Netherlands requires European shift to post-tracking web as privateness legal guidelines fail

The Netherlands is pushing for a radical rethink of how the web operates, arguing that Europe ought to abandon surveillance-based promoting in favour of contextual promoting or paid providers, and a complete report commissioned by the Dutch Parliament concludes {that a} decade of European privateness laws has essentially failed to guard residents from the harms of on-line monitoring. 

The timing of the decision is especially putting. Because the European Fee weighs digital competitiveness towards citizen safety following Mario Draghi’s latest report advocating for regulatory streamlining, the Netherlands’ Rathenau Institute is proposing one thing way more bold: questioning the web’s complete enterprise mannequin. 

“Privateness, autonomy and safety are too essential to click on away by way of a pop-up,” says Eefje Cuppen, director of the Rathenau Institute. The 143-page report, titled The worth of free web, represents some of the complete examinations of on-line monitoring’s societal affect undertaken by a European authorities company.

The report’s central discovering challenges the prevailing European strategy to digital governance. Regardless of landmark laws together with the Basic Knowledge Safety Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Providers Act and the Digital Markets Act, on-line monitoring has not diminished – it has change into extra subtle and invasive. 

“The phenomenon of on-line monitoring appears to be rising slightly than declining,” the researchers conclude. New applied sciences, together with generative synthetic intelligence (GenAI), digital actuality, and neurotechnology, are enabling what the report phrases ‘hyperpersonalisation’, the place each bodily and digital environments are extensively tailor-made to particular person customers. 

This represents a elementary shift in how European policymakers are fascinated with digital regulation. Relatively than incrementally tightening guidelines round consent and transparency, the Dutch are questioning whether or not the surveillance-advertising mannequin is appropriate with democratic values in any respect. 

The report identifies dangers throughout a number of domains: particular person privateness and autonomy, discriminatory concentrating on, nationwide safety vulnerabilities and threats to democratic discourse. Crucially, it argues these dangers are inherent to the tracking-based enterprise mannequin, not merely implementation issues that may be solved by higher regulation.

The economics of surveillance promoting 

The analysis exposes vital gaps within the claimed financial advantages of personalised promoting. Whereas the business often argues that focused advertisements create a “win-win” scenario for advertisers, publishers and customers, the proof is way much less clear. 

“It stays tough to measure how efficient personalised commercials are in comparison with different types of promoting,” the report notes. The choice impact – purchases customers would have made anyway – proves statistically difficult to tell apart from the real affect of promoting. 

Extra problematically for the European tech sector, the advantages seem to circulation disproportionately to a handful of US platforms. The report finds that Dutch media firms have barely benefited from the rising digital promoting market, regardless of the sector’s general progress. 

This financial evaluation offers European policymakers with ammunition for a special strategy. If surveillance promoting primarily advantages non-European firms whereas imposing prices on European residents and companies, the financial case for defense turns into stronger.

The report’s most concrete various proposal focuses on contextual promoting – exhibiting advertisements based mostly on webpage content material slightly than consumer profiles. This isn’t merely a return to pre-digital promoting; trendy contextual promoting makes use of AI and machine studying to match content material with related commercials in subtle methods. 

Dutch promoting organisation Ster offers a compelling case examine. When it launched clear cookie consent banners in 2018, solely 10% of tourists consented to monitoring cookies, inflicting vital income losses. Nevertheless, Ster’s subsequent growth of AI-powered contextual promoting has proved surprisingly efficient, with click-through charges remaining steady and conversion charges really enhancing for a number of manufacturers. 

These examples recommend contextual promoting could also be extra viable than business sceptics declare. The technical infrastructure exists; what’s missing is ample market incentive to undertake it. 

The report additionally examines paid service fashions, fastidiously distinguishing between totally different approaches. “Pay-or-nay” fashions – the place customers select between paying for entry or having no entry – are legally permissible and mirror offline enterprise practices. Nevertheless, these fashions face vital authorized challenges. The European Fee’s latest ruling towards Meta’s subscription mannequin for the six largest platforms suggests this strategy might not survive regulatory scrutiny.

The analysis highlights profitable examples of donation-based fashions, together with Wikipedia, Sign and The Guardian’s membership programme. These display that various funding fashions can be efficient, though they is probably not universally relevant.

For IT professionals, the shift in direction of post-tracking fashions presents each challenges and alternatives. Contextual promoting requires totally different technical infrastructure, with higher emphasis on real-time content material evaluation and semantic matching slightly than consumer profiling. 

Browser-level modifications are already underway. Whereas Google deserted plans to eradicate third-party cookies in Chrome, different browsers, together with Safari and Firefox, have carried out monitoring restrictions. The report suggests these piecemeal modifications might really strengthen dominant platforms slightly than lowering monitoring general. 

The proposed alternate options would require vital funding in new promoting applied sciences. European firms that may develop subtle contextual promoting platforms might discover substantial market alternatives if regulatory stress continues to mount.

The report’s authors acknowledge that particular person member states can not implement these modifications unilaterally. The web’s cross-border nature requires coordinated European motion, both by way of enhanced regulation or energetic promotion of different enterprise fashions.

This coordination problem comes at a fragile second for European digital coverage. The Draghi report’s emphasis on competitiveness suggests some urge for food for regulatory rollback, but the Dutch findings argue that stronger motion is critical to guard elementary values. 

The Netherlands seems to be positioning itself as a voice for extra aggressive intervention. The Privateness Collective, a Dutch advocacy organisation, has filed quite a few complaints towards main platforms and known as for outright bans on monitoring.

For the European promoting know-how sector, the Dutch proposals signify each a menace and an alternative. Corporations closely invested in surveillance-based promoting might face stress to pivot in direction of contextual alternate options. 

Nevertheless, European firms that may develop privacy-preserving promoting applied sciences might achieve aggressive benefits. The report notes that present programmatic promoting includes quite a few intermediaries, with as much as 49% of spending going to centermales rather than publishers or advertisers. 

Contextual promoting might disintermediate a few of these gamers whereas creating alternatives for firms providing content material evaluation and semantic matching providers. 

The analysis additionally highlights rising investor curiosity in privacy-preserving applied sciences. European startups growing contextual promoting platforms or privacy-enhancing applied sciences might discover beneficial funding climates if regulatory momentum continues to construct.

The Rathenau Institute’s report represents greater than educational analysis – it’s a coverage roadmap commissioned by Parliament, and more likely to affect Dutch positions in European negotiations. 

Whether or not different member states will embrace equally radical approaches stays unclear. Nevertheless, the technical viability of alternate options, mixed with rising proof of the societal prices of surveillance promoting, suggests the controversy is way from settled. 

For European IT leaders, the message is obvious: the web’s present enterprise mannequin is more and more underneath query. Those that can develop and implement privacy-preserving alternate options might discover themselves on the forefront of the subsequent part of digital evolution. 

The Dutch name for elementary change displays a rising recognition that tweaking consent mechanisms and transparency necessities is inadequate. As Cuppen famous, defending privateness, autonomy and democratic values might require abandoning surveillance capitalism altogether.