Three voices to be heard on Data Protection Day 2020

Sebastian Greger

January 28 is Data Protection Day, and here are three voices I strongly would like to see heard.

Privacy has nothing to do with cookie banners.

Karolina Iwańska

Online advertising in its current form upholds business models based on surveillance, built on the premise that people and intimate information about them can be treated like a commodity.

“10 Reasons Why Online Advertising is Broken” by Karolina Iwańska - a comprehensive summary of the toxic industry that is behavioural adtech (my summary here).

Laura Kalbag

It’s not consent if there’s not a real choice.

“Defying the mainstream: building technology that respects our rights”, the slides and speaker notes from Laura Kalbag's talk from this the New Adventures conference last week.

@oluoluoxenfree

It feels as though we should be up in arms, tearing down the foundations of the way that we use and sell and move around data.
I agree; but why does this always start with end-users? Why are the designers and developers of these systems not taking notice?

“Why is the onus put on users to not use certain services?”, a Twitter thread by @oluoluoxenfree that calls for shifting the responsibility for data protection from users to designers.

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing toge­ther social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

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