Google and Facebook are taking most of the advertising revenue, which is naturally undermining Murdoch as the biggest player in conventional mass media.
The question is how much money are they making? They can transfer money around and avoid tax, but if how much they are making is opaque, they cannot even be taxed properly on turnover.
Australia is leading the world in wanting to tax google to pay for other media that produce content. Who will be the main beneficiary of this? Murdoch; of course. So actually the Australian government is doing Murdoch’s bidding. This is unlikely to be a coincidence. We are having an inquiry into Murdoch’s power on one hand, and passing special laws to give him money on the other.
The key problem is that the media funding model is broken. Years ago media proprietors were willing to keep editorial and advertising departments separate. No more. At first we found there were fewer stories about smoking caused disease in the women’s magazines that took the advertising. Then we noticed that Murdoch’s coverage of Indonesia and China were slanted when he was trying to buy satellites or networks. Naturally his companies were well reported in his newspapers, then there was cross-promotion of his other businesses. So as well as restricting content critical of advertisers things progressed to having stories slanted to be more exciting rather than more accurate or relevant.
Now, as social media eats away at conventional media advertising revenue they sack journalists to save money and delete or slant stories even more.
Simply funding good people to produce news is what has been done with the ABC on the BBC model, and this is what should happen. But the current government wants to manage the media and so want to de-fund the ABC.
So while I favour simply taxing google on its income and using the money to fund the ABC there are a number of problems with this. Who will or can make google disclose how much money it makes and where? An international cooperative of taxation departments empowered to send in IT-savvy forensic accountants? Can governments ever be trusted to fund public media adequately and then not interfere in what they report?
The inquiry into media diversity is now a reality, and submissions close quite soon- 11 December.
Please make a submission, even if it only short- we need to show that a lot of people care about this issue.
It seems to me that the funding model s broken. Years ago, the wealthy Fairfax family got all the ad revenue and were relatively happy to let the journalists write what they liked. When the ad revenue started to fall, the stories were more to please the advertisers so that they would use this paper. Of course stories that were against their interest simply did not happen, so self-censorship got worse. As the paper got thinner, there was simply not enough space for many stories, which worsened the situation.
Finally a senior financial journalist told me that rather then headline writers putting headlines on his finished stories, he was being told the (catchy) headline and asked to write the story to under it. There was naturally some pressure to make sure that the story was at least consistent with the arbitrarily chosen (click inviting) headline.
The rise of social media has of course siphoned off a huge percentage of the ad revenue, and stories can be posted and accessed free, so those funding journalists have a problem.
Democratic ideas and the social media have made many people think that an ignorant opinion has the same value as an informed one. The algorithms that are to keep us watching give us the friends who think like we do, so as we think we see the world, we actually see our own sub-cultural bubble.
Since the funding mechanism is broken, this must be admitted and a new model found. Putting money into existing structures that work, like the ABC and SBS is obviously a good start, but not popular with the commercial media, who see them merely as subsidised competitors.
The idea that google and Facebook should subsidise the commercial media is also a convenient one for Murdoch. It is a massive government interference in the market. Presumably if the ABC is not involved in this subsidy scheme the algorithms would favour free information sources, which would in itself not be a bad thing, though it may also favour blogs of indifferent quality.
It would seem that if Google and Facebook had to pay a ‘turnover tax’ based on their revenue from Australian consumers we could have a sensible debate about how the money should be allocated to inform the population. As well as the ABC and SBS, entities like the Australian Bureau of Statistics might be worth considering, so that they can generate information and then distribute it to inform debate. The idea of evidence-driven policy is not dead, merely very ill.
If the government believes in competition as it professes to do, it must make rules that level the playing field. Chapter One of the economics books tell of open markets, which are modelled on some sort of medieval village where many farmers come to the square on market day, and the consumers have to spend all their money wisely and choose how much of each product they will buy. This is a very limited model and the rest of the textbooks tell about the development of monopolies, oligopolies, collusion, barriers to entry and other distortions to this simplistic market model. It seems that the politicians never get past chapter one. They need to this time. If you want a competitive market there need to be regulations that just stop big fish eating little fish.
It is important that a lot of submissions are received, and it would be good if they had a range of suggestions. Please put one in.
About 37 years ago BUGA UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) identified the problem of advertisers marketing to children and produced a guide, ‘AdExpo- A Self-Defence Course for Children’. It was in black and white as BUGA UP had no money and the ads are a bit dated now, but the text us still relevant. www.bugaup.org/publications/Ad_Expo.pdf
Advertisers market to children, and are successful with it. Now there is the internet, which has made things a lot worse. Kids can be targeted with the parents only dimly aware of what is going on, and before the kids have actually been formally ‘taught’ anything. The ads are part of the exciting environment that their little heroes show them. At last attention is being drawn to this. This article is from the NY Times, with a cut-down version in the SMH of 7-8/11/20.
Popular YouTube channels often bombard young children with thinly veiled ads for junk food, a new study finds.
One of the most popular YouTube videos from Ryan’s World shows its star, Ryan Kaji, pretending to be a cashier at McDonald’s. “It’s a stealthy and powerful way of getting these unhealthy products in front of kids’ eyeballs,” a public health expert says.Credit…via YouTube
That is the conclusion of a new study published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics. The authors of the study analyzed over 400 YouTube videos featuring so-called kid influencers — children with large social media followings who star in videos that show them excitedly reviewing toys, unwrapping presents and playing games. The study found that videos in this genre, which attract millions of young followers and rack up billions of views, were awash in endorsements and product placements for brands like McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr., Hershey’s, Chuck E. Cheese and Taco Bell.
About 90 percent of the foods featured in the YouTube videos were unhealthy items like milkshakes, French fries, soft drinks and cheeseburgers emblazoned with fast food logos. The researchers said their findings were concerning because YouTube is a popular destination for toddlers and adolescents. Roughly 80 percent of parents with children 11 years old or younger say they let their children watch YouTube, and 35 percent say their children watch it regularly.
A spokeswoman for YouTube, citing the age requirement on its terms of service, said the company has “invested significantly in the creation of the YouTube Kids app, a destination made specifically for kids to explore their imagination and curiosity on a range of topics, such as healthy habits.” She added, “We don’t allow paid promotional content on YouTube Kids and have clear guidelines which restrict categories like food and beverage from advertising on the app.”
Young children are particularly susceptible to marketing. Studies show that children are unable to distinguish between commercials and cartoons until they are 8 or 9 years old, and they are more likely to prefer unhealthy foods and beverages after seeing advertisements for them.
Experts say it is not just an advertising issue but a public health concern. Childhood obesity rates have skyrocketed in recent years: Nearly 20 percent of American children between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese, up from 5.5 percent in the mid 1970s. Studies have found strong links between junk food marketing and childhood obesity, and experts say that children are now at even greater risk during a pandemic that has led to school closures, lockdowns and increased screen time and sedentary behavior. The new findings suggest that parents should be especially wary of how children are being targeted by food companies on social media.
“The way these branded products are integrated in everyday life in these videos is pretty creative and unbelievable,” said Marie Bragg, an author of the study and an assistant professor of public health and nutrition at the New York University School of Global Public Health. “It’s a stealthy and powerful way of getting these unhealthy products in front of kids’ eyeballs.”
Dr. Bragg was prompted to study the phenomenon after one of her co-authors, Amaal Alruwaily, noticed her young nieces and nephews obsessively watching YouTube videos of “kidfluencers” like Ryan Kaji, the 9-year-old star of Ryan’s World, a YouTube channel with 27 million subscribers, formerly named Ryan ToysReview.
The channel, run by Ryan’s parents, features thousands of videos of him excitedly reviewing new toys and games, doing science experiments and going on fun trips to stores and arcades.
Children’s channels like Ryan’s World — which are frequently paid to promote a wide range of products, including toys, video games and food — are among the highest grossing channels on YouTube, raking in millions of dollars from ads, sponsored content, endorsements and more. According to Forbes, Ryan earned $26 million last year, making him the top YouTube earner of 2019. Among the brands he has been paid to promote are Chuck E. Cheese, Walmart, Hasbro, Lunchables and Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., the fast food chains. One of his most popular videos shows him pretending to be a cashier at McDonald’s. In it, he wears a hat with the McDonald’s logo, serves plastic Chicken McNuggets, cheeseburgers and French fries to one of his toys, and then eats a McDonald’s Happy Meal. The video has been viewed about 95 million times.
“It looks like a normal child playing with their normal games, but as a researcher who studies childhood obesity, the branded products really stood out to me,” Dr. Bragg said. “When you watch these videos and the kids are pretending to bake things in the kitchen or unwrapping presents, it looks relatable. But really it’s just an incredibly diverse landscape of promotion for these unhealthy products
In a statement, Sunlight Entertainment, the production company for Ryan’s World, said the channel “cares deeply about the well-being of our viewers and their health and safety is a top priority for us. As such, we strictly follow all platforms terms of service, as well as any guidelines set forth by the FTC and laws and regulations at the federal, state, and local levels.”
The statement said that Ryan’s World welcomed the findings of the new study, adding: “As we continue to evolve our content we look forward to ways we might work together in the future to benefit the health and safety of our audience.”
Other popular children’s channels on YouTube show child influencers doing taste tests with Oreo cookies, Pop Tarts and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream or sitting in toy cars and ordering fast food at drive-throughs for Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and other chains. “This is basically a dream for advertisers,” said Dr. Bragg. “These kids are celebrities, and we know from other rigorous studies that younger kids prefer products that are endorsed by celebrities.”
To document the extent of the phenomenon, Dr. Bragg and her colleagues identified five of the top kid influencers on YouTube, including Ryan, and analyzed 418 of their most popular videos. They found that food or beverages were featured in those videos 271 times, and 90 percent of them were “unhealthy branded items.” Some of the brands featured most frequently were McDonald’s, Hershey’s, Skittles, Oreo, Coca-Cola, Kinder and Dairy Queen. The videos featuring junk food have collectively been viewed more than a billion times.
The researchers could not always tell which products the influencers were paid to promote, in part because sponsorships are not always clearly disclosed. The Federal Trade Commission has said that influencers should “clearly and conspicuously” disclose their financial relationships with brands whose products they endorse on social media. But critics say the policy is rarely enforced, and that influencers often ignore it.
McDonald’s USA said in a statement that it “does not partner with kid influencers under the age of 12 for paid content across any social media channels, including YouTube, and we did not pay or partner with any of the influencers identified in this study. We are committed to responsibly marketing to children.”
Last year, several senators called on the F.T.C. to investigate Ryan’s World and accused the channel of running commercials for Carl’s Jr. without disclosing that they were ads. The Council of Better Business Bureaus, an industry regulatory group, also found that Ryan’s World featured sponsored content from advertisers without proper disclosures. And a year ago the watchdog group Truth in Advertising filed a complaint with the F.T.C. accusing the channel of deceiving children through “sponsored videos that often have the look and feel of organic content.”
In March, Senators Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced legislation to protect children from potentially harmful content online. Among other things, the bill would limit what they called “manipulative” advertising, such as influencer marketing aimed at children, and prohibit websites from recommending content that involves nicotine, tobacco or alcohol to children and teenagers.
The F.T.C. has long forbidden certain advertising tactics on children’s television, such as “host selling,” in which characters or hosts sell products in commercials that air during their programs. Critics say the agency could apply the same rules to children’s programs on the internet but so far has chosen not to.
“It’s beyond absurd that you couldn’t do this on Nickelodeon or ABC but you can do this on YouTube just because the laws were written before we had an internet,” said Josh Golin, the executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group.
“These videos are incredibly powerful,” he said. “Very busy parents may take a look at them and think that it’s just a cute kid talking enthusiastically about some product and not realize that it’s often part of a deliberate strategy to get their children excited about toys, or in the case of this study, unhealthy food.”
Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”
Presumably the whole world is watching whether the Australian government can make google and Facebook pay to carry news items.
The reason is quite clear. They gain customers for being able to point them to the news sources, and then they get the advertising revenue from people on their platforms, while the people who collected the news make no money for having done so, and then lose the advertising that used to come to them when people bought their papers or watched their TV channels.
So initially I was quite in favour of the idea. Here were big foreign companies, structured to pay no tax, grabbing all the advertising and the media was dying because of the lack of advertising revenue. Strangely the ABC was not going to get any revenue- it was only going to the commercial media. I wondered if this was a good thing. Would google and Facebook favour the ABC as it was free, and direct people there rather than to commercial media. But if they did, would this produce a reaction from Murdoch, and would then the government do something more to favour Murdoch and disadvantage the ABC- hey, they are already cutting the ABC budget ?at Murdoch’s request.
But I was thinking that the rise of fake news and conspiracy theories, which threaten any rational voting or policy development is largely due to the social media behemoths. Everyone is equal in that they can post what they like, and things that are more interesting and clickable are more equal than facts. Added to this, in order to get people to stay there and click around, they are connected up with things and people that they like and who think like them. So we are all reinforced. We friend the people we like, and they friend us. And we get our facts from them, and they from us. So if we do not really chase facts in this candy store of pleasant experiences, we can soon have our own bubble, with no need for facts. Pontius Pilate has been much quoted for asking, ‘What is truth?’ He did not want to know what the truth was, and many who quote him are of the same mind. Exact truth may not always be clear, but you can get closer to it if you try, and hopefully that is what science and good journalism tries to achieve.
So when I saw the Australian government leading the world in trying to get revenue for the commercial media, when they had not even been able to get workable legislation to get them to pay some tax, I wondered who is driving this. The companies that have bought our privatised toll roads have the government collect their tolls, and fine people if they do not pay. So I wondered is this just Murdoch getting the government to collect revenue for him? Murdoch was very much in favour of the market as he gobbled up smaller media players. The Rudd and Gillard governments were ruthlessly attacked and ultimately destroyed by Murdoch, and it was always my opinion that this was because they would not change the media ownership laws to allow Murdoch to have nearly all of it- the need for balance and diversity being totally irrelevant and profits the only objective. As soon as Tony Abbott was Prime Minister this law was changed in Murdoch’s favour.
Now the market has changed. New technology has taken the money from newspapers and free to air TV, which were funded from their advertising. The model had worked reasonably well when I was young. The Fairfax family were rich from the advertising, and let the journalists write what they liked, or so we believed. With Packer, it was not quite so clear. The slogan was ‘Publish and be Damned’, but while that may have been true for more salacious material or less powerful targets, there was a suggestion that some areas were off limits, like tobacco when there was a lot of cigarette ads in the paper. Later, as Murdoch became more powerful, stories seemed to be changed a lot to suit his interest. When Indonesia had a very authoritarian government Murdoch’s coverage of it was very benign as he sought to get a satellite TV licence. This has advanced further so that now there is more advertorial content. Before local papers closed, people bought a quarter page ad and got to write the article on the rest of the page. Ideal for restaurants and clubs, but independent journalism? I think not, but it was/is the norm.
Once, stories were written first, then headline writers wrote the headlines for them. Now even senior writers are being asked to write a story to fit under a pre-written, catchy headline. Hey, we have to get a click to get the ad revenue. Senior writers have told me that the headline may be misleading and they have to slant their stories so it is not seen as absurd. What effect is this having? What about people who only read the headline? It no longer has substance- it was just put there so that they would notice it.
The ABC has been much criticised by the commercial media, and Murdoch in particular because it just gets money to provide a news and cultural service. It has a different funding model, and if the commercial media has no money, they want the ABC to have none either.
But it is time to look at the root cause. The model of funding media and journalism by advertising revenue is broken. It was fraying before google and Facebook etc came, and it is very broken now. Murdoch was quite happy to let the market sort it out, when he was winning and buying up his competition. Now he is getting the government to get him money from his technological competitors. And the Australian government, which seems more beholden to him than any other national governments is doing his bidding.
If google and Facebook decide to offer less news and change their algorithms to favour ‘free’ news sources, is this likely to affect the content of our searches? And will there be even more fake news and conspiracy theories than now? Quite possibly.
I have no particular brief to act for google and Facebook, and find their ads telling me that the end of the world is nigh almost laughable. I think that they must pay tax, and this must be based on their revenue, and not on the profits that can be so easily fiddled with foreign loans and transfer payments etc. But it seems that there are 3 related problems:
The government has a problem- how to get tax from these behemoths.
The public have a problem how to get unbiased honest news and science facts.
The commercial media have a problem how to pay their journalists when the revenue has gone to social media to whom trivia and produces just as much revenue as news.
We need to discuss this carefully, so that facts and public interest win.
It seems that Australia, like the US is ‘dumbing down’. There seems little doubt about this. Fewer people study history, politics, geography and science as a percentage of the population. I would be interested in figures on this if anyone has them.
A key item in all this is that there is more to learn. Computers and how to work and programme them were certainly not at school years ago. But it should not be beyond the wit of syllabus-makers to give importance to things that are important. It seems that a culture of choice has not helped. Children can choose to opt out of subjects before they realise the significance of not knowing any science, or history, or foreign language. In a competitive world they can say that they are not good at it. In a specialised world they can say that they do not need to know it. In a world of choice they can choose something more exciting or more titillating.
If this happens at school, it happens even more in what might pass as continuing education. Your Facebook feed puts you in contact with those of similar interests or prejudices, and what pops up is what is most likely to interest you. It is more likely to be what titillates as click bait, than a more serious analysis of what might be worth knowing.
News may or may not be good, but it is not as entertaining as something made to be entertaining, so there is the rise of infotainment. It is all about ratings; people have to be encouraged to watch so that they can see the ads; whether they are any wiser is quite irrelevant.
In the days when Barry Jones was king of Quiz shows, were all about history, geography and science, and we checked our knowledge against the champions. Then TV quiz shows became about their programmes; who was the star of Sitcom X? Those who had no hope with Barry Jones but watched that Channel felt much better. Now even the ABC’s Hard Quiz asks what you are an expert in and researches to tailor the questions. All great entertainment perhaps, but the opportunity cost of all this is that programmes that deal in facts are correspondingly less represented.
Some years ago I wrote a paper bemoaning the fact that journalism was an arts-based subject and scientific information was thus not seen as news, more a specialty like architecture, medicine or music. But now there are whole cabinets of politicians with law or commerce backgrounds, successful with their own areas or in politics, a few even both, but with no idea what they do not know. When Barry Jones became Science Minister and spoke in the Parliament he was given a good humoured roasting as if he was a comedy, some light entertainment. It was easier than listening to him and making the significant changes that he advocated.
The huge mess of Australia’s copyright laws being applied to software, the fears of porn stopping Australia hosting datastores, the huge bungling of the NBN and the electronic health record are testament to ignorance in high places.
The influence of the market imperative on everything has meant that everything is expected to make a profit, and if it does not, it should not happen. This has distorted many areas of society, but sticking to the media, we all observed that while tobacco was advertised, we could not get the media to take tobacco control seriously. Media content is affected by advertising. Alan Blum, the editor of the Medical Journal f Australia left because of an argument over how advertisers were treated. Stories of consumers being dudded do not get carried if it would offend an advertiser. Advertising used to fund TV and newspapers. As advertising has moved online (and its revenues offshore), free to air TV has declined and Murdoch, with 70% of Australia’s media wants the ABC to lose market share so he has more people getting their news from him and he can prolong the dying funding model that he has traditionally had. The government, demanding that everything make a profit, and hearing the lobbying from Murdoch about his competition being subsidised by the taxpayer is happy to defund the ABC. It is also the last large critical voice that keeps them accountable. How much preferable it would be to have only entertainment or infotainment acceptable to advertisers as the fare for Australian TV.
The idea that everything must make a profit led to the absurd Wills report on medical research in Australia, which wanted more cooperative research with the private sector. The hope was that the private sector would share the profits of the research, so that government funded research would pay for itself. What has happened in practice is that the private sector sets the research priorities and things that do not make a profit are less likely to be done. If a discovery could save a fortune, but that fortune would not be made as a profit by the research facility, the research is unlikely to be commenced. The government has defunded the CSIRO, lessening its commitment to knowledge there. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is defunded, which could allow us to base social policy decisions on known and measured trends. Sorry- no data now.
The Saturday Paper yesterday (27/6/20) had an article saying that the change in University funding that made Arts degrees twice as expensive and science and nursing cheaper may have no effect. The students have to pay off their courses over a period of years, so if the course take 14 years to pay off instead of 10, that is a problem a decade away, so may not affect the student much as his or her decision as to what course to do relates to his or her ability and perception of the prospects of that career. Previous research showed that ‘the price elasticity of education courses is low’. But if students are not much affected by the changes Universities might change a lot. If they are squeezed for money and they can get twice as much for an Arts degree, they are likely to market it much harder and may even overcome the price effect. The assumption that producing more science graduates will produce more jobs may also be wrong. The lack of an industry policy has resulted in a huge collapse in our manufacturing industry and our research industry as CSIRO has been defunded also. What will the science graduates do? Many arts and law graduates have jobs, hey look at our politicians!
An understanding of history and culture gives us a sense of place and an understanding of our world, the idea that we exist only to be job-ready is a level of Philistinism that would be laughable if it were not now our Federal tertiary education policy. The promotion of ignorance has now reached the highest level in the land.
1 May 2020 Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd do not agree on much, but both Malcolm and Kevin agree that Rupert Murdoch is effectively a political party in Australia and by controlling information gets whatever government and policies that he wants.Kevin Rudd may have been a religious, egotistical, micro-managing nerd, but probably what brought him […]
There was a coup in Bolivia which has had minimal coverage in Oz, but I have 3 worries:
Australian media coverage is very distorted in the interests of US foreign policy
Facebook bans sites that do not suit US interests and
The pattern of the US waging economic war on South American countries that do not allow their multinationals to plunder the resources, and arranging coups seems almost standard.
The SMH coverage was from Bloomberg and seemed unable to figure out why there were two governments in Bolivia:
For all reasonable observers Morals won the election with 47% of the vote and with more than 10% lead over his nearest rival, should not have needed a run-off election. Irregularities were alleged, (but then again they always are when foreign interests are threatened). Morales offered a re-run, but was not allowed to stand by the guy who came second and the Army!! So Morales fled, which is very odd thing for a President to do if it were not a coup.
But the SMH article is written as if the Bolivian coup is very hard to understand.
Consider the following: The article has two journalists, Matthew Bristow and John Quigley but is attributed to Bloomberg, a US media company. Bloomberg owned by Michael Bloomberg, who is publicly contemplating standing as a Democrat presidential candidate, but is considered too right wing. It talks about the ‘interim ‘President’ Jeanine Anez, who was an ‘Opposition Senator’. How did she get to be ‘interim President’ when the government has a majority in both houses? How is she ‘appointing her Cabinet’- with what legitimacy? Why is the information sourced from the ‘Andean Information Network’, a ‘Think tank’? Who pays for ‘think tanks’? Are there no journalists in Bolivia? Why were their riots just after the election, when the economy was doing quite well? Why are the leaders of the government in power all resigning? Why is Morales not allowed to stand for the run-off election? Why is the army not supporting the existing elected government? Who trained them? Why did the President Evo Morales, who just won the presidential election by more than 10% ahead of his nearest rival flee to Mexico? For no reason? He was standing for a 4th term. which had been challenged in the High Court but he had won there. Presumably the Army was against him and in favour of the opposition.
President Evo Morales had nationalised a big oil company, and wanted his people to get a larger share of the country’s big lithium deposits. He claimed that this was why he was deposed.
I tried to post this on my Facebook page and it was denied as offending ‘Community Standards’! I just put the name of the paper, Orinoco Tribune, not the url and it was still denied with the same- ‘Community Standards’.
So what with the major media giving very one-sided coverage and Facebook censoring material, presumably for being anti-US, how do the Australian public ever get to know what is going on.
I will attach what I attempted to post separately..
I did manage to post some material critical of the SMH article and the RT article and they have remained there.
5 March 2017 Social media is increasingly important as it replaces mainstream media and mixes personal interaction with news and information. It is dollar driven but also personal, so that we identify ourselves and our values. Those who communicate with us individually do so with personal or mutual interest, but those who do mass communication […]
Social media is increasingly important as it replaces mainstream media and mixes personal interaction with news and information. It is dollar driven but also personal, so that we identify ourselves and our values. Those who communicate with us individually do so with personal or mutual interest, but those who do mass communication do so for financial or political interest. Since those at the big end who harvest the data are able to match the personal with the financial and political, it gives them immense power. At the little end getting someone to click on something can give you a lot of money that you would not have had, so a gimmick or a headline that makes people click on something is a trick to be striven for, without necessarily thinking through the consequences.
To illustrate this important thesis, I offer this article from The Saturday Paper, which is its later part suggests that fake news was merely headlines that would get clicks to make money and that Trump was used as he would make people click. The fact that this favoured his campaign was an incidental to the primary object of the fake news creators, who merely wanted the royalties from making people click. The idea that the tiny fractions of a cent per click on a website can create a President of the USA shows how far our decisions and lives are at the mercy of the short-term profit motive.
The power of collected data is that it allows the correlation of people interests, values and core values. Knowing what people believe, what is important to them and having access to them either through friends, honest communications or disguised communication gives the ability to change large sections of the populations values and actions, which gives a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘Manufacturing Consent’. This is very significant for the nature and use of power. Marx said that power was control of the means of production. In nominal democracies power will become control of the means of information. This is frightening stuff. It was in the Guardian. Read on if you missed it.
