Silke Jasso
On Thursday, the Senate took a vote on online advertising regulations, which many have cast as a critical hit on digital privacy. Here’s the rundown of the situation from The Week:
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The Senate voted 50-48 along party lines Thursday to repeal an Obama-era law that requires internet service providers to obtain permission before tracking what customers look at online and selling that information to other companies. The repeal is supported by major internet companies like Facebook and Google as well as internet providers like Verizon and AT&T, Vanity Fair reports, adding that there would likely be an option for consumers to opt out.
The referenced Vanity Fair piece is headlined, “Senate Republicans Just Voted to Kill Internet Privacy.”
That’s big, if true.
But is it true? I’m not so sure.
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Now, the rule this bill would overturn, as VF summarizes, required “broadband providers get their customers’ permission before selling or giving their data to advertisers and other third parties.” That permission seems like a good idea. I definitely would like my internet provider to ask me before sharing my browsing history. Still, getting rid of a mandate for that permission — especially if opting out remains possible — doesn’t exactly strike me as “The Death of Internet Privacy.”
After all, as the VF piece itself notes, “Current F.C.C. rules allow Web sites to track your behavior and sell information about you to ad-targeting companies, but internet service providers, under the Obama-era rules, still had to get your permission before they could do the same.”
What that means is Facebook can and does track your online behavior whenever you’re logged in and uses that data to target ads inside its own service. Likewise, Google Ads track what you do online and chooses what to advertise accordingly.
Last night, for example, I looked at some skirts at J.Crew and browsed some coffee tables at Crate & Barrel. Today, all my ads are for preppy clothes and mid-century modern furniture. (There are ways to opt out, but I usually don’t bother because I find without this browsing data Facebook decides that as a married woman in her 20s I should exclusively see diaper ads.)
In short, this sort of tracking already happens automatically. If internet privacy is alive and kicking when giant companies like Facebook and Google default to tracking our browsing this way, how are Verizon and Comcast doing the same thing a death sentence to the free web?
Now, don’t get me wrong: ISPs tracking, selling, and especially manipulating our internet usage is not great. Again, I want the chance to opt out.
But, ultimately, these companies, not just Facebook and Google, are private services we use voluntarily. Yes, because of geographic monopolies, the comparison is not exact. It’s much easier to delete your Facebook account than it is to switch to a different ISP. I’m not saying the concerns here aren’t real, but no one forces us to do business with these corporations.
The same cannot be said of digital surveillance conducted by our government, a far more serious problem that has been all too easily dismissed since it became President Trump’s cause du jour (at least where his own personal privacy is concerned; sadly, there is, so far, no indication he believes the rest of us deserve privacy, too).
Let’s save our life-and-death privacy headlines for the real civil liberties abuses our government continues to perpetrate because an opt-out choice is never on the feds’ agenda.
