Yet another Hacker News

Switzerland proposes banning profiling-based ads to minors

191 points wuemeli 1 hour ago 116 comments

jonathanstrange 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

Or find it themselves.

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

vincnetas 1 hour ago | parent

Its now about alcohol. Its about paw patrol.

tyleo 1 hour ago | parent

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 58 minutes ago | parent

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.

jubilee33 44 minutes ago | parent

Playboy was always in the grocery store checkout in usa, it sometimes had a black cover over it, but that was usually only for the real porn. My first glance at playboy was in 1st grade at my first sleepover, I don't think anyone even liked girls at that point. It was purely about it being forbidden, and guess how it was obtained? Yes the older brother of course.

I often wonder how much better my life would have been had it not been for that day? /s

jacquesm 1 hour ago | parent

It goes well beyond booze and porn.

dzikimarian 58 minutes ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

Great start, now do it for all ages.

ryan_glass 1 hour ago | parent

This would also prevent the issue of having to age verify.

tiahura 1 hour ago | parent

So they can get gambling and wiener pill ads too?

kotaKat 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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?

phatfish 16 minutes ago | parent

I'd guess they know there is no chance of any push back from Trump, so they are around half way through 4 years of zero regulation change, and are making the most of it. Isn't Kushner or one of them invested?

4ggr0 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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.

TZubiri 1 hour ago | parent

>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 54 minutes ago | parent

makes sense, i'm frequently confused by Law 101 and its totally logical ways.

shermantanktop 5 minutes ago | parent

Won’t somebody please think of the…Disney kidults? The adult Lego enthusiasts? The 7-year-olds who watch Masterpiece Theater?

You’re not wrong, but content made for kids is intended for kids, and vice versa. If someone wants crossover appeal, they intentionally do it —-hence the jokes in Pixar movies with cultural references the parents recognize.

jeroenhd 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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.

philipallstar 1 hour ago | parent

Just keep them off the internet. What's the point?

master-lincoln 1 hour ago | parent

parenting doesn't work everywhere

jubilee33 53 minutes ago | parent

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.

233mhz 46 minutes ago | parent

> Mine will have access to all torrents, shadow librarys, and local LLMs

Cool, that's not how 99% of people experience internet though. The state has to put regulations because people are cattle, I'm not eating ultra processed food but I'd still like it to be banned

jubilee33 40 minutes ago | parent

That's purely your opinion, mine is that your are interfering with natural selection.

If you call humans cattle you cannot pretend some sort of patriarchal concern in the same breath. I mean your not compeltly wrong in the dynamic, but coddling people instead of expecting them to suffer the consequences of their actions will only make them worse, or is it that you don't want to suffer the consequences of their actions? In which case why advocate for making them less capable?

233mhz 38 minutes ago | parent

Sheesh, following your logic we should stop enforce mandatory schooling, any kind of social safety net, etc. that's bleak, at least in my world we take good care of the cattle

jubilee33 30 minutes ago | parent

.. and then eat or milk them? Mandatory schooling wasn't implemented for their betterment it was done to make them a more valuable resource to employers and originally, the army, so yes the logic fits.

phatfish 11 minutes ago | parent

Or they just go to their friends who's parents don't give a shit and fill up on brainrot there. Or probably even at school.

You can't raise your kids in isolation. Society raises them, if society says it is OK to feed kids Tiktok brainrot before they are 14/16/whatever age it will happen. To your kids as well.

This is exactly what government is for. Solving problems like this universally.

icyfox 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

That's good: billboards ruin our cities.

kown7 1 hour ago | parent

worst case scenario we get Tokyo style trucks (apparently called koukoku torakku).

tecleandor 51 minutes ago | parent

Auch, their music is so annoying. TECHNICATION... TECHNICATION...

Good4boothee 25 minutes ago | parent

I'm afraid billboard boat on Florida beach was even worse.

comrade1234 58 minutes ago | parent

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...

shermantanktop 11 minutes ago | parent

The Lindt billboard across the Limat from the train station is an institution. I don’t know when it appeared but my guess would be the 80s.

rob74 36 minutes ago | parent

I'm a bit surprised there weren't already limits on outdoor advertising in Zurich? There certainly are in most place in Germany for example...

hobo123 36 minutes ago | parent

Hamburg in Germany had a city referendum to ban all public animated/screen ads in 2025, but they didn't get enough people signing it (got 50k votes, needed 65k).

hmokiguess 1 hour ago | parent

and how do you know who's a minor?

jerf 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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 57 minutes ago | parent

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 55 minutes ago | parent

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 51 minutes ago | parent

> 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

4ggr0 48 minutes ago | parent

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.

233mhz 43 minutes ago | parent

We're talking about age, not about your foot fetish, the government definitely knows about your age.

There are technical ways to implement this correctly, it's a political problem, not a technical one.

4ggr0 34 minutes ago | parent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

> We're talking about age, not about your foot fetish, the government definitely knows about your age.

well, yeah, they also know how much i earn, where i live etc. but that's not really my point. my point is what online-stuff they can additionally link to me. you responding with the fetish stuff as a counter-argument is kinda weird, and doesn't really seem to take what i wrote seriously.

i hope if we ever have such a solution its one of those hypothetical zero-knowledge "all we do is check your age and give back a single boolean flag and we also don't record from where and why these requests come", just not that optimistic about it. ban online ads and you got a way easier solution without having to build such a system in the first place.

> it's a political problem, not a technical one

i'd say it's both, so i at least half-agree on that point :)

tomp 47 minutes ago | parent

by "zero knowledge" you of course mean "the government can shadowban you without your knowledge" ?

Edit: non-snarky response: what's the default "fall-back" if government's signature is missing? IMO any option ("tracking/no tracking/invalid request") will be exploitable in bad ways.

233mhz 44 minutes ago | parent

That's already the case right now. They can ban you from getting internet, a phone, a bank account, a car...

Sometimes I wonder in what kind of alternative reality some people live...

hansvm 43 minutes ago | parent

A best effort implementation should be fine. Advertisers already have suspected age fields available (derived from behavioral patterns, linked information across devices, etc). When you develop a reasonable suspicion that it's a minor then stop fleshing out the profile and targeting them. That's what the big players already do (maybe not Meta, but certainly at least Google). That doesn't quite fall into your (1) point since it's not profiling that's being banned, but profiling-based ads.

bee_rider 35 minutes ago | parent

It seems like a roundabout way of banning profiling of non-ID’d users in general which seems… good? Like, if overlapping regulations have the practical effect of banning tracking, then that’s a win for society, right?

pahkah 32 minutes ago | parent

What's the downside to the ban as described, when compared to the status quo?

If there's no profile already, then they can serve the ad, since it's not a profiling-based ad and they don't need to know if the viewer is a minor.

If there is a profile then they have the knowledge to avoid advertising based on that if it's a minor.

I don't see why ID verification needs to come into play?

I would love to see a ban on _all_ profiling-based ads, but this seems like a step in the right direction to me.

forinti 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

What?! Minors absolutely are allowed to have money and to purchase things with it on their own.

micromacrofoot 1 hour ago | parent

Cool, but let them decide... don't put them up against a team of behavior psychologists at a billion dollar company

falcor84 49 minutes ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

> to minors

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

impossiblefork 1 hour ago | parent

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.

runarberg 32 minutes ago | parent

It is also banned in Iceland, but sometimes in the 2000s they stopped enforcing it, probably as people were getting more and more of their broadcasts from abroad. Curiously the milk monopoly (Mjólkursamsalan) was allowed to target children in their ads throughout this period.

bluGill 27 minutes ago | parent

The US has (had? I haven't checked in 40 years) rules like that for TV. It killed most of the TV programs for kids that were populate. The programs my parents remember fondly - not possible anymore because they need ads. I remember only public broadcasting kids programs.

esel2k 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

Why not just ban all ads?

moolcool 1 hour ago | parent

Yes, please

_ink_ 1 hour ago | parent

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 52 minutes ago | parent

yes please, sign me up for a free trial...

233mhz 49 minutes ago | parent

Wow slow down cow boy, the economy would collapse overnight

Buttons840 49 minutes ago | parent

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.

Good4boothee 19 minutes ago | parent

Similar laws (total ban of ads and promotion) are already in place in few countries for alcohol and tobacco.

yawniek 43 minutes ago | parent

how would you want to keep having free journalism without advertising? (and we all know where any democracy goes to die). historically nothing else worked at scale minus a few exceptions.

i think the sentiment against ads from the educated bubble really completely takes a working democracy for granted. spoiler: its not and look whats happening in the US... and the budget shift from openweb/newspapers towards video (mainly google) in the advertising industry is massive...

disclaimer: i work in adtech but we do not profile users and do not track them.

AlexandrB 25 minutes ago | parent

I don't know, but is "free journalism" actually good? If the incentives of free journalism (thanks to being ad funded) are to increase engagement and avoid criticizing their advertisers is the product actually journalism at all?

MSFT_Edging 11 minutes ago | parent

The weak point of journalism has always been the larger-tier patrons. Can't report negative things if money-man says "no".

The advertising industry at large is at fault for our degradation in journalism.

Advertising needs clicks and eyes, the providers produce highly targeted profile algorithms to ensure maximum clicks and eyes, which degrades the information conveyed into the smallest, most enraging snippets possible. Those rise to the top as the most profitable ways to convey information, and continues the cycle, further destroying news that doesn't profit in this ecosystem.

Killing most forms of advertising across the board would of course basically destroy these large tech companies that rely on them. But the same companies have completely derailed society with their "services". We'd be better off without them.

Of course this would likely hurt "GDP" and "The Economy", but that would just mean we have an unproductive economy primarily inflated by a pointless circle of advertisement.

entuno 22 minutes ago | parent

Or more realistically, ban targeting ads based on profiling the individual, and instead require that they're targeted based on the content.

I'd love a world without advertising, but it's never going to happen. But a world without profile-targeted advertising could.

jonhohle 21 minutes ago | parent

The idea of banning all ads sounds great, but legitimate content is paid for with ads. Ban tracking and targeted ads. It’s not a far stretch into cyberstalking, wiretapping, and other privacy laws.

There was 75 or more years of media ads that had no feedback except when very explicitly asking (Nielsen). Everyone was making money and doing just fine.

coldtea 1 hour ago | parent

The whole world should

rrgok 59 minutes ago | parent

Ban ads without users' consent altogether.

ctolsen 58 minutes ago | parent

Should do it across the board. The world would be a better place if harvesting personal data for ad targeting was illegal.

classified 57 minutes ago | parent

They should ban those generally, not just for minors.

Telaneo 57 minutes ago | parent

Could we drop the 'to minors' part of that? Either way, great move.

Buttons840 53 minutes ago | parent

What benefit does this have for minors that wouldn't also apply to adults?

bryanrasmussen 52 minutes ago | parent

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 51 minutes ago | parent

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 50 minutes ago | parent

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.)

Hugsbox 46 minutes ago | parent

It's a great idea too because it would force the companies to disclose the downright creepy extent of the data they've collected on you.

"We're showing you ads for diapers because we find it highly likely that you are pregnant. Oh, you didn't know that?"

Forgeties79 44 minutes ago | parent

“We know this because we gathered data from your CVS, Amazon, and Walmart purchases.”

Forgeties79 46 minutes ago | parent

They’d have to tell you directly that they’ve been pulling info on you from other sites/sources, effectively spying on your activity even when you aren’t on their platforms, which would be a PR nightmare.

estearum 44 minutes ago | parent

I don't think there's even a technical way to do this anymore. Digital ads are not actually audiences anymore (bundles of people labeled a certain way).

IMO the regulation needs to be at the data collection side: advertisers should only be able to collect data on a defined set of dimensions and each dimension should have a defined maximum specificity. Then beyond those, advertising platforms need to compete on making their actual products more compelling rather than making them better at sucking up data.

1shooner 32 minutes ago | parent

I agree, but I think the concept of data provenance would have a role. It should not matter if data is laundered through 'aggregation' or 'anonymization': if it was originally generated about an individual, and used to target an individual, that data should be an expensive regulatory liability.

estearum 22 minutes ago | parent

The answer is that (approximately) every ad you see is targeted based on (approximately) everything you've ever done on the Internet, every purchase you've made in-person or online, and every location you've been to physically.

I don't think attaching a disclaimer like this to every ad will be impactful at all.

Lucasoato 43 minutes ago | parent

Meta had such feature but was bullshit: it always showed extremely generic reasons for extremely specific ads.

celeries 39 minutes ago | parent

YouTube has this! It usually gives a vague reason like "Time of day" and "Your general location". Though I wonder if it's extra vague because I turned off some of the more creepy advertising sertings.

enigmoid 37 minutes ago | parent

Instagram does have a "Why you're seeing this ad" button. Clicking it for an ad on my feed, I see:

- "chasetravel wants to reach people like you" (clicking through reveals that this is because I am 18 years of age or older and based in the US) - "Your activity" which includes interacting with "ads about travel, fine arts and music" and "posts, stories, reels and pages about food & drinks, fine arts and cameras"

So, basically, the button reveals nothing. But with regulation maybe it would. I don't see how this would make things worse (for users - of course Meta would fight it).

EDIT: As another commenter has noted, I have also turned off every possible bit of tracking. Maybe if I hadn't I'd see more here. But I'm sure Meta is doing all sorts of fingerprinting along with tracking pixels across websites that's informing the auction, but they're not telling me about that.

rob74 33 minutes ago | parent

The few cases where it was clear to me why I was seeing a certain ad was after I had ordered that product online. Which is kind of useless for the advertiser, but at least it's slightly reassuring that the tracking doesn't go that far...

foresterre 8 minutes ago | parent

While I agree with the sentiment, any answer would likely be vague (unless it is only interests based) since the models used to choose specific ads to be displayed can be rather complex.

TomJansen 49 minutes ago | parent

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 47 minutes ago | parent

It's easier to sell when you can say "think of the children! they need to be protected" and then later extend it.

pac0 47 minutes ago | parent

Kids are more vulnerable

StingyJelly 39 minutes ago | parent

That is the justification, yes. And it is impossible to tell whether there is a kid, an adult or a dog on my side of the tcp connection without mass internet surveillance which is the actual reason.

phatfish 24 minutes ago | parent

Won't someone think of the smartphone addicted adults!

entuno 32 minutes ago | parent

That doesn't really answer the question though.

If the actions of these advertising companies are harmful, then everyone should be protected from them, not just one demographic that is considered to be more vulnerable.

And if they're not harmful, then in what sense are kids "vulnerable" to them and need protecting?

dfxm12 30 minutes ago | parent

Constant surveillance has become the default order of things. Doing what's best for corporations is the default order of things. On the flip side, "think of the children" is a strong appeal to lawmakers and has won this round. Us adults still have to suffer under the thumb of big business though.

entuno 25 minutes ago | parent

Because advertising (and in particular targeted advertising) is so entrenched in every aspect of our lives and society that it's very hard to admit that it's harmful. Because doing so means admitting a multi-decade failure gross failure of the government and regulators, and accepting that we need a massive structural overhaul of the entire industry, and of the operating model of a significant chunk of the Internet.

port3000 46 minutes ago | parent

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

bradley13 44 minutes ago | parent

The problem is: how do, ou identify minors without requiring everyone to ID themselves.

hliyan 43 minutes ago | parent

I feel now there's growing support behind the idea that advertising that (a) bypasses a person's volition and (b) consumes a significant amount of their daily attention quota, should be illegal. I think the boundary is crossed somewhere along this progression:

1) A sign atop a storefront

2) A merchant yelling at a public marketplace

3) A prominent display by the roadside

4) A flyer delivered to your home

5) An advertisement alongside a news article

6) An advertisement that interrupts a radio and television broadcast

7) An advertisement alongside a digital written content (analogous to (5) but somewhat more intense)

8) An advertisement that pops up while you read content (analogous to (6) but more intense)

9) An obvious product placement within written/audio/visual content you consume

10) A non-obvious placement of an an idea, thought or bias toward a product within the content you consume

11) Content that evokes intense emotions that are presented to you alongside an advertisement

12) Content that activates involuntary addictive pathways in your brain, presented to you alongside an advertisement

estearum 40 minutes ago | parent

Seems to totally avoid the most salient dimension which is the degree of personalization, no?

Personalization requires intrusive data collection upfront and then it requires the production of a "fractured reality" at the presentation end.

IMO 99% of the big problems with advertising stem from these two "features."

lvyafei 37 minutes ago | parent

The platform should first determine whether the current user is a minor; if a minor is using an account registered to an adult, how can this be detected?

yawniek 36 minutes ago | parent

as a swiss and as someone working in adtech that does not track users i think its good first step.

the ideal solution in my point would be that platforms that have a login or know or calculate (!) the ASL of the user would be disallowed from showing ads to users below age X.

Altern4tiveAcc 36 minutes ago | parent

Why only for minors? It's not good for adults either.

If implemented as the title implies, data about minors would still be collected (though they'd get generic ads until 18), and now age verification becomes a hard requirement for anything that uses advertising.

Banning targeted advertising completely is a much better move and reduces the incentive to track people online.

bluGill 32 minutes ago | parent

That depends on how they use it. Targeted ads that profile me as someone who buys things in the niche I buy things are good. someone who has a mouse problem needs your ad for a better mouse trap - they are better off for your product that solves their problem and you are better off for selling it to them.

Targeted ads are abused too often though and so despite the good I have to come out against them. That someone has a mouse problem is sensitive - they probably don't want to admit it even though it is a common problem. If the mouse problem is in a restaurant (which is very common), that getting out will drive customers to competitors (who also have a mouse problem but customers don't know it)

devonsolomon 35 minutes ago | parent

I hope there’s a future where people learn about this and say “WTF they were profiling children?!”

acd 32 minutes ago | parent

United nations human rights

"Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

Ad tech Data fusion violates that right

BLKNSLVR 22 minutes ago | parent

So now instead of children pretending to be adults in Australia, to keep using social media, adults in Switzerland will want to be identified as children to avoid profile based advertising.

Cool.

buellerbueller 19 minutes ago | parent

Good first step; then do it for all advertising.

adg001 8 minutes ago | parent

It is not enough banning ads; it is necessary to outlaw the profiling to take place in the first place. In fact, today's profiling remains a viable business regardless of any ads placed downstream, because bulk data gets routinely purchased for surveillance purposes.