⚖️ Tech Bros vs Congresscritters (& Concerned Adults)
2022 was rough for Big Tech. Layoffs, privacy changes, regulatory attention, the rise of TikTok, bad press, etc etc. So far 2023 is less fresh start and more 2022 extended director’s cut.
Seattle School District #1 is suing the tech giants because (and yes, I pulled this from the first paragraph of a 92 page document, sorry, not sorry):
Defendants’ growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms. These techniques are both particularly effective and harmful to the youth audience Defendants have intentionally cultivated, creating a mental health crisis among America’s youth.
I’m sure it’s unrelated, but Meta is further restricting how ads can be targeted to teens. Now “age and location will be the only information about a teen that we’ll use to show them ads.” Interests and activities were previously removed as options, now previous engagements across apps and gender join the list. Zuck’s Bucks Generator is also giving teens more control over what types of ads they see and information about their privacy options.
Speaking of privacy-friendly Meta moves, the successor to Special Ad Audiences for Housing is here. Enter the Variance Reduction System (VRS). It’s supposed to ensure the audience that sees the ad matches the targeting without discriminating. Consider me firmly in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” camp.
Switching tech giants, W3C (a web standards group) said Google’s Topics idea for post-cookie advertising just continues the surveilling status quo and asked they retool it. Google said “nah, we good.” The cookie continues to crumble but the crumbs haven’t taken a new shape yet. (Gated article, podcast recap)
New Jersey and Ohio have joined the ranks of states banning TikTok on government devices.
And Joe Biden has asked Democrats and Republicans to unite in legislation against a common adversary: big tech. Both sides of the aisle have issues with the big players (though those issues are usually also on opposite sides of an aisle), which could make 2023 the year of privacy on The Hill. And could mean cookiepocalypse 2.0 for platforms and marketers.
On The Continent, Germany wants Google to stop sharing so much user data between its services (for those sweet advertising profiles) and France has fined TikTok, Facebook, Google, and Amazon for cookie banners. And Apple for improperly collecting user data for ad targeting (while limiting/spoofing the data it sends to others (not part of this case, just an intriguing coincidence)).