One thing I don't see getting much attention here is the section on regulation and the lack of interest by tech companies who provide the platforms for people like this to exploit on.
Quoting part of the article, "... the tech companies that carry those ads tend to throw up their hands an declaim that the web is so huge that no one could hope to monitor it all."
This section of the article, where Edelman is quoted several times, stood out to me. It made me a little more sympathetic to regulation. In that, if there is no incentive inside the large tech companies to identify and punish or eliminate the Jesse Williams of the world from their platforms, why shouldn't they be held accountable for the consequences of the behavior enabled by the platform they developed?
One more quotes that stood out to me and made sense:
- "If Jesse Williams is responsible for the bad things his contractors did, why is Google not responsible for the bad things its advertisers did?"
To extend on that and not just limit this to Google - Uber recently got some bad publicity in LA. One incident where someone was charged several hundred dollars for what amounted to a cab ride home to from a bar and another where an uber rider left their cell phone in the car. Then the driver held the phone ransom for several hundred dollars and still never returned it. In the one case Uber suspended the drivers account and was trying to help the phone owner.
The point I am trying to make by bringing up Uber, who is not an advertising company, is as follows. Technology extends and scales human ability. But the onus is still on people to use technology morally, ethically & responsibly. The double edge on technology's sword is that not all people make choices with morals or ethics in mind. So, is a technology provider responsible for self policing their platform? Idk but reading the Atlantic article sway my opinion in the direction of, If the technology provider won't or "can't" be responsible then they open the doors for regulation without any sympathy from me.