The European Parliament has approved a bill to ban targeted advertising, but it's not as great as it sounds.
Targeted advertising: the dark side of releasing your data
The Digital Services Act (DSA) restricts the use of certain sensitive information for ad targeting. It also lets users opt out of tracking and could force platforms like Facebook and Twitter to remove illegal content, hate speech and more. The bill passed with 530 votes in favor, 78 against and 80 abstentions, about as close to a landslide as you could hope for. However, marketing experts and academics say the proposed laws go too far, and not far enough.
“The Digital Services Act, which was passed in 2020, doesn’t ban targeted advertising outright. It does ban ad targeting based on ‘sensitive’ data like sexual orientation, religion and race,” Matt Voda, CEO of online marketing firm OptiMine, told Lifewire via email. “So it’s an important privacy measure, but it only goes so far from a tracking and targeting perspective.”
The ad industry has been using surveillance ads for years and seems to have the right to continue doing so, but that doesn’t mean it should. Technology expert John Gruber likens the ad industry’s objections to “pawn shops filing a lawsuit to prevent police from intervening in a wave of burglaries.”
