Advertising powers the Web. What if it just doesn't work?
Is the Ad-Tech Model powering the Internet really the next financial bubble?
Dear DWeb Community, We want to invite you next Wednesday, October 14 at 10 AM PT to the launch of a significant new book by Internet researcher, Tim Hwang: Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet. If you don't already know Tim, he's is a polymath: former Google AI policy wonk, lawyer, polemicist. In other words, just the kind of thinker the builders of a new web should know.
Subprime Attention Crisis makes the case that the core advertising model driving Google, Facebook, and many of the most powerful companies on the internet is—at its heart—a multibillion dollar financial bubble. Drawing parallels to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, Tim shines a spotlight on the lack of transparency, flawed incentives, and outright fraud that keep this machine running.
After reading this review of Tim's book in WIRED, Cory Doctorow tweeted: "I just bumped Hwang's book to the top of my pile." Join us for a virtual book talk with the author and New York Times technology reporter Kashmir Hill. Their discussion will tackle:
- Why data-driven, online advertising may be much, much less effective than it looks
- The long-term impact of the COVID-19 recession on the media and online ads
- Whether or not the giants of Big Tech are already “too big to fail”
This discussion will also focus on the future, and how we might be able to transition to a better, more financially robust internet. Joining the discussion will be Desigan Chinniah, who co-leads Grant for the Web—a $100 million fund launched by our friends at Coil & Mozilla & Creative Commons to spur open standards and new web monetization protocols for the web.
Hope you'll join us. The first 50 people to buy a copy of the book from our local bookseller Booksmith will receive an autographed copy!
Best, Wendy
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