Today in the United States my fellow citizens are celebrating Independence Day. For those who didn’t pay attention in school, or who just aren’t all that familiar with American holidays, Independence Day commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, a document which was signed in the year 1776 and which declared the United States of America as a separate and independent nation from Great Britain.
It’s a bit ironic that ‘Brexit’ is still dominating the news today; as Americans celebrate their independence from England, the British are getting ready to go it alone without the European Union. Worth noting though is that the process of separation today is a largely peaceful one, with a few notable exceptions. But there are no French warships sailing to England, there are no British armies amassing to propel an attack. Profound changes happen these days without militaries firing a single shot.
And the agents of change in today’s global economy aren’t always governments, as the world’s largest corporations are massive and powerful. Apple alone makes more money than Ukraine, more money than Romania, more money than Iraq. Add in giants like Google and Facebook, and you have what amounts is an ‘axis of possibly evil influence’ whose doings often fly under the radar of average citizens. That’s to say nothing of Microsoft, Yahoo and other similar titans from Silicon Valley.
And I can prove it. Let’s start with email as an example of how these powerful companies can change the game for the entire Internet.
Want Your Emails Delivered? Kneel Before Zod.
Most of you reading this probably have a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail email address. Despite the fact that these companies can scan and analyze your email content, setting up email servers and managing clients on multiple machines is a pain in the ass, even with technologies like IMAP which make it possible to sync emails with multiple devices. So you turned to the big guys to make email easier.
Gmail, for example, is easy to use. It’s free. You can access your email from any device, any web browser. And the company does a good job weeding out spam which frankly can get so out of control without filtering that whole email addresses can become useless.
If you’re an email marketer it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that half or more of your customers’ email addresses end in gmail.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com. The vote is in, fuck privacy, fuck independence, customers want big tech companies to make technology a little easier to use. And they’re willing to give up a lot for a little convenience (as long as it’s free).
What that means for companies that send emails – and that’s pretty much all of us – is that our ability to reach our customers and colleagues is now in the hands of just a few big giants. You either play by their rules, or they don’t deliver your emails.
So let’s be fair. In a lot of ways, this is a really good thing. Spam really is a problem, and the difficulty of getting newsletters and marketing emails into inboxes is forcing companies to adapt best practices for email campaigns. It means companies are delivering better email content, and using email services like YNOT Mail that help them track opens, weed out bounces and remove complainers from their lists.
On the other hand, Gmail is a bit of a tyrant. Lots of companies who aren’t sending spam have issues getting very legitimate emails to their intended recipients when Gmail is involved, or even the other big ESPs. That doesn’t just affect marketing emails either. What happens when your customers don’t get your legitimate transactional emails and don’t know that their credit card was declined? What happens when you’re trying to setup a business meeting but the other side never knows you sent an email in the first place? How much money is lost because Gmail wrongly filtered a legitimate message? That’s saying nothing of the additional costs and expenses it takes these days to engage in email marketing, even if you’re doing everything right when collecting email addresses from customers.
Control Their Email. Check. What’s Next? Control Their News.
So yes, the big tech companies swing a lot of influence. So it was with no small amount of concern that I watched last year as Apple released its “News” app, which delivers articles to readers while stripping out all of the advertisements. You know, those things that fund the articles in the first place.
I get that some companies engage in pretty sleazy tactics when it comes to advertising. We’ve all dealt with ads that completely take over a mobile screen, with an X to close the ad that’s almost impossible to hit correctly. We’ve all seen ads that yank us off the page and over to an app store. We’ve all had that creepy stalker feeling after searching for “katana swords” on Amazon.com, only to have ads for katana swords show up on every site we visit for the next three days. This behavior by publishers and advertisers frankly sucks.
Remember when adult sites used to abuse the pop-up? And how many of them today still use circle jerks, or other tricks to score clicks at the expense of the visitor. Like spam with email, it’s a legitimate problem. So now users are once again turning to the big tech companies to save them. Sensing a new opportunity to leverage their influence, companies like Apple are all too happy to jump into the game.
So now if Apple takes over the display medium and strips out the ads, what’s to stop them from showing their own advertisements in the news app? Oh, I’m sure they’ll toss a couple pennies to the content creator. Small media companies who can’t find a way to adapt will simply cease to exist. The ones that survive will be forced to accept whatever pittance Apple decides to share with them, similar to what happened with the music companies and iTunes. I love being able to download a single song for a dollar, but how many people think the state of the music industry is better today than it was back in the 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. Anyone?
They don’t like you. Accept it.
And let’s face it, the big technology companies don’t always treat the adult industry fairly. Lots of companies don’t allow their technologies to be used by adult companies. Facebook has strict restrictions on what can be posted. Fail to obey their rules and you’ll find yourself out in the cold. And the mainstream news can’t stop combining adult entertainment and sex trafficking stories. Don’t believe me? Look up the “adult entertainment” news category in your Apple “News” app. Nothing but sex trafficking stories and James Deen-bashing feminists grasping for attention.
Part of the allure of working in adult entertainment is the promise of independence. The corporate 9 to 5 doesn’t work for everyone. Some of us prefer fewer limitations. When you’re deciding whether to use a mainstream service like Facebook, or instead spend your time on industry-powered networking sites like YNOT or GFY, consider the whole picture. When you’re deciding between Gmail and setting up your own email server, think of the unintended consequences of opting for simplicity over independence. When you’re thinking about using ad blockers or news apps to deal with the less ethical advertisers and publishers, ask yourself if that will mean less information and fewer voices in the future.
Independence. It’s worth the inconvenience.
