Thread · 5 tweets · 7 May 2020

I’m not sure that “what about other industries?” is the right question, and even less “what about corporations?” (cf Coase) or “what about brick&mortar?” :) Questions I would ask might be: • In what other industry would it be acceptable that 15% of the money in unaccounted for?

• How can it be that an alliance of some of the best investigative companies and some of the richest brands could barely pull this together, on a tiny fragment of the ecosystem? • If we consider a free press essential to democracy, is this how we should run it?

• Is a system that treats every source of inventory as a “publisher”, whether it’s the only thing holding local government to account or the 7,000th torchlight app, the right system?

• If all of brands, publishers, and users are deeply unhappy with the system, what is wrong with the power structure in advertising that this system does not change?

• And of course, the all-time-favourite 😇: there’s one company that has the data to provide the transparency this study is (yet again) showing to be missing, why isn’t it working to organise that part of the world's information to make it universally accessible and useful? 🤗