The day is over and I didn’t get as much done as I’d have liked.
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@zbrando that’s alright, you are absolutely correct though. Dozens of investigations link the targeted ads to organized crime and Meta profits off them handsomely, so getting rid of them would be a great start
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@feyter @zbrando I'm going to assume this is a question in good faith, so the answer is:
Lobbying - the act of trying to exert influence upon politicians to change their minds one way or another. Corporate Europe Observatory have explainers on this, you can find them and watch them. https://corporateeurope.org/en/2026/02/new-video-series
"Lobbing" was a typo.
Targeted advertising is how most scams in Europe operate, and how organized crime make huge profits, be it on Facebook, Google or TikTok. You can read up more here as a general overview: https://proton.me/blog/meta-scam-ads
The scale of scams is now so big that every European country reports thousands of these cases per week, so it's likely you know people who've fallen prey to a scam. Targeted ads is how they get scammed. Depending on how deep you want to go, here's another overview: https://www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/investment-scammers-slip-through-cracks-in-eu-big-tech-law
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@diemkay @zbrando If human right organizations are trying to influence political agenda, its lobbying to. Every advertisement is done to address a target audience.
"Just banning this" is quite impossible, if it is so fuzzy that actually everting can be seen as such. So " just do simple thing X" to "solve complex Problem Y", doesn't seam to be a good approach for me.
We should keep that in mind, even if we all want to archive something good here. Demanding more transparency could be a start.
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@diemkay @zbrando If human right organizations are trying to influence political agenda, its lobbying to. Every advertisement is done to address a target audience.
"Just banning this" is quite impossible, if it is so fuzzy that actually everting can be seen as such. So " just do simple thing X" to "solve complex Problem Y", doesn't seam to be a good approach for me.
We should keep that in mind, even if we all want to archive something good here. Demanding more transparency could be a start.
@feyter
In my opinion there is a big difference between a human right association asking for talks about a subject/law and a corporation paying to have an economic advantage.
About target advertising: it is used to uncover people identities and target them with malware or offer them worst deals. And the corps don't give a shit about security because they don't have consequences. It can be easily banned by substituting it with context advertising.
@diemkay -
@feyter
In my opinion there is a big difference between a human right association asking for talks about a subject/law and a corporation paying to have an economic advantage.
About target advertising: it is used to uncover people identities and target them with malware or offer them worst deals. And the corps don't give a shit about security because they don't have consequences. It can be easily banned by substituting it with context advertising.
@diemkay@zbrando @diemkay the reality isn't so simple. Sometimes giving certain business an advantage is actually the right thing to do, because "free markets" is an illusion. We wouldn't have the renewable energy technology that we have now, if it wound be heavily supported on a political level in the past.
So maybe you mean it should be unlawful to do unethically things... but that's impossible to define. It's a complex problem. People should not expact easy fixes or they will be disappointed.
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@zbrando @diemkay the reality isn't so simple. Sometimes giving certain business an advantage is actually the right thing to do, because "free markets" is an illusion. We wouldn't have the renewable energy technology that we have now, if it wound be heavily supported on a political level in the past.
So maybe you mean it should be unlawful to do unethically things... but that's impossible to define. It's a complex problem. People should not expact easy fixes or they will be disappointed.
@feyter
To me you are making a simple situation complex: if the advertising technology is used intentionally by most actors to identify people, follow them and feed them with scams then said technology should be banned.
And you are complicating again in the field of lobbying: if a state actor wants to push a business because it's convenient it has all the instruments to do it. Lobbying is for businesses to push their agenda for their advantage. -
@feyter
To me you are making a simple situation complex: if the advertising technology is used intentionally by most actors to identify people, follow them and feed them with scams then said technology should be banned.
And you are complicating again in the field of lobbying: if a state actor wants to push a business because it's convenient it has all the instruments to do it. Lobbying is for businesses to push their agenda for their advantage.@zbrando and how should a state actor know about what business need support and are worth supporting? Only because interest groups are coming to them and describing the situations and pointing on problems that exist. This is actually how politics is made.
For targeting, I think outlawing what information can be collected and can be shared with other + instruments to check this + punishment that actually hurt sounds more realistic for me. EU GDPR was a good step into the right direction.
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@zbrando and how should a state actor know about what business need support and are worth supporting? Only because interest groups are coming to them and describing the situations and pointing on problems that exist. This is actually how politics is made.
For targeting, I think outlawing what information can be collected and can be shared with other + instruments to check this + punishment that actually hurt sounds more realistic for me. EU GDPR was a good step into the right direction.
@feyter What you described is how things SHOULD work (businesses and the state talking); instead single corps or groups push THEIR agenda by bribing public officials. So the money (and the corps) drives the public agenda and not the state.
Advertising corps need all kinds of information to find the precise target customer, it's like targeted advertising works (while context advertising uses only the content you are seeing to serve you ads). So the only solution IMO is to outlaw targeted advertising. You can obtain something similar in countries with the GDPR by allowing only technically necessary cookies (no legitimate interest allowed) but even with this solution corps can fingerprint you with other techniques with enough data.
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In 2025, Big Tech—just ten major companies—spent €49 million lobbying Brussels. That’s more than pharma, finance, and automotive combined.
Google funds all sixteen major European think tanks shaping EU policy. Not *some* of them. All of them. Amazon and Meta fund most of the rest.
This is no longer “poor old me, I need a bit of help,” this is full regulatory capture. With a view to becoming even more embedded into businesses and governments, and getting whatever favorable legislation passed or diluted to suit them.
https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/big-tech-lobby-budgets-hit-record-levels
@diemkay any comments, @EUCommission ?
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In 2025, Big Tech—just ten major companies—spent €49 million lobbying Brussels. That’s more than pharma, finance, and automotive combined.
Google funds all sixteen major European think tanks shaping EU policy. Not *some* of them. All of them. Amazon and Meta fund most of the rest.
This is no longer “poor old me, I need a bit of help,” this is full regulatory capture. With a view to becoming even more embedded into businesses and governments, and getting whatever favorable legislation passed or diluted to suit them.
https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/big-tech-lobby-budgets-hit-record-levels
@diemkay Is there an organized initiative somewhere that we can support to stop it?
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In 2025, Big Tech—just ten major companies—spent €49 million lobbying Brussels. That’s more than pharma, finance, and automotive combined.
Google funds all sixteen major European think tanks shaping EU policy. Not *some* of them. All of them. Amazon and Meta fund most of the rest.
This is no longer “poor old me, I need a bit of help,” this is full regulatory capture. With a view to becoming even more embedded into businesses and governments, and getting whatever favorable legislation passed or diluted to suit them.
https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/big-tech-lobby-budgets-hit-record-levels
@diemkay Missing Alt Text: A chart plotting Tech "Think Tanks" against major tech companies, indicating which think tanks are funded by whom. Google funds all of them. Five "Think Tanks" receive funding from all of the charted big tech companies: Bruegel, Centre for European Reform, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), and Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE
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In 2025, Big Tech—just ten major companies—spent €49 million lobbying Brussels. That’s more than pharma, finance, and automotive combined.
Google funds all sixteen major European think tanks shaping EU policy. Not *some* of them. All of them. Amazon and Meta fund most of the rest.
This is no longer “poor old me, I need a bit of help,” this is full regulatory capture. With a view to becoming even more embedded into businesses and governments, and getting whatever favorable legislation passed or diluted to suit them.
https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/big-tech-lobby-budgets-hit-record-levels
@diemkay #Lobbyism as a #business or on behalf of #corporations and #billionaires needs to be outlawed!
- Not just at @EUCommission but globally, as an act of #corruption!
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