European Parliament wants to forbid personalised advertisements
Today became known that a large majority of the European Parliament voted in favour of the proposal of Dutch MEP Paul Tang of the Socialists and Democrats, to ban personalised advertisements on the internet. Tang: “With this statement, the European Parliament swings a stone, like David to Goliath, towards the head of the American tech giants. These companies keep on using our personal data as a revenue model to exclude competitors. Although this is only the first stone thrown, it is a significant move against the power of big tech”.
Thursday, 503 out of 701 Members of the European Parliament voted in favour of Tang’s amendment, included in the annual competition policy report. Today, also the amended report received a large majority so the proposal became the official view of the European Parliament.
Paul Tang, who is involved on behalf of the LIBE-committee in negotiations on the Digital Services Act, sees the parliament’s statement as the crowbar to break open and change the earning models of Facebook and Google: “We see that big tech continues to expand their market power by considering personal data as a commodity. In addition to interfering with our privacy, such a revenue model is unhealthy and sickening for the internet”.
Over the past two days, Tang organized a campaign in front of the Facebook offices in Brussels and Amsterdam to let his message be brought over to Facebook owner Zuckerberg. Also, a petition was launched, #AdsZuck, to call on him, other business leaders and leaders of governments to ban personalised advertisements.
