cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/4017115
Related material, not all as optimistic as the ABC news article:
Cool, but our governments have passed some of the absolute worst privacy laws in the world so this means basically nothing.
Our ISPs are forced to log all the metadata about everything you do on your internet service, and the government can basically just request it for any reason they desire.
Federal law enforcement agencies can request app Devs put backdoors into their apps, so the cops can steal data. What’s more, the Devs aren’t allowed to tell anyone that they have done so.
Yep, and that makes literally no sense as any code I do has to go through a peer review and be checked off by 2 other devs, who would catch the back door. Our government has no idea how technology works.
But these proposed laws mean that the government will have the monopoly on civil liberty violations.
Commercial businesses will not be able to exploit you.
Sounds great, but knowing something about how screwed Australians are for privacy I’m sure there’s a caveat. Probably have to have a digital ID 100% verifiable human citizen before you can use it. Allow yourself to be AI tracked online and off 24/7 to get rid of some ads. If people did a bit of research you will find you can already do these things and more to increase your security and protect your own privacy. The governments don’t like that though. If it’s something like the EU’s GDPR with no caveats then it will be an improvement.
Its the Australian government there’s going to be so many loopholes that its essentially pointless then when people ask for a real version they gonna point to it and go look we already have this stop complaining.
The caveat is it doesn’t apply to political parties.
Ads should be opt in. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to make them go the hell away.
Not while we live in a capitalist system. Ad personalisation on the other hand…
I think everyone would be surprised how many people would opt in.
I installed a pihole and not being able to click on ads for 12 hours is the closest my wife has been to divorcing me.
Say what ?
Do you know what sort of ads she clicks on most often?
And how do you propose sites pay for their hosting and staff?
With any number of alternative business models.
It’s unfuriating that people actually believe ads can have some kind of positive impact by creating a revenue stream for content.
And how many of those alternative business models:
- Ensure open access to content to anyone, rather than just those with enough disposable income?
- Enable support for content at a variety of different consumption patterns, including (a) niche but dedicated audience, (b) large moderately engaged audience, and © very large drive-by audience (i.e., audience of people who might not expect to access content from you ever again, but show up for this one particular popular thing)?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the option of other revenue streams. Paywalled content has the right to exist, and I pay for some of it myself very happily. So does donation-based content like Patreon and at least some Lemmy instances (including the one I’m on). But advertising works very well, and I have never seen someone suggest an alternative that could ever come close to replacing advertising in terms of the volume and variety of content that is currently available on the Internet.
You’ve pretty much answered your own question - the alternative model is simply no-fee, frictionless, convenient, secure, micro-payments.
If everyone paid $0.001 to, say, read an article content producers would have a lot more revenue than they do presently. I’m truly loathe to say this as I despise everything about crypto, but this is a problem that crypto could address.
The only reason this doesn’t exist is because the advertising model is more lucrative for the corporations that built the modern web.
You’ve pretty much answered your own question - the alternative model is simply no-fee, frictionless, convenient, secure, micro-payments.
No, I’ve explained why such a system is unable to solve the problem better than advertising can. Or to be more precise, I’ve explained the criteria that a successful system would need to meet. Criteria no system I’m familiar with has met.
I’m truly loathe to say this as I despise everything about crypto, but this is a problem that crypto could address.
Crypto certainly could be used to deliver the system you propose. Such a system actually exists. The Basic Attention Token; perhaps other implementations of the same idea. I think it’s a great idea in theory, but it’s been around for over half a decade now and hasn’t taken off. Because consumer interest isn’t there; because the website interest isn’t there; because it’s impractical to make work in a way that actually improves user experience. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is, the fact is it hasn’t worked, and if you’re proposing an alternative to advertising, it needs to be one that people can get on board with, and a proven failed system clearly isn’t the answer, as much as I might like it to be.
More to the point though, I worry that such a system, even with those low payments, would put an undue burden on the finances of those who can least afford it. The Internet has been an incredible democractising force, allowing people from all over the world and all walks of life to create content and share their experiences, and view that of others. To cut too many off entirely would be a great shame. And frankly I get a little uneasy even with the idea of some people being able to pay to remove ads. It would create two classes of people, those who must pay with their data, and those who can afford not to. I’m not necessarily saying it would be wrong to allow some people to pay to remove advertising fwiw, just noting that it’s an uncomfortable issue that should be carefully considered, not necessarily just taken as a given.
Also fwiw, I see no reason that it should need to be tied to crypto. Whatever software is needed to interpret that the token has been paid could just as easily ensure a centralised server has registered a microtransaction. From how you’ve described it I actually think I’m in principle less against crypto than you are (in the sense that I think the cast majority of its most publicised use has been as a tool for scams and grifts, but I don’t believe it necessarily has to be that way, and I’m very open to the idea of legitimate uses, even if I don’t yet think I’ve seen any), but I just don’t see what advantages it would have for this purpose over centralised architecture.
I think you’re looking at this UN a “how can we fix things” way while my comments are more idealistic. If advertising never existed, then something like the micropsyment platform I mentioned would have coalesced to find content.
As this are - there’s probably no pathway from the current status quo to my proposed idealist utopia.
Yeah that’s fair. I was being rather clumsy with my wording, and sort of doing a bit of both the pragmatic and idealistic approach, without clearly distinguishing when I was doing which. I think idealistically there’s a lot of good to be said for the micropayment system, but it’s not necessarily as much of a clear-cut good as you suggest. There are still equity issues at play as described above. There are also practical questions. Would every single site charge precisely the same amount? Would it be per page view or per user? Per page but with a cap on monthly spend per user? All this could be addressed of course, but would either create an equity issue distinct from the above-mentioned one, or would create awkward UX interactions for the user to manage their expenditure. Ads have the benefit of being both completely equitable and dead simple.
You could click the link in the OP to find out
The OP is talking about ad tracking. The comment I replied to suggested ads should be entirely removed.
Yes, click the link and tell me how many ads you see.
What, so you think all companies should be ad-free because they’re funded entirely by the government? Can’t possibly see how that would go wrong…
It’s how we run elections and generally it’s the parties that receive more non-government funding that are the problem.
You’ve completely lost the plot
Lol Australia is one of the five eyes countries who spy on their own citizens.
Very important legal distinction here: we have laws about spying on our own citizens, so we let our allies do it for us, while we openly spy on our allies citizens, and then share that information back with each other. Totally different bro! /s
About time, it should be seen as a liability to hold personal data you have no need for
That’s already illegal. Australian Privacy Principle #3 states:
an organisation, may only collect this information where it is reasonably necessary for the organisation’s functions or activities
In other words, they can’t collect it unless it is necessary to provide service they offer.
I have lived and breathed (and trained hundreds of people on) these privacy principles. Our privacy laws are already pretty good. Waaaaay better than the USA. But yeah, they’re due for a bit of modernisation.
You can read the current privacy principles here.
Good to see Chaney introduce a private members bill to remove the carve out for political parties.
But the outcome of that seems like a fait accompli in any parliament where Labor and the Coalition can combine for a majority.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Social media companies follow us wherever we go online (and occasionally offline), learning intimate details they can use to target advertising.
Millions of Australians have been implicated in data breaches compromising passport details, health information or other sensitive communications held onto long past when was reasonable.
Now, the federal government has committed to overhauling Australia’s privacy laws following the recommendations of a major review first initiated by the former administration.
Among the proposals the government has tentatively agreed to is also the idea that individuals should have the right to require an entity to delete or de-identify their personal information.
The government agrees in-principle that people should have that right, including being able to require search engines to de-index certain information about them, meaning it would not show in their results.
The government has flagged it will continue working on the reforms into next year, with fresh rounds of consultation to come for some of the most complex proposals, as well as likely transition periods for those affected.
The original article contains 785 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The “right to be forgotten” should not be looked at as a good thing. Its reason for existing is honestly pretty gross. It’s about censoring people’s access to news if the subject of that news doesn’t like it. Literally, Google v Costeja is basically its origin, and it’s a case where Google was forced to stop linking to news articles about a person despite those articles being entirely accurate. This is bad for two reasons:
- First, the news is accurate. It reported on events that had occurred—in fact, the reporting was legally mandated by the Spanish Government. This was not in dispute. Access to accurate information simply because it portrays someone in a bad light is an awful kind of censorship.
- Second, it went after the wrong subject. Google’s job is to link people to websites. If someone wants information taken down, they shouldn’t be asking Google to de-index it, they should be going after the news site. If the law wants to allow the information to be made inaccessible, they should require the news site to take it down. Or better, they should be required to issue an update or retraction alongside the previously-accurate article.
If someone wants information taken down, they shouldn’t be asking Google to de-index it, they should be going after the news site.
How? How can you ask a site run in a foreign country, by people who don’t speak english, to remove some content about you?
Also - just because content is accurate doesn’t mean it’s legal. A video of two people having sex is “accurate”. That doesn’t mean it should be shared online if they haven’t consented to that.
As far as I know, Mario Costeja González never did anything wrong? All he did was sell an asset in order to pay off a debt. The media’s coverage of the event did long term harm to his reputation. I think it’s a perfectly good example of a reasonable takedown request. The normal rule for people with financial difficulties in Australia is to erase all records after five years (e.g. if you’re overdue paying off a loan, that black mark against your name will be forgotten if you do eventually pay the loan off and then don’t miss a payment for five years).
Kids also do stupid shit all the time, and these days those mistakes are often posted online. They shouldn’t ruin your reputation for your entire life.
I’m sure this won’t be a universal right. There will be rules around when someone can ask for content to be taken down. I’m reserving judgement until I’ve seen those rules… and even then it’s pretty normal for new legislation to miss a few things and be amended later.
I’m not going to address the ridiculous bad faith arguments made in your first two paragraphs.
As to the third, he didn’t do anything wrong per se, but he was required to sell off assets to pay debt. This is a simple fact which occurred and the news was required to report on it. If a law existed requiring the news organisation to take down those records after 5 years, that would be entirely reasonable. But that law did not exist in Spain, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper had been asked and refused to remove the news. It’s ridiculous to censor it via Google simply because he doesn’t like it. If there’s not a lawful basis to remove the article from its original source, there shouldn’t be a lawful basis to remove it from Google. (This is different to, say, removing pirate links from Google, because they are illegal and a lawful basis does exist for removing them, even if practical matters around jurisdiction prevent actually enforcing that law.)
There is never a case where a news site in a country should keep an article up, but search engines be required by the Government of the same country to de-index the article.
John Barilaro demonstrated you can do the same thing already, this just gives the same right to people who can’t afford a team of KCs.
