BOOK: internet advertising and surveillance

This new book was just published and seems to be touching on a very important intersection between digital politics and the Internet everyday: the relations between internet advertising and surveillance. Advertising is as old as capitalism, and now it follows us everywhere. "Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily prescient ads, Facebook and Google read our messages and analyze our patterns, and apps record our every move", tells us the book's description - and indeed, it reminds us how quickly the constant online surveillance has become our norm.

For many, the idea that our data is sold to third parties who then turn it into advertising, seems like a fair price to pay for what is perceived as "free" use of apps and platforms. Others are increasingly concerned by the precision of online ads (especially on Facebook), as if the platform is "listening in" and spying on them: search results turn into suggested products; and conversations in WhatsApp and messenger lead to sponsored posts that pop up shortly afterwards, sometimes useful and sometimes annoying, but too often feeling like the platform has read our minds.

However, the crucial question is: what are the political powers of surveillance advertising?

The age of "surveillance capitalism" as Shoshana Zuboff describes it, is a thread to freedom and democracy. And as we have learned during various political events, from interventions in elections to the Cambridge Analytical scandal, mining of personal data goes far beyond advertising.

What is interesting in this new book, Profit over Privacy, is the history of consumer monitoring - a sort of "prehistory" of platform surveillance and internet advertising. Another interesting aspect is the focus on legal developments (a useful point to reflect on when in the UK/ EU, where GDPR is in operation).

To read in conjunction with

..this very interesting talk: "Influence Government: Targeted Advertising" looking at how targeted advertising and influence campaigns are used by police and security services.