21 Feb 2019 Search

White power assholes are not exactly the smartest people on the Internet. State-sponsored manipulation operations have better skills and can use the domestic guys as human sock puppets.

Pedophiles aren’t the smartest people on the Internet either. Even the “highly technical dark web” pedo networks are using off-the-shelf tricks that are far behind what even the most basic adfraud operation can pull off.

So I’m writing to explain why I’m going to move your long-form think piece about the “power” of the Internet “duopoly” to the probably-never-going-to-get-to-it end of my to-do list. Let’s have a look at just the last 24 hours:

(Come back in 24 hours for more.) You’re asking me to be interested in reading your ever-so-thoughtful essay about the awesome power of two companies that have to be like the fifth most influential people on the Internet, max. Even the Facebook ad integrity guy is down to asking for free reports of scam ads, on Twitter.Dude, if the “get everybody else to do your QA for you” strategy worked, then we’d all be running desktop Linux.

The “powerful platforms” are a box on the Internet cable between terrible marketing decisions on one end and criminals and terrorists on the other. A box maintained by vaguely creepy but not especially interesting IT staff. Yes, let’s write about CMOs who attach their brands to heinous shit—what’s up with that? Yes, let’s write about the criminals who end up with the money—that can’t be good. But the companies in the middle are not the story.