Let me start by saying I love idlewords writing and largely agree with his proposed rules (even if he did demonize something like 1/3 of my working life with 1 sentence).
> Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking
My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws "average people can understand". Things like Banks should have enough risk free capital to cover outstanding deposits and banks shouldn't make "speculative investments". But it turns out that the devil is in the details with these sorts of things. What is a "speculative investment" etc? And there are dramatic financial mismatches between the people trying to work around the laws and the people trying to enforce them.
So when I hear "information the site has about the visitor" being the only thing a publisher can share with the ad network, I have to wonder
a) can publishers share data with each other? If not how does that impact things like open ids, publisher networks etc.
b) doesn't this rule simply give even more of a stranglehold to giant companies like facebook and google? How does having a couple of giant extra-governmental tracking agencies make our lives better than having a huge network of them? If advertisers can only serve the ads they want on facebook/google, won't that mean that publishers will be levered into only using those sources for publishing? How do you break out of that cycle?
I think this is a very trenchant criticism of what I said, and I appreciate you not taking offense at me!
For a) I imagine data sharing is fine, except that you can't share behavioral data about users, and you can't use any of the shared data for advertising. That said, I know very little about how publisher networks work and would appreciate pushback.
b) is unfortunately quite right. If you're sufficiently pessimistic, one thing that makes having giant tracking agencies better is that they're more likely to not get hacked or leak your data. But I agree that this is a real problem and one that my proposals from this talk will exacerbate.
I think we are already seeing a shift to b.), one that is only being exacerbated by ad-blocking (on mobile) - and it makes me think about what will come of the "open" web.
I have no insider knowledge, but I'm starting to think Apple is placing a huge bet on the fact that ad-blocking will 1.) eventually make the web unprofitable then 2.) shepherd users onto platforms like iOS and Facebook where they can be monetized better. This, to me, is starting as an experiment with Apple Music vs Spotify (ad enabled) to test whether their platform has enough clout to get people to pay $9.99 for their platform and is now eventually moving to News where Apple is now starting with exclusive news but may move to a pay model where you also pay $9.99 for news.
If this model "works", you may see sites move inside Apple's wall garden in order to keep the lights on, and create a barrier for new sites to ever build up an audience without relying on Apple's/Facebook's walled garden.
All this stems from the fact of my fear that while everyone seems to be gung-ho about the proliferation of ad-blockers, no one, except Apple (Music, News for now) and Facebook (News), is providing any real alternative solutions to publishers for a source of revenue.
I'm still a bit confused about how right-to-download helps non-nerds. I think I have a minor allergic reaction to things that are (a) so hard to implement that they raise barriers to newcomers and (b) only help the nerd class.
The most clarifying moment for this was Google's comprehensive data download, which the FB Growth team found out about and actively, scalably encouraged people to use, at which point Google got institutionally offended and pulled it. It later got restored under a scary This Is Actually An Advanced Techy Thing; Pay No Attention To The Data Behind The Curtain warning.
I think the argument is that while the basic features are nerd only, they enable a better overall ecosystem.
Much like rules around financial disclosures are largely only cared about by finance nerds, but the halo allows everyone to have a better finance ecosystem.
> Ban on Third-Party Ad Tracking
My experience in finance makes me skeptical that this will play out the way that he hopes. Most of the financial regulation in the world started with laws "average people can understand". Things like Banks should have enough risk free capital to cover outstanding deposits and banks shouldn't make "speculative investments". But it turns out that the devil is in the details with these sorts of things. What is a "speculative investment" etc? And there are dramatic financial mismatches between the people trying to work around the laws and the people trying to enforce them.
So when I hear "information the site has about the visitor" being the only thing a publisher can share with the ad network, I have to wonder
a) can publishers share data with each other? If not how does that impact things like open ids, publisher networks etc.
b) doesn't this rule simply give even more of a stranglehold to giant companies like facebook and google? How does having a couple of giant extra-governmental tracking agencies make our lives better than having a huge network of them? If advertisers can only serve the ads they want on facebook/google, won't that mean that publishers will be levered into only using those sources for publishing? How do you break out of that cycle?