Center for Journalism & Liberty reporter Karina Montoya frames insights from a leading media analyst, focusing on the challenges of curbing Google and Facebook’s surveillance advertising, Apple’s opt-in data impact, and Google’s sandboxing efforts to rein in third-party cookies.

This interview is part of Open Markets’ Clearly Speaking series.

A new book offers a timely examination on surveillance advertising, an issue perhaps not as widely chronicled in the Facebook Files fallout as human trafficking or how Instagram distorts the self-image of teenagers, but one that has devastated user privacy and deeply damaged the economic foundations of journalism.  

Communications researcher Matthew Crain, a media professor at Miami University of Ohio, in September released Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet. Law professor Frank Pasquale has called it the “definitive history of the evisceration of internet privacy.” 

Crain explores roads not taken that could have led to a far different web — one not dominated by the Google and Facebook digital advertising duopoly that threatens independent journalism. In a different iteration of the web, a more competitive news media, and noncommercial undertakings, including the efforts to curtail online surveillance, could have flourished.

In this interview, we covered specific challenges facing Google and Facebook, Apple’s opt-in data impact, and Google’s sandboxing efforts to rein in third-party cookies. Crain’s comments have been edited for brevity and clarity. 

On better ways to design an advertising ecosystem: 

There is no technical or even business reason that ads must be surveillance-based. Take contextual ads, for example: if you’re going to search for Hawaii, we’re going to show you ads based on it. Money can still be made, goods can still be marketed, but no privacy needs to be violated. Google did this for the first years of its existence, and it made a ton of money by simply showing ads relevant to context without collecting any personal data. 

Today, Facebook and Google have such control over the advertising market that when they decide to do things a certain way, the smaller players follow suit. The fact that they can create a “standard” is more a reflection of the public policy [enabling this system] and their power to shape markets, than a reflection of what good advertising is. 

On structural changes to rein in Facebook and Google, including Europe’s get-tougher policies: 

It’s very exciting that antitrust is part of the conversation. An important discussion for me that I hope gets more traction is a federal privacy law. Imagine a law that limits microtargeting to something like a zip code, or that prohibits holding consumer profile information to no more than 10 days. This is akin to what the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] calls “data minimization.” It does something to level the playing field, and it makes contextual advertising a more exciting prospect.   

I don’t think breaking a monopoly into a triopoly or anything similar is the best solution if you don’t address the surveillance advertising business model. I definitely think that cutting this business model off at the kneecaps would open the door for others that don’t run on surveillance. Therefore, small publishers and medium-size publishers can compete for advertising dollars on a more leveled playing field. 

On news publishers’ efforts to respect privacy while still delivering effective advertising:

Publishers can lead this change. They are being squeezed in all senses, forced to race to the bottom and to accept the terms of their ad partners [Google, Facebook and other ad tech platforms] just to get the scraps after sharing revenue with them. I can see how they would be interested in moving away from these practices. Publishers didn’t have much choice, but once they decided to get in bed with these surveillance advertisers, they undermined their own product in nasty ways. That is part of what has been contributing to this vicious cycle of the journalism crisis. 

On the impact of switching the Web to an “opt-in” consent for online advertising: 

I’m skeptical of the consent model, but I think that having opt-in as a default [to receive targeted advertising] rather than opt-out would improve the situation. Apple is moving toward that opt-in direction, and it does limit surveillance. But it worries me that it’s a half-measure. There are a lot of problems with the consent-based model that are not addressed even with opt-in [as a default]. These consumer empowerment models of consent often mask information and power asymmetries that make it very difficult for someone to make an informed decision about trading their data for access to internet services. 

On Google’s plans for its “Privacy Sandbox,” which it calls “a series of proposals to satisfy cross-site use cases without third-party cookies or other tracking mechanisms”: 

As far as I know, Google is only disabling third-party cookies in the Chrome browser [dominating U.S. desktop browsers at 60%], not necessarily on mobile, and they’re not discontinuing their first-party tracking at all. Third-party tracking is a problem, and it’s good to start limiting it. However, Google is still going to track you on their own properties. This is where antitrust can potentially factor in. 

Another complaint [about the Privacy Sandbox] is that Google is harming competitors that rely on third-party tracking. So, if advertisers still want these hyper-targeted ads, they will have to go to Google and not the smaller ad networks. I don’t think it’s good that companies are competing based on how much they can surveil users, but this is another instance of Google throwing its market dominance around to do something that maybe incrementally helps privacy but also shores up its market power. 

On the future of small- and mid-sized local media if public funding is absent: 

I don’t think that structurally we can do without public policy. This is a hard conversation that Victor Pickard of the University of Pennsylvania has been writing about, and raises the question of public funding for journalism in the U.S. It’s a difficult and complex question, but it’s a conversation we need to have. If we’re going to solve this structurally, that must be part of the fix.