Pay, or Consent to Surveillance Ads - NOT the road forward
published:
by Harshvardhan J. Pandit
ads blog economics Meta (company) privacy surveillance
Pay or Consent to Surveillance Advertising model is inherently flawed and should not be legal. My notes on this topic.
First, it is important to note that Pay-or-Ads is acceptable where there is parity between the payment received from the individual and the revenue generated through advertisement. The Ads require consent only when using personal data in a way that isn't compatible with the service being provided. For example, getting my geo-location to show relevant ads for my city/region is okay since determining such location is non-intrusive and is probably being used already to provide the service. Getting my location history to show relevant ads for the last 5 locations I visited is not okay because it crosses the threshold into my private life and is intrusive without the need to be.
Second, surveillance advertising is not a 1-party affair. By consenting to such tracking and profiling, it is not just the service provider who uses the data but also thousands of other companies who will continue to use this data beyond the singular instance of advertising you might see on the original service provider's website. Thus, this consent is not proportional nor fair to the individual. To give an analogy - imagine you get into a cab/taxi and request a service to go to the airport. The taxi driver offers to make the ride free if they can take photographs of you, record what you're doing in the taxi, and share it with other people who will bid on this information in order to show you an advertisement on the billboards you pass by on the road. Which you may or may not see, and may or may not remember. You don't know who these people are, nor that they will continue using the data even after your ride is over, or that they are 'guessing' things you don't want to share - deeply personal opinions, health conditions, or your mental state of being. What's worse - you don't even know if they are 'guessing' the right stuff about you or getting it completely wrong - so you cannot correct it even if you wanted to.
Third, an alternative to the creepy behaviour in the taxi is to simply show preset ads - such as based on where you're going (i.e. to the airport) or the time of the day or the pickup location. Such 'contextual advertising' doesn't require intrusive information about you, and more importantly - ends when you get out of the taxi. Paying not to see such ads would be a fair and balanced trade off, perhaps even to see lesser ads for lesser payments. This is how media has survived through the past several decades. Imagine if the price of a free newspaper at your doorstep everyday was the newspaper vendor installing cameras inside your house - and you have no idea who is watching or what is being done with this data or even where the cameras are. If you understand why this is not okay - then it is the same principle for why digital services should not cross this line either.
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