Publishers, can personalisation work without surveillance?

“You only need to look at the recent spate of AI security incidents to know that trusting an agent with your private data is a risky proposition.” Alex Blake, writing in TechRadar.

Publishers need to reach readers who will find their reporting relevant. Readers need to keep their private information under their own control.

For years, the technology industry has treated those needs as a trade-off. Generic feeds are not useful enough, while highly personalised products often rely on large central profiles of reading history, location, interests, behaviour and private questions.

Chatbots add more sensitive information to that picture.

People now tell chatbots about their health, work, finances, relationships and fears. TechRadar reported Proton’s warning that people are sharing their biggest secrets with AI systems.

Another TechRadar report described research claiming Meta’s AI could read private messages without permission.

European regulators have also fined Google over the collection of consumer location data.

A person’s news interests can also reveal a medical condition, a workplace problem, a legal concern, a political fear, a financial risk, a family situation or plans to move or change jobs.

Mera News is trying to help publishers reach those readers without needing a private dossier on each person. Mera is designed to protect sensitive personal context, with more matching and intelligence happening locally where practical.

The publisher can gain a relevant reader, a measurable visit, a possible subscription and a relationship that brings the reader back. None of that requires receiving the reader’s private interests, a central behavioural profile, sensitive personal context or data unrelated to the visit.

I think we can design personalisation that gives publishers qualified readership while letting readers control the private context used to find the match.

Would publishers adopt privacy-safe personalisation if it produced fewer but more relevant visits?

Sources

• TechRadar: Proton’s warning about chatbot privacy
• TechRadar: Meta Muse and private messages
• de Volkskrant: Google location-data fine