Musk is trying to get out of his promised Twitter buyout because TSLA stock is down 30% since January and thanks to inflation, future demand looks soft. He wants to conserve cash. Saw that one coming a few miles away. But this whole sham marriage has been useful to observe because of the discussion it generated — around algorithms and “free speech,” to be sure, but also around the issue of click fraud.
My company shopped a solution for click fraud years and years ago. No one was interested. No one cared. Plenty of media and tech companies were staying afloat off the revenues from fake accounts and fake viewership. It was like having an apple cart balanced on top of an elephant’s back. Nobody wanted to talk about the elephant in the room, for fear of disturbing it and upsetting the cart.
Our approach back then was interesting, but flawed. The main problem isn’t spam — it’s that the old monetization models for print and broadcast media didn’t translate well to online content — and the new model, popularized by Facebook and Google of selling and segmenting based on personal data is anti-competitive and troubling from a privacy perspective. Today I have a better grasp on what would actually work to address this problem. And honestly, it’s too good an idea to share here.
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