a Better Bubble™
Edwin Williams from ZenHammer has partnered with WEPOWER and TechArtista to launch an event series connecting very early stage founders with local resources.
The post STL Black Tech Meetup to Discuss Validating Your Startup Idea at TechArtista appeared first on EQ.
In my previous article on Decide Technologies’ connections to the alt-right, I shared my research into when LockerDome’s alt-right advertising network first launched shortly after Ferguson, the size of the network that we can see with our own eyes and my estimates for how much money the company is paying out to alt-right publishers and how much they’re making.
In this article, I’ll explain how ad networks work for any publisher, and why Decide's business proposition lends itself especially well to working with fake news and disinformation networks.
The post The Business of Trafficking in Political Disinformation and Fake News appeared first on EQ.
Following the recent revelations that LockerDome has been funding Alt-Right websites and ignoring requests for comment from Reuters and the Gateway Journalism Review, I decided to investigate just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Sadly, I’ve got bad news: there is no bottom.
I estimate, conservatively, that LockerDome – the well-known and well-funded AdTech startup from St. Louis that changed its name to Decide Technologies in February 2022 – is paying out at least $1,700,000 per month in regular commission payments to at least 115 Alt-Right publishers who form the most visible segment of their online advertising network.
Over the last seven years, the total paid out to these sites – peddling racism, hate and disinformation – could be more than $100 million.
The post LockerDome Has Been Paying Tens of Millions of Dollars to Hundreds of Alt-Right Websites Over the Last 7 Years appeared first on EQ.
St. Louis AdTech startup Decide has been called out in this article on Bloomberg.
The post On Bloomberg: De-platformed Disinfo Site Sees Resurgence with Help of Alt-Right Social Platforms and Ad Networks appeared first on EQ.
"Online advertising is everywhere. And, —even the annoying ones with the clickbait headlines or dramatic claims about cures your doctor will hate— those ads are likely the backbone of the way your favorite websites make money.
You read their content, click their ads, and that click becomes cash.
And not just for the website you’re on. But for the companies which placed those ads using algorithms to automatically spread them at vast scale across the internet."
- Danny Wicentowski, reporter for St. Louis Public Radio
In this brief but informative podcast episode from St. Louis On the Air, another journalist discusses LockerDome's business with the Alt-right; and gets straight to the ethical concerns on every startup founder's lips:
If you're making money, where do you draw the line? Should you even draw a line?
In my previous articles on the Bioscience Labor Market Analysis in St. Louis, I argued that a hollowing out of the Great Lakes megaregion was caused by an overspecialization in the regional economy and explained why embracing economic complexity is more likely to lead to a increasing incomes and affluence in St. Louis.
Let us now turn to the economic complexity data to verify the supposition that an outsourcing of middle- and commodity-skill level production jobs, and the outsourcing of R&D jobs, will likely lead to a lowering of the region’s economic complexity.
In my previous article, on the Bioscience Labor Market Analysis in St. Louis, I explained the regional economic development complications caused by "overspecialization", and promised to provide a brief explainer on the issues of economic complexity in general.
So... Here's why questions of economic complexity are relevant to the St. Louis region.
"Increasing a region’s or country’s economic complexity — by making products of high complexity — is associated with increasing incomes and affluence.
Countries whose economic complexity is greater than [expected] tend to grow faster than those that are “too rich” for their current level of economic complexity."
In my previous article, on the Bioscience Labor Market Analysis, I concurred with the report's findings that an emphasis on manufacturing is a factor in making the St. Louis region unique, saying, "This is can indeed be a source of competitive strength."
"Locating research and development in close proximity to production and manufacturing can build an ecosystem effect in which R&D becomes more market- and production-focused. As a result, ideation can be more focused and the product development lifecycle shortened."
Unfortunately, this happy outcome is not guaranteed. Here's why.
Please join EQ in welcoming our new columnist, Mike Frabrizi, who will be writing about economic complexity and the places we live. His first series of articles reviews the well-articulated and researched paper St. Louis Bioscience Labor Market Analysis (University of Missouri Exceed Extension, December 2021), and extends the good news story and suggest some means by which the former study can be built upon to help ensure that the St. Louis region continues to generate well-paying jobs and that per capita income growth continues.
This week's series of articles builds extensively on economic complexity literature, that includes important publications such as The Atlas of Economic Complexity (Hausmann, Ricardo; Cesar A. Hidalgo, et al, 2013), Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies (Hidalgo, Cesar and Allen Lane, 2015), The Building Blocks of Economic Complexity (Hidalgo, Cesar and Ricardo Haussmann, 2009), How and Why Should We Study Economic Complexity (Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Diana Beltekian, 2018), The Observatory of Economic Complexity, Economic Complexity Theory and Applications (Hidalgo, Cesar, 2021, Nature).
stLouIST