<story><title>It’s time for a digital protection agency</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/paul-ford-facebook-is-why-we-need-a-digital-protection-agency</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wpietri</author><text>It is definitely not true for news and book publishing.&lt;p&gt;For news, consider things like the Chinese wall [1] between news and ad sales, the formal ad standards that news organizations will have, and the fact that at least traditionally, humans manually sell those ads, resulting in oversight.&lt;p&gt;For books, I&amp;#x27;m not even sure what you mean. Book publishers sell books that they think will do well and, mostly, that reflect well on them. You can&amp;#x27;t just walk into Random House with a credit card and say, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#x27;s my manuscript, please put it in book stores nationwide.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I&amp;#x27;d just ban all advertising. The economic-theory reason we need it, purchasers discovering better ways to solve their needs, has been made mostly unnecessary by the Internet. Now if you want to buy a foo you just search for &amp;quot;foo reviews&amp;quot; and you&amp;#x27;re off to the races. We&amp;#x27;d figure out other ways to fund things.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, that justification was always a little... generous. Coca Cola doesn&amp;#x27;t spend billions per year on ads because they&amp;#x27;re just trying to reach people who&amp;#x27;ve never heard of their products. They do it because they want to manipulate people into buying Coke. I say we can trust people to find unhealthy addictions all on their own.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Chinese_wall#Journalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Chinese_wall#Journalism&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>edanm</author><text>&amp;gt;  This is an industry that sells influence at scale. Anyone with a credit card can start changing how people think and act but there are absolutely no real consequences for bad actors.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t this true of almost any industry which lets you put out information? E.g. news publishing? Book publishing? Blogs?&lt;p&gt;I mean, what exactly would you do, ban all communications? Maybe I missed something, but it seems like everyone just assumes that advertising is the #1 biggest influence on most people, and was used to completely change the tide of democracy, when in reality it seems to me that it&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;small&lt;/i&gt; part of the problem, at most.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m serious about the question btw - what &lt;i&gt;would&lt;/i&gt; you do? You say regulate at the core. I&amp;#x27;m not saying necessarily don&amp;#x27;t regulate (though that is where I lean) - I&amp;#x27;m asking, what exactly do you propose?</text></item><item><author>manigandham</author><text>As usual, a bunch of nonsense by people who have no idea about this.&lt;p&gt;The fundamental problem is that digital advertising is a 12-figure global industry with practically 0 oversight and regulation. This is an industry that sells influence at scale. Anyone with a credit card can start changing how people think and act but there are absolutely no real consequences for bad actors.&lt;p&gt;Even the most minimal laws around who can advertise and how would radically change everything. Google has even more data than Facebook. Amazon has just as much. Your ISP has just as much. These silly little projects to chase the latest scandal will do nothing in the long run. The only way to fix anything is to regulate the core, not try and fix every little symptom that occurs.&lt;p&gt;* Before the inevitable comments, yes advertising works, yes it works on you no matter how much you think otherwise, and no adblockers dont magically solve everything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wutbrodo</author><text>&amp;gt; For news, consider things like the Chinese wall [1] between news and ad sales&lt;p&gt;Literally the second line of the two lines of the linked section talks about the (increasingly common) cases of it being breached, a natural consequence of increasing ad-blocker usage.  Also, everything in the example you&amp;#x27;re giving relies on old distribution methods, not &amp;quot;news&amp;quot;.  There&amp;#x27;s no longer a line between news and &amp;quot;random website who publishes information about events&amp;quot;, and I&amp;#x27;m not sure how anyone who hasn&amp;#x27;t been living under a rock for the last 15 years could be naive enough to think otherwise.  For God&amp;#x27;s sake, Buzzfeed was a Pulitzer Prize finalist a year or two ago!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For books, I&amp;#x27;m not even sure what you mean. Book publishers sell books that they think will do well and, mostly, that reflect well on them. You can&amp;#x27;t just walk into Random House with a credit card and say, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#x27;s my manuscript, please put it in book stores nationwide.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Amazon is the largest bookseller in the country IINM, and you can very much give them a credit card and start selling your books nationwide.  Again, you&amp;#x27;re confusing increasingly-unpopular (for market reasons) distribution methods with types of media.&lt;p&gt;The very existence of advertorials is a refutation of the notion that there&amp;#x27;s any principled way to legally distinguish between advertising and other forms of information, even less so one that wouldn&amp;#x27;t be riven with loopholes (cf limits on campaign spending and Super PACs&amp;#x27; technically-not-for-the-candidates&amp;#x27; spending).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Personally, I&amp;#x27;d just ban all advertising.&lt;p&gt;You seem to be confident that you have a definition of the word advertising that would be robust enough to implement this without enough collateral damage that it wouldn&amp;#x27;t be trivially unconstitutional.  What is your rough proposal for what that definition would be?&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I generally agree with you that advertising is a collective-action&amp;#x2F;net-loss problem, but I think you may be falling into the classic trap of &amp;quot;this thing is bad, we should just wish for it to disappear and hold all else equal&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>It’s time for a digital protection agency</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/paul-ford-facebook-is-why-we-need-a-digital-protection-agency</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wpietri</author><text>It is definitely not true for news and book publishing.&lt;p&gt;For news, consider things like the Chinese wall [1] between news and ad sales, the formal ad standards that news organizations will have, and the fact that at least traditionally, humans manually sell those ads, resulting in oversight.&lt;p&gt;For books, I&amp;#x27;m not even sure what you mean. Book publishers sell books that they think will do well and, mostly, that reflect well on them. You can&amp;#x27;t just walk into Random House with a credit card and say, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#x27;s my manuscript, please put it in book stores nationwide.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I&amp;#x27;d just ban all advertising. The economic-theory reason we need it, purchasers discovering better ways to solve their needs, has been made mostly unnecessary by the Internet. Now if you want to buy a foo you just search for &amp;quot;foo reviews&amp;quot; and you&amp;#x27;re off to the races. We&amp;#x27;d figure out other ways to fund things.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, that justification was always a little... generous. Coca Cola doesn&amp;#x27;t spend billions per year on ads because they&amp;#x27;re just trying to reach people who&amp;#x27;ve never heard of their products. They do it because they want to manipulate people into buying Coke. I say we can trust people to find unhealthy addictions all on their own.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Chinese_wall#Journalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Chinese_wall#Journalism&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>edanm</author><text>&amp;gt;  This is an industry that sells influence at scale. Anyone with a credit card can start changing how people think and act but there are absolutely no real consequences for bad actors.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t this true of almost any industry which lets you put out information? E.g. news publishing? Book publishing? Blogs?&lt;p&gt;I mean, what exactly would you do, ban all communications? Maybe I missed something, but it seems like everyone just assumes that advertising is the #1 biggest influence on most people, and was used to completely change the tide of democracy, when in reality it seems to me that it&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;small&lt;/i&gt; part of the problem, at most.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m serious about the question btw - what &lt;i&gt;would&lt;/i&gt; you do? You say regulate at the core. I&amp;#x27;m not saying necessarily don&amp;#x27;t regulate (though that is where I lean) - I&amp;#x27;m asking, what exactly do you propose?</text></item><item><author>manigandham</author><text>As usual, a bunch of nonsense by people who have no idea about this.&lt;p&gt;The fundamental problem is that digital advertising is a 12-figure global industry with practically 0 oversight and regulation. This is an industry that sells influence at scale. Anyone with a credit card can start changing how people think and act but there are absolutely no real consequences for bad actors.&lt;p&gt;Even the most minimal laws around who can advertise and how would radically change everything. Google has even more data than Facebook. Amazon has just as much. Your ISP has just as much. These silly little projects to chase the latest scandal will do nothing in the long run. The only way to fix anything is to regulate the core, not try and fix every little symptom that occurs.&lt;p&gt;* Before the inevitable comments, yes advertising works, yes it works on you no matter how much you think otherwise, and no adblockers dont magically solve everything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nine_k</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s my manuscript, please put it in book stores nationwide.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suppose you heard about a company named Amazon. This is basically one of the services they offer for years, if you&amp;#x27;re OK with selling an e-book.&lt;p&gt;If your audience prefers dead trees, print-on-demand offers are also numerous.&lt;p&gt;The problem, as usual, is to make the existence of your book known to potential readers, and this is done by... advertising. And you want it to be targeted unless you enjoy burning money on spamming innocent disinterested people.</text></comment>