TechCrunch
On California's Bizarre Internet Eraser Law For Teenagers
California has passed a well-intentioned law allowing teens to scrub their youthful indiscretions from the Internet. Starting in 2015, any minor can request that a digital service provider delete pictures of themselves passed out drunk at a Justin Bieber concert. The law doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since nearly every imaginable service offers a delete button.
Perhaps more importantly, it ignores the reality that it’s nearly impossible to delete information from the net: embarrassing photos spread virally, and Internet archives automatically create copies of nearly every piece of information on the web.
Yet, as written, it appears to create a head-on collision between privacy law and the First Amendment. There are no clear rules on what will survive when a friend comments or interacts with a given piece of regrettable content that will inevitably end up being deleted.
The web is chaotic, viral, and interconnected. Either the law is completely toothless, or it sets in motion a very scary anti-information snowball.
The Law As Written
California SB 658 requires “the operator of an Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application to permit a minor who is a registered user of the operator’s Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application, to remove, or to request and obtain removal of, content or information posted”.
The law kicks in on January 1st, just in time for hung-over minors to delete their New Year’s Eve shenanigans. It also prohibits websites from targeting minors with a host of fun, yet regrettable products, such as e-cigarettes and tattoos.
Not realistic
If a vengeful ex-boyfriend shares a naughty picture of his former lover with the Facebook universe, SB 658 doesn’t give a minor the right to erase it. Users can only delete data they upload. Also, if a teenage mother posts a picture of her toddler toking weed out of a bong, that’s also exempt: law enforcement can subpoena the information.
Perhaps most importantly, more and more of the social media world is automatically archived. The Sunlight Foundation, for instance, automatically archives tweets in case a politician deletes one. Some deleted tweets are pretty hilarious.
On top of all this, nearly every website imaginable permits users to delete a post. So, in reality, the law is completely unrealistic/unnecessary. Still, James Steyer, chief executive of child advocacy group, Common Sense Media, calls the law “a very important milestone.”
4th Vs. 1st Amendment
As written, the law is about giving a specific group, prone to stupid decisions, the ability to delete information they don’t like. In this, in comes dangerously close to the European Union’s proposed “right to be forgotten“.
“The right to be forgotten could make Facebook and Google, for example, liable for up to two percent of their global income if they fail to remove photos that people post about themselves and later regret, even if the photos have been widely distributed already,” explains Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University.
While SB 658 attempts to restrain court orders to information that hasn’t been reposted by other users, it’s not clear how that would work in practice. If, for instance, I “like” a photo of my friend at a strip club, but he later wants it erased, what should happen? Facebook “likes” are now protected as First Amendment speech.
To have any sort of teeth, the law will eventually have to permit the erasure of data that has been reposted, archived, or interacted with. And, as a result, must create a grow a whole new body of case law dedicated to choosing when the right to be forgotten trumps our right to share and discuss information.
The French, have already made their decision on this matter. “le droit à l’oubli—or the “right of oblivion”—a right that allows a convicted criminal who has served his time and been rehabilitated to object to the publication of the facts of his conviction and incarceration,” explains Rosen. If EU proposals go through, this type of censorship will extend to the Internet.
Realistically, the only thing SB 658 did was open up a can of worms on the right to erase information from the Internet. From here, things are only going to get more bizarre.
WPP's Martin Sorrell Sees Growing Relevance For Ad Agencies In A Tech-Centric World
Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of ad holding company WPP, weighed in on the digital media landscape today at the IAB MIXX conference in New York. One of his main arguments: That tech companies are also in the media business.
That may seem pretty obvious, since companies like Facebook and Google make most of their money from ads. However, Sorrell recalled being at an industry event where he asked representatives from big tech companies whether they considered themselves to be a media company or a tech company. (Tech executives seem to hate this question.) They all went with tech, but Sorrell said, “Of course that’s not true. … In our view, they are all, to some extent or not, media owners.”
That’s important for WPP’s business, Sorrell said, because “you wouldn’t entrust your media plan to a legacy media owner,” so why would you trust Facebook or Google? “Google sells Google, Facebook sells Facebook, Twitter sells Twitter. They are not agnostic. We are agnostic.” In other words, as technology creates new ad platforms, businesses will still need to work with agencies: “The more complicated it becomes, the more important we become.”
He returned to this point later, when interviewer Randall Rothenberg asked about Facebook or Google adding “agency-like services.” Sorrell countered, “Where we are is a very small business for them. They have bigger fish to fry and a lot of pressure on their sales organization.”
Oh, and even though I’m writing about ad holding companies and ad agencies, Sorrell said he dislikes the term “advertising”. His objection? That it makes people think of the world of Don Draper and Mad Men, when, in fact, “We’ve moved on from that.” In fact, he suggested that of WPP’s revenue, “Don Draper would recognize” the business model behind about $4 billion, while the remaining $14 billion comes from new areas.
Sorrell added that WPP and its competitors need to find new sources of revenue because the consumer goods companies who pay for ads are taking a closer look at their spending (as result of relatively little price inflation at the point of purchase for consumers compared to the price of commodities).
“That has put tremendous pressure on us as part of the supply chain,” he said.
As for what’s next, Sorrell said “the trite answer is mobile and data,” so instead he pointed to the success of Chinese companies like Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Xiaomi.
“If you said to me, ‘What’s the next big thing?’ I would say it’s Chinese business models,” he said. “We in the West think we have a monopoly on this wisdom, but we don’t.”
AdStage Expands Its Cross-Network Ad Platform With App Partnerships And New Formats
When AdStage launched earlier this year, the big selling point was the ease with which small businesses could create ads that ran across Google, Bing, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Today it’s launching what co-founder and CEO Sahil Jain said is “an entirely new platform product,” which should expand the customer base to broad range of advertisers.
To illustrate that point, Jain told me that AdStage Express, the company’s initial product (which had 2,300 sign-ups), is now just one of several applications available. And to turn AdStage into a true platform, the company is integrating with a number of tools for things like writing ad copy and A/B testing. Those services will be available in an app gallery, with rankings determined by customer votes.
“We’re becoming more of a one-stop-shop by integrating point solutions into an advertising management platform — not something the other similar companies in the space are doing,” Jain said.
The initial app partners are ReTargeter, Unbounce, Bigstock, Canned Banners, MixRank and Thinkstock by Getty Images. For example, AdStage customers can use ReTargeter to run retargeted ads through the Facebook Exchange. CEO Arjun Dev Arora said ReTargeter is both a partner and a customer for AdStage, which he described as “a huge step forward for online marketing.”
Other new features include support for new ad formats (on Facebook, Jain said AdStage only supported one ad type, and now it supports all of them, plus there’s been a similar expansion in support for other platforms) and the ability to import existing campaigns. Both additions seem to bolster Jain’s claim that AdStage can become a central platform for advertisers to manage their campaigns.
The new AdStage platform is now available in a beta version for $99 month, with five apps included for free. The company said more than 380 businesses have already signed up, and that their monthly ad spend ranges from $1,000 to $700,000.
By the way, the AdStage website seems to be having uptime issues right now. I will update this post when they’re resolved.
Update: The website is back up.
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