📯 Join the discussion on Monday about the future of privacy online.
It could not be more timely, considering the FTCs decision on the 24th of February against Avast, and the European Court of Justice’s decision on cookie banners yesterday, the Grindr court case next week and much more happening in the field of data protection, privacy, online marketing, AI and more.
More information and possibilities to sign up below.
This week we lodged complaints with the UK and French regulators about LiveRamp's new adtech system.
A report by @wchr and Alan Toner commissioned by ORG shows that LiveRamp has developed privacy-invasive profiling that combines online and offline identifiers.
Internet users are exposed to more privacy-invasive profiling, that can link their browsing habits to their real identity and even their home address.
Pamiętam, że gdy jakiś czas temu bodaj Axel Springer próbował coś w tym temacie zadziałać, zniknął z wyszukiwarki i podkulił ogon.
Może teraz? Gigant rządzi i dzieli, kierując się jedynie maksymalizacją zysków, z ogromną szkodą wyrządzaną internetowi (np. SEOSpam).
"Teraz 33 europejskie organizacje medialne postanowiły skonsolidować swoje roszczenia odszkodowawcze wobec jednej z największych globalnych korporacji, która przez wiele lat wykorzystywała swoją dominującą pozycję na rynku. Koalicja zdecydowała się złożyć pozew przeciwko Google w Holandii, kluczowej jurysdykcji dla roszczeń o odszkodowania antymonopolowe w Europie. Takie scentralizowane podejście eliminuje konieczność składania wielu pozwów w różnych krajach europejskich, co wiąże się z ryzykiem niespójności i spirali kosztów."
#Media#News#Journalism#SEO#AdTech#Search#SearchEngines: "[F]ew network effects have damaged the news more than Search Engine Optimization, where the allure of traffic from search engines like Google has led publishers to create content not with the goal of serving their audience, but attracting the spurious traffic that one might get from those searching "when does the Super Bowl start."
The result is a media industry in crisis. Desperate executives and disconnected editors twist their reporters' coverage to please Google's algorithms as a means of improving traffic to please advertisers' algorithms, creating content that looks and sounds the same as other outlets, which in turn leads to layoffs as profits fail to increase, which in turn normalizes and weakens the content created by the outlet. This is largely a result of those in power not actually consuming or producing any of the product that makes the outlet money, only understanding the business as a series of symbols that at some point create revenue, ostensibly from the written word and video.
When you make decisions for a website or company that produces words that it sells for money based not on the writing, but on how to twist that writing to make it "more profitable," the conclusion is always inevitable — the creation of identical-looking slop that people only read by accident, and the slow asphyxiation of journalism and culture.
It almost always leads to overstaffing and mismanagement, too. Any form of creative media requires an understanding that building an audience takes time and money, and that one cannot just spend a bunch of money to make that happen. But these craven idiots are as rotten as the rest of the economy (...) The media is being run by people that do not see value in people or the things that they create, but the metrics that come as a result."
ORG has submitted complaints in the UK and France about LiveRamp, an online advertising and data broking company.
An investigation commissioned by ORG shows the new #adtech system undermines #privacy through invasive profiling.
Thousands of #advertising companies draw detailed profiles of Internet users’ online activities to target them with ads. It's the backbone of #surveillancecapitalism and it's proven to be harmful.
ORG's complaints raise urgent concerns about the LiveRamp #adtech system:
🔴 Personal data processing without a valid legal basis
🔴 Lack of data protections throughout the advertising supply chain
🔴 More intrusive than previous adtech systems, combining online and offline identifiers (such as name, email and phone numbers, home addresses etc) for more privacy-invasive profiling
🔴 LiveRamp operates in the background and lacks transparency
“The Liveramp system is intrusive and lets advertisers link people’s actual address and name with their browsing habits.
These new and dangerous technologies are an attempt to get around changes that limit the use of tracking cookies, and to make online advertising more intrusive, rather than less.
Now is the time to halt these new and dangerous technologies before they get out of hand.”
This action comes at a critical moment, as the #DPDIBill in the UK will make it more difficult to address emerging online threats.
Requirements to seek a resolution with a company like LiveRamp before complaining to the Information Commissioner's Office (the UK's independent data protection regulator) create a significant barrier to promoting regulatory compliance.
Recherchen von @404mediaco zeigen, wie sich der weltweite Datenhandel der Werbeindustrie zur #Massenüberwachung einsetzen lässt. Ein kommerzielles Werkzeug soll die Wohnadressen und engsten Kontakte von Zielpersonen verraten – und auf Wunsch sogar ihre Handys hacken können. Zur anvisierten Zielgruppe gehören Geheimdienste.
"The #news is in trouble. It’s not just the mass closures of newsrooms—it’s also the physical and ideological attacks on journalists. News websites are plastered with ads, but more than half of the money those ads generate is siphoned off by #adtech, #Google & #Meta, whose ad-tech #duopoly has allowed them to claim an ever-greater share of the income generated by ads placed alongside of news content." @pluralistic https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech
#Surveillance#MobileApps#Spyware#AdTech: "Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps, are part of a global surveillance capability that starts with ads inside each app, and ends with the apps’ users being swept up into a powerful mass monitoring tool advertised to national security agencies that can track the physical location, hobbies, and family members of people to build billions of profiles, according to a 404 Media investigation.
404 Media’s investigation, based on now deleted marketing materials and videos, technical forensic analysis, and research from privacy activists, provides one of the clearest examinations yet of how advertisements in ordinary mobile apps can ultimately lead to surveillance by spy firms and their government clients through the real time bidding data supply chain. The pipeline involves smaller, obscure advertising firms and advertising industry giants like Google. In response to queries from 404 Media, Google and PubMatic, another ad firm, have already cut-off a company linked to the surveillance firm."
Über die Berliner Plattform #Datarade verkaufen #Databroker detaillierte Bewegungsdaten von 4 Mio. Niederländer:innen, darunter auch Menschen aus sicherheitsrelevanten Gruppen wie Polizei & Militär.
Zudem bestätigt: Dass mit den niederl. Geheimdiensten MIVD & AIVD nicht mehr nur US-Dienste bei Databrokern einkaufen.
Ach, was soll schon passieren, wenn die Wetter-App meine Location-Datan sammelt... 😌
Nun ja.
Eine Enthüllung in den Niederlanden zeigt die Risiken durch den weltweiten Datenhandel – auch für die nationale Sicherheit. Demnach standen detaillierte Standortdaten von potentiell Millionen Niederländer*innen zum Verkauf, darunter Angehörige des Militärs. Der Marktplatz: Ein Berliner Datenhändler 🤡
@johnnyryan Hard agree - #adtech and #rtb is not only a threat to our personal liberties, but potentially also to national security. You and the ICCL have done great work on this, including Patternz report with @wchr showing how these businesses categorize people into ie "Intelligence and counterterrorism" or "Military & Protective Services—Senior".
Coupled with Haaretz' reporting on spy tech using adtech shows how problematic this already is.
#Mozilla asks for donations to reach half of their CEO's yearly salary, while people are getting laid off. Seems to me that the solution is simple.
[edit] Okay, this has gotten a lot of buzz, and I'm happy people respectfully weighed in with arguments and counterarguments. I'm not giving up on #Mozilla and #FireFox, nor on other initiatives for a better web. I am, however, going to be muting this now.
@kerfuffle Although calling it "salary" instead of compensation seems like a big inaccuracy when most of it was bonuses tied to Mozilla's increased revenue (the org now has over $1billion).
I also think its interesting what #Mozilla is doing, like creating a framework to run AI services (starting with Firefox' new local text translation feature!) locally on the users PC instead of people using "cloud" for everything. Putting that kind of power in peoples' hands to reverse a trend of central control and spying seems like a very big deal to me. OTOH, if we want near cash-less orgs to fight these battles against trillion-dollor corps for us then I think we're going to keep losing.
Mozilla is the one that threw down the gauntlet on adtech trackers by having Firefox isolate 3rd-party cookies & cache by default and do it in a way that looks transparent to web sites. That struck at the heart of the #adtech model and caused such a sea change in how other browsers work that Google Chrome is scrambling to move people to a similar-sounding privacy feature that tracks people a different way. #firefox#privacy
#SocialMedia#SocialNetworks#LinkedIn#AdTech#Advertising#Twitter: "Professional social networking site LinkedIn has made new inroads into the digital advertising market, with higher demand driving up prices on the platform as brands seek to reallocate spending from Elon Musk’s X.
Annual advertising revenues at the Microsoft-owned group rose to nearly $4bn in 2023, up 10.1 per cent year on year, according to estimates from research group Insider Intelligence. It also predicted further growth of 14.1 per cent in 2024.
Marketing agency executives and advertising industry insiders told the Financial Times that prices for LinkedIn adverts — which are sold by auction and therefore set by market demand — were rising amid a surge of interest from advertisers. In some cases, prices have increased as much as 30 per cent over the past year, one executive said."
Der Saal Zuse beim #37c3 war brechend voll, einige mussten leider wieder raus, weil sie keinen Platz bekamen. Jetzt ist der Mitschnitt von unserem Vortrag zur Akte #Xandr online. Darin werfen @roofjoke und ich einen tiefen Blick in den Abgrund der Datenindustrie.
#AI#ContentModeration#AdTech#Recommendation#Automation#News#Media#Journalism: "Automated systems and processes are a common feature of the news and media environment. This report introduces four key examples: search, recommendation, automated content moderation and curation, and advertising technology (AdTech). We provide a basic explanation of how these systems work at the technical level and show how they operate in context, drawing on examples and case studies across news and media. We then map emerging challenges associated with the use of each technology across the news and media environment, drawing on peer-reviewed research from multiple disciplines. The findings and outcomes of current research in this area from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society are featured throughout. We end by identifying several critical areas where future work is needed to help ensure the safe and responsible deployment of automated systems across news and media."
@Tutanota I believe every website that uses #trackers to provide #pii to feed the #adtech beast should provide its visitors with such simple tutorial videos. An important first step in getting people to start understanding the 'cost' they pay for that wonderful, free to use online #software