You should be using an RSS reader: The one thing you can choose to do that will make your internet life better and make the internet better for everyone else, too.
Itâs hard to overstate how liberating the early years of internet publishing were. After a century of publishing driven by the needs of an audience, we could finally switch to a model driven by the interests of writers.
That meant that instead of trying to figure out what some âdemographicâ wanted to read about, we wrote what we wanted to read, and then waited for people who share our interests to show up and read and comment and write their own blogs and newsletters and whatnot.
When the first ad networks came along, they leaned into this model: âHere is a writer whose audience has this approximate composition and interests; if thatâs a group youâre trying to reach, then hereâs a rate card to show those people ads.â
Back in those days, it seemed that ad targeting would enable more niches, more âlong tailâ publications tailoring to the esoteric, gnarly interests of writers and readers.
But that was wrong. As behavioral ad targeting took off, and with it, social networks and recommendation algorithms, the money shifted to follow readers around on the internet. Some readers were worth more than others. Showing an ad for a contingency liability lawyer to someone with a mesothelioma diagnosis was worth a bundle, for example, but you didnât have to write about asbestos or lung cancer to score ad revenue from that user. Continue reading "So Youâve Decided to Unfollow Me"
Call center workers pay for the privilege: Propublica breaks open the massive, secretive abuser Arise, fronted by Disney, Airbnb, Intuit, Comcast, Carnival and more.
