#Privacy Control

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TORONTO on SUNDAY (Feb 23) at Another Story Books, and in NYC on WEDNESDAY (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN. More tour dates here.

The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between – they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The other witnesses were fascinating – and chilling, There was a lawyer from the AARP who explained how data-brokers would let you target ads to categories like "seniors with dementia." Then there was someone from the Pentagon, discussing how anyone could do an ad-buy targeting "people enlisted in the armed forces who have gambling problems." Sure, I thought, and you don't even need these explicit categories: if you served an ad to "people 25-40 with Ivy League/Big Ten law or political science degrees within 5 miles of Congress," you could serve an ad with a malicious payload to every Congressional staffer.

Now, that's just the data brokers. The real action is in ad-tech, a sector dominated by two giant companies, Meta and Google. These companies claim that they are better than the unregulated data-broker cowboys at the bottom of the food-chain. They say they're responsible wielders of unregulated monopoly surveillance power. Reader, they are not.

Meta has been repeatedly caught offering ad-targeting like "depressed teenagers" (great for your next incel recruiting drive):

https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/01/105987/is-facebook-targeting-ads-at-sad-teens/

And Google? They just keep on getting caught with both hands in the creepy commercial surveillance cookie-jar. Today, Wired's Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra report on a way to use Google to target people with chronic illnesses, people in financial distress, and national security "decision makers":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-dv360-banned-audience-segments-national-security/

Google doesn't offer these categories itself, they just allow data-brokers to assemble them and offer them for sale via Google. Just as it's possible to generate a target of "Congressional staffers" by using location and education data, it's possible to target people with chronic illnesses based on things like whether they regularly travel to clinics that treat HIV, asthma, chronic pain, etc.

Google claims that this violates their policies, and that they have best-of-breed technical measures to prevent this from happening, but when Wired asked how this data-broker was able to sell these audiences – including people in menopause, or with "chronic pain, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, arthritis, high cholesterol, and hypertension" – Google did not reply.

The data broker in the report also sold access to people based on which medications they took (including Ambien), people who abuse opioids or are recovering from opioid addiction, people with endocrine disorders, and "contractors with access to restricted US defense-related technologies."

It's easy to see how these categories could enable blackmail, spear-phishing, scams, malvertising, and many other crimes that threaten individuals, groups, and the nation as a whole. The US Office of Naval Intelligence has already published details of how "anonymous" people targeted by ads can be identified:

https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf

The most amazing part is how the 33,000 targeting segments came to public light: an activist just pretended to be an ad buyer, and the data-broker sent him the whole package, no questions asked. Johnny Ryan is a brilliant Irish privacy activist with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. He created a fake data analytics website for a company that wasn't registered anywhere, then sent out a sales query to a brokerage (the brokerage isn't identified in the piece, to prevent bad actors from using it to attack targeted categories of people).

Foreign states, including China – a favorite boogeyman of the US national security establishment – can buy Google's data and target users based on Google ad-tech stack. In the past, Chinese spies have used malvertising – serving targeted ads loaded with malware – to attack their adversaries. Chinese firms spend billions every year to target ads to Americans:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/business/google-meta-temu-shein.html

Google and Meta have no meaningful checks to prevent anyone from establishing a shell company that buys and targets ads with their services, and the data-brokers that feed into those services are even less well-protected against fraud and other malicious act.

All of this is only possible because Congress has failed to act on privacy since 1988. That's the year that Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you have at home. That's also the last time Congress passed a federal consumer privacy law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The legislative history of the VPPA is telling: it was passed after a newspaper published the leaked video-rental history of a far-right judge named Robert Bork, whom Reagan hoped to elevate to the Supreme Court. Bork failed his Senate confirmation hearings, but not because of his video rentals (he actually had pretty good taste in movies). Rather, it was because he was a Nixonite criminal and virulent loudmouth racist whose record was strewn with the most disgusting nonsense imaginable).

But the leak of Bork's video-rental history gave Congress the cold grue. His video rental history wasn't embarrassing, but it sure seemed like Congress had some stuff in its video-rental records that they didn't want voters finding out about. They beat all land-speed records in making it a crime to tell anyone what kind of movies they (and we) were watching.

And that was it. For 37 years, Congress has completely failed to pass another consumer privacy law. Which is how we got here – to this moment where you can target ads to suicidal teens, gambling addicted soldiers in Minuteman silos, grannies with Alzheimer's, and every Congressional staffer on the Hill.

Some people think the problem with mass surveillance is a kind of machine-driven, automated mind-control ray. They believe the self-aggrandizing claims of tech bros to have finally perfected the elusive mind-control ray, using big data and machine learning.

But you don't need to accept these outlandish claims – which come from Big Tech's sales literature, wherein they boast to potential advertisers that surveillance ads are devastatingly effective – to understand how and why this is harmful. If you're struggling with opioid addiction and I target an ad to you for a fake cure or rehab center, I haven't brainwashed you – I've just tricked you. We don't have to believe in mind-control to believe that targeted lies can cause unlimited harms.

And those harms are indeed grave. Stein's Law predicts that "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Congress's failure on privacy has put us all at risk – including Congress. It's only a matter of time until the commercial surveillance industry is responsible for a massive leak, targeted phishing campaign, or a ghastly national security incident involving Congress. Perhaps then we will get action.

In the meantime, the coalition of people whose problems can be blamed on the failure to update privacy law continues to grow. That coalition includes protesters whose identities were served up to cops, teenagers who were tracked to out-of-state abortion clinics, people of color who were discriminated against in hiring and lending, and anyone who's been harassed with deepfake porn:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/20/privacy-first-second-third/#malvertising

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[sergeant-macho-nacho]

Just a reminder. One of, if not the main reason that many people dont want highspeed rail in the United States is the same reason many are opposed to affordable housing and healthcare.

Equality.

A highspeed rail system that ran along the Interstate would allow millions of people economic freedom and opportunities that comes with choosing your employer and housing from essentially anywhere in the country.

The control freaks would absolutely hate it and is why they fight against its construction.

[eziojensenthe3rd]

So european peeps, remember chat control? Well consider making some noise atm and contacting your reps because it seems to be back on the agenda with october being a discussion on progress with december aiming to endorse it. Get cracking.

(Posting this under kosa tag cause its another bad internet bill)

[sk3tch404]

Thought of this for a sec and was like, "yeah 🤔🙂"

#ultimategamermoment

Also I have not played on a Gameboy in like 8 years nor have I touched a Nintendo ever. So.. yeah.

[currentlyonstandbi]

cannot believe albo is actually so fucked right now he's got me agreeing with PAULINE HANSON of all people .

[tallymali]

in a way i am thankful that if i had to have a fucked up childhood, it was fucked up in a neglectful way bc at least then you have some form of self sufficiency ykno. i was able to scarper at the first opportunity. sorry to the people who were raised in overbearing helicopter high-control environments. and also ipad babies. you are fucked up in ways i cannot even comprehend

[its-a-crazy-world-aintit]

Something that has been on my mind lately: revolution.

What does that really look like?

How does that work right now?

I blame my current media consumption. Rewatching Andor. Rereading the hunger games and reading its subsequent prequels. Rewatching Anon. Binging Leverage and Person of Interest. Hunting down old copies of Uglies and Maximum Ride. Rewatching Equilibrium. Going through old research for cyberpunk and solarpunk worlds I built for me.

I feel a huge dissatisfaction with the world. While not as extreme as the dystopian worlds above, so many tiny injustices piling up. A 50 hour work week just to make ends meet. Pausing a movie to catch a detail but only seeing an ad. Watching multiple sources pull different details out of context to highlight their narrative. A new system at work to “maximize oversight”. Another company mining my data.

And unlike most of the dystopias, there is no one tyrannical entity behind it all. A single place to focus my fury. It’s not just an Evil Corporation out to make maximum profits. It’s not a Totalitarian Government determined to control a populous.

It is multiple corporations trying to make a profit. It is different factions of government all trying to get their agenda pushed. It is all these different companies and parties and individuals scrambling for power and control and safety.

I just want to run away from it all.

When I was younger, I wanted the power to change the world. I wanted to be the Chosen One; to defeat a Great Evil and stop all the wrongs. I sought out ways to increase my power and influence, sure I would use them for the good and safety of everyone.

Which is exactly how you become the Great Evil that must be defeated.

Now I just want enough money and enough power to be left alone. Enough influence to get the things I need.

I see no way to achieve this in the world I currently live in. I want the powers that be to leave me alone. Yet in their version of the world, that is a threat. Anyone or anything outside of their sphere of influence, outside of their grasp, is a danger to the systems that currently hold our world in place.

There’s no one place to concentrate the fight, to rebel against. So many people say pick one thing and fight that. But there are too many things I care deeply for. Too many injustices to push back against. But that just plays into their hands. They want me hopeless. They want me overwhelmed. They want me to be apathetic and inactive.

I just need to find a way forward.

I’ll let you know when I find it.

[moonshynecybin]

https://www.tumblr.com/moonshynecybin/748065034533568512/at-this-point-all-thats-left-for-marc-is-to-get

Hi hello i was scrolling through and found this. WHAT does the date consist of? Does the sponsor (take advantage) and force them to film it for promo? Is it a silly date? Dinner date? Excursion to f1 date? Track time at the ranch date? Hilariously related to the sponsor date? Obviously marc would say yes to the filming bc he IS addicted to sponsor money:( (the sponsor is paying them A LOT for the opportunity to make this a commercial)

this would be after vale bidding at the marc date auction sorta soft launched the reconciliation (if vale announces it like it’s a JOKE that SUPRISES everyone i think it makes it a more bearable ego-loss in his brain lol) then wellllll the next move from the valentino rossi i have reconciled with one of my historic rivals playbook, as we have recently seen, is a track day at the ranch. inviting him back into that circle. still publicly with a bit of an upper hand because it’s his territory, still enough plausible deniability of professionalism, but it’s marc and marc will whip everyone’s entire ass without a thought for how that will go over at dinner, and it’s a short drive to get to vale’s bed at the 2004 yamaha m1 beside it. perfect compromise, they’re both happy, so i think it’s very much scenes of marc carving through the academy nastystyle on that dirt bike and open mouth laughing at one of vale’s bad jokes and cele following behind with his little gopro as they do crazy shit into corners and then them talking for so long that they’re the last to shower (on purpose they do this. on purpose. they are gross on purpose.) and giving each other sloppy handjobs pressed up against the tile after everyone else has trundled off to dinner to eat their phallic meats. night ends with psychosexual mindgames by the bonfire and marc getting drunk on the expensive ass bottle of wine that vale had flown in just to watch his eyes SPARKLE in the firelight

[funkily]

i do think s1 fwhip has a crazy ridiculous dramatic four-poster bed with like blackout curtains and high-quality red and black bedding in the castle . i just simultaneously think that despite this he ends up crashing on the shitty little bed in his storage room more often than not

[brick-van-dyke]

So, I've been doing some thinking. This could either be a meaningless little ramble that no one will care about, or something seen as really dangerous and putting a target on my back.

So, what if we, those most weary of the far right created an international group of activists in light of the US election? See, the thing is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are very dangerous, but they are also very incompetent and could lead the government down a path that weakens it. It could create a very unique opportunity to address the far right problem and the US Imperialist system itself in one go. Or maybe I'm being overly ambitious.

This group I have in mind would have several purposes, such as keeping communities safe and protecting people from the harm the far right would do in the name of winning the election. Or, most importantly of all, connecting activists from all over the world and allowing us to dismantle the system as a concrete and united movement. Maybe it's just me being naive and hopeful, but maybe it's also something we've all wanted deep down but been too afraid to initialise? If so, maybe this is a sign to really stand up and start trying to make those connections.

[pearl-kite]

Someone was picking up testosterone for the first time and asked about syringes, so our pharmacist walked through switching the points to draw vs. inject, how to recap the best way to avoid accidental sticks, etc. He then pointed out that the vials are 1ml each and designed for one dose only, which means there'll be leftovers to discard, because there isn't a preservative in the vial as they aren't intended to be used multiple times. He then very emphatically pointed out that we the pharmacy can't enforce disposal and that no one will show up at anyone's house to check to make sure that all vials are properly tossed after the single dose. Heavy emphasis.

Idk, I just really appreciated overhearing it. Some pharmacies are genuinely scary for some people right now, but there are ones out there that just want to be good.

[eziojensenthe3rd]

Can we please go 5 minutes without some internet censorship law popping up? Please?

Eu people, please call your relevant reps.

[quaranmine]

On Wednesday before I gave my presentation I confessed to a new employee that I was worried it would be too long and she brightly told me her life hack was to just let AI rewrite things for her. She said I should put in all my talking points and ask ChatGPT to give me a five minute exactly presentation. I was like....how is the most polite possible way (since this is a new colleague I shouldn't get off on the wrong foot with) that I can express that I will Not be taking this advice. Ever. I told her that I didn't think we were allowed to use ChatGPT at this job (we most certainly are not, it is a nightmare for any type of protected information) and also that I prefer to write all of my own work. Despite my best efforts the last part of that was still passive aggressive, lol.

Something about being a writer makes it so that it's almost offensive to me for someone to suggest I use AI to do my work instead? Like, the day I reach the point where I let AI write something for me is the day y'all need to be checking me for brain damage because clearly I'm losing it

[toiletphotoshoot]

Just ‘LOVE’ it when proshippers interact with my posts. It just brightens my mood so much and makes me feel soo safe. /sarc.

I want to make this abundantly clear: if you are and/or support people who think proshipping is okay, kindly fuck off. Idc that you think it’s ’just fiction’. Sure, the characters are, but the thing they’re doing is not. It is a real problem in the real world, that you are romanticizing.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Nineteen Eighty-Four was not supposed to be an instruction manual."

Yet so much Orwell's writings ring true today. Big Brother Watch is determined to make Nineteen Eighty-Four fiction again.