Hello, everyone. I'm Selina Connell, the managing director of news partnerships EMEA at Google. We know the industry is thinking hard about what's to come in a world without third-party cookies. And as you may know, Google, led by the Chrome and Android teams, is working hard on the Privacy Sandbox Initiative, developing new solutions that support ecosystem needs, without reliance on online tracking identifiers so that publishers grow their business in a privacy-preserving way. Given our efforts to partner with the publisher ecosystem in adopting change, we wanted to take this opportunity to hear firsthand from the Privacy Sandbox team about the path to cookie deprecation in 2024. Today, you'll hear about a number of new tools and techniques that can be adopted to have immediate impact for your business in a privacy-centric web. But first, let's start with some context. Billions of people around the world rely on access to information on sites and apps. To provide this resource for free, without relying on tracking, publishers and developers need privacy-enhancing alternatives for their key business needs, including serving relevant content and ads. A 2022 global research study showed that 80% of users are concerned about their online privacy. It's clear more than ever. People expect companies to respect how their data is used and to keep their information private. 85% want brands to invest in more privacy-focused technologies. The tide is turning, and it's important to remember how these issues are viewed both by consumers and by regulators. In the last few years, consumer consciousness about privacy has reached its tipping point. Consumers fear sharing data, and they're turning to platforms that promise rate of privacy. Meanwhile, regulators globally are weighing into these concerns. And the question for our industry is how do we transition into a sustainable, durable, privacy future? The increased priority on privacy and limiting user data sharing is not a temporary fad. It represents a fundamental shift in how people in society expect online experiences to protect their privacy. And it's clear the current system of online advertising, which was built on legacy technology developed decades ago, like third-party cookies, is now falling short of users' expectations. And it's an imperative that, as an industry, we respond to this by developing durable products with privacy at their core, powered by innovative technology that enables businesses to succeed online. So let me introduce you to Hannah, to Mr. Inch, and the Privacy Sandbox team to help demystify the Privacy Sandbox and how it's going to support both users and publishers in the journey towards a more private internet. Hi, I'm Hannah Dormester-Inch, Director of Privacy Partnerships for EMEA here at Google. I'm excited to share with you a refresher on the Privacy Sandbox journey and outlook and our timeline for third-party cookie deprecation in Pro. As Selena noted, there is a fundamental shift in how people expect online experiences to protect their privacy. The Privacy Sandbox initiative reflects this change, addressing two core challenges. First, developing innovative alternatives to key use cases that today rely on third-party cookies and cross-site identifiers. These legacy technologies embedded in your browser track your activity across the web. Second of all, we are combating harmful practices like covert tracking as these tactics undermine user privacy on the open internet. So we aim to develop, in a collaborative manner, new privacy forward technologies to reduce cross-site and cross-app tracking while ensuring that businesses have the tools and insights they need to succeed. For nearly 30 years, the digital advertising industry has relied on legacy technologies like third-party cookies. These outdated methods fail to meet modern privacy expectations, leading other browsers to block them by default. We believe that making brute force decisions or providing blunt instruments without having alternatives in place is not the right way to move forward because restricting user identifiers without alternatives may lead to rise in covert tracking methods like fingerprinting, which could further undermine user privacy. Since 2019, we have worked with the industry to develop better privacy-observing solutions, both web and mobile platforms. We also believe that privacy and performance can and must coexist. And we believe that consumer platforms, meaning also browsers and operating systems, have a responsibility to support the transition to a more private internet. That is why we are developing the Private Sandbox and launching these technologies in Chrome and Android. The mission of the Private Sandbox is to keep people's activity private across a free and open internet. But it's important to understand that Private Sandbox is not a simple swap of legacy technologies into a slightly better version. It is really a fundamental rethink and rebuild towards a new privacy-forward future. We have developed new platform technologies that address a wide range of important ecosystem use cases that today typically rely on cross-site identifiers like third-party cookies. This includes new technologies for digital advertising that support ad relevance and measurement. And these technologies are now available for 100% of Chrome users worldwide. In a few moments, you will hear more about the privacy design elements, but it's important to note that Private Sandbox aims are broader than just advertising use cases. I also want to take a moment to share four key facts about what the Private Sandbox is and what it is. First of all, Private Sandbox works the same for everyone. All businesses and ad tech platforms, including Google Ads, have the same access to data and capabilities at the same time. This is one of the key commitments which we have made to the UK's competition and markets authority, which we apply globally. Second of all, it is not a standalone ad tech solution for marketers and publishers. We often hear Private Sandbox being described as a one-to-one replacement for third-party cookies. I want to be clear that is not the case. The Private Sandbox instead provides building blocks that ad tech providers can incorporate into their products alongside other privacy-safe signals like contextual and first-party data. And just like today, ad tech companies will craft a wide range of innovative solutions using the best of these technologies to meet the needs of their customers. And thirdly, Private Sandbox is not another type of tracking. It significantly improves privacy compared to third-party cookies and other cross-site identifiers. And it does so by using privacy-enhancing technologies or pets for short. And finally, at its core, Private Sandbox is a collaborative effort. Companies from across the industry have provided input which has directly shaped how these new solutions work. Making industry-impacting changes, whether introducing new technologies or phasing out existing ones, is something that needs to be done in the open. And that is why we discuss and debate our proposals and technologies in forums like the W3C in industry bodies and trade associations. And we are already seeing new solutions being built by ad tech companies. These companies are reimagining their solutions with the help of Private Sandbox technologies. These are solutions that help advertisers reach and measure their target audiences or help publishers monetize their content all whilst protecting their data. It is thanks to the effort of hundreds of companies like these who have contributed to the proposals and discussions and to the dozens who have leaned into testing that the Private Sandbox is ready for the industry to adopt now. Since the beginning of the initiative, the focus has been really on ad tech, transforming audience targeting, auction mechanics and measurement. But as we move from functional testing and begin utility testing, publishers are absolutely key. We are now making sure that, first of all, agencies and advertisers are spending on privacy-preserving solutions. Second of all, that ad tech continue to reimagine their services with privacy-preserving signals. And of course, that publishers open up inventory to validate real-life integrations and enable end-to-end testing. The stakes are high. If we fail to take decisive action, we risk reducing access to information for all users on the internet. I'm gratified that many companies are rallying to tackle this challenge. To summarise, here are the most relevant updates until the full deprecation of third-party cookies in growth. In the summer of 2023, the private sandbox technologies were made available to 100% of Chrome browsers worldwide. And in January 2024, Chrome disabled cookies for 1% of Chrome browsers globally and has made available consistent labels to facilitate testing across stakeholders. Until July of 2024, the ecosystem is testing the private sandbox technologies and sharing their respective results with the CMA. No sooner than July the 1st, CMA will start a 60 to 120-day evaluation period called a standstill. Subsequently, subject to the approval of the CMA, Chrome plans to fully sunset third-party cookies in Chrome by the end of 2024. So the final question I want to address is this. What happens to the private sandbox after third-party cookie deprecation? Is this it or will it continue to evolve? I want to be clear, we are not going anywhere. The private sandbox isn't just about deprecating third-party cookies. It is an ongoing initiative to ensure that the web and mobile evolve in ways that strengthen user protection and support a free and open internet. So we're going to keep working with all of you to raise the bar both on privacy and utility in the years to come. And speaking of working together, let me hand over to Juan to talk about some of the tools and insights and high-level steps you can take to get ready as we count down to the third-party cookie phase out in Chrome. Hi, I'm Juan from the Privacy Sandbox team. Thank you, Hane and Zulina. In this section, I'll be covering freaky topics. Firstly, I will briefly introduce the privacy enhancing technologies that enable privacy sandbox. Then I will cover new technologies that address advertising use cases on preserved trust and usability for a private web. And finally, I will take you through the high-level steps that you and your teams can take right now as we count down to the third-party cookie phase out if the CMA agrees during the stencil period of the second half of the year. So let's jump in. So hopefully we're hoping to demystify a few questions you might have had at the beginning of this session. So now let's take a closer look at how Privacy Sandbox works. Privacy enhancing technologies are fundamental to this initiative. You might remember Hane speaking about the context of the evolving privacy landscape, including innovation as a key driver. Privacy, private enhancing technologies, or Pets, demonstrate how innovation can be applied in a new and exciting way to help solve privacy use cases and potentially to help to uncover new opportunities for a more private web. For example, we have spoken about the cookie challenge where in a more private, privacy-centric web, we seek to limit the ability to re-identify a user across different sites. There is a technique called differential privacy which hides the original data by adding a statistical noise to the data sets to maintain both privacy and accuracy. We're also delivering improved user settings and controls so people can make more meaningful choices of other data usage via the new Privacy Sandbox technologies. Most of the Privacy Sandbox APIs employ multiple pets in combination to protect and minimize the collection of the user data. As you've heard from Hane, the Privacy Sandbox consists of another 20 APIs that address a broad range of new ecosystem use cases that today rely on cross-site identifiers like free body cookies. All of these APIs are designed with privacy at a core and utilize the latest in privacy-enhancing technologies to protect user data. You might be interested to know that this includes the use of technologies like data aggregation, differential privacy, data noisy on-device processing or trusted execution environments, a few of the pets that I mentioned previously. Because of the design, Privacy Sandbox does not rely on cross-site user identifiers and limits sharing of a user data which is a big step forward for user privacy. So let's dive a little bit deeper into a few of these new technologies. When we think about the new advertising technologies, think of it as technologies that support relevant use cases and technologies that support measurement use cases. And because of the privacy enhancing technologies, we enable these advertising use cases without user identifiers. So what I mean by this, the topics API is designed to preserve privacy while showing relevant content and ads. It provides a high level signal of a user interest base on very recent browsing history to help sites and apps to serve relevant ads. On a high level, there are three main parts of topics. First, the API labels each website from a set of recognizable high level topics. For example, the browser will match as per website with the topic sports. Then the browser collects all the topics a user has visited and prioritized them based on commercial value and frequency for a given week. And finally, a total of three topics for three weeks are shared with the topics API callers to help advertisers show users more relevant ads without needing to know the specific sites they have visited. Users also have the option to view the topics they're associated with according to their browsing history and remove them, any they want, or disable the API entirely. As we move down the funnel, performance will come to play an important role in delivering on business goals. The Protected Audience API, formerly known as FLECH, is a privacy sandbox proposal to serve question audiences and enable remarketing use cases designed so third parties cannot track user browsing behavior across sites. Today, if you visit that website, the third party cookies can be used to show your relevant ads later on, but a lot of your browsing history is exposed and too much of your information can be collected and shared with third parties. With Protected Audiences, advertising technologies companies can show the user ads but information about their user browsing history stays private. The Attribution Reporting API helps advertisers to measure performance of their online ads without needing to track people's activity across the websites and the apps. Imagine your browsing the morning news and you see a pair of headphones that are on sale. You click on that ad to take a closer look and that tech company can use Attribution Reporting to let an advertiser know that approaches occur but keeps your individual browsing or app history private using methods like encryption, time delays, secure service, data aggregation, and randomification. The advertiser can see which of their ads was most effective without individual identifiers being used in the process. This is great. For those interested in understanding how the relevance and measurement APIs work in a more detailed and technical way, stay tuned for our next section. Yeetal Advertising is key to maintain the free and open web we all know today. And beyond advertising purposes, developers currently use their barricades to provide a great amount of web experiences but cookies and some of their signals were not designed with privacy in mind, allowing companies to track users across sites and thus the strength of cross-site boundaries to meet users' privacy expectations. At the same time, we need to ensure that we're enabling the legitimate use of web experiences to continue guarantee that we're building new technologies that will limit cover tracking across mobile and web. So what does it involve? We discussed from the onset that Privacy Sandbox is focused on rising bar for user privacy. And this is why we're also seeking to strengthen cross-site privacy boundaries and prevent cover tracking by designing several non-advertisement APIs that can be used beyond advertisement and use cases. Let's discuss some of the available APIs that are relevant to publishers, especially CHIPS related website sets and user-agent client hints. CHIPS API helps you to continue using third-party embeds that rely on third-party cookies by partitioning the use of third-party cookies to the site they are placing. Any data flows remain restricted to that partition. And if your embeds are used on yet another site, that pairing will also be partitioned and no info can be shared across these partitions. Related website sets, if you or your organization owns and runs multiple sites, you can combine them in sets within which cross-site cookies are treated as first-party and can be enabling data flows between your sites and your related website sets. User-agent client hints API. Since the use of the reduced user agents in Chrome 13.113, the user-agent client hints API has allowed callers to retrieve additional information about their usage agent in a privacy-preserving format. And finally, let me talk about the federated credential management, which is a technology for a privacy-preserving approach to federate identity services, where users can login into sites without sharing their personal information with the identity service or the site. These were just a few examples of helpful tools that you can add to your toolkit to assist with more privacy-centric digital experiences. The important thing to remember here is that these are not replacing third-party cookies. They are a new generation of web technologies to take us from a new level of functionality while safeguarding user privacy. We encourage you to test, learn, and share your feedback so we can help privacy products with more insights from the publisher community. But let's take a moment to come back to the user perspective. It is important to consider the user controls as part of the overall digital consumer experience. We have also rolled out a new ad privacy control syndrome that allows people to manage how the privacy sandbox technology can be used to deliver ads they see. These controls allows users to tailor their experience by customizing what ad topics they are interested in, which sites can create relevance and not share many APIs they want, and they can enable and disable and more. We can view these controls by visiting settings, privacy and security, ad privacy control syndrome, and you can find additional information about the new ad's privacy features in our Help Center. Okay, so let's talk about readiness. So what steps can publishers take now, next or later to prepare for the third-party verification? My peer Damian will detail the specific actions you can take to maximize privacy sandbox for inventory and how you can increase your participation in testing. For now, here's an overview of the steps that we have taken in 2023 and the ones that you can take now in the future to prepare for third-party verification in Chrome. In 2023, it was time to learn and assess. Adtex worked with Chrome to test the functionality of a new privacy enhancing technologies. Most of the publishers were not able to test these technologies directly in live marketing campaigns. However, we encourage publishers like you to ask SSPs about their testing plans and discuss their individual needs, objectives, and use cases. We also ask publishers to closely monitor privacy sandbox updates throughout our regular blog posts and quarterly ecosystem updates and to share feedback throughout our numerous feedback channels and engagements. Lastly, we encourage publishers to voice their interests in participating in testing throughout the public github tester list for the ad's APIs. In terms of now, SSPs have started to enable testing of privacy sandbox technologies within their selling platforms. They are preparing and executing testing plans during the current Chrome-facilitated testing period. We encourage you to participate in their respective testing plans if offered the chance. Some of the SSPs might require publishers to update their setups to be more comfortable with their testing plan as such as we encourage publishers to leverage privacy sandbox technologies as much as possible for the inventory. Lastly, we recommend publishers to start auditing their third-party cookie dependencies across their domains to ensure the best web experiences possible for the users in the future. As for next, we anticipate the ecosystem will optimize and develop best practices based on the shared learnings as we continue to rise the bar for user privacy. To move away from third-party cookie-based solutions and to explore new approaches to support user privacy. If you want to be more involved, the privacy sandbox team has created a public github tester list to facilitate testing coordination between different website stakeholders. This is a great way to declare your interest in being considered for the future at tech testing or perhaps to showcase your learnings for the related websites or chips APIs where you have directly integrated these technologies. If this is of your interest to you or to your teams, you wish to review the github tester list for APIs such as topics, protected audiences and attribution reporting. In this list, you will be able to see what roles testers play as well as any planning time for testing thanks to testing plans, key learnings and contact and information. Thank you. Now I will be handing over to my peer, Scott, who will be chatting in more detail with our guest speaker to understand what other publishers are doing to prepare for the Google's world in Chrome. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Scott Friesen from the Privacy Partnerships team at Google. It's my great pleasure to introduce Terry Hornsby, EVP of Mattis and Group Digital and Innovation Director at Reach to share some insights about their journey on the Privacy Sandbox. So warm welcome to you, Terry. For the people who maybe don't know much about Reach, could you give us a bit of background and about the company? Yeah, sure. So Reach is the biggest commercial publisher in Europe. It's a regional and national newspaper and digital platform. Excellent. So in your role as EVP here at Reach, when you're sitting in the executive meetings, what were the kind of discussion points that you were thinking through as you were evaluating the Privacy Sandbox and what was your kind of role in that journey? Yeah, very much the team myself leading that conversation. I think the first initial thing is what does it mean? Looking at the calculus environments that we already have and looking at kind of the differences between the Sandbox and that and just identifying what we wanted to find out from the test and also the ongoing tests. Yeah, and I think we have seen today that there's a lot in there as part of the Privacy Sandbox. So maybe we can talk a little bit more about the use cases for the technology. So how did you identify and really prioritize which of the use cases you maybe wanted to test out and which ones maybe weren't as important or you were gonna wait on? Yeah, so I think the first initial step was what data comes back? So we run lots of tests around kind of what was coming back to us, identifying, again, topics, kind of the analysis of kind of buyers that are buying on Sandbox, et cetera. And then we kind of framed that, you know, kind of product roadmap, I guess, and tests where we looked at use cases across editorial engagement analytics and also test cases for advertising. So now the big question is how prepared is Reach to kind of maintain and sustain your user experience in this new cooculus world? What are you focusing on next? Yeah, so I think that's a big question. We've obviously got our own contextual proprietary tool, Mentis, and we're looking at different options around the data to come back from Sandbox. What does that mean? How do we match that with Mentis to be even in a stronger position? I'd suggest we're in a strong position because we've got our proprietary tech and also that tech is also available across other publishers. So I think we're in a strong position. I think what it means for us is that we've got time now to look at the different options, different use cases. I think also it gives us a good range to look across editorial engagement, content recommendations, what does it mean? What does the Sandbox give us data-wise compared to other data platforms? What does it tell us about our users? What does it tell us about the topics and contents they might be interested in and how we kind of needle and thread that into our everyday? Yeah, so from the sounds of it, you've got quite a big team that are looking at this. Can you also talk a little bit about what sort of structure you have internally to help kind of test and assess these different technologies? Was this sort of a small team that you just started out as a one-off, or is it part of a wider task force around privacy? Yeah, so we've got a commercial development team. We're lucky in the sense that it's quite a large commercial development team with the Department of Analytics people as well. It was set up originally kind of them as a project and saying, look, this is Sandbox, look at it again. Then I believe kind of the long term, medium term will be that the team grows as it is now when we incorporate it into our day to day. So yeah, we're lucky in the sense of we've got a large team looking after our day today in our BAU. And now it's just about how Sandbox fits into that BAU. But I think any size publisher, small, medium or large, you don't, to do that first step that everybody's worried about and don't necessarily think that people know how to really approach it is find out what data's coming back, do that test. That initially can be done by an analytics person that a dev or even a revops person. Yeah, it's great to share that learning as well as I think a lot of us here today are wondering what is that first step that we should be taking and how can we start preparing today? So, Terry, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you sharing your journey with us and helping to kind of inspire this group. So I will now hand it back to Damian who will provide us with a wrap of today's session. Thank you, Scott. Hello, everyone, my name is Damian and I will be sharing with you more detailed actionable steps you can take today in order to elevate your participation in the privacy Sandbox during the Chrome facilitated testing period. But before we go there, let me just remind you of where we are in terms of the roles towards our particular application in Chrome and which steps we have recommended publishers to take to prepare for the cookie-less future so far. Last summer, Chrome moves the privacy Sandbox to add the API to general availability, thus making them available in 100% of Chrome browsers and ultimately enabling large-scale testing with real traffic. To facilitate testing, Chrome will use two testing modes with consistent labels and different configurations. One of them being ModD in which short-party cookies are disabled on 1% of Chrome browsers globally which was released in the early 2024. Now, we are in the phase where AdTex and other ecosystem stakeholders are encouraged to test their integration. Until July, the ecosystem is free to test the privacy Sandbox technologies and share their respective results with the CMA. Starting July 1st, the CMA will start its evaluation period and trigger a standstill period. After this, Chrome will start to fully sunset third-party cookies on 100% of browsers subject to the approval of the CMA. As Juan mentioned before, in 2023, it was time to learn and assess. AdTex worked with Chrome to test the functionality of new privacy-enhancing technologies. We also asked publishers to closely monitor privacy Sandbox updates through a regular developer blog post and quarterly ecosystem updates and to share feedback through our numerous feedback channels and engagements. Lastly, we encourage publishers to voice their interest to participate in testing through the public GitHub tester list for the ads APIs. In terms of now, SSPs have started to enable testing of privacy Sandbox technologies. We encourage you to participate in their respective testing plan if offered a chance, in which, in some cases, we require publishers to update their setups. Lastly, we recommend publishers to start auditing their third-party cookie dependency across their domains to ensure the best web experience possible for their users in the future. As for next, we anticipate the ecosystem will optimize and develop best practices based on shared learnings. And we encourage you, publishers, to move away from third-party cookie-based solutions and to explore new approaches to support user privacy. But what are the actionable steps you can take today to be more involved in the privacy Sandbox initiative? Let's begin. First and foremost, it's important to understand the full picture when it comes to third-party cookie dependency. For this, we have created a Chrome extension that will analyze the presence of cookies on any given website and categorize them respectively. My colleague Andrei will share more details on the tool in the next session. But in a sense, you can use the extension with the Chrome developer tools and the privacy Sandbox tab to identify how each cookie was categorized and used. The privacy Sandbox tab also includes the different APIs you can use for example, limiting site boundaries, enhancing private advertising or partitioning cookies for your domain. The tab also includes the respective instructions to get you started. In addition, the list should also help you in identifying which cookies are crucial for your site and EW to create a pipeline of service providers you need to contact in regard to their cookie-less plans on Chrome. To have better visibility of companies participating in the testing of privacy Sandbox technologies, we recommend to check out the tester lists within GitHub for the ad APIs topics, protected audience, and attribution reporting. In this list, you can check the role each company has in the tests as well as a plan schedule, publish results, and a contact option. The list were created specifically to facilitate the coordination of testing between different parties of interest. If you want to leverage the privacy Sandbox signals as much as possible for your inventory, you may want to contact your SSPs to understand in more details their testing plans and step needs did to be included in testing. Previd is a good example of how you can obtain privacy Sandbox-enabled demand from different SSPs. However, some SSPs may require you to upgrade your Previd Core to version 8.9 or higher to enable topics and protected audience technologies for testing. Depending on the SSP, you may also need to update your bid adapter to be able to receive protected audience bids. Finally, it's necessary to add the protected audience module to be able to configure the different SSPs. With these updates, publishers enable the use of topics as well as remarketing an audience group through protected audience on their pages with Previd. As a publisher, you can also publicly voice your interest to be included in future tests by joining the tester lists in GitHub under the publisher repository. You can even showcase your learnings from APIs like related website sets or chips where you have directly integrated these technologies. Ultimately, these leads were created to facilitate testing between web stakeholders and to share learnings or early results with the ecosystem. So, once you enable the privacy Sandbox technologies as much as possible for your inventory, you might want to assess its impacts on your lead. Depending on your attack providers and if they're offering reporting capabilities in line with the privacy Sandbox APIs, you can link reports with the Chrome-facilitated testing levels. In Google Manager, for example, you can utilize reportable key values linked to Chrome labels to report an impression that included a topic or that were sold via protected audience section. For this, you will need to create predefined key values in line with the Chrome testing levels like Control-2 or Treatment-1-1 and make sure to apply them on a page level depending on the response you get when accessing the label. This ultimately will also give you the opportunity to create a testing framework that you can use to assess the privacy Sandbox technologies and share the respective results with the CMA to elevate the publisher's POV during the evaluation period. In summary, these are the steps you can take today to prepare as much as possible for the third-party cookie phase-out in Chrome. First, audit your third-party cookie usage by leveraging the privacy Sandbox Chrome extension and developer tools. Second, reach out to your providers to understand the cookie-less plan. Third, open up inventory for your providers to test by updating your pre-built modules and build adapters. Fourth, voice your interest for testing in the GitHub testing list and or showcase your findings. Fifth, update your reporting capabilities to assess the impact of the privacy Sandbox for inventory. Check out the checklist on the right with more detailed steps as you prepare for the phase-out for third-party cookies in Chrome.


Good afternoon everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for coming. It's great to meet old friends and make new ones. I would like to thank Professor Hopper and Gildsinn for inviting me to this wonderful conference. We can only underestimate the enormous work and dedication that goes into organizing this, I think, and it's because of their kindness and intellectual curiosity and hospitality that we can enjoy each other's company and learn from each other. I'm going to talk about a sensitive topic, discrimination. Is any one of you maybe a snowflake? Maybe easily offended? Well, if you are, good luck. It's not only a sensitive topic. It's only also a hot one because virtually all democratic presidential nominees can't stop talking about it. Joe Biden said, racism has been built into every aspect of our lives. And Bernie Sanders stated, we will go to war against racism in every aspect of our lives. And we all know that politicians are very wise people. So am I a madman to defend prejudice and the right to discriminate? Well, not really. I will argue that prejudice actually serves a very useful social and economic function. And I will also explain why anti-discrimination policies are counterproductive. Nowadays, if you imitate a foreign accent or tell a sexist joke or mention a group difference or refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding, it seems like it's a capital offense. And it's the prelude to hatred and violence. If you say something discriminatory, even if it was 20 years ago and even if it was a joke or it was in private, you can become toast.   But you are irredeemable. It's like a modern inquisition. Expressing a discriminatory opinion can result in a fine or a cost to your job. And social media sites can delete your account if you state, for instance, that transgender men are still women. And countries can deny you entry for discriminatory statements. You can even end up in jail like happened in South Africa with a two-year sentence. I'm certain that many of you might have felt guilt about your own discrimination, maybe or your own preconceived idea and your preferences.  Well, I hope this talk will boost your confidence. Earlier this year, I published The Discrimination Myth, a book that debunks 14 myths regarding prejudice, exclusion, equality, and segregation. And it's very un-PC, but remarkably, people haven't gotten angry at me. So I think I must be doing something wrong. The English edition is for sale here at the lobby. And I would like to hardly thank Aaron Carlons here present. Where are you, Aaron? Ah, there. For being so kind as to proofread the book. So what actually is discrimination? People associated with everything that is evil, like hate and violence, xenophobia, misogyny, calling people names, etc. The official definition, however, suggests something far less evil. Unjust distinction, or to exclude someone on the basis of group characteristics or irrelevant traits. But that's a bit vague, isn't it? I mean, what seems unjust to me might be perfectly reasonable for you. I want to be clear that by defending the right of individuals and companies to discriminate, I don't defend government discrimination like apartheid or Jim Crow laws. And I neither want to belittle all discrimination.  And also I acknowledge that some people experience far more discrimination than others. However, for freedom-loving people like ourselves, freedom of association is essential. And to exclude someone should be legal for any reason at any time, at any place. Although it may be morally wrong sometimes. It should not be forbidden. For you don't need a good reason to not associate with someone. Actually, you don't need a reason at all. That is what liberty is about. The anti-discrimination laws in our egalitarian culture have created an increasingly totalitarian and hypersensitive society in which the government interferes in our decisions with whom we want to associate with, who to hire, who to fire, and what salaries we pay, to whom we sell to, what non-stereotyping advertisements are allowed, and to whom we allow access to at our event or venue. It has also limited our freedom of speech and has created an increasingly humorless society, I think. Let me give you some examples. The restaurant chain Hooters is known for its scantily-clad waitresses. And that's why they're also called restaurants. And years back it was sentenced to pay no less than three million dollars for the horrible crime of hiring young women, only hiring young women. And in another case, a Christian dating website was fined because it didn't facilitate gay dating, horrible. A Christian baker was fined for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. And 50 years ago most people would consider this totalitarian, but now it's reality. And recently in Canada, Jessica Yaniv filed no less than 29 discrimination complaints to a human rights tribunal against various waxing parlors. Jessica is a self-identified transgender woman who requested a Brazilian wax and was refused. The thing is that Jessica still has the family jewels dangling and unsurprisingly the ladies refuse to treat his testicles. Well, I prefer his. George Orwell once said, some ideas are so absurd that only intellectuals believe them. And indeed, many progressive intellectuals think that any group disparity in societal outcomes is a sure sign of discrimination and marginalization. For instance, if company CEOs are predominantly male this is because women are discriminated against.  Same goes for the disparities regarding Oscar winners of Wimbledon prize money, the works of art in museums, everything. However, everyone can easily observe that groups differ in talent and motivation or circumstances. Provided you have two eyes to see and the same number of brain cells. Take talent. Men and women are about equally intelligent on average but men wildly outperform women on IQ tests at the genius level. So that might explain why men dominate in science and mathematics and engineering. Or take motivation and intelligence in science and mathematics and engineering. Or take motivation. According to research done by the dating website OKCupid men tend to favor beauty and youth in females whereas women appreciate the income and professional status of men. Nothing new here, I think. There is this not-so-tellent Dutch actress, Tatiana Chimik who still enjoyed her successful movie career and in a recent interview she explained the secret of her success. She said, I would have been a hairdresser and not an actress if it weren't for my big boobs. True to stereotypes, she hooked up with a multimillionaire 15 years her senior and feminists complain that women are often regarded as sex objects but they forget to point out that men are often considered success objects and therefore are more motivated than women to excel and earn a high income. And for women it means that a career enhancement sometimes implies a breast enhancement. Different outcomes might also be the result of differences in circumstances. Did you know that sharks are horribly sexist? Anyone know? Well, according to the international shark attack file, more than 90% of all shark attack victims are male and those horrible sharks are even racist too because 95% of their victims is white. This is definitive proof of blatant sexism and racism. I think the most plausible explanation is, however, that white males swim with the fish more often. So not all differences in outcome are due to discrimination. But discrimination is still rampant. Suppose you approach a dark alley on your way home at night we have all experienced something similarized and you notice a group of strangers standing there and it matters for everyone whether there are four skinheads standing there or four old ladies in floral dresses.  And in the case of skinheads, Bernie will probably take a detour and with the elderly ladies he might run towards them. So why then is it evil when employers use the same logic? So it's inescapable and prudential to discriminate, to have prejudice. If it didn't exist, I would invent it. I would say I have found this wonderful thing and I call it prejudice. And what you do is if you have limited information on someone new and you need to decide whether to engage or not, then you project alleged group characteristics on that individual and your decisions will improve dramatically. You know, it's fantastic. It can be used for advertising and combating crime and hiring personnel and disease prevention. And it's all free. So nowhere else exists such blatant and open discrimination as on dating sites. I don't know if you've ever noticed that. But on their profiles, individuals shamelessly list their demands and wishes regarding age and height and weight and education and appearance. And small men who date are often immediately excluded by many women, even though they may possess very practical skills and maybe great lovers.  This is a bit ironic because on gay dating websites the men shamelessly express their preferences. No fetties, no feminine types, etc. And with the culinary codes, the men indicated who need not reply. So no rice, that's Asians. Or no spice, Latinos. No curry, that's Indian men. And you can probably guess what no chocolate means. Well, do these men hate these groups? Are they eligible for a Ku Klux Klan membership? I don't think so. Generally discrimination doesn't equate hatred. We all judge and exclude people on their sex and ethnicity and religion. And therefore I think we are in a way all racist and sexist if the term means anything at all. We also like to hang out with people like ourselves. Is that wrong? This is an example. Nobody complains that yoga practitioners generally don't get drunk with Hell's Angels. And you don't see nuns who stage-dive with heart rockers, do we? So even discriminate against groups we are a part of. Since men are far more crime-prone than women I at least discriminate against men to stay safe. But if I would hire a personal guard I would probably discriminate in favor of men. Even the American black civil rights activist Jesse Jackson once said there is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved. It was a confession he might regret. Regarding crime, by the way there are a lot of complaints about ethnic profiling certainly in the Netherlands where I come from. Already age and gender profiling is a very useful tool to combat crime. You know, if the police hunts down a serial killer they don't start off by aggressively interrogating the old ladies at the pensioner's home, do they? So it's very hard not to discriminate or not to use discriminatory speech. Even progressive struggle with it, which is often funny. For instance, right after the Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher died that's not the funny part, that's the sad part. The comedian Steve Martin kindly tweeted when I was a young man Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well. Well, I'm sure you and I can't find anything wrong with that statement. But feminists were outraged. It was sexist because he mentioned her beauty prior to her talent. The horror. So what do you think Martin did? He humbly apologized and deleted the tweet. And for us this can be a source of great joy, I think. All these two gooders who compete on being tolerant and politically correct and still eat their own. It might be the cure for depression. So even giving compliments can get you in trouble. When doing the wrong thing, however, you have to be egalitarian too. Charlie Rose, the famous American television journalist, was accused of sexual harassment in 2017 by female staff members. And the remarkable thing was that he was criticized by a black female staff member because he had only harassed white women, which proved that Charlie was a racist. So my advice to you is, you know, if you plan to harass women, I oppose it. Don't do it. Disclaim it, disclaim it, disclaim it. But please be inclusive about it. Or better, even harass men too. No, not yet animals and plants. Yes. You might think that the left never intentionally discriminates. They would never be hypocrites, would they? Well, progressive media outlets happily engage in racism and sexism. And there are thousands of examples, and I'll give you some highlights. In 2018, the renowned newspaper, The Washington Post, featured an opinion article titled, Why Can't We Hate Men? And this was not satire. It was not even a clickbait. And Time Magazine published an article like, Why Women Are Better at Everything? Hmm, I didn't know that. And the popular online magazine Buzzfeed tops that. In 2014, visitors could read about 29 things white people ruined. In 2018, that number rose to 37 things white people need to stop ruining. And I wonder what the number is this year. And the black actor Jamie Foxx once joked, I killed all the white people in the movie. How great is that? I think it's an okay joke, but no public outrage. However, if the colors were reversed, Jamie Foxx would instantly have even fewer job opportunities. than a student of the liberal arts. A few hundred meters from my home is a ladies-only fitness club, but they never get sued. If they would substitute ladies only with men only, or whites only, it would cause an international outrage. And did feminists ever protest against the injustice of the draft, which enslaves millions of men to be cannon fodder? They like to complain about too few women in higher positions, but fail to argue for gender parity, for garbage collectors, sewage workers, homeless people, etc. And suppose we could turn this hypocrisy into food. There would be no hunger left in this world, I think. What few people realize is that anti-discrimination laws are actually counterproductive. Take the following case. A Muslim woman, Samantha Isla from Oklahoma, had a job interview with the fashion company Abercrombie & Fitch. And she was passed over for the job because she wore a hat scarf. And the fashion company employs strict dress codes for its sales representatives. And Samantha filed a lawsuit for religious discrimination and was awarded no less than $20,000 for economic and emotional damages. However, these rulings have unintended consequences. Companies will probably respond to this by avoiding candidates with Arabic-sounding names. And if people are prohibited to discriminate on a specific characteristic, they will discriminate more broadly. So because of anti-discrimination laws, Muslims like Samantha are now considered walking lawsuits. They might gain the right to demand halal food in the canteen, or prayer breaks, or not serving alcohol, etc. But by the way, I don't want to pick on Muslims, of course, certainly not here in Turkey. It's just a good example. So due to anti-discrimination laws, white, heterosexual, non-religious males have become the most appreciated job candidates for companies. Coincidentally, that's something like me. Well, you run less risk of discrimination complaints and lawsuits, and of course, no company will admit this. They will publicly pay lip service to the whole community of diversity and inclusivity and equality.  I'm the embodiment of an oppressor.  If the government was serious, however, about reducing discrimination, it would embrace individual liberty and the free market. First, it would abolish all anti-discrimination legislation, because, like I explained, it's counterproductive. Secondly, all affirmative action laws should be abolished, and this needs no further explanation here, I think. In the Netherlands, it's called positive discrimination. But for me, it doesn't feel so positive. And thirdly, abolish all laws that indirectly foster discrimination. I'll give a few examples. The minimum wage forces company to exclude the low-skilled and inexperienced, often minorities. Employers are mandated to pay sick leave, and this forces them to discriminate against sickly, disabled, older or obese people. And landlords must accommodate for the religious customs of their tenants. The Canadian landlord had to pay no less than $12,000 because he didn't take his shoes off when entering the tenant's room. So landlords will tend to exclude certain religious groups, like Muslims. There are many more of these laws, and therefore you could argue that the state causes more discrimination than all the angry white men combined. Well, I'm not really angry, I'm just disappointed. So in conclusion, prejudice and generalizations are indispensable and can serve a useful social and economic function. In essence, it's about avoiding people, optimizing choices, not about violence. It's not necessarily about hate, either. Anti-discrimination legislation is an insult to liberty and it's incompatible with a free society. It's totalitarian. It ruins company and it creates a polarized society, divided into oppressed and oppressor classes, a society where people compete in the oppression Olympics. No, I'm more oppressed than you, and you have no right to speak.  So the anti-discrimination movement is interested in equality and not so much in quality. For them, people need to be selected on the basis of their characteristics, not their achievements or capabilities. And their ideology is neither about equality before the law, but about equal outcomes. And they talk about tolerance, but they do not mean our idea of tolerance, namely to live and let live, but forced association and government coercion, the obligation to associate with someone, even when that other person considers herself a cat, like the Norwegian woman Nano. I don't know if you know her. She doesn't really exist. Suppose you run a cat grooming service and Nano comes in, gonna have some service. So we cannot improve society, I think, by forcing people to associate with each other. In fact, the best medicine against hate and social conflict is the freedom to avoid each other. And I hope that you will no longer be intimidated and muzzled by accusations of racism and sexism and homophobia. I think our opponents have newly defined and stretched these terms to use it as a weapon to shut everyone up who doesn't agree with their egalitarian ideology. And their political power is, therefore, far greater than their numbers justify. You don't have to feel guilty if you have preferences and prejudices and you don't have to apologize for it. You can still be polite and kind to people. And I suggest we oppose the anti-discrimination activists with the inconsistency of their arguments and their opportunistic hypocrisy and their selective outrage, their willful ignorance, their shameless virtue signaling, let's fight for our birthright to free association, to decide for ourselves who we deal and trade with, to live in peace with whoever we like to on the basis of mutual agreement. Thank you.