Doc Searls - The problem for people isn't advertising, and the problem for advertising isn't blocking


Doc Searls, writing on Medium 1 about some important projects to help pull the balance of power on the internet back to the individuals that make it awesome in the first place.

There’s a new sheriff on the Net, and it’s the individual. Who isn’t a “user,” by the way. Or a “consumer.” With new terms of our own, we’re the first party. The companies we deal with are second parties. Meaning that they are the users, and the consumers, of our legal “content.” And they’ll like it too, because we actually want to do good business with good companies, and are glad to make deals that work for both parties. Those include expressions of true loyalty, rather than the coerced kind we get from every “loyalty” card we carry in our purses and wallets.

When we are the first parties, we also get scale. Imagine changing your terms, your contact info, or your last name, for every company you deal with - and doing that in one move. That can only happen when you are the first party.

Source: The problem for people isn’t advertising, and the problem for advertising isn’t blocking. – Medium


  1. I had somehow unsubscribed to his Harvard blog, so hadn’t seen this. Until he cross-posted on Medium. Oops. Resubscribed. ↩︎


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