that is true; although bear in mind FB is used by many people who are not tech literate; often as a native app on mobile devices where adblocking is more of a technical challenge and there are a shit ton of dodgy “adblockers” covertly funded by the online marketers (70% of app writers seem dependent on ads and loath adblocking) which could make the device insecure.
I’ve just re-read the original article on the cops website in Dutch (the indy translation is to be fair quite accurate).
it does seem unusual (perhaps more so to those of us brought up in a ruthlessly capitalist English speaking country) for the Police to be openly criticising a decision of a foreign tech company in the first place but they do have a point; especially if FB are as claimed counting negative reactions as good for advertisers. The datagathering also collects peoples political preferences, religious beliefs etc; if you regularly use more than one language ads might appear in those languages too.
Given the recent events in Belgium and the complete lack of control over who can buy online ads [compared to those on telly or a newspaper where there is oversight from the Communications Ministry or their appointed agencies] I can see why the cops might treat this as a potentially serious security risk.
One one mobile device where blocking in-app ads is difficult (not sure if its possible) bar-code readers kept delivering ads trying to intice me to join the wingnut brigade of “born again” US Protestants so I dread to think just what could be delivered to people of other faiths…
At the same time if the cops openly recommended adblocking it might result in diplomatic incidents or worse [including cyberattacks from pro-capitalist vigilantés; shit like this actually happens]
To be fair this sort of advice isn’t uncommon from mainland European Police, German cops recently warned parents to secure their family photos not just against predators but also to prevent embarrasing your kid when s/he becomes a teenager….
