Today’s links Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat: Targeting people with chronic illnesses, parents of sick kids, military personnel with gambling problems, seniors with dementia, and national security decisionmakers. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: 2005, 2015, 2020, 2024 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I’ve been. Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em. Colophon: All the rest. Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat (permalink) The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between – they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life. Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does The other witnesses were fascinating – and chilling, There was a lawyer from the AARP who explained how data-brokers would let you target ads to categories like “seniors with dementia.” Then there was someone from the Pentagon, discussing how anyone could do an ad-buy targeting “people enlisted in the armed forces who have gambling problems.” Sure, I thought, and you don’t even need these explicit categories: if you served an ad to “people 25-40 with Ivy League/Big Ten law or political science degrees within 5 miles of Congress,” you could serve an ad with a malicious payload to every Congressional staffer. Now, that’s just the…Pluralistic: Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat (20 Feb 2025)