Ahead of another big tech versus Congress “grab your popcorn” grilling session, scheduled for March 25 — when U.S. lawmakers will once again question the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter on the unlovely topic of misinformation — a coalition of organizations across the privacy, antitrust, consumer protection and civil rights spaces has called for a ban on “surveillance advertising”, further amplifying the argument that “big tech’s toxic business model is undermining democracy”.

The close to 40-strong coalition behind this latest call to ban “creepy ads” which rely on the mass tracking and profiling of web users in order to target them with behavioral ads includes the American Economic Liberties Project, the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Center for Humane Technology, Epic.org, Fair Vote, Media Matters for America, the Tech Transparency Project and The Real Facebook Oversight Board, to name a few.

“As leaders across a broad range of issues and industries, we are united in our concern for the safety of our communities and the health of democracy,” they write in the open letter. “Social media giants are eroding our consensus reality and threatening public safety in service of a toxic, extractive business model. That’s why we’re joining forces in an effort to ban surveillance advertising.”