#235/ Jan. 17, 2021

DISGUSTED BY MY INDUSTRY

Were the advertising and marketing industries primarily responsible for the awful events of the past two weeks? Of course not. Were we complicit? Yes.

Earlier this week I wrote a piece for Campaign UK magazine called "How Adtech Helped to Radicalise the US" (The Brits spell things funny.) You can find it here. Here is an excerpt from it:

"The wedge that has been driven into the fabric of US society has been driven in part by information gathered about American citizens by the adtech ecosystem and fed into algorithms that are employed by platforms and online publishers.

The purpose of these algorithms is primarily to keep visitors 'inside the corral' of the publisher or the platform...To do this, the platforms feed visitors ever more 'engaging' content. Experience has taught the algorithms that the more juicy the material, the more likely they are to retain the visitor.

Consequently, the algorithms feed us incrementally more lurid notions of our own predispositions and connect us ever more closely with others who share them."

The table below is an attempt to illustrate the process.

The online ad industry is a black box of corruption, fraud, lies, and greed. It contains some good people and an abundance of fools and creeps. It has played an unambiguous role in the radicalization of segments of our society. The people who don't understand that are either blind or on the putrid $300 billion adtech gravy train.

The "leaders" of the ad industry - you listening Bob Liodice, Marla Kaplowitz and Randall Rothenberg? - pretended for years they didn't understand the relationship between tracking, adtech, and polarization. They have opposed every substantial effort to rein in the obscene excesses of the adtech industry and have culpability for the shit storm it has enabled.

It is time for these "leaders" to get out.

The NYTimes ran a piece entitled, "How Facebook Incubated The Insurrection" in which the author said, "Right-wing influencers embraced extremist views, and Facebook rewarded them."

But don't tell that to Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg, Facebook's COO, said the siege of the Capitol was "largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate, don't have our standards and don't have our transparency." I'm trying not to puke.

The Washington Post wasn't having it. "A growing body of evidence shows Facebook played a much larger role than Sandberg suggested." Here's one example out of thousands of Facebook posts about the event:

"BUS TRIP to DC . . . #StoptheSteal. If your passions are running hot and you're intending to respond to the President's call for his supporters to descend on DC on Jan 6, LISTEN UP!" ...wrote the Polk County Republican Party of North Carolina in a Facebook post that is no longer publicly available.

In 2018 I posted a blog piece called "Zuckerberg Has To Go" in which I wrote...

"It's very simple. Facebook is way too powerful to be run by a jerk like Mark Zuckerberg.
While Zuckerberg has shown himself to be capable of creating a financial juggernaut, he has simultaneously shown himself to be utterly inadequate to handle the responsibilities of managing an organization with the power and influence of Facebook. Or even understanding what the responsibilities are."

But never forget on whose behalf Facebook does its dirty work -- and where 99% of its revenue comes from.

According to BuzzFeed, "Facebook employees warned that military product ads were being advertised against news about DC riots. The company did not act." The Director of the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit watchdog group, said "Facebook's advertising microtargeting is directing domestic extremists toward weapons accessories and armor that can make their militarized efforts more effective..."

And then there's this. A company called Flo Health sells a period and fertility-tracking app. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company promised that "the information would be kept private." Except, of course, it wasn't.

This week the FTC reached a settlement with Flo Health after receiving hundreds of complaints from users who found their "private" info was sold in the crooked adtech   marketplace. Who did Flo Health give the "private" information to? You guessed it.

A spokesquid for Flo Health said, “We are committed to ensuring that the privacy of our users’ personal health data is absolutely paramount.”  Still trying not to puke.

"...You are now in a unique position to do something amazingly worthwhile about a very dangerous situation the agency industry has gotten itself into. I’m talking about 'surveillance marketing', tracking, and ad tech. These are very unhealthy for us as individuals and as members of a free society.

"Sadly, the 4As has been on the wrong side of this issue, including its recent siding with the Trump administration in dropping the Obama administration’s proposed regulation aimed at not allowing Internet Service Providers to collect and sell personal, private information about us. But the problem is many times bigger than that…can we have a brief talk about this subject?

"I would like to try to convince you...that this is an issue you guys should put on your agenda. It will not make you many friends among the holding companies, but you can do our industry and our country a great service…"

Still waiting to have that brief talk.

For info on having Bob speak, go here.
For all previous newsletters go here.  For Bob's blog go here.