Ad Hominem #1
Let's get the ball rolling...
Welcome to the first issue of ‘Ad Hominem’, a new weekly-ish newsletter where I’ll be sharing stories from around the web on the changing nature of AdTech, surveillance capitalism, and the privacy issues that face every individual in the modern marketplace.
If you’ve been forwarded this email from a friend, you can read other issues and sign up here. It’s my hope that this newsletter can be valuable to you, the reader, so please feel free to reach out with suggestions or requests, and if you do enjoy reading this email, please share the signup link with your friends.
Twitter updates its policy on political content // Social media advertising has fundamentally changed the landscape of global politics. Facebook is a much bigger player here, but this change from Twitter is interesting and probably a step in the right direction. All ads from PACs as well as campaigns are banned under this policy.
Related, watch Sacha Baron Cohen’s speech at the ADL on the responsibility of social media giants to not remain “neutral” on truth.
ReWork (The Basecamp Podcast): A Hosty Retreat // A great comparison interview between reps from two podcast hosting companies, one of which uses targeted advertising, and the other which does not. Basecamp recently migrated their podcast hosting between these two companies as part of their push for increased customer privacy.
This article in The Correspondent which insinuates that online advertising may actually be in a ‘bubble’, in which expectations and reality are out of alignment, and advertisers aren’t getting the value they expect from their campaigns.
Some updates from Google on how they are responding to CCPA and safeguarding user privacy.
So that’s issue #1, and this will be the basic format. If you have any feedback, please let me know on Twitter. Thank you for your time and attention. I know it’s your most precious resource.