This is part three of an ongoing, five-part series. Part one, the introduction, is here. Part two, about breaking up ad-tech companies, is here.The ad-tech industry is incredibly profitable, raking in hundreds of billions of dollars every year by spying on us. These companies have tendrils that...
The book Manufacturing Consent has an excellent analysis of how advertising is one of the major filters which affect the content of news. Regardless of whether it is surveillance ads or not, the model of advertising, while lucrative, profoundly compromises the integrity of news.
Of course, I understand (and I believe the book also suggests) most news can’t be expected to self-sustain and compete without having ads in their economic model. So this isn’t a rebuttal to the article’s discussion on “Non-creepy” contextual ads.
Bruce Schneier’s also echoed Chomsky in a way when he said that surveillance was the business model of the Internet.