More evidence about the damage that targeted advertising causes, so why isn’t it illegal?
Raquel Quelart, from Barcelona daily La Vanguardia, called me to talk about a Harvard study that estimates the revenue that social media platforms obtain from ultra-targeted advertising to minors in the billions of dollars. Here’s the Spanish-language story.
The hard evidence that social media platforms contravene all regulations and bypass all protections for minors to make billions of dollars from compulsive usage patterns is just more proof of the abuse and utter lack of ethical principles of these companies.
The law supposedly protects minors, although companies prefer to pay fines rather than obey it. But the real point here is that all hyper-segmented advertising should be banned. The internet has allowed companies to track everything we do, spy on our every move and preference, and use that data to target us with advertising. As one of Facebook’s first employees, Jeff Hammerbacher, aptly puts it:
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”
The best way to understand this issue is to imagine if the internet didn’t exist. Imagine how we would feel if, when we woke up, somebody was standing next to our…
