If the ads content depends on a social media company seeing your posts and analyzing them, it’s probably fair to say it’s targeted advertising.

Browsers typically send Accept-Language headers so you could easily return ads in languages matching that header, without having to analyze your posts.

It’s like switching on to a Spanish TV channel and getting Spanish speaking ads. It’s not targeted because you are signalling you probably understand Spanish.

Correct. The proposal is to not be able to use your posts to determine which ads to show. But showing you ads in Spanish because you’re in southern Florida or Puerto Rico would be acceptable.

Such a law will probably allow targeting based on the browser's language (browsers already send a "Accept-Language" field, doxing you with every single http request), or whatever language you have configured a website/app interface to be shown in.

But not guess a language based on the content of posts.

Are we also going to target in app advertising? If not, every website will just tell you you must use their app

In this hypothetical scenario, why are you assuming in-app advertising would be any different from browser advertising? Re-read @phire’s comment above; the proposal was to get rid of targeted advertising that uses your personal data to make advertising decisions. I assumed that would apply to all advertising channels, including both web and in-app ads, otherwise you’d be right and it probably wouldn’t work.

Are you also going to ban websites that aren’t hosted by the US from being seen in the US that have advertising?

Why are you assuming that the hosting locale is even relevant? I’m not going to ban anything, but if @phire’s idea was law, it would probably ban anything advertiser from choosing which ads to show you based on your personal data. It’s irrelevant where the ads or site is hosted, I assume. If ads from foreign countries don’t target individuals, their ads would be legal. If ads from foreign countries, or from the US, use your posts to choose which ads they think you’ll engage with, that wouldn’t be allowed under @phire’s proposal. Is @phire’s suggestion confusing?

How are you going to police foreign countries? If they don’t comply are you going to tell ISPs they must block any foreign site that has targeted ads?

I don’t know, maybe by not showing the targeted ads? By putting legal liability on the US based advertising channels & distributors? By making it illegal for US sites to share an individual’s tracking and history information with advertisers? I can imagine a lot of ways this might work.

Again, why are foreign sites relevant, and why does this idea seem hard to grasp?

Because the internet exists outside of the US and you can get to foreign sites on the Internet?

Do we tell US companies they can’t buy advertising on foreign sites and that those foreign sites can’t be accesed from the US?

We have an existence proof of what happens when a government tries to restrict what people can see on the internet. I live in one of the states that require porn sites to validate ID. If you add all of the sites that ignored the law completely and all of the sites that you can access via a VPN, the number you get is 100%

We also have an existence proof that region-specific laws can change web advertising practices globally with the GDPR.

The only thing that the GDPR has done outside of the EU is annoying cookie banners.

False.

How has the GDPR changed the practices of any company outside of the EU? If you think the GDPR and cookie banners on every website is an argument for more government regulating, is that the argument you really want to be making?

Nearly all large U.S. corporations adhere to the data retention rules and right to delete GDPR rules for EU citizens because they also operate in the EU, and nearly all of them proactively adhere to the GDPR for US citizens just to keep things simpler. Fixating on cookie banners is naive. Here’s just one example: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/governance/

Counterpoint: how is the DMCA affecting companies outside of the EU? Companies didn’t care about the right to delete, it didn’t affect their profits.

But I don’t speak Spanish and I’m in Florida…

Isn’t hearing some Spanish from time to time expected in Miami, whether you speak it or not? I expect to hear Spanish and I live nowhere near a coast… And you prefer that advertisers read through your posts/emails/history/everything to make ads targeted at you? If you don’t care about the risks of targeted advertising, and don’t agree with the EU’s decision to ban manipulative behavior, then the proposal we’re discussing maybe isn’t for you. But at least consider that having an ads language setting is not ruled out by this idea, so if you can’t stand Spanish, then you can have your ads in English without the advertisers reading all your posts.

I know some Spanish. But if I were an advertiser, I wouldn’t want to waste my money on ad impressions on people who couldn’t understand a word I was saying. I also as a business person who targets Spanish speaking people - like you know immigration assistance or when mask thugs think I’m here illegally when I was born in Puerto Rico (hypothetically).

So what if I have a website based out of the counter and accept advertisements? Are you going to tell ISPs to block those foreign websites?

Let me tell you a little story. The state I live in just passed a law requiring all porn sites to verify age. Guess how many porn sites not based in the US ignored the law entirely? Guess how many who did folks the law can be viewed over a VPN? If you guessed “lesser than 100% between both, you would be wrong.

Obviously sites not based in the US don’t have to follow US laws. And obviously using a VPN circumvents local laws. Again, I’m not going to do any of this, but you answered your own question: one way the US could enforce this would be to require ISPs to block targeted advertising, regardless of where the originating site is located.

So now we are going to put up the “Great Firewall of America” to protect Americans from those evil foreign advertisers?

You really like where this is going?

No, that’s a straw man. For the fifth(?) time, whether it’s foreign or not is irrelevant, and only you suggested they’re evil. The criteria proposed was whether it’s targeted based on personal content or not, and I’m not alone in not liking where we already are in terms of privacy. Are you suggesting that we need to protect foreign advertiser’s rights to your personal content so they can target ads personalized for you? Why? Are you a foreign advertiser?

No I’m saying that how do you stop American companies from buying ads from foreign companies that Americans can get to?

Again I gave you an example of what happens when you try to regulate the Internet - porn companies completely ignoring Florida law?

People accessing sites in other countries via VPN proves absolutely nothing. We are talking about what would happen on US based sites like Google and YouTube, sites that don’t and can’t ignore US law.

They could declare domicile overseas and still sell ads to American countries? You know the Internet is international right?