A tough week

Hello,

Before anything, I hope you and yours are safe from Hurricane Helene, a storm full of devastating surprises.

This email was supposed to go out last Friday, but, well, Helene happened.

I’m in St. Petersburg, Florida, where it passed us 100 miles to the west. But even that was enough to bring record storm surge and damage that’s the worst in living memory. Rebuilding will be measured in years for some communities. I only lost power and sewer, but people I know and love lost homes. 

And then Helene, supercharged by historically abnormal warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, brought its havoc to western North Carolina.

Record-breaking floods deluged Asheville, a city that for years has been hailed as “climate haven.” Dozens are dead, hundreds are missing in the state.

Climate change is making storms more intense. Helene was no exception. And yet as climate change makes storms worse, ad exchanges work with climate disinfo websites and profit.

In last week’s report, we highlighted 15 exchanges that work with sites publishing climate change misinfo. And some of them — like Google — have policies that EXPLICITLY PROHIBIT monetizing articles that deny climate change.

Hold on, just gonna check something real quick.

Yep, there’s Google today, with its policy against monetizing climate change misinformation, again monetizing climate change misinformation. Great job.

We’re gonna make some more noise about this soon. Stay tuned.

UN-doing the information crisis  

"Google, Pubmatic, Magnite, The Trade Desk … are in control of our entire media ecosystem. They choose where ads go, and what media dies. We're in an information disorder crisis."

That’s part of the message Claire had for the UN last week, as she appeared on a panel as part of Climate Week. She was joined on the panel, “Advertising and Information Integrity,” by Jake Dubbins of the Conscious Advertising Network and Rupen Desai of The Shed 28. Catch the whole thing here.

Bonus Claire appearance: The School for Startups Radio podcast. Bonus bonus Claire appearance: AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O last week:

Gone 'til November  

It’s done! She’s free! after three weeks of intermittent courtroom fasting, Arielle wrote her last daily dispatch from the Google trial, which now moves on to closing arguments in November. Can I get a great job, Arielle, going in chat?

Our trial site has all of her updates, so click on through if you want to see anything you may have missed. ICYMI last week, Arielle popped up on AI doomer Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline to talk about what else, the trial.

A bright spot in all this is Arielle finally made it back home and her cat still loves her. 

Take care out there folks, and I’ll be back in your inboxes soon.

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