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Switzerland proposes banning profiling-based ads to minors

https://www.admin.ch/en/newnsb/NMn5s24l8NjQ
132•wuemeli•44m ago•76 comments

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1•morraa•17h ago
Open in hackernews

Switzerland proposes banning profiling-based ads to minors

https://www.admin.ch/en/newnsb/NMn5s24l8NjQ
117•wuemeli•44m ago

Comments

jonathanstrange•39m ago
I agree with that. If profiling-based ads were allowed, minors would no longer receive ads for booze and porn. They'd have to ask their older brother about the real internet, which is embarrassing.
lenerdenator•37m ago
Or find it themselves.

Good thing no one did that in the mid-00s. Nope. Nobody. God, can you imagine if they had?

vincnetas•36m ago
Its now about alcohol. Its about paw patrol.
tyleo•34m ago
I don’t think the mentality, “people would do it anyways,” is convincing. Just like we don’t put Playboy in Grocery store checkout there’s a reason some advertising isn’t front and center.
behringer•17m ago
Considering grocery stores around here in the US are now running gambling machines I think you underestimate what grocery store operators are willing to sink to.
jacquesm•33m ago
It goes well beyond booze and porn.
dzikimarian•17m ago
Meta profiled for vulnerable, low self-esteem minors (eg by monitoring added and quickly removed photos). It was used by advisers to push ads for beauty & lifestyle products feeding on depressed teenagers. Booze is non issue compared to that.
chinathrow•38m ago
Great start, now do it for all ages.
ryan_glass•27m ago
This would also prevent the issue of having to age verify.
tiahura•35m ago
So they can get gambling and wiener pill ads too?
kotaKat•25m ago
Ah, no, that's why Discord did the sudden mass-push to verify everyone they could as an adult, because "Real Money Gaming" is now an advertising category they welcome with open arms.
LoganDark•23m ago
I wonder why gambling and prediction markets have suddenly popped up so much in the past couple months or so. Like, Polymarket's been a thing for years at this point, so what caused the sudden surge? Is it just Discord pushing ads or what?
4ggr0•34m ago
how will the age of the browsing person be evaluated without checking for IDs? or do kids still get profiled, but if they get profiled and determined to be a kid you can't serve them ads? we could also teach kids at school how to install adblockers.

i'm all for it if we expand it to banning ads in all virtual and physical spaces of Switzerland :D (or at least inside of public transport, i hate how distracting and useless these freaking ad-panels in buses, trains, trams etc. are).

EDIT: okay per a different article[0], social media platforms and search providers have to analyze if their service enhances risks for minors, and do something against it if so. and "big platforms" shouldn't be allowed to serve personalized ads to kids. so they'll just serve unpersonalized ads to kids then? bwoah...

[0]https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/kommunikationsplattformen-bu...

TZubiri•32m ago
I was thinking that based on the profiling itself. So if you profile that the user is 18, you cannot serve them profiled ads.

You can also not build marketing campaigns based on profiling technologies.

So an advertiser would not be able to advertise a toy with a marketing strategy based on bidding on users that watch MrBeast and Minecraft videos

4ggr0•28m ago
suddenly everyone gets profiled as being at least 18 years old, problem solved.

> based on bidding on users that watch MrBeast and Minecraft videos

but then what is the cutoff for "childish" topics? i mean firstly i'm sure there are people who aren't minors who watch MrBeast and Minecraft, but that's the lesser problem. but if i take myself as an example, i did also watch content as a kid which wasn't targeted to kids. not talking about NSFW stuff either, just stuff you wouldn't think as kids being the target audience.

philipallstar•34m ago
Just keep them off the internet. What's the point?
master-lincoln•30m ago
parenting doesn't work everywhere
jubilee33•12m ago
You can keep your kids off the internet. Mine will have access to all torrents, shadow librarys, and local LLMs, ( and if I can afford it as many real life engineering tools as they can use) Let's see who is better prepared for life at 18?

As a parent my job is to install restrictions to filter ads, the "TikToks", and other assorted corporate brainrot, same restrictions as for myself, but also explain to them why. once/if they can work around my tech, I think they can handle it all.

icyfox•33m ago
There's been a lot of recent swiss efforts to curtail advertising. Off the top of my head:

- Zurich's parliament voted 58–57 last year to place limits on outdoor advertising (have 2027 to come up with implementation)

- Bern fully instituted the ban but reversed course over revenue concerns

- Vernier & Lancy have banned billboards

They certainly seem to have the appetite to reduce the size of the industrial advertising complex... but there's clearly some successful industry pushback (like in the case of Bern). Curious to see how this profiling shakes out. Hard to make a revenue loss argument so I'm guessing it'll pass.

reddalo•32m ago
That's good: billboards ruin our cities.
kown7•22m ago
worst case scenario we get Tokyo style trucks (apparently called koukoku torakku).
tecleandor•11m ago
Auch, their music is so annoying. TECHNICATION... TECHNICATION...
comrade1234•17m ago
The billboards here, in Zurich at least, are quite small and tasteful. The design museum even has exhibits at times of them.

For example: https://monocle.com/design/how-zurichs-poster-culture-has-tu...

hmokiguess•32m ago
and how do you know who's a minor?
jerf•27m ago
All my life, minors have wanted to fake being of age, so they can get access to the various privileges thereto, but for the first time I find myself asking, how do I, as an adult (multiple times over at this point) convince the system I'm a minor?

"Oh, no, I seem to have failed your intrusive system for proving I'm an adult and you have to assume I'm a minor, how awful. Don't mind me, I'm just a particularly precocious minor who loves to learn about computer science and whose search history looks an awful lot like a professional programmer, but nope, seriously, totally a minor."

I suppose banking would be a problem if the bank ever took that flag seriously. Probably have to go through the almost-certainly intrusive validation process for that, at least. But otherwise, gee golly it seems like Jerf Junior does a lot of interneting and he sure isn't an adult, nope, no way, not even a little. And it's pretty wild but when Jerf Junior aged out it seems Jerf III had just been born and is also a minor, an even more precocious baby who loves the same thing as his father and/or possibly his grandfather, it's, uh, honestly a bit unclear what is going on there. What a bizarre family I seem to have.

walthamstow•31m ago
This kind of ballot issue is a great filter. It's so obviously correct, the reason of any normal person will be "why was it legal at all?", so anyone arguing against the ban is quite probably paid to do so and should be ignored.
msdz•19m ago
You bring up an excellent argument there, however, haven’t you thought about the money?

I mean, who cares about the developing minds of the next generation when there’s money to be made involved?

mhitza•16m ago
Why allow profiling at all? This way everyone gets a bit more privacy, second it doesn't create another situation where you got to prove that you're an adult.
tomp•14m ago
I'm arguing against a ban.

There's no way to implement this without (1) usage-based profiling (what's being banned in the first place) or (2) ID verification.

I'm against both of those.

For me, the only acceptable solutions are: (1) ban all profiling-based ads (2) require respecting DO_NOT_TRACK (so that people/minors/their parents can individually decide what to do, but websites are then legally forced to respect that)

233mhz•10m ago
> There's no way to implement this without (1) usage-based profiling (what's being banned in the first place) or (2) ID verification.

(3) zero knowledge age verification hosted by the gov which already has all the data anyways

forinti•28m ago
All ads to minors should be banned.

An ad is a business proposal and minors cannot do business without the consent of their parents.

falcor84•27m ago
What?! Minors absolutely are allowed to have money and to purchase things with it on their own.
micromacrofoot•22m ago
Cool, but let them decide... don't put them up against a team of behavior psychologists at a billion dollar company
falcor84•8m ago
I don't think this is a child protection thing; I as an adult am not that much better equipped to protect myself against these psychologists, and would also want to have regulators protect me from advertising. So this is one of several reasons why I wish I lived in Switzerland.
NooneAtAll3•28m ago
> to minors

why limit only to them? why not to ban it altogether?

impossiblefork•27m ago
Here in Sweden it's illegal to make ads directed at children. Consequently the TV channels that do so transmit from abroad.

This would of course have been easy to ban anyway-- it's not like we can't have rules on foreign internet firms, for example, but historically the politicians were unwilling to make a useful law.

I think the Swiss could take one step further and add a general ban on ads targeting young children in addition to this; and then we Swedes should imitate the package.

esel2k•23m ago
I wonder if it would be simpler for the digital advertisement to ban companies to block adblockers solutions. Yes we might kill a certain business area, which lead to let companies find other income sources. Removing targeted advertisement on minor should be no brainer but just harder to implement (everyone is curious and say they are 18).
throwawayy6767•22m ago
Why not just ban all ads?
moolcool•20m ago
Yes, please
_ink_•19m ago
This would be awesome. Imagine you would need to build excellent products, that advertise through word of mouth. And all that slot machines that only exist to force ads onto you would actually need to provide real value that people want to pay for.
suncemoje•11m ago
yes please, sign me up for a free trial...
233mhz•8m ago
Wow slow down cow boy, the economy would collapse overnight
Buttons840•8m ago
I'm in favor, in principle.

But how would you actually do it? Ban the exchange of money for delivering specific messages? I guess it could work. It would require judgement calls, but we have other laws that require even more subtle judgement calls.

coldtea•21m ago
The whole world should
rrgok•18m ago
Ban ads without users' consent altogether.
ctolsen•17m ago
Should do it across the board. The world would be a better place if harvesting personal data for ad targeting was illegal.
classified•16m ago
They should ban those generally, not just for minors.
Telaneo•16m ago
Could we drop the 'to minors' part of that? Either way, great move.
Buttons840•12m ago
What benefit does this have for minors that wouldn't also apply to adults?
bryanrasmussen•11m ago
so does one need to profile if someone is a minor in order to show them an ad from a random pool of minor and non-minor ads?
cloudie78•11m ago
For anyone who’s concerned about the whole “oh we need to check the age of the user”

Here’s a simple solution: the ad industry is welcome to not profile its users.

Don’t get distracted though:

> Furthermore, the reporting procedure is to be extended to include all content suspected of being unlawful.

Operating keyword here: “suspected”

What happened to due process?

archildress•9m ago
Common topic amongst friends on online advertising: feels like it would be reasonable for platforms like Meta, TikTok, etc to explain why they've served you the ad you're seeing. Imagine an "explain why I'm seeing this" button.

The adtech of today feels very opaque to me; I often have no clue why I see what I do. If platforms had to disclose why you're seeing what you are, you could plug the holes in your privacy. (Fully aware this will never happen, but it's the type of regulation I wish we were proactive about.)

TomJansen•8m ago
I really don't get why all these improvements are only geared towards minors. What is the reasoning here to not extend this to every citizen?
tweakimp•6m ago
It's easier to sell when you can say "think of the children! they need to be protected" and then later extend it.
pac0•6m ago
Kids are more vulnerable
port3000•6m ago
Such a common sense law. It's crazy to me that we have so many youth protections in place but only in the last year or two governments have started to pay attention to this
TZubiri•23m ago
>but then what is the cutoff for "childish" topics?

This is pretty much Law 101, a written law sets the rules, and the courts evaluate the cases, effectively finding that cutoff in practice.

4ggr0•14m ago
makes sense, i'm frequently confused by Law 101 and its totally logical ways.
jeroenhd•28m ago
Can't wait for every website to show you "before you can view this ad, verify your age by logging in" banners!

Realistically, lawmakers know that ad companies know which age cohort a user is in. For companies like Google/Facebook/etc. this shouldn't be too much of an issue, they already know your age when you make an account.

And if they cannot determine what vulnerable groups they're not allowed to show profiled ads, maybe they should disable profiled ads by default until you sign in. Everybody wins!

4ggr0•26m ago
please no, sounds like cookie banners 2.0 :D

in a couple of years we'll have to get through 5 different banners just to access a website, which you can bypass by logging in with your eID which then acts as kind of an SSO for every website.

4ggr0•7m ago
for my taste that goes a bit too much into "you don't have anything to hide" and doomerism. if one wants, one can boot a TailsOS with a VPN and then no, the gov does not have all the data it needs to link it to you. just because lots of stuff is being monitored we don't have to destroy every privacy boundary in existence.
tomp•6m ago
by "zero knowledge" you of course mean "the government can shadowban you without your knowledge" ?