If the leaders of the Big Tech platforms thought geopolitics would unburden their businesses during Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address, but they were wrong. In a highly publicized speech, the president took the time to berate social media companies for what he called “the national experiment they are running on our children for profit.” Biden called on Congress to “strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, and demand that tech companies stop collecting personal information about our children.”
Though just a passing reference, Biden’s call to ban targeted advertising to children — sparking a noticeable round of applause — was a milestone. Regulating targeted advertising wasn’t even close to being a mainstream idea until recently. Now it is in the State of the Union.
Not long ago, during the CEO’s first-ever appearance before Congress, the most notable example of federal lawmakers addressing online advertising was when Orrin Hatch asked Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook was making money off a free product. Zuckerberg went viral for excelling: “Senator, we run ads.”
Hatch actually knew that Facebook sold ads; he feigned ignorance for rhetorical effect, as lawmakers often do during hearings. Does not matter. The exchange went viral as a so-called example of how untouchable Congress was when it came to technology. Facebook employees wore T-shirts with Zuckerberg’s phrase printed on them. Look at these old morons: they don’t even know how social media companies make money. How will they ever regulate it?
Just two years ago, Congress hadn’t made much progress on that front. In a March 2020 piece titled, “Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Ads?” I wrote about a small group of thinkers who began publicly attributing a litany of ills to tracking users in order to provide them with personalized ads. Obviously, this includes almost anything related to online privacy violations. For example, when a Catholic priest was fired for frequenting gay bars, it was thanks to his employers using Grindr geotargeting data, which mainly exists to target ads. But microtargeted advertising is also related to other problems. It diverts ad revenue away from the organizations that create media content and to the aggregator platforms that hold the most comprehensive files of users. And it arguably drives the incentives of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to relentlessly optimize for user engagement.
But small was the operative word to describe that group of critics: a lawyer here, a professor there. There was little evidence that they had made progress in the people who could actually bring about change. Congress had argued for two years over what to do with Big Tech, especially social media. But members had paid negligible attention to the business model that underpins it.
That is no longer the case. In the past year, lawmakers have begun to focus on the advertising model that supports social media platforms, which are increasingly referred to as “surveillance advertising,” a term that encompasses not only the targeting, but also the data collection required by the targeting. (This is partly due to a push from an advocacy group called Ban Surveillance Advertising, which launched in March 2021.) “The problem is in the business model,” Congresswoman Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) said at a hearing in December. “One designed to grab attention, collect and analyze what’s holding that attention, and place ads.” And so he asked, “Should we limit targeted advertising?” In January, House members Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), along with Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), introduced the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act. That same month, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a bipartisan bill to regulate the online advertising market more like the stock market, directly calling into question Google’s current status as the primary buyer, seller, and marketplace for targeted advertising.
