Re: <nettime> Ad Fraud: $5M A Day By Faking 300M Video Views

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

Fascinating.

There were previous attempts to monetize own attention-time by sharing 
the ad income between content providers and victims themselves, but it 
never worked because the opt-in/on-boarding was complex, and payments 
were expensive in the absence of efficient micropayment systems.
The willing bot network technology, where it is technically impossible 
to remotely distinguish human attention from automata, may turn the 
whole Internet business/influence/big data model upside down.
Instead on wasting money on anti-virus software and ad blockers, people 
could monetize their own internet/mobile connections by intentionally 
installing bots/AI and auctioning for getting hit by ads, or tweeting 
support (with premiums for using verified real names.) The money is 
unlikely to come from those paying for ads (as they would avoid ad 
networks that participate in this,) but it may come from competition, 
commercial or political. Such adversaries would pay to create misleading 
data - interest in product, support for ideology, candidate, etc.
We are already seeing willing manual 'bots', party zealots, who 
intensely promote politics, issues and candidates, often for direct 
remuneration. It seems we're close to the moment where AI, network 
technologies and payment systems will enable presently passive targets 
to participate in the ad/big data/campaign economy.
While it may sound preposterous today that people will massively rent 
out their (real or fake) Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn credentials, to be 
used from their own home/mobile devices, impossible to distinguish from 
the 'genuine' use, some will. It is a small step from being cool with no 
privacy to outright renting out one's persona (if you have any doubts, 
check out the booming business of live porn sites - in 1990s we had one 
JenniCam, now there are tens of thousands, and there is one in your block.)
The questions are: what is the critical mass to kill the concept of 
online presence, and how long it will take. The rest are technical 
problems, and those get solved. The Internet may, once again, route 
around the damage.

On 12/22/16, 5:12, nettime's failing bot net wrote:

> [looks like the most promising digital business model in years.]
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