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Link: The surveillance ad industry shouldn’t exist in Europe

While there are some problems with ad-supported media, they’re completely separate from the problems of surveillance – and the problems of surveillance are much worse than the problems of ads. That’s why we should ban surveillance ads.

Wait, I hear you saying. Doesn’t Europe ban surveillance ads already, through the GDPR? Well, yes, technically, they do. The process of getting consent for surveillance ads under the GDPR is deliberately so cumbersome that it is effectively impossible to run a surveillance ad industry.

So how is it that Google and Facebook and other ad-tech companies operate in Europe? Simple: they break the law. They – and many other companies – claim that they don’t need your consent to spy on you, because they can use the “legitimate interest” clause of the GDPR that allows them to process your data without asking you. This is a lie, and it’s only a lack of enforcement that allows the tech giants to get away with it (it’s possible that the new Digital Services Act will finally spur enforcement).