That was the subtext of the message the Federal Trade Commission delivered to Web advertisers, in particular with relation to ads that track consumer behavior. According to Reuters:
FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz said Internet advertisers should tell consumers that information was being gathered, give them a choice to opt out, and protect any data collected.
While there is nothing particularly new about the advertising technologies the FTC is worried about, Washington seems to be just waking up to the privacy implications of how ads are served to consumers across the Web. As election year approaches, expect to hear a lot more sabre-rattling on this issue.
AOL’s announcement on Wednesday to let people opt out of having its advertising systems place cookies on their browsers was conveniently timed for the day before the hearing. Calls for an industry-wide do-not-track list are also picking up. A do-not-track list is a good idea. Not that it would ever be enforceable. But opt-out systems are preferable to someone at the FTC deciding which advertising tactics are acceptable and which ones are not. Ultimately, the market should reward the advertising platforms that produce the most relevant ads, which are good for both advertisers and consumers. And if people want to opt out of these system altogether, well that is a market signal also.
and I absolutely agree with Jon Leiw…, look what happens because of having the current system:
http://www.btle...info.asp?id=212
“Ultimately, the market should reward the advertising platforms that produce the most relevant ads, which are good for both advertisers and consumers. And if people want to opt out of these system altogether, well that is a market signal also.”
Erick,
Facebook has the controls in place to comply with giving users an opportunity to opt-out of the “behavior tracking” system, but they need to make sure that their employees behave.
The FTC doesn’t have anything better to worry about than cookies that track me on the internet? If consumers are given the option of opting out of online tracking they will…it’s natural. Google, Yahoo et al. will oppose any FTC moves in this area as it will crush the billions of dollars being made on online advertising.
The only thing I have to be embarassed about is when my wife finds out that I visit techcrunch.com far too often.
A donottrack list is needed thats what the industry needs
donottrack!
People must be protected and provided opportunity at the same time. People sell their valuable individual commodities for pennies on the dollar far too willingly. Mankind makes slaves of itself one person at a time until there is so much momentum a revolution is required to fix the inequity. Why should the web community allow this to continue to be the case, when it has so much power to change it?
When will digital individuals realize the power they ought to possess?
Your data is your data. You ought to own it. Your participation in any network is a valuable commodity in and of itself. Pooled together with 50 million other individuals, you become a groundswell. Led by an entrepreneurial philosophy espousing universally distributed private ownership at the individual identity level… well you have a new socio-economic system.
America and the net. What a relationship. Our tax dollars created its existence. A small group organized its deployment and financing (NSF/NSI/Cerf), and we all develop its value as a public infrastructure commodity. Every nation gets to do it its own way. It is distributed into our homes, our hands, our ears, our eyes, our minds. We build its archives one database at a time, give our contribution away without any correlation of value to the individual participant in the system… and get all geeky over our creation!
We are teaching our young to be foolish. Free information is not the answer. Advertising revenue supported information is not the answer. A global digital brain structured as a resource and a marketplace simultaneously needs to be structured correctly if it is to perform correctly. Performance… that is the goal of everyone, whether we know it or not.
You must own your life in a digitally enabled socio-economic system. This is a matter of National and International importance. Just like the Earth must be valued in order that we develop it in a sustainable manner, our individual lives must be organized in a value-enhancing manner. That is the reason we create socio-economic systems. That is why we study economics.
You dont own your life currently.
Facebook can not form an appropriate relationship with its users until it is doing so with the direct owners of all information created, consumed and distributed via Facebook. Advertising supported business models are feasible only when there is fair and honest participation. The YouTube model is flawed.
This is a race to the right finish line. Every nation is represented. No one is doing it right yet. America is organized as a nation with ownership in mind, but in practise, none of its citizens own their citizenship. America is owned by owners, but America pretends it is ruled by free men who own nothing.
There is one thing more powerful than freedom… OWNERSHIP.
Stop casting your pearls before the pigs dummies. Hold out as long as you can… whats next has yet to get here. But first you have to care.
No one seems to care.
blah blah b lah.
@NZN
“People must be protected and provided opportunity at the same time. People sell their valuable individual commodities for pennies on the dollar far too willingly. Mankind makes slaves of itself one person at a time until there is so much momentum a revolution is required to fix the inequity. Why should the web community allow this to continue to be the case, when it has so much power to change it?”
“Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jamster (@6) Right on!!
FTC all the way baby!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Nobody find it just a tad ironic that a government agency is telling companies to scale back their hording of our personal/not-so-personal data while governments keep building it up ..?
Seems to me either the government is scared that the companies might know more about us than they do, or they really do care about citizens privacy
Anyway, one must applaud them for not telling companies to keep the data for longer and give them access!
Well, cookies have only benefitted me in past, so…
…well, I’m not U.S. citizen, so have nothing to fear about, so I’ll just keep my maw shut…
…or feds will know something about our app too early?
> A donottrack list is needed thats what the industry needs
It cannot work. The “do not call” phone list works because phone numbers are fixed and specific to a person. There is no way to do the same thing with online tracking. You do not use the same username/login for every site you visit. My guess is that you have dozens of online identities. Then there’s the problem of when you are not logged in (say anonymously browsing cnn.com). Sites don’t know who you are, so there’s no way to know if you are on the “donottrack” list. The default will be “if they’re not logged in, we track them”.
A global “do not track” list is not possible unless you are willing to register a global identity that you take with you to every site you visit, which is much much worse from a privacy standpoint than some silly anonymous ad tracking cookie.
Geez.
Twitter has been cybersquatted in France : http://www.twitter.fr