Today’s news about TikTok being fined by the European Union reminded me to give you a heads-up that this here website thingy will soon comply with a recent Google edict related to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). All US-based sites that carry Google ads must issue a statement regarding privacy and personal data collection. A new message on our Google dashboard ominously warns, “If you don’t publish it by January 16, 2024, we’ll publish one for you.”
As some of you have probably noticed, a couple of weeks ago we switched over to a new ad provider and the GDPR message will likely come through them in a one-time pop-up statement that you’ll simply need to click “okay.” (Or maybe “consent.”) Since the vast majority of JMG readers don’t live in the EU, this policy compliance doesn’t apply to most of you, but we still must jump through the hoop.
As for the new ad service, those of you who don’t use ad blockers may have seen them experiment with a several formats in recent days as we try to final a sweet spot.
I’ve always tried to keep our ad load to the bare minimum but we haven’t made our monthly nut since early this year so obviously something had to change.
Recent analytics have shown that a large majority of JMG readers use ad blockers, more than twice as many as the US average, so as I did in April’s anniversary post, I humbly ask you to consider whitelisting JMG. And as always, I give big hairy hugs to everybody who hits our tip jar.
I’m not crazy about the current ad layout and find it too busy, but the ad service is still making tweaks. Please bear with us. Don’t panic.
“TikTok had contravened GDPR by: placing child users’ accounts on a public setting by default; allowing public comments on those accounts; not checking whether an adult given access to a child’s account [..] was a parent or guardian” https://t.co/NXRZBIaBoP
— Alderik Oosthoek (@a_oosthoek) September 15, 2023