I was interested by the title of a paper called “Behavioral Advertising: The Offer You Cannot Refuse” by a small coterie of privacy activist/researchers. I love the Godfather movies, in which the statement, “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” is a coolly tuxedoed plan to threaten someone with violence or death. I don’t love the paper’s attempt to show that government “interventions” are superior to markets in terms of freedom.
Behavioral advertisers are no mafiosi. They are not in the business of illegal coercion. They’re not in any kind of illegal business, in fact. The choice of title suggests that the authors may be biased toward making targeted advertising illegal. (The lead author argued in 2004 that Gmail should be shut down as a violation of California law.)
What was most interesting, though, was the paper’s unspoken battle with lock-in, or path dependence. That’s the idea in technology development that a given state of affairs perpetuates itself due to the costs of changing course.
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