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European Union set to revise cookie law, admits cookie banners are annoying (www.techspot.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I really wish we had a simulated world sandbox to try these ideas out in. I suspect this might lead to the end of most free websites.

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    TV never targeted commercials directly at "Dave Smith, likes fishing and interracial porn, lives in Chesterfield, searched for new cameras recently", but they still operated.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Sure, but also beside the point? I'm talking about the effects of changing an underlying mechanism of a live system, not of comparing two different systems that developed over time.

    Here are my guesses: sites that have enough unique visitor count and data to work directly with advertisers may not fall. Small sites that rely on Adsense networks for revenue would no longer have revenue. A small (though non-zero) number of people/groups would continue on and seek alternative funding. Without ad networks, many tech companies fall.

    I'm not saying that I'm against any of this, either. In my view, there's a large chance that nothing of real value (to a society) would be lost. Maybe we can bring web rings back.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ad networks could still work, they just wouldn't have the targeting data to work with or the usage data they can sell as an entirely unrelated business model. They were profitable before the current big data push, there's no reason they couldn't continue to be profitable without that big data again

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Do you think our economy has changed since big data targeted advertising? Your example is the same as Blackmists', essentially. We're 30 years down a path and flipping a switch like that would have widespread repercussions. Again, I'm not saying the repercussions shouldn't happen.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There's no reason they can't just use the page you're on and a very rough "location from IP address" (e.g. just the country, and sometimes not even that), to give the advertisers something to aim at. If you're on a camera website, you'd see camera shops in the UK, etc, rather than a load of weird buttplug shaped things from Temu.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    How would the advertisers get location IP if they can't have the data?

    Edit: whoops, got trigger happy. Anyway, I'm totally behind taking back control from advertisers. They have an outsized influence in society. I also think there are unforeseen consequences of your blanket statement suggestion that haven't been considered, hence wishing for a simulation. Again, if advertising is less targeted, cost of customer acquisition goes up and most business models break.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Your browser would technically have to request the advert anyway. So they'd have your IP regardless if they served you an ad. They just wouldn't be allowed to push it and your browser fingerprint to 1000+ "data partners".

    A better addition might be to have a dedicated advert tag in HTML, that disables any JS within that block, so the only thing they can do is give you a chunk of HTML/CSS/images with no ability to fingerprint.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Which free websites? The modern web is just:

    • (Quasi-)monopolistic platforms (meta, google, xitter, etc.)
    • Newspapers
    • SEO filler
    • Webshops
    • Free sites already operating out of the goodwill of some random admin and making single-digit ad revenue anyway <-- you are here
    • Porn aggregators
    • SEO filler
    • SEO filler
    • Wikipedia
    • End of list

    The only ones whose business model would truly be threatened and whose loss would be problematic are newspapers.
    OTOH newspapers accidentally cornering themselves in a "freemium" business model has fucked journalism over so bad I'm not sure how it could even be worse.

    Free websites like the ones we are on barely exist anymore anyway, because how the fuck do you "compete" in the "free marketplace of search indexing" when some russian troll is burying you to page 5 of google's search results and you can't reach anyone via facebook or twitter without paying thousands?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Craigslist struck the first blow against newspapers by taking away classified ad revenue. The death blow came when Silicon Valley taught people that "information wants to be free," which meant that no one wanted to pay for local news anymore. That led most local newspapers to collapse, while the few that managed to survive --apart from a handful of "legacy" papers-- mostly did so at the cost of turning into click-bait sites or outrage machines.

    We have to bring back the idea that people should be happy to pay for local news.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    They can just run ads without all the tracking bullshit and data collection like they do on every other medium with free ad supported content like radio and television. Somehow I can watch TV and listen to the radio for free and they manage to stay running without monitoring my every move.

    Might be less profitable for them but so be it. Just because tracking helps their business doesn't mean it is justified.

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