The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

gruez

I'm not sure what this blog is complaining about. >Problem one: Over-rating search, social, and app store ads Isn't this a problem with today's ad attribution system? The author doesn't try to argue how the new system makes it worse. >Problem two: Incentives for extra tracking Same as above. It sounds like he's against attribution in general, which is an okay position to have, but I'd rather he say this upfront and more directly rather than spending 1k+ words on what essentially can be boiled down to "I hate Attribution Level 1 because it's attribution, and attribution is bad in general", and implying the issues he has are issues with Attribution Level 1 specifically.

AndrewKemendo

So they “reinvented” HTTP cookies but with only advertisers? > Technically, the way it works is that a script running on a site with ads asks the browser to record an ad impression. Then the browser keeps a record of ads seen from all the sites you visit. Later, when you buy something, the retail site can ask the browser to generate a “conversion report” that can be passed to a centralized aggregation service.

sandcat_

> When Meta, Google and Apple [and Mozilla] agree on a “privacy” feature, watch out. ? This feels like a good sign, to me. I get far more worried when I see the likes of Meta, Google, Spotify, Epic etc team up.

theamk

This seems like this is written by an advertiser who wants their profits, but pretending to care about privacy so they get users' support. Here is a more honest summary: "This proposal hurts us, small advertisement networks and professional marketers. Reject it, or we will ramp up the tracking to compensate for the lost opportunities!"

skybrian

> Don’t look for a section on permissions or consent in that document, by the way. There isn’t one. And nothing about nerd lawyer stuff like “opt out of sale” or “objections to processing” in there, either. The Big Tech companies want a two-track system, where other companies’ ad features are required to do all the privacy regulation hassles, but the browser’s own built-in tracking feature is something that people have to find the right setting for and turn off. This language to make consent popups sound good is suspicious. Not being interrupted while you're browsing is good. A browser setting that people can turn off once, for all participating websites, is good.

shevy-java

> called Attribution Level 1, as a standard feature of web browsers We need to eliminate private companies from our browsers in general. Many years ago they called it "acceptable ads".

powerpcmac

Closed immediately due to the invasive "using this site means you agree to our terms of service!!" Popup

sporadicism

You can tell who works in adtech

troupo

The next time anyone on HN says "GDPR should've been a setting in the browser", I'll just point them to this. This is what browser vendors are making as a default setting.

cm2012

"The average person in the USA has about $1200/year spent on advertising intended to reach them. Where do you want “your” $1200 spent?" Interestingly $1,200 is roughly 3.5% of what the average American spends per year (roughly $78k), and $1200 is roughly 15% of the average American's discretionary spending. That doesn't seem too crazy to me as a cost for the main driver of the matching and branding system of the capitalist economy of the United States.

Hizonner

Time to fire up the chaffing. Or the pitchforks and torches. Either one. Advertising needs to be over now.

ddxv

I've been wanting to build something like this for mobile advertising attribution. Mobile attribution is much worse since it by nature needs to on a device / fingerprinting level track across apps, and since there is not HTTP direct connection between the apps, the tracking is much more broad. Companies like AppsFlyer are in 20% of apps and track everything that happens in those apps. I'd like to see AppsFlyer work on this as well. Moving mobile attribution to device based would be a huge privacy benefit. But it might be quite difficult for a company like AppsFlyer to do this, so it might need to end up being pushed by Apple and Google, but as both advertising companies, they might be even less incentivized for this kind of local tracking.

jsrozner

Following the overturning of Roe v Wade, it is clear that the US needs privacy enshrined in the Constitution. For example, it is absurd to imagine a state government trying to distinguish between an abortion and a miscarriage in order to potentially prosecute; this distinction is something that no one beyond the woman should have any right to know. It's my view that the Founders did not think to directly mention privacy since they had no capacity to imagine technology as powerful as that which enables today's surveillance capitalists. But the sort of law that would establish a general right to privacy (or the kind of values that would lead us to establish one) would likely also hinder companies from aggregating user data for any purpose other than directly serving users. (And it would also hinder the government from surveilling its citizens.) If such an amendment were considered, we'd all fast find that most techies aren't actually liberals. Oh wait, we saw that when they all turned to support Trump. Surprise, surprise. I promise you that when consumer and enterprise funds dry up, every one of these AI companies will be placing ads and selling surveillance and drone tech to the government. Anthropic already dropped the part of its constitution that forbid collaboration of any kind with the military. The pressure to profitability is immense. Today, purported morality is mostly (temporary) sophistry. Most folks will work for Zsuck or Palantir if the money is good enough.