NebuAd Inc., a company that sought to target ads to consumers based on their online behavior, is going out of business after facing scrutiny over whether its technology infringed on the privacy of Internet surfers.
In court filings this week, NebuAd said it has been winding down its business since last year. It laid off virtually all its employees in July and August, closing its office in Redwood City, Calif., in September. NebuAd once employed over 60 people.
NebuAd has “essentially ceased to exist,” according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
NebuAd’s clients – Internet service providers who wanted to share the ad revenue with NebuAd – started dropping out after Congress held hearings last July on the technology, which examined consumers’ Internet traffic to determine their interests. Although individual Web sites routinely target advertising, privacy advocates argu ed that NebuAd’s all-encompassing approach went too far, and said consumers’ overall Web surfing should be tracked only if they opted into the system.
Among the cable and phone operators that abandoned interest in NebuAd were Charter Communications Inc., Bresnan Communications LLC, The Washington Post Co.’s Cable One Inc. and Embarq Corp.
In Britain, a similar company called Phorm Inc. has also faced complaints since it struck partnerships with three access providers reaching 70 percent of Britain’s broadband market – BT Group PLC, Virgin Media Inc. and Carphone Warehouse Group PLC’s TalkTalk.
But Phorm spokesman Justin Griffiths said the company has retained its partners. BT has completed its trial of Phorm’s ad-targeting service and expects to deploy it this year.
Griffiths said Phorm asks consumers upfront after they log on whether they want to receive targeted ads. Griffiths added that the company has received assurances from the British governmen t that its technology “can be operated in a lawful manner.”
Even so, Richard Clayton from Internet think tank Foundation for Information Policy Research in Cambridge, England, believes Phorm is getting some snubs from potential partners.
“I haven’t seen any other ISPs queuing up to associate themselves with Phorm at all,” he said. “A number of smaller ones have said they won’t go anywhere near it.”
TikTok Creators Left In Limbo As Supreme Court Considers Potential Platform Ban
Will TikTok be banned this month?
That's the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The fate of the popular app will be decided by the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Jan. 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a U.S. ban.
At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.
For creators, the TikTok doomsday scenarios are nothing new since President-elect Donald Trump first tried to ban the platform through executive order during his first term. But despite Trump's recent statements indicating he now wants TikTok to stick around, the prospect of a ban has never been as immediate as it is now with the Supreme Court serving as the final arbiter.
If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its U.S. platform by Jan. 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.
"A lot of my other creative friends, we're all like freaking out. But I'm staying calm," said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok's live feature and rewards program, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lens and editing software for her short films "Gambit" and "Awaken! My Neighbor."
Johnson said the idea of TikTok going away is "hard to accept."
Many creators... Read More