CW: Politics, Russia, Advertising Show more
One thing that isn't discussed enough is how the current dominance of ad-tech on the internet actively facilitates propaganda, e.g. of the sort used by Russia or US super-PACs to influence elections. We've built a system that is incredibly efficient and finely tuned to follow individuals around and target them with information specifically tailored to each demographic to maximally affect their feelings and actions, and commoditized this access to human minds
CW: Politics, Russia, Advertising Show more
It's been a slow burn, but there's no putting the fire back in the matches now. We're in a world where ad-tech is pervasive in nearly every communication form, and getting more and more effective at massive scale individual targeting and understanding how to affect individual people. There's no material difference between the tech that makes you buy a Starbucks Latte and the tech that makes you start to support Nazis.