My first post on this board.
Just ran into this article on Wired Business: “German Regulators Just Outlawed Facebook’s Whole Ad Business”.
https://www.wired.com/story/germany-facebook-antitrust-rulin…
First crack in one of the “big” walled gardens?
John
Nice catch, thanks!
Will be interesting to see if CEO Jeff Green of The Trade Desk brings this up in 2 weeks on their CC.
Dreamer
Long TTD
across the web and smartphone apps, collecting data on which sites and apps they visit, where they shop, what they like, and combining all that information into comprehensive user profiles.
One may argue that Facebook can track users when they are on their media properties, but tracing them everywhere, and don’t tell me it is anonymous because they know how to link it to their Facebook users who are anything but anonymous. Anonymity is a fiction in regards to Facebook.
When they say it that way an overreach is an understatement as to what Facebook is doing.
Tinker
One may argue that Facebook can track users when they are on their media properties, but tracing them everywhere, and don’t tell me it is anonymous because they know how to link it to their Facebook users who are anything but anonymous. Anonymity is a fiction in regards to Facebook.
I’ve been seeing repeated ads and/or event notifications for Twilio and Nutanix on my FB page. The only sites I’ve ever hit for queries on TWLO and NTNX are the Fool, Morningstar, SA and Bert’s. I also have them listed on my Yahoo Quotes, and of course they’re on file in my brokerage account.
I have never once queried or mentioned either one on FB.
What gives? Is the “surveillance economy” (as Dreamer calls it) now ubiquitous?
Dude
(first post here, thanks for indulging me…)
There’s two interesting aspects to this story:
The first one relates to “corporate responsibility” and “sustainability”. These are more than nice sounding words, and “sustainability” is much more than “environmental sustainability”.
Any company that systematically acts unethically (like Facebook, which has been acting completely irresponsibly in a hundred different ways) doesn’t have a sustainable business model. Especially if it’s a very big company. There is a large risk that at some point, regulators will come in and say “what is this s+++” and impose severe restrictions on you.
This is particularly true if your value contribution to society is dubious. There are many studies now that show how people are happier if they DON’T use Facebook, or use it much less often. Unlike in the past, Facebook is not seen as a promising new way of bringing people together, and more like a vendor of an addictive product that ensnares its users (in particular young users).
The second one is the European (and in particular German) focus on COMPETITION. It is very different from the (current) US mindset. When the Europeans see areas in the economy with little or no competition, it irks them. Walled gardens give us heartburn.
The EU regulators look at the 30% monopoly rents Apple is collecting in its App Store and they think “this would be so much more efficient if we could introduce some competition”. And they’re right, of course.
The “data portability” provision in the EU GDPR is another attempt to break open these walled gardens. (Upon request, Facebook has to provide you with all your data in a format that you can transfer to, say, a Facebook competitor).
There is a risk for the big tech companies (but not only tech companies) that the US will return to more vigorous pro-competition policies at some point. The current extremely lax approach leads to high profit margins, low business investment, low wages and low growth.
I see many ads on FB that are wholly unrelated to any FB activity. Obviously, they are reading tracking cookies, maybe not even their own. I’m too lazy to clear my cache and browsing history every day. I’ve used incognito Chrome occasionally, but I guess not enough in order to shield my activity.
This is akin to Amazon prime loyalty customers at Whole Foods (I’m one of them). This gives Amazon at least some insight to brick and mortar purchasing activities. Probably the same reason Amazon is creating B&M bookstores, knowing what books and magazines people buy gives you a whole lot of advertising insight. This is how Publisher’s Clearinghouse has been able to give away a bunch of money and remain in business.
Zuck has created a monster. He probably didn’t intend to, and most likely was not aware of it until the 2016 election cycle but there it is. It’s out of his control, though he won’t admit it. But think on it for a minute. FB can microtarget users for advertising dollars but has trouble identifying Russian bots. You know that doesn’t make any sense. I recently read an article that informed social media users how to recognize bots and fake pages based certain characteristics. Yet Zuck can’t build s/w to do the same thing? Give me a break.
Dang! Should have checked the URL when copy/pasting. This one should work.
https://www.wired.com/story/germany-facebook-antitrust-rulin…
Please ignore my prior post; it’s a repeat from 2 weeks ago. Was copy/pasting too many things too late at night.
Mea Culpa.
John