Roman Danyliw's Ballot Comments - Discuss

[SpencerDawkins]

From @rdanyliw

** Section 5.4.

Ads may be inserted either with Client Side Ad Insertion (CSAI) or
Server Side Ad Insertion (SSAI). In CSAI, the ABR manifest will
generally include links to an external ad server for some segments of
the media stream, while in SSAI the server will remain the same
during advertisements, but will include media segments that contain
the advertising. In SSAI, the media segments may or may not be
sourced from an external ad server like with CSAI.

     …

As a
mitigation for concerns driven by those incidents, some SSPs have
required the use of players with features like reporting of ad
delivery, or providing information that can be used for user
tracking. Some of these and other measures have raised privacy
concerns for end users.

Thanks for starting the discussion about privacy. The framing doesn’t seem
completely accurate. Whether there is ad fraud or not, user data of some kind
is being sent off to ad exchanges (it’s the basis of the bidding process), and
network level tracking is being facilitated through connects to CSAIs. Please
provide some editorial construct to suggest that practically any kind of
targeted ads are going to entail some trade in privacy, and explain the risks
specifically or with a reference.

[GrumpyOldTroll]

We think the points to make are:

• media operators, your media is part of an arms race aiming to track users for more effective advertisers
• There are some efforts, such as Topics, to get the ecosystem to reduce its reliance on individual tracking while still achieving targeted ads, which are worth a lot of money (pick out a reference or 2 from e.g. [1] https://www2012.universite-lyon.fr/proceedings/proceedings/p111.pdf )

As an initial idea, we're thinking perhaps to add a paragraph after the first mention of targeting, and we're wondering if this is in the right direction, and whether you can suggest any specific improvements?:
https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/ietf-wg-mops/draft-ietf-mops-streaming-opcons/blob/gh-pages/draft-ietf-mops-streaming-opcons.html#section-5.4-5:

Traditionally, targeted ads have relied on user tracking, which involves a relatively large privacy exposure for end users. At the time of this writing some proposals such as Topics have been made in an effort to reduce that exposure without losing the effects of targeting (ref from [1] that measures a high impact).

We found a few references touching on the risks, like:

• https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/targeted-ads-threat-privacy/
• https://getterms.io/blog/the-risks-of-targeted-advertising/

But maybe someone knows a better reference?

[evyncke]

Just wondering when we could expect some PR to address Roman's DISCUSS.

[SpencerDawkins]

Hi, @evyncke, Jake had asked @rdanyliw for guidance here, the Wednesday before this document was on the telechat. I haven't seen a response yet.

The authors are meeting later today to coordinate our continued comment resolution, so we may be smarter after that.

[GrumpyOldTroll]

While this is true, as of last week I stopped waiting and am working on a PR to address this, basically trying to tighten up the rough proposed direction I outlined in the request for guidance in hopes that direction is close to right. That timing came with a number of other outside distractions, which is the reason I'm not done yet.

Most of the time on this topic so far has gone toward looking for good references, and a bit toward angst on whether and how to add something about pervasive monitoring to the original sketch of the proposed text. So maybe within the next day or so, if I can land on something I'm happy with.

[GrumpyOldTroll]

#168 is my first attempt to address this, please let me know what you think @evyncke and @rdanyliw.