Is it ethical to use ad blockers and anti-tracking technology?
Here’s my stance: in print media, was it ethical to flip past a magazine ad without reading it?
Anything that makes skipping ads harder than that—or that gives advetizers one byte more data about me than they would have had when I picked up a magazine off the newstand—is an overreach, and fair game for me to block or evade by any means necessary.
"De Nederlandse Loterij, bekend als verkoper van Staatsloten, adverteert niet meer op X. Ook webwinkel bol heeft het socialemediaplatform de rug toegekeerd. [..] De webwinkel wil vanwege "een gebrek aan contentmoderatie" zijn merk niet langer verbinden aan X.
#Cybersecurity#Privacy#DataProtection#DataBrokers#AdTech: "Internet browsing data is being collected and sold in greater detail than previously thought, increasing the likelihood that individuals’ identities can be ascertained from the anonymised information, a new report has found.
Web users have for years been grouped by data brokers by traits such as their broad professional sector or interests, inferred from their browsing history. This anonymised information is then sold to advertisers so they can target specific categories, or segments, with personalised marketing.
An investigation by the non-profit Irish Council for Civil Liberties published on Tuesday shows the number of segments is greater than previously thought, including data on many influential and sensitive professions that were not known to be sold to advertisers.
Data has been put into segments used to target judges, elected officials, military personnel and “decision makers” working in national security, it found."
#EU#Europe#Cybersecurity#RTB#AdTech#Privacy: "Real-Time Bidding (RTB) allows foreign states and non-state actors to obtain compromising sensitive personal data about key European personnel and leaders.
Key insights:
Our investigation highlights a widespread trade in data about sensitive European personnel and leaders that exposes them to blackmail, hacking and compromise, and undermines the security of their organisations and institutions.
These data flow from Real-Time Bidding (RTB), an advertising technology that is active on almost all websites and apps. RTB involves the broadcasting of sensitive data about people using those websites and apps to large numbers of other entities, without security measures to protect the data. This occurs billions of times a day.
Our examination of tens of thousands of pages of RTB data reveals that EU military personnel and political decision makers are targeted using RTB.
This report also reveals that Google and other RTB firms send RTB data about people in the U.S. to Russia and China, where national laws enable security agencies to access the data. RTB data are also broadcast widely within the EU in a free-for-all, which means that foreign and non-state actors can indirectly obtain them, too."
#Media#News#Journalism#SentimentAnalysis#Algorithms#Advertising#AdTech: "Spanfeller and Great Hill Partners have, surely, mismanaged Jezebel in ways both big and small, and Spanfeller and G/O haven’t given anyone a reason to take their words at face value, but the subtext here is that Jezebel’s content was hard to sufficiently monetize.
This should not be the case considering that millions of people read it and chose, specifically, to visit Jezebel every month. But this is unfortunately how the internet works now, and has for a long time: News terrifies brands big and small, to the point where “brand safety” and “brand suitability” have become gigantic industries that have brought even giants like Facebook and Google to heel.
In theory, the “free market” should reward publications that are doing important work. The more people care about a given issue the more they’ll read news stories about it, which should give publications covering it traffic and ad dollars. In reality, the advertising industry has singled out the issues the audience cares about most, like reproductive rights, as unsuitable to sell ads against, even though a ton of people want to read about them. This helps explain the precarity of publications like Jezebel, despite it being more vital to its audience than ever."
This week on my #podcast, I read my recent #Medium column, "Microincentives and Enshittification," about the way that monopoly drives mediocrity, with Google's declining quality as Exhibit A:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Same goes for Google/Facebook, the #adtech duopoly: not only do both companies charge advertisers and publishers sky-high commissions, clawing 51 cents out of every ad dollar, but they also illegally colluded to rig the market and pay themselves more, at advertisers' and publishers' expense:
#BigTech#GAFAM#Lobbying#EU#AdTech#Antitrust: "According to Andree, Google, Facebook, Amazon and their counterparts have executed a "hostile takeover" of the internet by exploiting regulatory loopholes and thus misleading state institutions. "This leads to a glaring and feudalistic system of regulation," he says, meaning that the companies can dictate the conditions for e-commerce on their platforms or which user data they can collect.
Through strategic lobbying tactics, they have engaged in a protracted game of cat-and-mouse with the authorities for years. "
#BigTech#Disinformation#AdTech#News#Media#SocialMedia#Journalism: "Big Tech’s business model is harming us all by amplifying hate and lies. Our children are hurting, our rights are being abused and we are losing our shared reality. This means we cannot come together to solve big challenges like climate change, sexism and racism.
This is one of the most complex challenges of our time. But we can step up. It’s time to reclaim our rights in the digital age.
The 10-Point Plan to address the information crisis is a manifesto for change. It will transform the internet from a space monopolised by profiteering Big Tech companies to one that puts our rights first. Signed by Nobel laureates and over 100 organisations and individuals, it charts a path to a world where technology serves humanity.
Meta is proposing a paid option to opt-out of advertising on Instagram and Facebook. It's basically extortion to have your right to #privacy protected.
Ads can and should be delivered without resorting to illegal #surveillance that violates users' rights and exposes them to predatory or discriminatory advertising.
If #Meta can't conduct their business legally, that should be their problem to solve not ours.
#AdTech#Surveillance#Privacy#DataProtection#Facebook#MetaPixel: "In response to our stories, many sites immediately reversed course and removed their pixels. Not only that: Lawmakers called for immediate action, and attorneys filed dozens of lawsuits alleging that the practice of gathering the data was unlawful.
At this point, you might think that the project would be over and done. But we’re still seeing reverberations.
Since last month, we’ve seen legal action taken against companies in response to three different stories in our series."
Being watched sucks. Of all the parenting mistakes I've made, none haunt me more than the times my daughter caught me watching her while she was learning to do something, discovered she was being observed in a vulnerable moment, and abandoned her attempt:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
It's hard to be your #AuthenticSelf while you're under #surveillance. For that reason alone, the rise and rise of the surveillance industry - an unholy public-private partnership between cops, spooks, and #AdTech scum - is a plague on humanity and a scourge on the Earth:
💃 🕺YES!!!!! and finally! The Norwegian Privacy Appeals Board has turned down Grindr's appeal! This means Grindr has to pay the NOK 65 million fine, based on our complaint and report, unless they file another appeal in the court system.
I realized this article recommended Brave as a privacy-focused choice, so I un-boosted it.
Brave Inc. is a for-profit company that is trying to block existing ad networks so that it can substitute its own #adtech. Not only are they planning this bait-and-switch, but the ads will be "anonymized" by virtue of being based on cryptocurrency transactions. So... they are pushing cryptocurrency as well.
#Xandr is one of the most important players in the advertising industry. Inadvertently, it published a document with about 650,000 advertising segments.
For weeks, we evaluated it in search of particularly questionable segments from the EU. You can find the result here: