What's so interesting about the internet - I keep saying this - is the web has gotten worse over the last five years as opposed to better. Tim Wu More Quotes by Tim Wu More Quotes From Tim Wu Trolling is an ancient problem. It's been around as long as there has been media. Tim Wu media problem long You know, the only reason net neutrality is controversial is because it's complicated. Tim Wu controversial neutrality complicated More than anyone else, Adolf Hitler completely understood the union between government propaganda and between - and advertising, that they were in some ways the same thing. Tim Wu unions government way I want to say, however, one thing our media in America has done which didn't happen in other totalitarian states is it has very effectively stood up to Donald Trump who has obvious fascist tendencies and his - who's a temptation like all authoritarian figures to try to crush the media or make it obey him. As that - the media has, in fact, stood up to him and has refused to bow out or cower. Tim Wu crush media america Now, he doesn't control the media, but Donald Trump has been incredibly successful in having his face appear everywhere. You cannot go a day without seeing that face somewhere maybe 10 times. Tim Wu media successful faces Google - and some of the other sites, YouTube and, you know - Google has an amazing search engine. The map product is incredible. So there's a sort of exchange when you put up with a bunch of ads. Facebook basically gives you access to your friends who, in theory, you had access to already. So sometimes I don't really understand the deal, but I guess it makes it slightly easier. So that's their contribution. Tim Wu google maps giving I think that's been really the key, the idea of trying to harness social capital for selling purposes. That we've let this happen so easily without clearly getting something in exchange is kind of amazing to me. Tim Wu keys ideas thinking Facebook, when it began, like Google, was very resistant to advertising. They knew, like all - Mark Zuckerberg, like all good engineers, knew that advertising makes the product worse. But, you know, over time, they've been forced to increase the advertising load more and more and more. And the way they advertise is they - it's subtle but they know everything, you know, about everybody on the site. Tim Wu zuckerberg google way I don't think anyone at Google feels happy about it, but they've been in some sense, you know, enslaved to their business model, and so they have to satisfy their advertisers. Tim Wu google feels thinking Google has - at least at this point - maintained the line where it keeps organic results separate from the advertisements. But over time - so in other words, you still get the - there still are honest to goodness results which are based on an algorithm which is based on how important or how many people link to that particular site, so there's that. At the very beginning, there were unobtrusive advertisements on the side that sort of showed up when you typed in certain phrases. Over time, the amount of real estate that those ads take up has increased. Tim Wu google real people Google's AdWords, they allow you to bid on words that people will type into the search engine, and they cost more or less. For example, I think mortgage refinancing can cost - now, it's probably hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. So, in other words, they are allowing you to bid on what people are going to type, and that is the AdWords program. So you own certain terms, and then your ads show up as opposed to someone else's. Tim Wu google people thinking When you think about normal advertising, it's just like, hey, here's a car and, you know, we don't know if you're looking for a car or not. So Google promised that mental state, and then were able to prove that delivering the message at the exact right moment would make someone click on something. So they pioneered the idea that advertising could be profitable on the internet, that a specific, very micromental state could be targeted. And they established the primacy of the click, which has haunted us ever since. Tim Wu car ideas thinking Google has you at a very specific mental state that is, looking for something. And what they've always been able to say is, we deliver your message at the exact time someone is, say, looking for fishing hooks or looking for marriage counseling or looking for a lawyer for a particular problem. And here we have our customers telling you what is in their heart and soul. It's something that, you know, advertisers have wanted for decades. Tim Wu soul fishing heart If you really care about content, you should pay for it. Tim Wu care should pay I do think the best thing for companies like Google and Facebook, if they are afraid of this ethical trap of advertising, is they should start letting people pay who want to pay and avoid some of the advertising. Tim Wu google people thinking I think, year in, year out, Google is starting to get worse instead of better. I think this is happening to a lot of the web companies, is as their demand to increase the payload they deliver in ads increases, they end up degrading and corrupting their own services. And you can see it with Google Maps, you can see it with Google Directions, where somehow Uber is, you know, always one of the options. And it's becoming exactly what they said was what they never wanted, which is a pay-for service where the highest bidder gets the best results. Tim Wu uber years thinking Advertising always corrupts the goal of the search engine, which is to try to give you the most important stuff, not the stuff someone paid there to be there. Tim Wu goal trying giving All business models have something challenging about them, but the problem with the attention merchant business model they have is they need to keep increasing the amount of ads they deliver to people and therefore make their product worse. Tim Wu challenges people needs We already have our phones, but other wearables, and those technologies are going to want to know when you're deciding things and then offer some kind of input subtle or less so on that moment. Tim Wu phones technology want Let's say you're someone's phone, and you notice that your owner is drinking coffee at certain times of the day, just very subtly indicating where the local coffee shop is which happens to have paid, you know, whoever makes your phone at the right moment. I think we're in a future where frankly we are possibly facing little tiny bits of manipulation in all of our waking hours, if we don't have that already. Tim Wu coffee drinking thinking
