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#adtech

13 posts13 participants0 posts today

Like CEOs at Coldplay concerts, we keep finding malicious adtech hiding behind well-known advertising brands. While these platforms may appear credible, they allow malicious actors access to their platform, and profit from their successes.

Our posts often focus on adtech operators because they are the ones who manage the infrastructure. But they are not the only ones profiting from this business. Affiliates play a big role by driving traffic (aka visitors) to the adtech platform (TDS).

Malicious affiliates do this by tricking visitors into clicking hidden links or manipulating pages to redirect them automatically. They are so good at it that they generate a profit just due to the sheer volume of traffic they drive into the platform.

Legitimate affiliates do this by posting what they believe to be normal ads on their web pages, tempted by promises of big rewards. Unfortunately for them, this is rarely the reality, and there are many reports of affiliates being underpaid or not paid at all. Additionally, affiliates risk damaging their own brand image – no one wants their legitimate website redirecting to malware, right?

As a user, regardless of how you find yourself diverted into a malicious TDS, if you happen to fit the profile then you face the risk of being sent to a malicious landing page. Scams, disinformation, malware…you name it.

As there are many players involved in this scheme, we’ve created an infographic that highlights who they are and how they fit into the malicious adtech landscape.

Have you come across any of these shady platforms or, worse, been lured into becoming part of the scheme? Let us know!

#adtech idea, that won't go anywhere: I'm currently in the market for 'shorts' if ad companies allowed me to select something I'm in the market for, and the ads were super relevant to me, I'd buy.

Show me all the shorts, and let me thumbs up & thumbs down as I see ads, then allow me to tell the system 'I purchased' and the flow stops

Me actually signaling that I'm interested is way more of a real buying signal than trying to guess based on my behavior.

good for the advertiser & good for me

"The Pay-or-Okay model adopted across the online news industry and platforms like Facebook and Instagram is “manipulative” and cannot be considered a free choice, a new report from the digital rights group noyb has found.

The report comes as the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which oversees the implementation of privacy rules in the EU, is considering formal guidelines regarding the use of the model, also known as Consent-or-Pay.

Organizations like noyb, a Vienna, Austria-based non-profit, have long called on regulators to adopt a stricter approach to Pay-or-Okay, which they say violates the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

According to the group, Pay-or-Okay does not provide users a genuine choice to refuse tracking, as required by privacy rules, because the alternative is too expensive.

“Right now, users are effectively and unlawfully nudged towards ‘consenting’ to being tracked. The EDPB now has the opportunity to take a clear stance on this issue in its upcoming guidelines,” said Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb."

cybernews.com/privacy/pay-or-o

The closest thing to standard #adtech in ActivityPub is Threads. One can argue that you cannot separate Threads from Meta’s behaviour, which at times it can be considered unethical. Is there an ethical approach to ‘buying’ visibility for your organisation in #mastodon?

Continued thread

The problem with that strategy is that its being crowded out by the enormous resources that #adtech has dedicated to further discover and exploit human weakness, #tiktok being the prime example.

The analogy is trying to free an enslaved drug addict by offering them a diet of fruits and veggies. Its clearly hopeless.

What could work is an invention that is at the same time wholesome for the individual and society *and* very attractive *and* doable on a miseable budget 🤦

Incredibly bad odds.

Continued thread

For the #fediverse and friends this raises some pretty stark challenges:

Clearly the promise of human-centricity, agency, #dataprivacy etc. does not resonate with the masses.

But importantly, it does not resonate with their appointed political stewards and assorted elites either: if not outright captured, they have made their Faustian bargains and are intensely relaxed about the #adtech dystopia.

Another potential wedge for disruption would be to offer something genuinely new...