Conversation

Dino A. Dai Zovi
@dinodaizovi
Can someone explain to me how ad targeting to defined segments is "selling user data directly to advertisers?" Because that dilutes the privacy concerns about data brokers that literally sell user data, as in share bulk user data to a customer in exchange for money.
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Zack Kanter
@zackkanter
Wow. Adtech giant NYT ($800m ARR, $6B valuation) to begin selling user data directly to advertisers. Scary, anticompetitive trend led by corporate journalism - local news outlets just can't compete with closed tech platforms like this. axios.com/new-york-times
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Justin Schuh
@justinschuh
Replying to
@dinodaizovi
IANAL, but under CCPA this seems to count as selling data. And nothing here precludes using persistent identifiers (e.g. email/street addresses) to do opaque, back-end joins with data brokers, which is standard practice in publishing going all the way back to print subscriptions.
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Justin Schuh
@justinschuh
Replying to
@justinschuh
and
@dinodaizovi
Obviously the style of the tweet is very incendiary, but the argument doesn't seem inaccurate—particularly regarding the chilling effects that media consolidation among a few big players has had on journalism at large.
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Dino A. Dai Zovi
@dinodaizovi
Replying to
@justinschuh
I am also clearly not a lawyer, but I if an advertiser buys 100 impressions on a given sufficiently broad segment and doesn't receive any user personal information from an impression, it's not "selling info" b/c no personal information is sent to the 3rd-party. Agree re: point.
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Dino A. Dai Zovi
@dinodaizovi
Replying to
@justinschuh
I at least agree that an IP address is now PII, esp. with home broadband and their relatively fixed addresses with long DHCP leases. It’s completely the opposite for mobile cell data IP addresses (I think?).
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