Click Here for Sexy Crypto Trump TikTok Nazi Kitties
Inside the duplicitous worlds of digital advertising and the attention economy
Gotcha!
We’ve all been hit by clickbait. You think you’re a click away from those hot new pics of Keanu Reeves shirtless on the beach, but instead you end up being pitched crypto by some mummy wearing a bath towel. What the Internet has shown is that advertisers will do anything — lie, cheat, and definitely steal — to grab your attention. And no one has been more successful at snatching our attention — and then getting rich off it — than Meta and Google.
At their core Google and Meta are ad-agencies — middle-men to companies who want to sell you crap. Doubt it? Check the numbers: Google gets 80% of its revenue from selling ads; Meta, a whopping 99%. In other words, these companies aren’t helping you find “friends” or providing all-inclusive cloud platforms, but tricking you to buy stuff. They’re 21st century Mad Men, sipping Soylent instead of scotch, and armed with tools of surveillance and manipulation that go far beyond even Don Draper’s wildest dreams. And they’re close to taking over the world.
As of 2021, 86% of the world’s Internet searches went through Google. Meta’s three apps — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — have 3.6 billion…
