Thread · 3 tweets · 20 Jul 2022

One interesting aspect of @netflix's foray into advertising is that it's bringing battles over privacy to TV. Right now, TV systems are pretty leaky, with connected TVs and the likes of Roku observing and reselling behaviour. That's incompatible with Netflix's interests.

You can only have a large scale sustainable ad business as a first party if intermediaries aren't able to extract and remonetise your data. Today's Web is captured by intermediaries for precisely the reason that it's a poor privacy environment.

Those mistakes are being fixed on the Web, which is why you're seeing rearguard anti-privacy activism from intermediaries. I look forward to seeing Netflix enter the arena.