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  • Protecting Children and Teens from Unfair and Deceptive Marketing, including Stealth Advertising

    By: Jeff Chester | Jul 19 2022

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    Sub-title

    CDD Comments to FTC for "Stealth" Marketing Inquiry
    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • FTC Should tell Microsoft that it’s “Game Over” with its plans to buy Activision Blizzard

    By: Jeff Chester | Mar 22 2022

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    Sub-title

    Deal reflects Big Tech move to grab more data for omnipresent tracking & targeting

    Microsoft is rapidly expanding its surveillance advertising complex—first acquiring AT&T’s powerful Xandr targeting system last December, and adding a few weeks later the online gaming and eSports giant Activision Blizzard.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Tuesday, March 22, 2022
    Read more
  • CDD Tells FTC It's Time to Regulate Commercial Surveillance Marketing

    By: Jeff Chester | Jan 26 2022

    Sub-title

    Documents 25 years of failures by agency to rein in practices that have eviscerated privacy and consumer protection in the U.S. and globally
    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Wednesday, January 26, 2022
    Read more
  • New WHO Report on Digital Marketing of Alcohol

    By: Jeff Chester | Dec 8 2021

    Sub-title

    CDD's Jeff Chester contributed to report's focus on online marketing practices, inc. use of big data analytics, by alcoholic beverage companies

    (Excerpt from WHO release):  

    Just as with tobacco, a global and comprehensive approach is required to restrict digital marketing of alcohol.

    “The vast majority of alcohol advertising online is “dark”

    Children and young people are especially at risk from the invasion of their social spaces by communication promoting alcohol consumption, normalising alcohol in all social contexts and linked to development of adult identities.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Wednesday, December 8, 2021
    Read more
  • We Can’t Let the Surveillance Ad Industry Create the new Rules for Privacy

    By: Jeff Chester | Oct 17 2021

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    Sub-title

    Time for the FTC to intervene as marketers create new ways to leverage our “identity” data as cookies “crumble”

    For decades, the U.S. has allowed private actors to basically create the rules regarding how our data is gathered and used online. A key reason that we do not have any real privacy for digital media is precisely because it has principally been online marketing interests that have shaped how the devices, platforms and applications we use ensnare us in the commercial surveillance complex.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Sunday, October 17, 2021
    Read more
  • Who is Really “Pushing” Your Online Shopping Cart as You Buy Groceries? It’s Big Data, Machine Learning and Lots of Cash from Advertisers

    By: Jeff Chester | Aug 10 2021

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    Sub-title

    The FTC and States Should Investigate “Grocery Tech”

    Online grocery shopping became a pandemic response necessity for those who could afford it, with revenues to exceed $100 billion in 2021. Leading supermarket chains such as Kroger, big box stores like Walmart, online specialist companies such as Instacart, and the ubiquitous Amazon, have all experienced greater demand from the public to have groceries ordered and then quickly delivered or available for pick up.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Tuesday, August 10, 2021
    Read more
  • Surveillance Marketing Industry Claims Future of an “Open Internet” Requires Massive Data Gathering

    By: Jeff Chester | Jul 13 2021

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    Sub-title

    New ways to take advantage of your “identity” raise privacy, consumer-protection and competition issues

    The Trade Desk is a leading AdTech company, providing data-driven digital advertising services to major brands and agencies.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Tuesday, July 13, 2021
    Read more
  • Contextual Advertising—Now Driven by AI and Machine Learning—Requires Regulatory Review for Privacy and Marketing Fairness

    By: Jeff Chester | Mar 11 2021

    Contextual Advertising—Now Driven by AI and Machine Learning—Requires Regulatory Review for Privacy and Marketing Fairness

    What’s known as contextual advertising is receiving a big boost from marketers and some policymakers, who claim that it provides a more privacy-friendly alternative to the dominant global surveillance-based “behavioral” marketing model. Google’s plans to eliminate cookies and other third-party trackers used for much of online ad delivery are also spurring greater interest in contextual marketing, which is being touted especially as safe for children.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Date

    Wednesday, March 10, 2021
    Read more
  • Data Governance for Young People in the Commercialized Digital Environment

    By: Kathryn C. Montgomery, Jeff Chester, and Katharina Kopp | Sep 10 2020

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    Sub-title

    A report for UNICEF's Global Governance of Children's Data Project

    TikTok (also known by its Chinese name, Dǒuyīn) has quickly captured the interest of children, adolescents, and young adults in 150 countries around the world. The mobile app enables users to create short video clips, customize them with a panoply of user-friendly special effects tools, and then share them widely through the platform’s vast social network.

    Authors

    Kathryn C. Montgomery, Jeff Chester, and Katharina Kopp
    Read more
  • Leading child advocacy, health, and privacy groups call on FTC to Investigate Children’s Digital Media Marketplace Before Proposing any Changes to Privacy Protections for Children

    By: Jeff Chester | Dec 5 2019

    Sub-title

    Threats to young people from digital marketing and data collection must be analyzed to ensure meaningful safeguards under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

    EMBARGOED UNTIL DECEMBER 5, 2019 AT 12:01 AM

    Contact:

    Jeffrey Chester, CDD, jeff@democraticmedia.org, (202) 494-7100

    Josh Golin, CCFC, josh@commercialfreechildhood.org; 617-896-9369

    Leading child advocacy, health, and privacy groups call on FTC to Investigate Children’s Digital Media Marketplace Before Proposing any Changes to Privacy Protections for Children

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • CDD, EPIC, USPIRG Opposition to Google/Doubleclick "Big Data" Merger

    By: Jeff Chester | Sep 11 2019

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    Sub-title

    2007 FTC filings example of groups calling for antitrust, privacy and other safeguards for digital marketplace

    Working closely with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org) and US PIRG, CDD led a campaign to oppose the acquisition of Doubleclick by Google.  CDD opposed the deal on privacy, consumer protection and competiton grounds.  We all foresaw what would happen if Google was allowed to swallow a leading digital marketing giant--more data collect

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • The FTC’s Google/YouTube decision on children's privacy & digital marketing brings new safeguards, opportunities—and questions

    By: Jeff Chester | Sep 11 2019

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    Sub-title

    Key new COPPA related policies won as groups vow to hold Google, marketers, FTC accountable

    I played a key role helping get the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) passed by Congress in 1998 (when I was executive director of the Center for Media Education). Since then, I have tried to ensure that the country’s only federal law addressing commercial privacy online was taken seriously.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • Groups Join Legal Battle to Fight Ineffective FTC Privacy Decision on Facebook

    By: Jeff Chester | Jul 26 2019

    Sub-title

    Statements from Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, CDD, Color of Change, Common Sense Media, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Open Markets, Public Citizen, USPIRG

    FOR RELEASE

    July 26, 2019

    Consumer Privacy Organizations to Challenge Facebook Settlement

    Statement from Groups

    ---------

    “The Settlement Fails to Provide Meaningful Relief to Facebook Users”

    WASHINGTON, DC – Many of the nation’s leading consumer privacy organizations are urging a federal court in Washington, DC to consider public comments before finalizing a proposed settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • FTC Must Effectively Penalize Google for Violating COPPA Privacy law

    By: Jeff Chester | Jul 8 2019

    Sub-title

    Concern that FTC actions will not protect privacy for children on Google platforms; Digital ad giant must be held accountable

    Letter sent on June 3 2019 to Chairman Simons and FTC Commissioners in response to a call made by the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood and CDD, represented by our attorneys from the Institute for Public Representation (IPR), Georgetown University Law Center with the commission.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Google, the GDPR and Digital Marketers: Will Big Brands and Advertisers Pull the Plug that has Erased Privacy?

    By: Jeff Chester | Mar 30 2018

    A digital “great awakening” has occurred with unprecedented global attention given to the commercial surveillance business model at the core of our collective digital experience.

    Read more
  • AT&T, Comcast & Verizon Expand “Big Data” Tracking & Targeting of Consumers

    By: Jeff Chester | Mar 8 2018


    Read more
  • Statement of Jeff Chester on plans by FCC to review 3-hour Children’s Educational TV Programming Rule

    By: Jeff Chester | Feb 13 2018

    Broadcasters want to kill one of their only few public interest obligations:  to air at least 3 hours of educational children’s programming a week.  The FCC is engaged in another outrageous form of digital highway robbery—to steal from kids in order to allow TV giants to make even more profits from shows filled with commercials.   Broadcasters now earn billions of dollars from their free public license to transit television—including getting access to invaluable cable TV channels.  They are supposed to serve as  a “Trustee” of the airwaves—not video programming bandits.
    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • The Role of Digital Marketing in Political Campaigns

    By: Jeff Chester | Jan 20 2018

    Computational politics—the application of digital targeted-marketing technologies to election campaigns in the US and elsewhere—are now raising the same concerns for democratic discourse and governance that they have long raised for consumer privacy and welfare in the commercial marketplace. This paper examines the digital strategies and technologies of today’s political operations, explaining how they were employed during the most recent US election cycle, and exploring the implications of their continued use in the civic context.

    ---

    Read more
  • Death of Net Neutrality Will Spur Greater Loss of Digital Privacy, Further Content Consolidation & Control

    By: Jeff Chester | Dec 15 2017

    Sub-title

    Statement of Jeff Chester, CDD

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more
  • “Smartwatches” For Parents to Monitor Young Children Actually Pose a Danger to Kids’ Welfare—Report

    By: Jeff Chester | Oct 18 2017

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    Sub-title

    Groups call for investigation and action by U.S. and EU Regulators, including FTC

    WASHINGTON, DC – October 18, 2017—A number of brands of “smartwatches” intended to help parents monitor and protect young children have major security and privacy flaws which could endanger the children wearing them. A coalition of leading U.S. child advocacy, consumer, and privacy groups sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today, asking the agency to investigate the threat these watches pose to children.

    Authors

    Jeff Chester
    Read more

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