Thread by @jason_kint

Attention Verizon Wireless customers: “Custom Experience” is a new setting allowing Verizon to mine your mobile activity to feed its surveillance ads business effectively ripping off publishers, too. Even if you turn off the on-by-default setting they’ll text you again. /1

None of this would be possible under the FCC privacy rules passed in 2016 that were then thrown out in first few months of new administration. Google and adtech also opposed them as they were worried about a “slippery slope” impacting their own surveillance ads businesses. /2

I wrote a number of op-eds about all of this back in 2014-2016. Same issue continues to exist when companies acting as “gatekeepers” leverage their market power to force or trick users into accepting their surveillance advertising business models which most users don’t want. /3

All this matters to consumer trust and undermines the economics of publishers. If Verizon can monetize your browsing activity without having to pay the companies who operate the sites and apps you actually choose to browse… they’re effectively acting like Facebook and Google. /4

Here is a report by @strawberrywell at @verge on recently launched Verizon wireless program which unlike apple ios14.5+ doesn’t by default give users a simple and easy opportunity to choose not to be tracked and stay off by default. /5 theverge.com/2021/12/17/228…

Here is a super smart 2017 Politico report (which much of press missed as it happened) on why you can thank Google, Facebook and the adtech complex for making this Verizon surveillance advertising possible five years later. /6 politico.com/story/2017/03/…

Here is one of the op-eds I wrote as this was all going down. And yes it’s remarkable it took Verizon this long to execute on it. Seems pretty clear they didn’t need to until after Apple rolled out its tracking prevention. End of thread. /7 vox.com/2016/11/21/136…

For those who have asked how to opt out.

https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1476732190079737857