A case study examined by Panoptykon Foundation and showcased by the Financial Times, demonstrates how Facebook uses algorithms to deliver personalised ads that may exploit users’ mental vulnerabilities. The experiment shows that users are unable to get rid of disturbing content: disabling sensitive interests in ad settings limits targeting options for advertisers, but does not affect Facebook’s own profiling and ad delivery practices. While much has been written about the disinformation and risks to democracy generated by social media’s data-hungry algorithms, the threat to people’s mental health has not yet received enough attention.

Our new report: To Track or Not to Track? Towards Privacy-friendly and Sustainable Online Advertising shows that it’s actually possible to reform the ad tech industry without bankrupting online publishers. But in order to make that happen, EU policymakers must create a regulatory push by enforcing the GDPR and adopting new rules which would incentivise the uptake of alternatives.

Do Polish political parties microtarget voters? What is the role of Facebook? How to regulate (political) advertising? Read our new report — Who (really) targets you? Facebook in Polish election campaigns.

By Agata Foryciarz, Daniel Leufer and

We are right to be worried about the polarization of public debate, the rise of populism and digital propaganda. It also goes without saying that social media have a growing impact on our politics and society.

In October 2015 we published a report on “Profiling the Unemployed in Poland: Social and Political Implications of Algorithmic Decision Making”.

The report looks at what happens at the interface of Internet service providers and public authorities in Poland. Who sends requests for users data, how many and for what purpose, what legal procedures are followed and what safeguards apply. During our research we analysed legal provisions and collected data from both major Internet service providers and public authorities. On that basis we were able to identify several systemic problems that should be solved in order to ensure adequate standard of protection for individuals.

Why do we need the reform of European Personal Data Protection Law? Panoptykon Foundation prepared a publication explaining problems regarding current law and presenting solutions to those problems that should be included in new regulation on personal data protection.

This paper is aims to give a brief overview of the following issues: (i) Polish data retention regime and its drawbacks; (ii) the use of data retention in practice and available
data on the subject; (iii) campaign run by the Panoptykon Foundation over last two years; and (iv) political shifts that occurred in Poland.