“Billion Dollar Bully” Yelp Keeps Pressure On Businesses
Despite bad publicity and lawsuits, Yelp continues to tank ratings in order to punish those who won’t advertise.
Category: Advertising
Podcast #32: Josh Golin on Marketing to Kids
Josh Golin, Executive Director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, fights a metastasizing marketing machine that has swept kids into its orbit of consumerism and surveillance.
Podcast #28: Jonathan Taplin on Internet Aggregators
Jonathan Taplin, former music and film professional, tells first-hand what the new rentier economy of Internet aggregators like Google and Facebook has done to the creative arts, journalism, and democracy.
What Facebook Knows
We’ve long known Facebook is selling our data to advertisers in a vague sense; now we can see what they’re hoarding and who’s buying.
Podcast #19: Tim Kasser Talks Materialism
Tim Kasser has spent over two decades studying the relationship between materialism and well-being. As it turns out, they don’t always go together.
Geofencing: Corporate Surveillance in the Real World
Geofencing is the way corporations and advertisers track your every move–literally.
The Technoskeptic Ad Translator
Check out The Technoskeptic’s take on some particularly lampoonable technology ads.
For Yelp, Extortion Has a Starring Role
Yelp uses the power of its rating system to bully small businesses into buying their expensive advertising; if they decline, so do their ratings.
The Suicide Algorithm: Facebook’s Self-Appointed Role in Mental Health
Facebook’s invasive attempts to identify suicidal individuals, while collecting revenue from advertisers targeting them, may do more harm than good.
Podcast #8: Tim Wu On Attention and Communications Networks
Tim Wu is a renowned scholar on our communications networks, having coined the phrase “net neutrality” and written extensively on the subject both inside and outside of government and academia, including the White House and Columbia University. His latest book, The Attention Merchants, is a history of advertising, and it’s not pretty. He spoke with us about our declining private spheres, the current state of the Internet, and the effects of what he calls The Cycle, as new communications technologies inevitably move from open to closed.