At the recent NAI summit analyst and attorney Alan Chapell gave a compelling talk looking at the latest developments in the advertising privacy debate. As part of this, he drew a unique analogy from the life of Robert Moses, the urban planner who essentially architected the layout of modern day New York City.
When Moses was designing the Jones Beach development in Long Island, the story goes that he wanted to preserve the area for a ‘better’ class of citizen. As an unelected civil servant, he had no power to compel this, so instead he turned to his ability to influence the infrastructure that allowed residents to visit. To achieve his goal he simply ensured that all the bridges under which traffic heading to Jones Beach must pass had clearance of no more than 9ft.
This seemingly objective architectural decision was in fact a piece of social engineering because the public buses that poorer citizens would rely upon to get to the beach required 10ft of clearance. By defining the infrastructure Robert Moses was able to enforce his own restrictive policy.
The read across for adtech is clear. Decisions about the plumbing and infrastructure of adtech are being made all the time by trade groups and standards bodies that are, more often than not, captured by the tech giants. These infrastructure decisions are effectively creating policies that benefit those self-same businesses, but restrict most rivals.
The clearest example is in the so-called ‘first party exemption’ that is regularly inserted into decisions about data privacy. This relies upon the fallacious first/third party distinction to claim that data that is held by a first party is somehow less risky than if held by a third. This is a distinction that has been rejected by many, including the UK’s ICO, but it keeps appearing in consequential decisions about data management and privacy. First party data is exempt from many prirvacy “protection” rules whilst third party is subject to them all.
Why does this matter? Because first party data is – by and large – held by the large platforms and third party is held by smaller independent businesses. Yes, publishers hold first party data, but their holdings are dwarfed compared to the data hoards of Meta and Google. As such, a first party exemption is essentially a bridge under which the giants can pass but which blocks the route of independent competitors. It’s installing a competitive advantage for the monopolies by creating a discriminatory policy masquerading as objective standards in infrastructure.
If we want a decentralized and competitive ecosystem, then we need to ensure that effective real-time communication is supported not stifled by discriminatory infrastructure decisions. Given the US dominance in Big Tech, the growth of the UK’s and the vast majority of other nation’s economies depend on action by regulators to protect the open standards the internet relies. Otherwise, Big Tech will continue to implement restrictions so only they can enjoy what ought to be a public good.