Rick Edmonds writes:
The Pew Research Center has released another in a series of studies of privacy issues with fresh evidence that consumers do not want to sacrifice personal information to get served targeted ads.
A separate study from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, to be presented at a Federal Trade Commission conference today, finds many consumers resigned to their personal habits being harvested for commercial use. But they do not like it or buy the idea that it’s a fair tradeoff.
Read more on Poynter.org.
I just finished binge watching the videos from the FTC’s Privacy Con conference where the paper mentioned above was presented. During the conference every aspect of the “Notice and Choice” and “Privacy Policy” system of self regulation in the U.S. was rigorously proven to be a complete fraud. If the job of the FTC is to prevent unfair business practices, they now have no excuse to believe the following lie promulgated by the surveillance/manipulation (behavioral advertising) industry:
That consumer profiling and tracking is OK with consumers because the privacy policies inform them of what happens and they are ok with it.
What the research shows is that consumers hate being tracked but have been conditioned to not even read indecipherable Privacy Policies, and feel their only choice is to be a Luddite or give up all their privacy.
So now the FTC knows officially what everyone who uses the internet has known for years. I can’t wait to see the deceptive practice settlements. Just kidding. I’m sure we’ll just see many more meetings where the “Stakeholders” explain why they believe having no privacy is not a harm.
Well said. Bravo! I thought some of the research presented at PrivCon should be an eye opener. But of course, it will only open the eyes of those who wish to see.