BC INTERNET
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

There are lots of problems with ad-tech:

* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;

* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;

1/

 * data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");

* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and

2/
* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;

That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.

3/
Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.

4/
Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the fraud.

https://t.co/4mKAB25rnY

5/
Time and again, everything in the ad-tech stack has been demonstrated to be fraudulent: fake audiences firing fake clicks at fake videos on fake sites that suck real dollars out of advertisers' accounts.

6/
This was masterfully elucidated in @timhwang's short 2020 book SUBPRIME ATTENTION CRISIS, whose thesis is: we must deflate the ad-tech bubble intentionally, lest we get a messy rupture that destroys many of the good things the parasite has colonized.

https://t.co/pmWMTNsPRp

7/
The ad-tech fraud is many-layered. On the surface, there's the counting frauds: fake clicks, fake sites, fake videos, etc. But there's a deeper fraud, a theory fraud, the fraud that with enough surveillance data and machine learning, ad-tech can sell anyone anything.

8/
That is: even if we count accurately, ads are still overvalued and underperforming. This is also a lesson whose examples are coming with increasing tempo, as when Ebay simply stopped buying Google search ads and saw NO decrease in sales.

https://t.co/eHL39RRRho

9/
In a piece for @Forbes, marketer-turned-antifraud-auditor @acfou rounds up some of the grossest things festering under the ad-tech log.

https://t.co/5mfJwONF0x

10/
Like that time in 2018 when Procter and Gamble - inventors of "brand marketing" - turned off $200m worth of ad-tech buys and saw no change to their sales. Or when Chase killed 95% of its advertising and kept all of its business.

11/
Most interesting is the tale of how @Uber allowed itself to be defrauded of $150m/year, for years, by ad-tech intermediaries. It's a story told in detail by former Uber head of "performance marketing" @kevin_frisch on the @themktgtoday podcast:

https://t.co/pWgXAeloqX

12/
It starts with the revelation that $50m of its annual spend on customer acquisitions - money paid when an ad leads to a new Uber customer downloading the app, entering payment details and taking their first ride - was fraudulent.

13/
Here's how that worked: scummy marketers fielded low-quality apps (like battery monitors) that requested root access. These apps spied on every app you installed. If you installed Uber, they "fired a click" to the system to report you as having been "converted" by an ad.

14/
After clearing $50m of fraud, Frisch continued to dig into the system. In the end, about $120m of the $150m was being stolen, pocketed for fake clicks on fake sites by fake users.

15/
In a fascinating turn, Frisch describes how his colleagues were indifferent or actively hostile to his efforts. Uber was in "growth mode," trying to beef up its numbers prior to the IPO where suckers would relieve its Saudi royal investors.

16/
Uber is a company that will never, ever be profitable. It, too, is a bezzle. It only "works" if outside investors - marks - can somehow be convinced to buy the insiders' stock, which requires the appearance of growth - AKA "A pile of shit this big MUST have a pony under it!"

17/
So execs like Frisch were required to "spend to budget" - to maintain the appearance of growth, including (especially) the growth of its "precision analytics" marketing, where ad-tech spends turned into directly attributable customer acquisitions.

18/
This is the story that keeps on giving, because it all starts with @slpng_giants's campaign to force Uber to stop advertising on Breitbart, and Uber's inability to get its ad-tech "partners" to definitively switch off Breitbart ads.

https://t.co/YsedrbEzSE

19/
The system's layers of misdirection - there to hide the fraud - meant that it behaved nondeterministically and couldn't fulfil simple requests, which triggered the search.

20/
There's a theory that the reason Big Tech spies on us so much is that they're really good at turning data into sales (and, by extension, influence, as in elections, referenda, etc). But it is increasingly apparent that Big Tech's spying is part of a bezzle.

21/
That is, we're being surveilled, doxed, placed under automated suspicion and digitally discriminated against all to put on a show that separates marks from their dollars.

This is the theme of my 2020 book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM:

https://t.co/Us0SPxlcmD

22/
Namely, that we are under constant surveillane because monopolies can get away with obviously fraudulent and dangerous conduct by mobilizing their monopoly profits to buy political outcomes that serve their ends.

23/
This is also what happened with #Prop22, the most expensive ballot initiative in US history: Uber didn't spearhead a $200m campaign to legalize worker misclassification to become profitable.

Uber will never be profitable.

24/
All that money was spent to maintain the fiction, the fraud, the bezzle - it was an appeal to rescue the wholly fictional pony underneath that gigantic pile of shit.

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government"; Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/7JMcAbaULj

#Pluralistic

1/


Monday night, I'll be helping William Gibson launch the paperback edition of his novel AGENCY at a Strand Bookstore videoconference. Come say hi!

https://t.co/k3fvBdqOK0

2/


Stop saying "it's not censorship if it's not the government": I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

https://t.co/7I0MpCTez5

3/


Trump's swamp gators find corporate refuge: The Swamped project.

https://t.co/MUJyIOr2iw

4/


#15yrsago A-Hole bill would make a secret technology into the law of the land https://t.co/57bJaM1Byr

#15yrsago Hollywood’s MP loses the election — hit the road, Sam! https://t.co/12ssYpV46B

#15yrsago How William Gibson discovered science fiction https://t.co/MYR0go37nW

5/
TRUMP
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
After the 9/11 attacks, airlines and public buildings adopted a flurry of "security" measures, like taking away pen-knives from fliers or requiring visitors to office buildings to be photographed or present a driver's license.

1/


Bruce Schneier's seminal 2003 "Beyond Fear" called these measures: #securitytheater.

Schneier pointed out that these measures would be easy to circumvent, and were thus providing only the comforting appearance of security - not security

Security theater is worse than nothing. Security theater gives people the false impression that their risks have been mitigated, when actually things are just as dangerous.

After al, if you know that danger exists, you can take some steps to mitigate or avoid it.

3/

But if you have the false impression that you've been made safer, you might unwittingly engage in risky behavior.

4/

Like, if you know your car's brakes are flaky, you might nurse the car along to the mechanic at low speed on side-streets.

But if you don't know about the brakes, you're apt to discover their flaws at 75mph on the freeway.

5/
FOR LATER READ
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Surveillance companies assure us that they employ safeguards to ensure that their customers aren't abusing their products to engage in unlawful or unethical surveillance. And yet, inevitably, these companies abuse their tools THEMSELVES.

1/


It's almost as though being the kind of person who dreams of achieving incredible wealthy by spying on people makes you kind of an asshole.

2/

Like the people at @VerkadaHQ, "a fast-growing Silicon Valley surveillance startup" whose male employees used its own products to sexually harass their female colleagues and received the barest wrist-slaps for

Male Verkada employees maintained a private Slack channel where executives posted photos of female employees - captured with the company's own surveillance tools - and made sexually explicit remarks about them.

4/

When this came to light, the company's founder and CEO Filip Kaliszan called an all-hands meeting, expressed disappointment in the harassers, and told them that they could either quit...or lose some stock options. They chose the latter and remain employed there to this day.

5/
TECH
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The pandemic has afforded all of us a refresher course on the five stages of grief, a theoretical and controversial framework for describing how people cope with tragedy: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

https://t.co/nqPmjCvyab

1/


A far slower-moving unfolding of these stages can be seen in the reactions of the super-wealthy to the breakdown in neoliberal orthodoxy, the tale that says that inequality results from meritocracy, and makes us all better

Denial came out in the "rationalist" view: the world is better off than ever - richer, less violent, healthier, and any discontent you feel with your plummeting fortunes and the contracting possibilities for your kids is just your tunnel vision. Lack of perspective.

3/

But the Great Financial Crisis and Occupy triggered the anger of the elites: violent suppression of protests, the "Doom Boom" in new luxury bunkers, Howard Schultz's insistence that "billionaire" is a slur (he says we should call him a "person of wealth").

4/

The pandemic - and the "K-shaped recovery"- has revealed the existential threat inequality poses for our species, between price-gouging, fraud, profiteering, flouting health directives, and coercing the poor and vulnerable into risking their lives to keep the economy afloat.

5/
SOCIETY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
2018 was almost the year we won the #RightToRepair.

Instead, 2018 turned out to be the year we lost #R2R: 20 bills defeated in 20 state houses, and it was mostly @apple's fault.

1/


Apple has a problem. As CEO Tim Cook warned his investors at the conclusion of his company's repair-killing lobbying spree, Apple's profits depend on people throwing away their devices, not fixing them.

By monopolizing repairs, Apple doesn't just get to gouge you on parts and service - the real action is in pronouncing your device DOA, beyond repair. Then you have to buy another one.

3/

Other companies lobbied hard against R2R: John Deere, GM, and other monopolists backed Apple's play. But Apple wrote the playbook, coming up with risible bullshit like claims that blocking independent repair is essential to protecting

Apple's anti-repair FUD got picked up and amplified by Big Car in 2020, when they spent millions fighting an automotive R2R ballot initiative in Massachusetts, claiming that letting independent mechanics at your car would lead to your actual MURDER.
BUSINESS

More from Internet

Amit Ganguli
Amit Ganguli
@amit_ganguli
Many conversations happening on #WhatsApp (WA) groups about new #WhatsAppPrivacyPolicy .
This thread has arguments to help ditch WA & move to @signalapp:
https://t.co/En4fe9VxUN
Share, use, copy-paste, modify with understanding as you deem fit on any platform in whole or part
1/n

Note: No affiliations, conflict of interest
Info presented with NO bias, prejudice, malice or indemnity.
Open to corrections: individual tweets may be deleted, tweets added to thread or corrected as replies.
Points that are unclear or uncertain are marked with "(?)".
2/n

CONTENT OF WA MESSAGES SHALL REMAIN ENCRYPTED END TO END.
BUT, there's data: contacts, group affiliations, co-affiliations, locations (live?), frequency of contacts, *tags* generated when we send or forward a message or file to contacts or groups, links, clicks on links, etc.
3/n

It is unclear whether this data is anonymized.
NOTHING in latest policy *prevents* the collection, retention, sharing or sale by FaceBook (FB: owner of WA) of this data in part or whole whether with identifying information or anonymized.
Meme source:
https://t.co/nMDTUlb0rl
4/n


Companies need to make money & generate profits:
To create software, install & maintain infrastructure.
Google, FB, Insta, Amazon etc sell data created from our content & data generated from our interactions (searches, clicks, purchases etc).
This makes many uncomfortable.
5/n
INTERNET
Elky
Elky
@Elky_Style
Company
Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump
By Twitter Inc.
Friday, 8 January 2021
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter —


we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. 

In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.

Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. 

However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are

not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement. 

The below is a comprehensive analysis of our policy enforcement approach in this case.

Overview

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form
INTERNET
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Francesco Ciulla
Francesco Ciulla
@FrancescoCiull4
One of my purposes for 2021 is to simplify Docker for beginners.

Let's start with some definitions:

🏠Docker host
⚙️Docker engine
❓ Docker client
📝Dockerfile
📑Docker Image
🐳Docker Container
🐙Docker Compose
🪣 Docker Registry
🐳🐳🐳Docker Swarm

Definitions Below 👇

🏠Docker (Active) Host

A computer with Docker installed and the daemon running.

It can process Docker and non-Docker workloads.

⚙️Docker Engine

A Client-Server application. It has 3 components:

- "daemon process": A server that is a type of long-running program.

- "Rest API": to specify interfaces that programs can use to talk and interact with the daemon.

- "CLI": A command-line interface client

❓Docker Client

It sends commands to dockerd, using the Docker API.
It can communicate with multiple daemons.

📝Dockerfile

It's a text document that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an image.
INTERNET
Disclosure Backpack
Disclosure Backpack
@DisclosureBP
Affidavit by former head of IT for large Italian defense contractor admitting he uploaded instructions through military satellite to Frankfurt to flip votes from Trump to Biden on election night under direction of US persons. Willing to testify.#ItalyDidIt
INTERNET
Carey is destroying dreams
Carey is destroying dr...
@PrivaCat
Well, this should be a depressing read -- notably because the UK and the US are both terrible when it comes to data protection, but the UK appears to be getting a pass. So much for 'adequacy'.


A few initial thoughts on the Draft Decision on UK Adequacy: https://t.co/ncAqc93UFm

The decision goes into great detail about the state of the UK surveillance system, and notably, "bulk acquisition" of data, and I think I get their argument. /1

For one, while the UK allows similar "bulk powers," it differs from the US regime both in terms of proportionality, oversight, and even notice. Some of this came about after the Privacy International case in 2019 (Privacy International) v Investigatory
Powers Tribunal [2019]) /2

Whereas, other bits were already baked in by virtue of the fact that the Human Rights Act is a thing (This concept doesn't exist in the US; rather we hand-wave about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and then selectively apply it) /3

For example, UK bulk surveillance (I'm keeping this broad, but the draft policy breaksk it down), substantially limits collection to three agencies: MI5, MI6, and GHCQ). By contrast, it's a bit of a free-for-all in the US, where varying policies /4
INTERNET

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Funny, before the election I recall lefties muttering the caravan must have been a Trump setup because it made the open borders crowd look so bad. Why would the pro-migrant crowd engineer a crisis that played into Trump's hands? THIS is why. THESE are the "optics" they wanted.


This media manipulation effort was inspired by the success of the "kids in cages" freakout, a 100% Stalinist propaganda drive that required people to forget about Obama putting migrant children in cells. It worked, so now they want pics of Trump "gassing children on the border."

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