Tim Hwang on Subprime Attention Crisis

Lawyer, writer and researcher Tim Hwang discusses his provocative new book, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

 

On the first episode of Technology & Prose, Tim Hwang joins host Nikita Aggarwal to talk about the digital and programmatic advertising market (1:39), why the attention being sold for digital advertising is garbage (5:32), similarities with the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis (10:18), digital vs traditional advertising (12:32), the myth of online manipulation (15:36), digital advertising fraud (16:55), regulating digital advertising (20:13), advertising and the design of the internet (23:24), why this is the world that Google built (25:53), alternatives to an advertising-driven internet (28:34), privacy, surveillance and Cambridge Analytica (31:44), the risks of a systemic crisis, and why we should defuse the subprime attention time bomb (35:08), antitrust and breaking up Big Tech (40:10).

Recorded on December 31st 2020.