Thread · 5 tweets · 18 Jan 2021

It's easy to read this as just some technical cheating over ads from Google and Facebook in collusion. But this deal alone made sure hundreds of millions of dollars earned by publishers were kept between those two companies. 🧶 nyti.ms/3imRzwt

This can be measured directly in journalism jobs. There are stories like the #MeToo ones or the Trump Taxes that none of us know about as a direct result of this "Jedi Blue" deal. Let that sink in.

It's also not isolated, it's a system. Most of what Facebook asked from Google in that deal was that Google wouldn't get to cheat with them as they do with others (hide the prices, reuse the data, keep identity to itself).

And what do publishers do if their ad revenue is held artificially low? They increase the volume and invasiveness of ads. In turn this makes AMP attractive, which furthers Google's strategy of running the Web the way it runs YouTube, like a toxic strip mall.

The silver lining in this is that it is pretty clear that they cheat because they couldn't compete on a level playing field. With just a bit of levelling we can both get democracy back and enjoy watching them reinvent themselves as service companies.