Norway Bans Meta From Showing Users Personalized Ads

My favorite is when you go on Amazon to buy something, say like a TV. Then you get blasted with ads for TVs for the next month.

Mother fucker, I just bought a TV. I bought it from you. Are you smart enough to start advertising TVs to me before I even search on your site, but not smart enough to know I already bought the fucking thing? From you?

Please ban all personalized ads everywhere.

We've had one yes, but what about a second TV?

It would be so refreshing to get randomized non tracked ads just like in the ye ol free tv days. This shall be the new norm. But wait, i can't have that, there's a PiHole. :(

And you can't have that either because there are no Pi's (yes I know it runs on other machines as well)

Dear Meta,

Most of your business model is no longer legal here. Please kindly fuck off.

Sincerely, Norway

(probably)

Michael Scott

Can they also forbid facebook from collecting and selling (or renting) user data?
Because otherwise it won't change much.

You can’t really effectively do that, as every social media platform has to collect user data per definition.
Forbidding selling would be a bit difficult to define, but at least worth the try.

The cost of personalized ads is privacy. Do you value privacy? Whats your phone number? My friends want to send you some texts

Test

... that kind of sucks actually. I'd rather have personalized ads that just random ass ads.

lol wat
- If I looked up gaming monitors, I'd rather get ads for PC components rather than ads for soap, for example. If I'm getting ads anyways, I'd want ads for stuff I might actually be interested in. Does that make sense?
I get your sentiment, but having personalized ads is just an incentive for a lack of user privacy. If we kill the incentive, we can embrace security.
- having personalized ads is just an incentive for a lack of user privacy.
  The most salient point here.
Meanwhile, targeted ads IRL: We kind of noticed you recently bought LAWNMOWER on Amazon. As a LAWNMOWER aficionado, would you like to buy more LAWNMOWER? Take your pick of these four crappy, overpriced ones. We will bill you like they are gold plated and dropship some junk from China, lol.
Also, you added your neighbor on Facebook and her aunt recently went on an esoteric streak. Would you like to buy some tarot cards to talk to your recently deceased grandmother or some crystals that can heal ass cancer? Doctors hate this one trick! Mostly because they hate seeing their desperate patients getting scammed, but they do hate it.
And while we are talking about your nether regions, as a proud owner of a penis you must have thought about enlarging it before, so here are some options …
I’d prefer neither. No ads are best
I actually tend to agree. I value privacy and I hate the idea of Meg-O-Corp selling my data all over the world but on the other hand, I’ve bought some really cool shit that I love off targeted ads
So are targeted ads better than just ads? Yes for the consumer in me, no for the private person
- Maybe it will counter people buying stuff they don’t need, in addition to better privacy.
- The solution is not personalized ads, but localized ads like what ExplainXKCD does.
The issue is not the personalised ad, but how Meta decides who seems them.
Today they take a lazy but effective approach of collecting as much data as possible at user level, to draw correlations between the user data and the content of the ad.
If regulation prohibit them from using this approach they'll be force to innovate or die.
that’s stupid
[..]
It's disappointing to see how many people are downvoting this because, to them, it's a "I disagree and think you're an idiot" button.
Well, actually, I've kinda come to expect it here. People aren't really interested in actual discourse.