It is Thursday the 24th of July 2025 in your listening to Skeptics with the K,

the podcast for Science, Reason and Critical Thinking.

Skeptics for the K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside

Skeptic Society, a non-profit organization for the promotion of scientific skepticism the Merseyside Skeptic Society, a non-profit

organisation for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Merseyside around the UK and internationally.

I'm your host, Mike Hall. With me today is Marsh. Hello. And Alice. Hello.

So we've spoken on the show several times about the way large internet companies use the web

to watch what you're

doing. Companies like Google and Facebook aggressively will take steps to monitor your online

activities, see which websites you're looking at, how long are you looking at them for, how often

you're looking at them, and they match these findings with personal information about

you, your name, your address, your date to birth, etc., and aggregate all of this together,

and then they sell that to advertisers.

Is that thing Amazon's doing as well?

Amazon do this as well, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And that advertising is not necessarily just for products and services.

I think it's bad enough if it was just for products and services,

but it's also used for political advertising,

which knowingly directs disinformation and misinformation

at vulnerable people in order to sway their political opinions,

and targeting people who are likely to receive that message well

...