"I like personalised ads!"

The mechanism for personalised ads fuels mass manipulation

Now you know that all of our harvested personal data and metadata is available not only to advertisers but to anyone, good or bad, that wants it. If the ability to swing elections (including by foreign states) doesn’t shock you, then perhaps you’ve never lived in an authoritarian-ruled country.

Democracy under threat

If you’re American and reading this since 2025, then you’re seeing what's happening in your country (it is currently listed as a ‘flawed democracy’). If you’re Hungarian then it’s already happening. If you’re Polish then it happened but you finally voted them out in 2023. If you’re Philippino then you suffered under Duterte until 2022.

If you're British and wondering how Brexit happened, thank Russian interference via social media. They did that in the 2016 Trump victory too.

The trend towards authoritarian rule across the globe is accelerating. The Economist democracy index now shows that just 7% of the world population is governed by a ‘full democracy’:

Source: Wikipedia - The Economist Democracy Index

Targeting for ads = targeting for content

The ability to target ads at you based on personal behavioural data is the same mechanism that enables Big Tech recommendation algorithms to personalise your social media content. These algorithms can mercilessly take vulnerable people down self-harm or radicalisation rabbit holes. Big Tech firms like Meta, Google, TikTok, X and Snap all know this, and they don't care. More engagement = more advertising dollars. They don't care if you become miserable, isolated, angry and kill yourself.

Privacy is a collective problem

Hopefully you can now see that the leaking of personal data is a collective problem. For you alone you may not feel any pain, but at national scale it is a serious problem. So you may well enjoy personalised ads, but is it worth selling out your fellow citizens, and democracy itself, just for ads??!

Will we look back at this period and say “we gave ourselves away, and our freedoms... and for what? Just advertising dollars?!”

Next: "They've already got all my data!" ▶