Ethical Targeting Ad Ledger/Manager

This code makes up the backend service for Ethical Targeting, an ad network designed with privacy baked in. For the browser extension source, see @larkinds/EthicalTargeting.

Most data collection of Internet user behavior ultimately comes from advertising's desire for audience targeting and campaign analytics. Constant exposés in the news and the gradual rollout of data privacy regulations are not enough to fight this technological arms race. Pandora's box has been opened and advertisers will not back down from having access to targeting and analytics.

Ethical Targeting recognizes this reality and compromises by moving ad targeting to the browser. Browsers pull from a public ledger of ads and match ads with locally stored user profiles that never touch the Internet. Users can update, remove, and switch between multiple profiles at any time with immediate effect, or disable ad personalization altogether. We can't convert the megacorps with massive ad budgets, but we can provide an ethical alternative to the big ad networks for SMBs who rely on effective advertising to drive revenue.

This service runs on the DFINITY Internet Computer, a decentralized network of independent data centers enabling a public ad network that is:

• Transparent: anyone can see what ads are in the ledger (past/present/future) and who funded them
• Private: nobody will know who clicked on an ad or what their interests/demographics are
• Targeted: actually relevant, making ads more useful to the user and effective for the advertiser
• Truly open: not stored in any one data center and controlled by community governance in the future

Usage

The backend service is made up of two canisters:

• ads_ledger: open repository of ads (and the API endpoint for browsers)
• www: web interface to manage/browse ads (slightly modified version of in-development Candid UI)

To see the ad JSON payload that the browser receives from the backend service, visit https://gf3q7-kyaaa-aaaab-aa6aq-cai.ic0.app.

To create/edit/view ads, visit the ad manager at https://glz5x-riaaa-aaaab-aa6bq-cai.ic0.app.

Ad Manager Functions

• add: add a new ad to the ledger and get its ID
• allAdsJson: JSON payload of all ads in the ledger
• delete: remove an ad from the ledger by ID
• get: look up an ad by ID
• http_request: used by the ic0.app gateway to act as an API server
• replace: update an ad by ID

Ad Format

Ethical Targeting uses an ad format that is incredibly powerful and flexible, though it can be confusing at first. Here's the breakdown:

Required attributes

• owner: Sponsor of this advertisement
• link: URL to visit when the user clicks on the ad
• image: image to display for the ad
  • url: URL of the image to display
  • height: height of the image in pixels
  • width: width of the image in pixels

Optional attributes
In the ad manager, optional attributes are shown as a checkbox. Checking the box expands the fields that make up an optional attribute, and unchecking the box removes the attribute.

• start: time this campaign starts (in nanoseconds since the Unix epoch)
• end: time this campaign ends (in nanoseconds since the Unix epoch)
• profile: describes the audience to target (if unspecified, anyone can be shown this ad)
  • age: age range a person falls into
  • occupation: primary business function of employment (not company)
  • industry: primary business category of employer (not employee)
  • interests: topics a user is interested in
  • gender: primary gender expression masculine/feminine/non-binary (clearly not exhaustive, but we've yet to see ads targeting more specific identities)
  • dislikes: topics a user has chosen to hide

Match rules
Each attribute in an ad profile is an (optional) set of rules made up of all, some, and none. Each of these three sub-attributes is a list. For a profile to match an ad, it must have everything in all, at least one thing in some (if not empty), and nothing in none.

To create a profile in the ad manager, first select the checkbox next to the profile attribute, type a length into all/some/none specifying how many values are in each list (or 0 for none), then enter the values.

For example, I might target an ad for a commercial Minecraft hosting service to interests.all=minecraft, interests.some=servers,multiplayer games, and age.none=age0_12.

This system is a little complex, but with a little practice it becomes straightforward. You can mix and match rules for each profile attribute to get as specific and relevant as you want, all without nonconsensual data harvesting.

Development

The DFINITY Canister SDK only supports Unix-like systems (including Linux and macOS).

For Windows environments

• Use the Windows Subsystem for Linux
• Ensure your Linux distribution is running WSL 2
• Use a Linux partition as your development workspace (e.g. /home/username) instead of any Windows-mounted partitions (e.g. /mnt/c)
• If you have npm installed in Windows, you will need to install Node.js through the Node Version Manager (nvm) in your Linux distribution

Prerequisites

• npm
• DFINITY Canister SDK
• Rust compiler (with cargo)
• Binaryen (for wasm-opt)

Setup
After installing rustup, add the wasm32-unknown-unknown target if you haven't already:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

Then you can clone the repository and build:

git clone https://github.com/jkmartindale/ethical_targeting-backend.git
cd ethical_targeting-backend
npm install
# Required to generate canister_ids.json
dfx canister --network=ic create --all
# All that's necessary after the first run
dfx deploy --network=ic

The console output of dfx should list canister IDs for ads_ledger and www, which you can also find in canister_ids.json.

Access the all ads JSON endpoint at <ads_ledger-canister_id>.ic0.app and the ads manager at <www-canister_id>.ic0.app.

Currently the ad manager can only make calls against a canister on the ic network. Since it is basically equivalent to Candid UI, you can instead visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/candid?canisterId=<www-canister_id> for testing the ads_ledger canister locally.