This letter has been sent by the undersigned to EU & US regulators, to urge them to take action on banning surveillance-based ads, as recommended by the Norwegian Consumer Council.
Recently, the Norwegian Consumer Council published a report calling for a ban on surveillance-based ads. In solidarity, we the undersigned have sent the following letter on Wednesday, July 7th, to EU and US regulators to encourage them to take action during legislative sessions and any relevant privacy discussions.
TIME TO BAN SURVEILLANCE-BASED ADVERTISING Surveillance-based advertising permeates the internet today, creating a number of highly problematic issues for both consumers and businesses.
On June 23, a broad coalition of consumer rights organizations, civil rights groups, NGOs, as well as academics, researchers, privacy experts, and enthusiasts – all concerned individuals – called on regulators to stop the invasive and privacy-hostile practices related to surveillance-based advertising.
In the EU, they urged regulators to consider a ban on surveillance-based advertising as a part of the Digital Services Act. In the U.S., they urged legislators to enact comprehensive privacy legislation. We are a group of businesses who write to you today to show our support to this initiative. We represent small, medium, and large businesses who all believe – and demonstrate on a daily basis – that it is possible to run profitable companies without exploiting the privacy of individuals.
In addition to the clear privacy issues caused by surveillance-based advertising, it is also detrimental to the business landscape.
In the surveillance-based advertising model, a few actors can obtain competitive advantages by collecting data from across websites and services and dominant platform actors can abuse their positions by giving preference to their own services.
These practices seriously undermine competition and take revenue away from content creators. Anti-competitive behavior and effects serve to entrench dominant actors’ positions while complex supply chains and ineffective technologies lead to lost revenues for advertisers and publishers.
It is also difficult for consumers to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actors in the digital sphere, which means that legitimate actors, amongst them many small and medium-sized enterprises, are directly affected by the actions of unscrupulous companies.
This harms consumers and businesses and can undermine the cornerstones of democracy.
Although we recognize that advertising is an important source of revenue for content creators and publishers online, this does not justify the massive commercial surveillance systems set up in attempts to “show the right ad to the right people”.
Other forms of advertising technologies exist, which do not depend on spying on consumers, and alternative models can be implemented without significantly affecting revenue. On the contrary – and that we can attest to – businesses can thrive without privacy-invasive practices.
We encourage you to take a stand and ban surveillance-based advertising.
With kind regards,
Vivaldi Technologies, Jon von Tetzchner, CEO & Tatsuki Tomita, COO Fastmail Pty Ltd, Bron Gondwana, CEO Conva Ventures Inc., dba. Fathom Analytics, Jack Ellis & Paul Jarvis, Directors Proton Technologies AG, Dr. Andy Yen, CEO Tutao GmbH, dba. Tutanota, Matthias Pfau, Co-Founder and CEO DuckDuckGo, Inc., Gabriel Weinberg, Founder and CEO Disconnect Inc., Casey Oppenheim, Co-founder and CEO Mojeek Limited, Colin Hayhurst, CEO Ecosia GmbH, Christian Kroll, CEO Startpage & StartMail, Robert E.G. Beens, Co-Founder and CEO Nextcloud GmbH, Frank Karlitschek, Founder and CEO Kobler, Erik Bugge, CEO Strossle International, Håkon Tillier, CEO & Rickard Lawson, CMO Mailfence, Patrick De Schutter, Co-Founder and Managing Director
But since Google is a major supplier of info on all of us to the NSA (thanks Edward Snowdon for confirming that!) you can expect that nothing will be done.
The government and the corporate media are now the enemy of the people, operating for the profit of the elite alone. Their insistence on giving everyone the jab for the profit of "vaccine" companies seems to be ample poof of that.
I agree.