A push to reform murky ad tech industry practices in Europe, and the viability of data transfers over the pond has been all over the news last week. 

Twitter is full with Mark Zuckerberg’s response yesterday questioning the ability to provide its main services Facebook and Instagram within the EU in the future, if data transfers from Europeans will not be able to be processed on U.S. servers.

The problem here is… Microtargeting!

TechCrunch published an excellent article by Natasha Lomas that tackles Meta’s reckoning on privacy relating to their ad tech practices and well-known issues with privacy. She makes a compelling argument in favour of privacy by tracking data to confirm digital profiling in the gambling industry. It is a detailed account and involves “tracking and profiling web users without their knowledge or consent, and using that surveillance-gleaned intel to manipulate and exploit at scale regardless of individual objections or the privacy people have a legal right to expect”.

Facebook is aware of the “regulatory headwinds” that are coming its way, and the 20% drop in share price most certainly also reflects investors awareness of this situation. Especially, since its business models is heavily exposed to any regulatory hurricane of enforcement against permission-less Internet tracking.

This doesn’t affect Facebook alone, in the current ad tech duopoly, Google and many third party vendors will also be heavily affected by this data reform reboot. 

….

Don’t want to miss new posts? Then don’t forget to like, subscribe and follow this space