The advertising industry has more than 650,000 labels to target people. Reading through them reveals how even the most sensitive aspects of our life are monitored. EU-based data brokers play a vital role in this system.
This puts too much blame on the users. Individuals do not have the power to fight international mega corporations. It also ignores that, regardless of who you think is at fault, adtech violates a ton of privacy laws, at the very least in the EU. If a company doesn’t have a legal basis for collecting personal data, they are not allowed to do it. Especially if it is sensitive data like medical information, religion and sexual preferences.
I don’t get why we have to defend these practices or downplay them.
Excellent point. I completely agree and should have perhaps put more emphasis on the fact that these practices are of course egregious and the onus should not just be on the user. There should be more public awareness of these privacy nightmares, however. Somehow people need to learn to start caring about this stuff, because if nobody uses Facebook, Facebook doesn’t have the power to act the way it does.
This puts too much blame on the users. Individuals do not have the power to fight international mega corporations. It also ignores that, regardless of who you think is at fault, adtech violates a ton of privacy laws, at the very least in the EU. If a company doesn’t have a legal basis for collecting personal data, they are not allowed to do it. Especially if it is sensitive data like medical information, religion and sexual preferences.
I don’t get why we have to defend these practices or downplay them.
Excellent point. I completely agree and should have perhaps put more emphasis on the fact that these practices are of course egregious and the onus should not just be on the user. There should be more public awareness of these privacy nightmares, however. Somehow people need to learn to start caring about this stuff, because if nobody uses Facebook, Facebook doesn’t have the power to act the way it does.