Article 11.06.2019 2 min. read Text Who Targets Me (us) and What Can I (we) Do About It – Katarzyna Szymielewicz’s speech at the 2019 edition of Personal Democracy Forum is already available online (on YouTube).We live in social networks on tech platforms. We were attracted there with the promise of access (to all the information possible), choice (personalised experience) and community. We would still like to think of ourselves as users. But after more than 10 years of this experiment we should rather define ourselves as targets. Our online profiles, based on three layers of data, serves as an exploited resource for commercial entities that organise our online life. The predictions that they form on the basis of our profiles are used to influence us, also in the context of politics. There is, however, scarce evidence of how the so-called political microtargeting is used. Tools developed by tech platforms have limitations: all we see are Facebook profiles and not real names, there is no detailed information about criteria used for targeting, and we have to rely on what Facebook itself classified as political. Apart from new transparency and electoral regulations we need stronger evidence on what is really going on. And here comes our role as civil society organisations. This year, on the occassion of European elections and Polish parliamentary elections Panoptykon will test transparency tools for political advertising prepared by Facebook and Google as well as use the WhoTargetsMe plugin and build up our research with other methods. Fundacja Panoptykon Author Previous Next See also Article Digital sanctions won’t solve the problem of war propaganda online. Robust platform regulations will European officials urged Big Tech to ban Kremlin-related accounts in the effort to tackle the propaganda online, as the Internet – and particularly the social media – became an important front of Russian invasion on Ukraine. But such “digital sanctions” are just a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Yet… 14.03.2022 Text Article Can the EU Digital Services Act contest the power of Big Tech’s algorithms? A progressive report on the Digital Services Act (DSA) adopted by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) in the European Parliament in July is the first major improvement of the draft law presented by the European Commission in December. MEPs expressed support for default… 03.08.2021 Text Article Three layers of your digital profile Your online profile is not always built on facts. It is shaped by technology companies and advertisers who make key decisions based on their interpretation of seemingly benign data points: what movies you choose watch, the time of day you tweet, or how long you take to click on a cat video. 18.03.2019 Text
