-
I think this is a common but bad mistake to make when engaging in conversation around "surveillance advertising". The term is not intended to just cover behavioral but also demographic, precision geo & even self-volunteered information. This is important! Here's why: ... eric_seufert/1483582823466418190Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 7 Retweets
❤️ 33 Favorites
Mood -3 🙁
-
Why do we even have laws or regulations amirite? Well wow, there's a lot of answers to that, but let's talk to the most important one here: lawmaking is an important process for when citizens are incentivized to act against their long term (or the society's long term) interestsPermalink On twitter.com
❤️ 7 Favorites
Mood +9 🙂
-
So this is why we have a ton of financial regulation. There are tons of ways that look like you can get rich quick in order, but will actually hurt you in the long term. Trust and anti-fraud laws are specifically about this...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood +3 🙂
-
There are also lots of things individuals can do that won't hurt them personally but are highly likely to hurt the people around them. Thus we have anti-discrimination laws, gun regulations, etc...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood -1 🙁
-
I'm not going to go into a history or philosophy of law here, but I mention this because it is important to understand that law making around surveillance advertising isn't just about what companies do, it's about what *we* do as individuals as well...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 7 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
See we have a lot of incentives to volunteer information to big tech firms they then use for ad targeting in one form or another, demographic, look-alike targeting, geo, etc... & then there are a lot of incentives to allow these companies to track you--that's the behavioral partPermalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
The more you volunteer this information the heavier handed companies can get about pushing you to give them more information and the fatter they get off selling your data, and the more comprehensive and bigger their products get, and then they become hard to escape...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood 0
-
This phenomenon is called "lock-in" when you can't escape a platform because all your stuff is there and they aren't giving you a clear way out. And then they end up giving you more reasons to give them data...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
Ex: You gave your college email to company X (which implies lots of data) which they turned into an ad empire, parts of which they feel bad about. Now they own the best digital face ripper for creating avatars, so what are you going to do? Not give them a high resolution scan?Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
Now you might say: 'Aram you haven't talked about bad ads yet!' Yeah, because this is an important part of how we understand the concept of surveillance advertising, it comes hand in hand w/monopolist behavior and an imbalance in power between you and the cos that hold your dataPermalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood 0
-
This is why having regulation is so important because there are a lot of incentives to volunteer our data and our activity to these platforms, but that data then gets turned around and used, built into user targeting models, leveraged for ad campaigns etc...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
And while some of those campaigns really just want to sell ma & pa's apples from down the street to you--a white male with an abundance of income ready to buy some overpriced apples because of your trip upstate--others want to trick you or have you vote against your interests.On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +3 🙂
-
Some of these ads want to *exclude* you, target around you because they have built in, perhaps racist, sexist, or otherwise biased assumptions, about you that make them think you are unsuitable for some opportunity. Chronotope/1483808270754230275Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood -5 🙁
-
Creating ad campaigns that are discriminatory is sort of the *design* of a user-based ad targeting system. Chronotope/1270507857713278982Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 6 Favorites
Mood -2 🙁
-
And this is at the core of understanding what people are implying when they're talking about "surveillance advertising". It's a poor term, I know, but it is intended to encompass any methodology that lets you target based on *user* data and there is a clear reason why...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood -1 🙁
-
Once you can target on user data, no matter how just one thinks their system is, no matter how bullet proof, there is always going to be discrimination built in to that process... JuliaAngwin/1359857040378781700Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood 0
-
Machines are not humans and they're never going to be able to keep up with the increasingly complex ways in which we define and divide ourselves. There's no way to really truly build protection of user interests into these systems because inevitably the users change...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood 0
-
And programmatic advertising builds on machines that can surveil that change without understanding it. But the *people* buying the ads *do* understand what these pieces of data mean. The dynamic here is eternally unsafe for those being surveilled, even those volunteering...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood -2 🙁
-
So when people talk about surveillance advertising they're talking about *all the user data targeted advertising systems* and *all the types of data they select*, including *volunteered data*. And...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood 0
-
When we talk about surveillance advertising regulation, we are talking about this particular power dynamic: the pressure for users to enter and remain in systems that observe them and ask them to volunteer data. B/c that is exactly the type of power imbalance gov'ts are there forPermalink On twitter.com
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood -1 🙁
-
Surveillance advertising is a poor term, I'll give it's critics that, but it isn't a bad concept, nor is it a bad concept to create regulation around...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood -10 🙁
-
This is why I talked about why we create laws at the top, because this type of situation is exactly the situation we make laws for, where citizens are given incentive to act against their own interests and the interests of the society, pressured from forces they have no say in.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 3 Favorites
Mood +1 🙂
-
Here's the thing... maybe you believe that ads can't impact users behavior? Maybe they can't change why they vote or what they buy or how they act? Well then why are companies spending billions of dollars on these ads? Why are political campaigns? There must be a reason right?Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood 0
-
Well, if all these billions of dollars spent by thousands of companies supporting billion dollar tech platforms are spent in error... well then a law won't hurt will it?Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +1 🙂
-
And if ads do have some sort of impact... then mitigating that impact by blunting the precision is exactly the sort of regulation that would be a common sense next step in reaction to all we've seen over the last decade in ad tech. Wouldn't it?Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood 0
-
At absolute least... the role of the gov't is to preserve our autonomy where that autonomy does not conflict w/the health of the state. And if precision targeted ads are impacting our autonomy, then we need protection. If they *aren't* then what's the point of opposing the law?Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 2 Favorites
Mood +2 🙂
-
I think this is the right direction. The way forward is to ban the capacity to target ads at the level of user precision we have available right now. I don't think it is possible for users to consent to the level of "surveillance" they end up opted into in the current system...Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 5 Favorites
Mood 0
-
If they cannot give informed consent due to the complexity, if they cannot escape the system due to lock in, if they are impacted in any way by the ads they see, there doesn't seem to be another choice other than removing the threat by banning precision targeted ads.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 6 Favorites
Mood -1 🙁
-
User targeted ad regulation is clearly needed at the federal level, and it is insane that we are facing a random patchwork of state laws instead. I am not sure if this is the exact law we need, but we need federal regulatory control over ad targeting, that's *very* clear.Permalink On twitter.com
♻️ 1 Retweets
❤️ 10 Favorites
Mood 0
-
Replies: Another factor that I didn't get into, but is an important other type of lock-in that benefits platforms above all others: dmarti/1483816061828927489Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 4 Favorites
Mood +4 🙂
-
Been talking more & reading closer & I think one of the most interesting things is the law seems particularly focused on *outcomes*, there isn't a lot in here about the *collection* of data, just action makes it valuable to collect, which is very different from other ad tech lawsPermalink On twitter.com
Mood +4 🙂
-
Which is to say: it looks to punish the inappropriate use of the data, but doesn't care much about the collection of it. Which is somewhat different from GDPR and CCPA.Permalink On twitter.com
❤️ 1 Favorite
Mood -6 🙁