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UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets
THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.
Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.
It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."
And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).
These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.
This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.
Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.
Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.
But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.
This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.
So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.
But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!
But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.
It's money.
Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.
This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web
This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores
Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.
First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!
This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.
So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech
Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising
Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).
It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again
Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.
And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/
The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.
This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.
You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561
You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA
Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.
Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.
That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg
This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand
Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.
By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.
Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free
#pluralistic#competition#advertising#surveillance advertising#saving the news from big tech#link taxes#trustbusting#competition and markets authority#uk#ukpoli#Ad Tech Collective Action#digital markets unit#Competition Appeal Tribunal
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Write this down so we're all on the same page here. There is nothing, no manner of content whatsoever, that will be compelling or in any way rewarding enough to entice me to watch through an unskippable ad.
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Buy now👉 Link in Bio
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Advertising Back In The Days / Fake AD #6
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Unlocking Success: The Best Use of Facebook Marketing
In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, Facebook remains a powerhouse for businesses seeking to connect with their target audience and drive results. With over 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers an unparalleled platform for businesses to enhance brand visibility, engage with customers, and boost sales. Here's a comprehensive guide on the best use of Facebook marketing to maximize your business potential:
1. Create a Compelling Business Page:
Your Facebook business page is the digital face of your brand. Ensure it's visually appealing, consistent with your brand identity, and includes essential information such as your business hours,
contact details, and a compelling 'About Us' section. Use high-quality images and a captivating cover photo to make a lasting first impression.
2. Leverage Facebook Ads:
Facebook's robust advertising platform allows businesses to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. Invest time in creating eye-catching ad creatives, compelling copy, and a clear call-to-action.
Experiment with different ad formats, such as carousel ads, video ads, and lead ads, to find what resonates best with your audience.
3. Engage with Your Audience:
Social media is all about building relationships. Regularly engage with your audience through comments, messages, and posts. Promptly respond to inquiries, address concerns, and foster a sense of community. Encourage user-generated content by running contests or asking for reviews, turning your audience into brand ambassadors.
4. Utilize Facebook Groups:
Facebook Groups provide a unique opportunity to create a community around your brand or industry. Join relevant groups and participate in discussions, positioning yourself as an authority in your niche. Alternatively, create your own group to foster a sense of belonging among your customers and prospects.
5. Harness the Power of Facebook Analytics:
Facebook Insights offers valuable data on your page performance, audience demographics, and content engagement.
Use these insights to refine your strategy, identify popular content, and optimize your posting schedule. Data-driven decisions are key to a successful Facebook marketing campaign.
6. Optimize for Mobile Users:
A significant portion of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices. Ensure that your content is mobile-friendly, with concise and visually appealing elements. This includes mobile-optimized ads, responsive landing pages, and a seamless user experience.
7. Implement Facebook Pixel:
Facebook Pixel is a powerful tool that helps you track the actions users take on your website after clicking on your ads. Use this data to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, retarget website visitors, and optimize for conversions. Facebook Pixel is an invaluable asset for refining your marketing strategy.
8. Run Targeted Contests and Giveaways:
Engage your audience by running contests and giveaways. Encourage participants to like, share, and comment on your posts to increase organic reach. Ensure that the prizes align with your brand and attract your target audience, fostering a positive association with your business.
9. Stay Consistent with Content Strategy:
Consistency is key in maintaining an active and engaged audience. Develop a content calendar and post regularly to keep your audience informed and entertained.
Mix up your content types, including images, videos, articles, and user-generated content, to maintain variety.
10. Test and Iterate:
The digital landscape is ever-evolving, and what works today may not work tomorrow. Continuously test different strategies, analyze results, and iterate based on the feedback and data you receive. This iterative approach will help you stay ahead of the curve and adapt to changing consumer behavior.
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How to make a Skin Tone Palette!! 🎨
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Unleashing the Power of Facebook Marketing: Best Strategies for Success
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, Facebook continues to reign supreme as a powerhouse platform for businesses looking to connect with their target audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales.
Crafting an effective Facebook marketing strategy is essential for staying ahead in the competitive online market. Here, we explore the best strategies to make the most of your Facebook marketing efforts.
Create a Compelling Business Page: Facebook Business Page is the foundation of your online presence. Optimize it by providing complete and accurate information, using high-quality visuals, and incorporating your brand's unique personality.
Regularly update your profile and cover photos to keep your page fresh.
Content is King: Develop a content strategy that resonates with your audience. Use a mix of engaging text, eye-catching visuals, and videos. Experiment with different content types to see what works best for your target demographic. Consistency is key, so establish a posting schedule and stick to it.
Leverage Facebook Ads: Facebook's robust advertising platform allows you to reach highly targeted audiences. Utilize Facebook Ads to promote your products or services, boost posts, and drive website traffic.
Experiment with different ad formats, such as carousel ads, video ads, and slideshow ads, to see what generates the best results.
Harness the Power of Video: Video content has become increasingly popular on Facebook. Utilize live videos, tutorials, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and storytelling to engage your audience. Facebook's algorithm often favors video content, leading to higher reach and engagement.
Engage with Your Audience: Actively respond to comments, messages, and reviews on your page. Encourage discussions, ask questions, and run polls to foster a sense of community.
By engaging with your audience, you build trust and loyalty, which can translate into customer retention and advocacy.
Run Contests and Giveaways: Create excitement and boost engagement by running contests and giveaways. Encourage users to like, share, and comment for a chance to win. This not only increases your reach but also creates a buzz around your brand.
Utilize Facebook Analytics: Regularly analyze Facebook Insights to understand the performance of your content and ads. Identify trends, track key metrics, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
This data-driven approach ensures that you're making informed decisions to optimize your Facebook marketing efforts.
Implement Retargeting Strategies: Make use of Facebook Pixel to track website visitors and retarget them with relevant ads. This helps re-engage potential customers who have shown interest in your products or services, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Collaborate with Influencers: Partnering with influencers can significantly expand your reach.
Identify influencers whose audience aligns with your target demographic and collaborate on sponsored content or promotions.
Stay Updated on Algorithm Changes: Facebook's algorithm evolves, impacting how content is displayed in users' feeds. Stay informed about algorithm changes and adjust your strategy accordingly. Currently, meaningful interactions and quality content are prioritized, so focus on creating content that sparks genuine engagement.
Conclusion:
Mastering Facebook marketing requires a combination of creativity, consistency, and adaptability. By implementing these strategies, you can unlock the full potential of Facebook as a marketing powerhouse, driving brand growth and achieving your business objectives. Keep refining your approach based on data and feedback, and watch as your brand flourishes in the dynamic world of social media marketing.
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(CNN) — Jack Latham was on a mission to photograph farms in Vietnam — not the country’s sprawling plantations or rice terraces but its “click farms.”
Last year, the British photographer spent a month in the capital Hanoi documenting some of the shadowy enterprises that help clients artificially boost online traffic and social media engagement in the hope of manipulating algorithms and user perceptions.
The resulting images, which feature in his new book “Beggar’s Honey,” provide rare insight into the workshops that hire low-paid workers to cultivate likes, comments and shares for businesses and individuals globally.
“When most people are on social media, they want nothing but attention — they’re begging for it,” Latham said in a phone interview, explaining his book’s title.
“With social media, our attention is a product for advertisers and marketers.”
In the 2000s, the growing popularity of social media sites — including Facebook and Twitter, now called X — created a new market for well-curated digital profiles, with companies and brands vying to maximize visibility and influence.
Though it is unclear when click farms began proliferating, tech experts warned about “virtual gang masters” operating them from low-income countries as early as 2007.
In the following decades, click farms exploded in number — particularly in Asia, where they can be found across India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond.
Regulations have often failed to keep pace: While some countries, like China, have attempted to crack down on operations (the China Advertising Association banned the use of click farms for commercial gain in 2020), they continue to flourish around the continent, especially in places where low labor and electricity costs make it affordable to power hundreds of devices simultaneously.
‘Like Silicon Valley startups’
Latham’s project took him to five click farms in Vietnam.
(The click farmers he hoped to photograph in Hong Kong “got cold feet,” he said, and pandemic-related travel restrictions dashed his plans to document the practice in mainland China).
On the outskirts of Hanoi, Latham visited workshops operating from residential properties and hotels.
Some had a traditional setup with hundreds of manually operated phones, while others used a newer, compact method called “box farming” — a phrase used by the click farmers Latham visited — where several phones, without screens and batteries, are wired together and linked to a computer interface.
Latham said one of the click farms he visited was a family-run business, though the others appeared more like a tech companies.
Most workers were in their 20s and 30s, he added.
“They all looked like Silicon Valley startups,” he said. “There was a tremendous amount of hardware … whole walls of phones.”
Some of Latham’s photos depict — albeit anonymously — workers tasked with harvesting clicks.
In one image, a man is seen stationed amid a sea of gadgets in what appears to be a lonely and monotonous task.
“It only takes one person to control large amounts of phones,” Latham said. “One person can very quickly (do the work of) 10,000. It’s both solitary and crowded.”
At the farms Lathan visited, individuals were usually in charge of a particular social media platforms.
For instance, one “farmer” would be responsible for mass posting and commenting on Facebook accounts, or setting up YouTube platforms where they post and watch videos on loop.
The photographer added that TikTok is now the most popular platform at the click farms he visited.
The click farmers Latham spoke to mostly advertised their services online for less than one cent per click, view or interaction.
And despite the fraudulent nature of their tasks, they seemed to treat it like just another job, the photographer said.
‘There was an understanding they were just providing a service,” he added. “There wasn’t a shadiness. What they’re offering is shortcuts.”
Deceptive perception
Across its 134 pages, “Beggar’s Honey” includes a collection of abstract photographs — some seductive, others contemplative — depicting videos that appeared on Latham’s TikTok feed.
He included them in the book to represent the kind of content he saw being boosted by click farms.
But many of his photos focus on the hardware used to manipulate social media —webs of wires, phones and computers.
“A lot of my work is about conspiracies,” Latham said. ” Trying to ‘document the machines used to spread disinformation’ is the tagline of the project. The bigger picture is often the thing we don’t see.”
Click farms around the world are also used to amplify political messages and spread disinformation during elections.
In 2016, Cambodia’s then-prime minister Hun Sen was accused of buying Facebook friends and likes, which according to the BBC he denied, while shadowy operations in North Macedonia were found to have spread pro-Donald Trump posts and articles during that year’s US presidential election.
While researching, Latham said he found that algorithms — a topic of his previous book, “Latent Bloom” — often recommended videos that he said got increasingly “extreme” with each click.
“If you only digest a diet of that, it’s a matter of time you become diabetically conspiratorial,” he said.
“The spreading of disinformation is the worst thing. It happens in your pocket, not newspapers, and it’s terrifying that it’s tailored to your kind of neurosis.”
Hoping to raise awareness of the phenomenon and its dangers, Latham is planning to exhibit his own home version of a click farm — a small box with several phones attached to a computer interface — at the 2024 Images Vevey Festival in Switzerland.
He bought the gadget in Vietnam for the equivalent of about $1,000 and has occasionally experimented with it on his social media accounts.
On Instagram, Latham’s photos usually attract anywhere from a few dozen to couple hundred likes.
But when he deployed his personal click farm to announce his latest book, the post generated more than 6,600 likes.
The photographer wants people to realize that there’s more to what they see on social media — and that metrics aren’t a measurement of authenticity.
“When people are better equipped with knowledge of how things work, they can make more informed decisions,” he said.
“Beggar’s Honey,” co-published by Here Press and Images Vevey, is available now.
#Jack Latham#click farms#box farms#Hanoi#Vietnam#Beggar’s Honey#box farming#social media#algorithms#user perception#trolls#PR#marketing#advertising#likes#comments#shares#digital profiles#virtual gang masters#bots#spam#China Advertising Association#click farmers#mass post#disinformation#misinformation#fake news#metrics
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Advertising Back In The Days / Fake AD #4
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