BREAK THEM UP.

AuthorMildenberg, David
PositionUPFRONT

While editing Alyssa Pressler's Page 14 story on the iFLY indoor skydiving venue in Concord, I visited the company's website to check for accuracy. Within hours, my Facebook feed included an ad from iFLY inviting me to imitate Peter Pan.

Long ago, I gave up complaining about such an intrusion. The marketing sharpies really can't hurt me, and I don't have any great secrets anyway. Plus, I hold a defeatist attitude: There's no reason to fight the machine.

Thank goodness others aren't so timid. It's long overdue, but key lawmakers and influences are waking up to the negative effects of tech giants Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. After years of looking the other way, Congress is holding hearings studying their impact. Among the more unabashed critics is conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, whose June essay "Overthrow the Prince of Facebook" noted "everybody knows they're too powerful, too arrogant, loom too large in public life."

Noonan's solution: "Break them up. Break them in two, in three; regulate them. Declare them to be what they've so successfully become: once a pleasure, now a utility."

My annoyance about the iFLY ad is trivial except when considering the chain of events: An entrepreneurial entertainment company builds a website that almost assuredly relies on a tech giant to help grab personal information. I could reject the tracking software, maybe, but that would make my fact-checking either difficult or impossible.

iFLY then pays Facebook to target an unwanted ad at me. It's a more efficient advertising buy than for iFLY to spend money for my local newspaper's print or online editions--or maybe even certain magazines that circulate around North Carolina.

The result is the collapse of the publishing industry's business model, a condition so severe that it was a key subject in last month's congressional hearings. Google and Facebook now grab about 60% of U.S. digital advertising revenue...

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