archive/mc433
Franklin Foer,
Christian Fuchs,
Wolfgang Streeck,
Frank Pasquale,
Evgeny Morozov,
George Ritzer,
Nick Srnicek,
Nancy Fraser,
Arjun Appadurai,
Yann Moulier-Boutang
tech and justice essay quotes
The first breach in the barricade is something called "branded content" or "native advertising". [...] It is an ad that is written to resemble journalism--a pseudo-piece about the new scientific consensus [...] the ads are usually produced by the media companies themselves, not an ad agency. [..] There's usually a tag indicating that the article has been "sponsored" or "paid for by advertisers." But it's as discreet as possible, and that's the point. Advertisers will pay a premium for branded content, because it stands such a good chance of confusing the reader into clicking.
The profusion of data has changed the character of journalism. It has turned it into a commodity, something to be marketed, tested, and calibrated. Perhaps media have always thought this way. But if that impulse always existed, it was at least buffered. [...]
tech accelerating, microcosm
[...] Capitalism has always dreamed of activating the desire to consume, the ability to tap the human brain to stimulate its desire for products that it never contemplated needing. Data helps achieve this old dream. It makes us more malleable, easier to addict, prone to nudging. It's the reason that Amazon recommendations for your next purchase so often result in sales, or why Google ads result in clicks.
Because circulation was never a profitable business, the Internet hardly required a large leap of imagination. Instead of selling journalism to readers at a loss, media would give it away for nothing. Media executives bet everything on a fantasy: Publishing free articles on the Internet would enable newspapers and magazines to increase their readership manifold; advertising riches would follow the audience growth. [...]
It might have worked, were it not for Google and Facebook. Newspapers and magazines assumed that the Web would be like a giant newsstand--and readers would remain attached to the sterling reputations of their titles, their distinctive sensibility, and brand-name writers. The new megaportals changed all that. They became the entry point for the Internet--and when readers entered, they hardly paid attention to the names attached to the journalism they read.
With their enormous scale, Facebook and Google could undercut media, selling ad space for phenomenally little because they had nearly infinite windows of display. Since they specialized in collecting data on their users, they could guarantee advertisers a precisely micro-targeted audience. [...]
Advertising has become an unwinnable battle. Facebook and Google will always beat media. Between 2006 and 2017, advertiser spending on newspapers dropped by nearly 75 percent, with most of that money redirected to Facebook and Google. Money shifted because the tech monopolists simply do a much better job of steadily holding the attention of audiences.