Profiling
No Tracking and No Profiling: Taking Back Control of Your Online Experience
The Hidden System Behind Most Social Platforms
Many social platforms do far more than host communication. They collect behavioral data, analyze patterns, and build profiles designed to predict what people will click, buy, believe, or do next. This process often happens quietly in the background, shaping the experience without the individual fully seeing how much information is being gathered or how it is being used.
This is not limited to advertising alone. Tracking and profiling can affect what content is shown, what products are promoted, how offers are presented, and how people are categorized within digital systems. The result is an online environment that can feel personal, while actually being driven by surveillance and prediction.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has recently highlighted how personal data, including location, demographics, browsing behavior, and even detailed interaction signals, can be used to build individualized profiles and shape pricing and targeting systems. (Source 1)
What Tracking and Profiling Actually Mean
Tracking
Tracking is the collection of information about what a person does across a platform or across multiple digital environments. This can include clicks, views, browsing patterns, location signals, device data, purchase history, and interaction timing.
Profiling
Profiling is what happens after that data is collected. Systems analyze the information to sort people into categories, predict preferences, estimate vulnerabilities, and influence what they see next.
The European Data Protection Board has long treated profiling and targeting on social media as serious data protection concerns because these systems can shape visibility, influence decision making, and operate with limited transparency to the individual. (Source 2)
How Tracking Changes the Experience
Content Is Filtered for Influence
Algorithms can prioritize content based on what is most likely to keep attention, trigger emotion, or produce a desired reaction.
Advertising Becomes Surveillance Driven
When behavior is tracked continuously, advertising becomes a system of observation, categorization, and repeated targeting built on personal data.
Profiles Are Built Quietly
Most people never see the full extent of the profile being built about them.
Trust Begins to Erode
When behavior is continuously monitored and interpreted, trust in the platform begins to weaken.
Emerging Concerns in the Profiling Economy
Surveillance Pricing
Tracking and profiling can influence pricing and offers based on individual data profiles. (Source 3)
Hidden Pixel and Event Tracking
Tracking technologies can capture detailed interaction data without clear visibility. (Source 4)
Cross Context Behavioral Analysis
Data can be combined across contexts to create deeper behavioral profiles.
What This Costs the Individual
- Loss of Privacy: Personal behavior becomes a source of value for others.
- Loss of Autonomy: Systems can shape what a person sees before they choose.
- Loss of Transparency: Profiles influencing the experience remain hidden.
- Loss of Trust: Confidence in the platform begins to weaken.
How Squares 9 Takes a Different Approach
Squares 9 rejects this model at the structural level. The platform does not rely on behavioral tracking, profiling, or manipulation. It is built around privacy, intentional interaction, and user control.
No Behavioral Tracking
Squares 9 does not monitor user activity to build behavioral profiles.
No Hidden Profiles
No internal profiles are created to classify or influence members.
No Sale or Trade of Personal Data
Information is not sold, traded, or repurposed for third party use.
No Manipulated Content Experience
Content visibility is driven by user choice, not engagement optimization systems.
Privacy First System Design
Reduced exposure, controlled access, and contained interaction allow the platform to operate without surveillance based systems.
How Squares 9 Eliminates Tracking and Profiling
Squares 9 removes tracking and profiling at the system level. The platform does not collect behavioral data, monitor interaction patterns, or build user profiles.
The No Cookie Policy confirms that no tracking technologies are used to monitor behavior or capture interaction data. This eliminates a primary mechanism used to build behavioral profiles.
The Privacy Policy reinforces these limits by restricting how information is collected and used. Data is not gathered for behavioral analysis, targeting, or profiling purposes.
Tracking is not reduced or limited. It is not part of the system.
A Different Standard for Online Experience
Your experience should belong to you, not to systems designed to observe, classify, and influence behavior.
Squares 9 creates an environment where interaction is driven by intent rather than profiling. Privacy is preserved, control is maintained, and the experience reflects the choices of the individual.
This is what social media looks like when tracking and profiling are removed from the model.
To understand how this fits into the Squares 9 platform, visit What Is Private Social Media And How It Works.
Sources
- Source 1: FTC Surveillance Pricing Study (2025)
- Source 2: EDPB Targeting Guidelines
- Source 3: FTC Surveillance Pricing Orders (2024)
- Source 4: FTC Pixel Tracking Analysis (2023)
Platform Standards
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Relevant Squares 9 Governing Documents