Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Three years ago, on the way to my apartment in Brooklyn to cook dinner for myself and a friend, we stopped into a grocery store that offered build-your-own six-packs of beer. The store had dozens of options of craft beers and ciders in weird flavors, from obscure breweries we had never heard of. We idly…
Google has scrambled to remove third-party apps that led users to child porn sharing groups on WhatsApp in the wake of TechCrunch’s report about the problem last week. We contacted Google with the name of one these apps and evidence that it and others offered links to WhatsApp groups for sharing child exploitation imagery. Following publication of our…
Photo: Artwork by Ayatgali Tuleubek In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered. Digital advertisers tend to want two things: people to look at their ads and “premium” websites — i.e., established and legitimate publications…
Tapping through Palak Joshi’s Instagram Stories recently, you might have come across a photo that looked like standard sponsored content: a shiny white box emblazoned with the red logo for the Chinese phone manufacturer OnePlus and the number six, shot from above on a concrete background. It featured the branded hashtag tied to the phone’s…
The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails — each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor…
Call them irritating data guzzlers, but native rich-media ads will play a significant role in reviving display advertising across the internet in 2019. Display advertising in its traditional form has been shrinking for a long time and has reached a point where all those leaderboards and square box ads have become blind-spots for the users….
In August 2017, the FBI organized a secret meeting of digital advertising and cybersecurity experts in a secure room in a Manhattan federal building. The roughly 30 people in attendance met to create a coordinated response to a massive ad fraud scheme that posed a risk to the global digital advertising industry and sparked a…
This following is from an SEC filing released today by Verizon regarding it’s “Oath” media business. That’s the unit which owns the assets of Yahoo, AOL and Huffington Post … Verizon’s Media business, branded Oath, has experienced increased competitive and market pressures throughout 2018 that have resulted in lower than expected revenues and earnings. These…
Harvard Business School invented the “leadership” industry—and produced a generation of corporate monsters. No wonder Sandberg, one of the school’s most prominent graduates, lacks a functioning moral compass. Sandberg arrives for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on September 5, 2018. By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call. The ongoing three-way public-relations car wreck involving Washington, Facebook, and…
Last week news came out that Mic, a publication that I once worked at for the better part of two years, laid off its entire editorial staff. Staffers were given zero warning. Management told them during a Thursday morning meeting that their computer access would be cut off at 2 p.m., that they’d get just…