Thread · 4 tweets · 9 Feb 2022

This seems funny - sites that use adtech don't understand it! - but it's a big part of why the system is so hard to change: people are scared of tinkering with what they don't understand because they can't tell what change will bring. t.co/Yq02jU9Tpy

Forget privacy, the system is worth reforming on opacity, fraud, and inefficiency alone. Most studies of adtech economics, even the few that don't have industry conflicts, have methodological gaps that you could drive a supertanker through.

I don't know of many industries in which you can funnel hundreds of billions through a system yet have no traceability whatsoever. It would be comical if it weren't a key piece of democratic infrastructure.

It should be a key tenet of any reform of advertising that we get full farm to table transparency down to the auction and impression label. It might reveal marketing strategies, but the trade-off is worth it.