Editing Privacy (section)

===Advertising===
{{main|Online advertising}}
{{further|Surveillance capitalism|Mass surveillance industry}}
{{promotional section|date=June 2023}}

The Internet has become a significant medium for advertising, with digital marketing making up approximately half of the global ad spending in 2019.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Global Digital Ad Spending 2019 |url=https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/global-digital-ad-spending-2019 |access-date=2023-09-30 |website=Insider Intelligence}}</ref> While websites are still able to sell advertising space without tracking, including via [[contextual advertising]], digital ad brokers such as [[Facebook]] and [[Google]] have instead encouraged the practice of [[Targeted advertising#Behavioral targeting|behavioral advertising]], providing code snippets used by website owners to track their users via [[HTTP cookie]]s. This tracking data is also sold to other third parties as part of the [[mass surveillance industry]]. Since the introduction of mobile phones, data brokers have also been planted within apps, resulting in a $350 billion digital industry especially focused on mobile devices.<ref name=":7"/>

Digital privacy has become the main source of concern for many mobile users, especially with the rise of privacy scandals such as the [[Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal]].<ref name=":7">{{Cite news|last=Chen|first=Brian X.|date=2021-09-16|title=The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the Internet|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/technology/digital-privacy.html|access-date=2021-11-22|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> [[Apple Inc.|Apple]] has received  some reactions for features that prohibit advertisers from tracking a user's data without their consent.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hausfeld |date=2024-05-16 |title=Privacy by default, abuse by design: EU competition concerns about Apple's new app tracking policy |url=https://www.hausfeld.com/de-de/was-wir-denken/competition-bulletin/privacy-by-default-abuse-by-design-eu-competition-concerns-about-apple-s-new-app-tracking-policy/ |access-date=2024-06-28 |website=Hausfeld |language=German}}</ref> Google attempted to introduce an alternative to cookies named [[Federated Learning of Cohorts|FLoC]] which it claimed reduced the privacy harms, but it later retracted the proposal due to antitrust probes and analyses that contradicted their claims of privacy.<ref>{{cite web|title=Google Facing Fresh E.U. Inquiry Over Ad Technology|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/business/google-antitrust-european-union.html|date=2021-06-22|website=[[The New York Times]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230415083901/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/business/google-antitrust-european-union.html|archive-date=2023-04-15|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=EFF technologist cites Google "breach of trust" on FLoC; key ad-tech change agent departs IAB Tech Lab|url=https://itega.org/2021/04/02/privacy-beat-eff-technologist-cites-google-breach-of-trust-on-floc-key-ad-tech-change-agent-departs-iab-tech-lab/|access-date=April 16, 2021|website=Information Trust Exchange Governing Association}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea|url=https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea|website=[[Electronic Frontier Foundation]]|date=2021-03-03}}</ref>