“We don’t have to manipulate our customers or exploit their vulnerabilities to scale up” – European entrepreneurs and social organizations appeal to the MEPs to put an end to invasive and privacy-hostile practices related to surveillance-based advertising and thus open the market to ethical and innovative online ads, which respect users’ rights and their choices. On the opposite bench – the Big Tech lobby fights for the status quo to remain – despite the well-documented social and individual harms caused by the current ads ecosystem.

Following a number of complaints filed in 2018 and 2019, including by Panoptykon and Bits of Freedom, and coordinated by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Belgian Data Protection Authority has found that the consent system developed and managed by the adtech industry body IAB Europe, and used by many websites in the EU, is illegal under the GDPR.

We have taken part in the public consultations of the draft code of conduct which is supposed to help apply the GDPR to the internet advertising sector. The code was prepared by the Polish office of the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Poland has a history of interesting revolutions, including its famous, peaceful transition in 1989. No one, however, reasonably expected that the country would become the hub of a very unusual, civic revolt: a grassroots, non-partisan—some even say “cultural”—movement against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Following Panoptykon’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaint against one of the biggest Polish news website, Interia.pl – the Polish Data Protection Authority has confirmed that online publishers should give users access to their advertising profiles generated for the purposes of delivering behavioural ads.