@bagder "this advert was served 30 thousand times and sales increased 7%" is more than good enough, and more than enough for most businesses. Certainly the ones I've worked with.

You get that from your metrics

The rest is weird bollocks for the sake of weird bollocks for the sake of a problem that doesn't exist for the sake of the people who've grown fat off this bollocks.

@bagder Isn't that a similar line of thinking than saying: "Corporations don't actually need to make a profit" (as in: they can just break even)?

People hate paying for services more than they hate ads. If the ads are not profitable enough, websites go out of business, including stuff critical to our democracy like news sites. What is the solution if not ads that are good enough to actually give enough money to those sites?

@bagder 🤔 I wonder how effective even is it to know the previous times the user has seen an ad on before clicking on it. It seems like such a useless metric that doesn't really even help targeting.

Maybe that's their 4d play, somehow push all ad networks onto the almost useless metric and then block all the other options

@bagder Sadly 2/3 browser vendors are primarily ad-funded T_T Google through being directly ad funded, and Mozilla through being Google funded

@bagder They really have to in order to keep profitability up

@bagder I wonder if @mozilla knows this? ​:nko_think:​

@bagder Correct. Advertiser pays website for ad space on it. No further variables or parameters are really needed.

@bagder you're damn right.

@bagder This right here.

@bagder let's go back to physical newspapers 😭

@bagder That depends on whether or not you think users should be subjected to advertisers' intense distrust.

That is the reason tracking was created.

If they can't function without the distrust, then we distrust them back and block them.

@bagder Facts.

@bagder

I don't know how effective "targeted" advertising is.

Everyone I know who is open to being tracked hates advertising popping up when they talk about particular items.

I am leaning towards this being another collateral debt scam.

Businesses seem to be paying for a service that doesn't actually do what they want. A bit like AI.

I see a house of cards and am waiting for someone to turn the fan on.

@bagder A browser that keeps you from being tracked exists but it's actually pretty tough to use, and to use in a way that won't get you tracked anyway. That's the TOR browser and it has to jump through a bunch of proxies, disable a bunch of features most people expect, and you still need to avoid maximizing the window and shit. It's an arms race and the fact that most people are like, "I'd rather gmail work than have privacy," makes it a losing battle.

@bagder I can't say I know much about the ad ecosystem, but I really suspect that if they didn't have ANY data beyond 'yep, served that one 20K times', the ads would be no less or more effective. It's not like the targeting is working now, judging from what I see.

@bagder Tell us more about that

@bagder I'm STILL going to use Firefox over Chrome dude.

@bagder nothing on the web needs cookies.

@bagder In saying this, are you advocating Mozilla's recent experiment in Firefox?
I mean PPA API: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution

@bagder

Extreme capitalism dictates that companies do all they can - no matter how enshittified the user experience/product is - to make the most money possible.

Yeah, you're right - they don't need to but they can and will and do and will continue to.

Ethical capitalism is what we need - that which also accounts for morality keeping the user and customers interests at heart.

@bagder sadly the browsers that people actually use are mostly made by or funded by those who want to do the tracking, though.

@bagder we have a subconscious need to comply and cornform - jeff has 30k webpages, this is not a coincidence, there is a feedback loop

@bagder Newspapers ran ads just fine without it.

@bagder Firefox: surprised Picachu face

@bagder Very well said. Contextual ads worked just fine, and advertiser and publisher could make money—arguably more for publishers to keep things afloat. Tracked ads largely enrich Google. Why so many are complicit in giving Google more money is beyond me.

@bagder Ethical ads is a company attempting to put ads on webpages based on the content of the webpage itself, exactly like ads used to be on cable TV. No specific user-tracking, simply "if you are looking at python documentation, you may like this python course"

Yeah, browser developers should always be on the users' side.

@bagder That's true, but one of the biggest developers is an ad-company - Google. :/

@bagder the bulk of browser development is funded by advertising money. So it's not something they can walk away from easily, Mozilla included.

@bagder I understand the need for some services to fund themselves through advertising so I accept adverts... unless the particular advert is tracking in me, in which case it gets blocked. Funny thing is, I can't remember the last time I saw an advert on the internet.

@bagder some sites have DOZENS of trackers on a single page. They use YOUR computer processing power to execute, and user YOUR bandwidth to send the data back to their masters.

Use a browser like Brave or Firefox, install blockers like NoScript and Ghostery, and you can probably just click away from sites that don't work without all these trackers enabled.

@bagder Also, websites shouldn't host ads that redirect you to a different website, that's shady. A lot of them are scams anyway.

@bagder @geerlingguy
Just so happens that the most used browser is owned by the same guys as the biggest ads provider 🙁

@bagder there's the correct address for this: @mozilla

@bagder on the other hand our current economic system basically forces ad networks to do invasive tracking, which could only be improved by browsers actually coming up with *better* (as in generating more profit) solution

@bagder Unfortunately, I think that they kind of have to and the reason is #capitalism

Meh.

@bagder Did you see this thread of Mozilla Tech Lead Bas Shouten arguing that tracking ad impressions is not data processing and that they decided against informed consent because it would be „too complex to explain“? Good times https://mastodon.social/@Schouten_B/112780696822570041

@bagder I wonder how much effort it would be to sabotage the ads tracking thing and send them a lot of noise

@bagder Tracking (by which I guess you mean attribution in this case) makes the ads much more effective because the next set of ads can be targeted more precisely to people who might want to see them. More effective ads makes them cheaper for the advertiser, which means that a small business actually can reach new customers economically. And that also means that people will see fewer irrelevant/spammy ads. It’s a tradeoff many don’t like, but it’s not just evil profiteering.

@bagder always thought that when apps demanded access to the microphone to work, or demanded location, there should be a "yes but send fake data" option. The OS/browser/whatever should be on my side there. If the webpage coordinates so heavily with third party ad networks that the page won't load without ad metrics, then be on my fucking side here and send fake data. Spam the spammers. Is that so wrong?

@bagder Said it before; a lot of the time pages I like ask me to disable my adblocker.

I do so, but then the page still don't recognize that the adblocker is off as long as you still block trackers.

So then I enable my adblocker again, because fuck them.