For those who track monopoly power and privacy rights, incredibly smart hearing this morning in Brussels where they have an opportunity to tame surveillance advertising which will only work if they also constrain “gatekeepers” - also on the eve of legislation in next 60 days. /1
I’m especially energized when I see testimony from people I don’t know who absolutely nail the issues. “The most important thing you can do is strongly limit the data that the dominant players have access to.” Thank you. Nailed it and rationale. /2
Important: adtech lobby (IAB, CCIA, Google, Facebook) have used influence and ad campaigns to create a straw man this is a “ban on targeted ads.” This is entirely false. The concern is tracking - aka surveillance - now also limited by Apple iOS. All four witnesses noted this. /3
amusing side point here is adtech lobby is running ad campaigns suggesting restrictions on surveillance advertising (which again their smokescreen calls “targeted ads”) will be the death of SMEs because contextual ads don’t work - and they’re using contextual ads. Lol. /4
Again, back to market power and why their lobby is pushing so hard to confuse parliament and weaken these once in a generation laws. Dr. Lynskey who was brilliant, explains using UK regulator investigative reports, who the current system benefits hence the relentless lobby. /5
In terms of who else benefits from unbridled surveillance advertising besides Google and Facebook, their trade bodies avoid that research but Dr Acquisti did the only major empirical study and publishers see minimal benefit which she cites here. /6
Dr. Lynskey also points out the misleading straw man that they’re going to take away all targeted ads and how they use deceptive research to create a narrative that ads won’t be relevant any more. It’s really BS by CCIA/Google/Facebook/IAB adtech lobby. /7
All this said, Dr Ryan comes in strong with reality check they must address market power. If you provide for a single consent and a weakly enforced GDPR then the gatekeepers will abuse this. The DMA must silo data as German Cartel Office has ordered Facebook (now in appeal). /8
By the way, ad fraud and toxic sludge are indeed downstream from data and competition policy which is brilliantly noted here. Solve integration of antitrust and privacy and you’ll boost industry integrity and hurt the bad guys currently being funded by advertising. 🤛 /9
Here is a link to the full hearing which I highly recommend. The US, UK, EU and Australia have been learning from each other on these issues. Two steps forward, one step backward, two steps forward… EU has next if they don’t screw it up ;) with ❤️ /eof europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-…
and here is @johnnyryan's full ten minutes which is well worth watching as he explains how ad auctions and the digital ad marketplace works. It's enlightening for those who aren't fully aware.

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More from @jason_kint

21 Nov
This entire Washington Post report today is a must-read and once again deeply disturbing receipts on Facebook’s willingness to allow toxic sludge in order to maintain global scalability. It sure seems like they lied during the most significant external audit in their history. /1 Image
Facebook even went to white people in the heart of deeply conservative America in order to establish content was objectionable. But even that apparently wasn’t enough to get Bickert+Kaplan to support that hate speech against the most vulnerable groups needed to be prioritized. /2 Image
The “worst of the worst” may better describe the governance, executive leadership and policy team that protects Facebook’s toxic and harmful business model putting profits over democracy and civil societies. Andy Stone once again features in this report protecting Kaplan. /3 Image
Read 7 tweets
20 Nov
This nuance is super important. Nearly $300B of advertising is funding the duopoly and they’re funding toxic sludge, “The tech giants are paying millions of dollars to the operators of clickbait pages, bankrolling the deterioration of information ecosystems around the world.” /1
This entire report is incredibly. By the way, this stat. And it should almost never happen. Without Facebook, the toxic sludge would only be seen by those explicitly choosing to go find it. This is nearly all Facebook’s doing using microtargeting, velocity and reach vehicles. /2
How many years have we been putting up with this? … Facebook PR protecting their profits over democracy and civil society by denying, delaying, deflecting. Wait for next tweet. /3
Read 4 tweets
19 Nov
Three hours.
Also three hours: The Wolf of Wall Street
3:01 Dances with Wolves
3:02 The Deer Hunter
3:05 King Kong
3:08 Magnolia
(thanks to @RepDonBeyer for the inspiration)
Read 6 tweets
18 Nov
Aah, Stanford researcher with a timely prompt. I'm going to have to do this, aren't I? The only right answer here is that we don't know. the entire case was a gigantic cover-up. There are very active lawsuits from major pension funds and powerful AGs to get answers. /1
Yes, many will reply to her that their methodology and targeting was "snake oil" but that’s still very much debated on use and impact but it's also irrelevant to the real issues at hand. /2
We do know... Cambridge Analytica contracted with a purpose-built intermediary that laundered and sold Facebook data to them. We also know the intermediary's CEO testified under oath he told facebook what he was doing in Sep '15, months prior to the first Dec '15 press report. /3
Read 18 tweets
18 Nov
Aah, Google->Stanford academic. I'm going to have to do this, aren't I? The only right answer here is that we don't know. The entire case was a gigantic cover-up, dust hasn't settled. There are VERY ACTIVE lawsuits from major pension funds and powerful AGs to get answers. /1
Yes, many will reply to her with FB's PR spin that their methodology and targeting was "snake oil" but that’s still very much debated/confused on the actual data use and relative goals and impact but it's also irrelevant to the real issues at hand. Here is what we DO know. /2
We do know... Cambridge Analytica contracted with a purpose-built intermediary that laundered and sold Facebook data to them. We also know the intermediary's CEO testified under oath he told facebook what he was doing in Sep '15, months prior to the first Dec '15 press report. /3
Read 19 tweets
18 Nov
"They are very good at dancing with data." - Facebook whistleblower. We've discussed this regarding Zuckerberg's misleading testimony on hate speech. But this Markup report is super important to understand prevalence of news brands. Stay with me here. /1 themarkup.org/citizen-browse…
When Facebook finally, under public and government pressure, began releasing a quarterly content report (first in q2 after reportedly suppressing q1), it's used a metric simply showing the # of users who saw links to a website without analyzing frequency of those sites. /2
any researcher with access to source data would avoid this pretty terrible metric. Since The Markup has developed its own source data from users volunteering their aggregated data for research, they are able to use a much better metric - taking into account frequency. /3
Read 7 tweets

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