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What's Lurking Behind the Meta Machine?
Is Meta pushing for accountability, or are they big mad? Following an $18 billion surprise settlement for its role in purposely making its platforms harmfully addictive to minors, they are asking everyone to remember TikTok and YouTube, essentially asking for these companies to join them on the chopping block. The suit has pushed Meta to put protections in place for teens and, alongside state attorneys general, has set a new industry standard with new teen accounts and stronger parental controls.
On their newfound journey for teen protections, they have launched a campaign, pushing for TikTok and YouTube to join them. Is this a move towards accountability, a power play hoping the platforms receive similar hefty settlements, or leverage to not pay their entire settlement?
While on its path towards informed, fair choices, Meta is removing placement options from ad sets. The current settings allow advertisers to exclude anywhere they do not want their ads to appear.This would be options such as not appearing in in-stream ads between reels, in search results on Facebook, and, shockingly, on other platforms Meta owns. This is part of Meta’s push towards fully automated ad campaigns, powered by their own AI ad system. In our advertiser verification report, we touched on how a fully automated system, with lackluster verification methods, is harmful for consumers and advertisers… but this also keeps the door wide open for Meta to place ads with no oversight from the advertisers themselves.
I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me
We all know that anything we post to the internet is preserved “forever”, but most users aren’t aware of how pervasively they are being tracked. Advertising IDs are one key method enabling this persistent tracking, despite their whole purpose being to offer anonymity through hashing, they are relatively easy to decode and figure out who is who. Advertising ID details fall into two categories: (1) deterministic data as location history, device's operating system, and gyroscopic data and (2) inferred data, such as political affiliation, employment status, relationship status, and household income. Both types of data are publicly available for sale to any bidder.
In the new report "How Mass Surveillance from Online Advertising Puts Journalists at Risk" published by The Committee to Protect Journalists and Harvard University’s Ryan-Carr Center, Arielle and Iesha discuss how the harvesting and selling of data via Software Development Kits (SDKs) and within the auction-mediated Real Time Bidding (RTB) advertising system poses direct risk of harm to every person who browses the internet or uses a smartphone. And also why these risks are especially prevalent for journalists.
In the report, journalists share firsthand experiences of how they have become easy-to-find targets because of the trove of data that is far too easy to access. The real-world consequences of journalists’ confidential sources being exposed and their personal location histories being purchased by anyone is as serious as it sounds. The system in place does not track what companies are tracing, logging, and selling this data; unlike spyware, there is no software or hardware installation needed that would leave clear evidence on data transfer.
The current status quo isn’t a good one, we are set up to rely on a digital advertising market that thrives on opacity. We are at the mercy of data stewardship of thousands of companies, many of which most people have never heard of. Safety and private information should not be for sale.
The Scary Truth of California Consumer Privacy Act
The California Consumer Privacy Act gives California residents the right to opt out of the sale of their personal information, the right to delete their data, and the right to request a copy of their personal information that companies have collected about them — and we are hoping the rest of the states will follow suit. The protections in place and the rights to have some control over your own information are great, but just how difficult is it to exercise those rights?
As WIRED found while requesting their personal data from more than 100 companies, exercising that legal right can be more difficult than it should be. Despite explicitly asking for a report of their collected data and specifically noting they were not asking for account deletion, companies often times deleted accounts and opted them out instead — seemingly automatically. When that didn’t happen, consumers had to jump through hoops, calling the advertised privacy policy number in attempt to get their request approved.
This unfortunately seems to be the status quo, with other researchers attempting the same and facing similar automatic responses confirming opt-out. The problem? Consumers are asked to navigate a maze to exercise the rights that this law, passed back in 2020, gives them.
The protections are there, but if companies are not providing the resources and support needed to help consumers exercise these rights — how meaningful are those protections?
The Monopoly Lurking in Plain Site
Great Googly Moogly. We weren’t expecting that one.
Last Wednesday, the federal court has ruled that despite Google’s label of being a monopoly — it won’t have to break up its business. That’s right, Google will continue to be the ad server and the exchange, allowing favoritism for its own products to skew the market. The court plans on ordering some behavioral tweaks, yet to be specifically announced, arguing that this will be enough to change their monopolistic ways. We're not convinced.
Check My Ads joined Tech Justice Law and other consumer advocacy groups in an amicus brief arguing that Meta should be held accountable when it fails to make good on its promises to protect users from scammers exploiting its platform.
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