An End to Targeted Advertising?

Reuters has a very short article about a recommendation by the E.U.’s European Data Protection board to force Meta to offer a free tier that does not force people to participate in behavioral ads.

Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab and other large online platforms should give users an option to use their services for free without targeted advertising, EU privacy watchdog the European Data Protection Board said on Wednesday.

This should be the policy/law as it stands. There are no good aspects to target ads and the data used to create them exposes users to all sorts of harms. They don’t even really work, and they have contributed to the death of journalism by concentrating ad dollars in the hands of a couple of companies, Meta included.

The fact that a major regulatory agency is making that suggestion might mean we have hit a tipping pointing these discussions. Meta, Google, and Apple make a ton of money selling target ads, so they are not willing to give them up lightly. Nor are the data brokers that collet the data needed to create target ads, among other privacy nightmare products that they sell.

No company has an inalienable right to a specific business model. If the harm of the model to society outweighs the benefit, then no matter how good the business is for the owners, society is entirely within its rights to foreclose that model. You don’t get to sell candy laced with cocaine in order to get kids addicted to your product. More relevantly, you don’t get to advertise cigarettes to children with a Cartoon camel in the hopes they try your product and become addicted. At least not anymore. The same principle applies: no matter how much money these companies make, the hard of targeted advertising makes outlawing it a reasonable step for a society to take.

This action, plus the possibility of finally having a national privacy law (even if it is not fully adequate) makes me at least a little hopeful that the worm has turned on tech privacy issues. We might finally b at a point where we can end these harmful practices. It will a hard fight — the companies aren’t going to give up their golden goose easily — but one that is worth the effort.