Behavioural metadata extraction underpins the ‘surveillance business model’, which we think has been shown to undermine democracy. We think it may too enable: manipulation of individual voting at scale via social media microtargeting, spreading fake news, increasing big tech power, mistrust of govs, opinion polarisation, victimisation. RTB [Real Time Bidding] system data can be accessed by anyone, not just advertisers.
Data is sold through Real Time Bidding (RTB) system which is easily accessible and data may be de-anonymised.
I will sign this. I also wonder whether parliament.uk itself sells behavioural data. I seem to remember getting a ‘share this data with 754 partners’ notice on a gov website once…
Signed
Signature no.242. Doing my part.
Do petitions do anything in the UK?
Short answer : Not a lot.
Long answer : If they reach a certain amount, they get discussed in parliament and you get an official response to the issue. The response is normally “no”. I don’t know of any occasion of one causing major changes.
What it does do though, is force (somebody within) the government to take a position on an issue, and they can no longer say they are ignorant of it. Having an official response means they must explain their counterarguments and reason for denial. If this is then brought up by other means in future, you know what you’re arguing against.
Depending on where you live and who your local MP is, you may get better results writing to your local MP, who in theory should be supporting the views of their constituents.
Ultimately, it’s a bit weak. Perhaps the response is worth it, as a stepping stone to further methods on an issue - though it’s been suggested that it’s a distraction, making people fill in a form to “get the anger out of their system”, and then not protesting or raising awareness by other means.
I still fill them in, but I don’t expect much from them.
though it’s been suggested that it’s a distraction,
I wonder who’s initiative it was to set the petitions site up. I cba to find its history rn but it would probably be quite easy to infer what their motivation was.
Tony Blair’s in 2006 originally, then it got binned off for a while, but came back under the Tory/Libdem coalition, which has gradually morphed into what we now use. More info on wiki page
Sadly doesn’t give us a very good idea behind the intent without, as you say, reading a lot more about it.
Thank you for the thought out response. I appreciate it.
