Streaming industry snooping on users on industrial scale

A new report has accused the streaming TV industry of operating a huge data-driven surveillance apparatus and further undermining privacy and consumer protection online.

The industry is conducting vast surveillance of viewers and targeting them with manipulative AI-driven ad tactics, says a new 48-page report from the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a digital privacy and consumer protection group.

Because streaming is now so popular, the television set has been transformed into a “sophisticated monitoring, tracking, and targeting device,” claims the report, called “How TV Watched Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era.”

Cybernews has already reported that we’re not really alone when watching content on our smart TV sets. But this report goes further and accuses the industry of conspiring against users in a vast commercial surveillance scheme.

It says that leading streamers, connected TV (CTV) device companies, and smart TV manufacturers have allied with powerful data brokers to create “extensive” digital dossiers on viewers based on a person’s identity information, viewing choices, purchasing patterns, and thousands of online and offline behaviors.

The report adds that a powerful arsenal of interactive advertising techniques is used, including virtual product placement inserted into programming and altered in real-time. Thanks to generative AI tools, this is easier than ever before.

So-called FAST (Free Advertiser-Supported TV) channels – such as Tubi or Pluto TV – play a major role here. They’re a key part of the industry’s strategy to monetize viewer data and target them with interactive marketing.

“The US CTV streaming business has deliberately incorporated many of the data-surveillance marketing practices that have long undermined privacy and consumer protection in the ‘older’ online world of social media, search engines, mobile phones, and video services such as YouTube,” says the report.

The alleged surveillance of users is especially concerning this election year, as CTV has become the fastest-growing medium for political ads. Ad-tech, data analysis, and tracking tools make it easy for political actors to “run cover personalized campaigns” and spread disinformation, the authors of the report point out.

Just 29% of ad-based streaming viewers feel that the ads they see are for relevant products and services.

“CTV has become a privacy nightmare for viewers,” explains the report co-author Jeff Chester, executive director of CDD.

“It is now a core asset for the vast system of digital surveillance that shapes most of our online experiences. Not only does CTV operate in ways that are unfair to consumers, it is also putting them and their families at risk as it gathers and uses sensitive data about health, children, race and political interests.”

The irony is that, according to researchers at Parks Associates, a market research and consulting company, just 29% of ad-based streaming viewers feel that the ads they see are for relevant products and services.

The CDD has submitted letters to the chairs of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, as well as the California Attorney General and the California Privacy Protection Agency.

It has called on policymakers to address its report’s findings and implement effective regulations for the CTV industry.

The report co-author Kathryn Montgomery said: “In addition to calling for strong consumer and privacy safeguards, we should seize this opportunity to re-envision the power and potential of the television medium and to create a policy framework for connected TV that will enable it to do more than serve the needs of advertisers.”