Subprime Attention Crisis

Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

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Tim Hwang: Subprime Attention Crisis (2020, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

176 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-72124-4
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4 stars (1 review)

2 editions

direct analogy to 2008

4 stars

References other worries about online advertising (the ways it shapes what tools get built and how we interact with each other), but very focused on the ways ad tech resembles the 2008 financial crisis: systemically entwined with how internet services and media are funded; opaque automated derivatives trading of supposed value (our attention), in a market of perverse bubble-inflating incentives; and is our attention online actually worth so much more than previous advertising (targeted!) or is it subprime and full of fraud and disinterest?