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.