Thread · 3 tweets · 3 Mar 2021

It's not that simple. What @ssnstudy et al. found was that it doesn't increase *publisher* value by that much, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't increase *intermediary* value. There are also, as you well know, many ways to track people. Google hasn't given up its own!

Additionally, it's very difficult to make an assessment from any of the studies because what is considered a "publisher" is hopelessly broad: any entity that provides inventory.

So it's entirely possible that, without cross-context tracking, high-quality news pubs lose little to nothing, whereas ad-supported whoopee cushion app "publishers" lose 95%. The 4% study was clearly a "real" publisher. Other studies are often useless because they blend it all.