A few months ago, I pointed to the FTC’s interest in ad targeting and its potential to create an ‘adpocalypse’ – outlawing, through regulation, some of the basic business models behind Internet publishing.
Anyone else notice how the noise about this is only increasing lately? ISP-based behavioral tracking is kicking off a large privacy dispute in England – see Saul Hansell’s latest for a pointer to the discussion. The same technology is already available in the United States, so I expect the same debates to come here soon enough. And there are plenty of legislators willing to throw behavioral targeting under the bus, and I doubt there’s many willing to defend it. It doesn’t help that entities with significant non-advertising revenue streams, like Microsoft, would much rather broaden proposed bills to ensure they encompass their competitors’ practices than lobby against it.
My feelings about this remain somewhat mixed. In general, I’m against regulation, because it never works out like you’d expect — the law of unintended consequences takes care of that. Say all ad targeting online requires an explicit, obvious opt-in, an opt-in that’s not likely to be given if the content can be accessed anyway. If the numbers opting in are too low, and the difference in value between an opted-in user and an opted-out one is too high, the rational response is to limit access only to users agreeing to be tracked. Instead of limiting online tracking, these bills could make total, invasive monitoring and targeting absolutely mandatory for any effective use of the Internet. It’d be ironic if the efforts of a Jeff Chester helped bring about the surveillance society.
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