A massive majority of consumers believe that using their data to personalize ads is unethical. And a further 59% believe that personalization to create tailored newsfeeds — precisely what Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications do every day — is unethical.
At least, that’s what they say on surveys.
(photo image: GETTY)
RSA surveyed over 6,000 adults in Europe and America to evaluate how our attitudes are changing towards data, privacy, and personalization. The results don’t look good for surveillance capitalism, or for the free services we rely on every day for social networking, news, and information-finding.
“Less than half (48 percent) of consumers believe there are ethical ways companies can use their data,” RSA, a fraud prevention and security company, said when releasing the survey results.
The challenging thing about the report, of course, is that if so many people feel so strongly about their privacy, their data, and its use in the personalization of ads, social feeds, and news results … why do they continue to use services that do precisely that?
From a European perspective, the answer might be that they actually lack choice.
That’s exactly what the president of Germany’s antitrust regulatory body said about Facebook earlier this week, arguing that if the only choice is between using a dominant social network by surrendering data or not being able to use the social network at all, that’s not a real choice.
“In such a difficult situation the user’s choice cannot be referred to as voluntary consent,” said Germany’s Federal Cartel Office president Andreas Mundt.
Whether or not that’s true, Europeans certainly are more cautious with their data than Americans.
“In the months of the GDPR being implemented, German attitudes shifted in favor of stricter data privacy expectations, with 42 percent wanting to protect location data in 2018 versus only 29 percent in 2017,” says RSA.
In the U.S., 60% of adults agree that there are ethical ways companies can use their personal information. In Germany, only 43% agreed. Other European nations are fairly similar to Germany, with the equivalent number being 48% in the U.K. and 45% in France.
Of course, personalization is not the only way to tailor ads to people.
While personalized ads use data about…
