‌ ‌Hey friends,

Thank you so much for all of the questions you submitted about surveillance advertising and our campaign to ban it -- we loved hearing from supporters like you.

If you didn’t have a chance to submit a question, or just weren’t sure where to start, we wanted to make sure you could look over some of the most Frequently Asked Questions, and the answers (and resources!) that lay out how important it is for us to take on Big Tech and ban surveillance advertising, once and for all:

How would we ban surveillance advertising?

There are a number of avenues through which we could effectively ban surveillance advertising. (1) We could ban surveillance advertising through congressional legislation. Recently, Representative Anna Eshoo announced that she is working on a bill that would do just that. (2) We could work to ban surveillance advertising administratively by working with leaders at the Federal Trade Commission, which could issue updated rules to ban the practice. And, (3) we can appeal directly to the public by demonstrating the harms of surveillance advertising and mobilizing everyday consumers to hold social media companies accountable until they ban surveillance advertising. All these options are on the table, and that’s why we’re actively trying to educate the public about the toxic business model of surveillance advertising.

Why is this so important?

Big Tech won’t do the right thing by themselves -- they’re making too much money off of it! The push to ban surveillance advertising -- which 4 in 5 Americans support [[link removed]] -- takes direct aim at Big Tech’s toxic business model. It will shine a light on how these companies exploit our personal information, abuse their market dominance, and rely on profit-driven algorithms that distort reality and stoke division. It won’t undermine ongoing efforts to advance privacy, antitrust, or algorithmic transparency, rather it will underscore their urgency. There is no silver bullet for reining in Big Tech and repairing our broken information ecosystem, but banning surveillance advertising is a great place to start.

What would happen without surveillance advertising?

We’d be just fine -- and so would advertisers! This intrusive model didn’t exist until recently, and advertisers found plenty of effective ways to reach their audiences without violating our privacy and incentivizing social media platforms’ most harmful practices. Many companies continue to rely on ‘contextual advertising,’ in which online ads are placed next to relevant articles or search terms instead of through behavioral profiling, and it works quite well.

How would this affect Big Tech?

In 2020, Facebook and Google boasted record-breaking profit margins of $29 billion and $40 billion, respectively. While these tech giants might deploy scare-tactics to say this change would deplete them of their revenue, the notion that reverting to less invasive ad models would necessitate charging users for their platforms is absurd. Indeed, they continue to rake in money in places like the United Kingdom and California that have already taken steps to restrict surveillance advertising without switching to paid models.

Thanks for being in this fight to hold Big Tech accountable with us.

Nicole, Jesse, and the whole Accountable Tech team



As a small non-profit standing up to the world’s most powerful Big Tech companies, we need all the help we can get. Please consider chipping in to support Accountable Tech in this fight: [link removed]



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