Targeted advertising is online advertising that uses our personal information to display ads that are most likely relevant to us. While targeted advertising can be more effective than traditional advertising, it also raises serious concerns about our privacy and manipulation.
One of the main ways targeted advertising invades our privacy is by tracking us across multiple devices. Companies can track our activity on all devices and link them together. This includes information about our browsing history, likes and dislikes, demographics, and much more. This data is then used to display targeted ads and customise our online experiences. This leads to a manipulation of our beliefs, as it allows advertisers to display ads to us based on all the information gathered on us and customises the feeds we see, leading to situations where we are only exposed to information that confirms our existing beliefs and can be used to influence our opinions and behaviours and causes major polarisation of different groups that have just been exposed to their own beliefs only. This leads to a lot of tension between closed-minded individuals.So, we must be aware of how our personal information is being collected and used and take steps to protect our privacy online. We can use privacy-focused browsers (https://www.torproject.org is great for this), private search engines instead of google(https://duckduckgo.com is my favourite), and adjust our privacy settings on social media and other websites.
In the end, while targeted advertising can be an effective marketing strategy, it raises serious concerns about our privacy and the manipulation of our beliefs. We can take some actions to minimise it but can’t totally get away from it (unless we just stop using the internet😅).
