Do not miss this epic battle on Twitter between the IAB CEO and current publishers – TechCrunch

Grab the popcorn. As the Internet fights, it deserves your full attention – because the fight is about your attention. Your eyes and the scary ads that are exchanging data about you to try to rotate them.

In the blue corner, the CEO of the Internet Advertising Association, Randall Rothenberg, who is more and more interested in Twitter in recent days on the general framework of Europe's wild life, the RPGD, and on keen warnings about the law on the protection of consumer privacy (CCPA) of California – whose in-depth studies show that "the negative impact" on publishers.

Room A, tweeted on August 1st:

NB: The IAB is a mixed organization of advertisers, brands, publishers, data brokers * and giants of the adtech platform, including the dominant duopoly adtech, Google and Facebook. that bring home ~ 60% of digital ad spend. The only entity capable of breaking the duopoly, Amazon, is also in the club. Its membership reflects the sprawling interests of the online advertising industry and, finally, the personal data that feeds it (your eyes are back!), Although some members clearly have more money to spend than others to fight against the regulation of digital privacy.

In what appears to have been abolished last month, Rothenberg has publicly declared to be proud of Facebook's presence in its "publisher defense" club. Certainly, according to the tweet above, he also fears that brands and retailers are "killed". He does not have to worry about the disappearance of Google and Facebook, which would be ridiculous.

Now, in the – I wish I could call that the "red-top" corner, except that these types of newspapers are anything but tabloids – we find prominent publishers reprimanding Rothenberg's attempts to deceive the legislation on online privacy.

Robin Berjon, head of data privacy and data privacy in the New York Times, demolishes Rothenberg through the exquisite medium of estimates tweet…

I will quote Berjon in full because every tweet is packed with remarkable accuracy:

• One of the main reasons we need #GDPR and #CCPA (and more) today is that the @iab, under @ r2rothenberg, is 20 years old to self-regulate and used his time to do it. [checks notes] Nothing at all.
• I have spent much of my adult life in self-regulatory environments. They are never perfect, but when they work, they really deliver.
• #Adtech had the opportunity to self-regulate when the FTC asked for it – which earned him the AdChoices joke.
• They had a second major chance with DNT. But the notion of a level playing field between #adtech and consumers did not work for them, so they did everything to prevent it from happening.
• At one point, it became apparent that the @iab lacked the vision and leadership needed to guide the industry toward healthy and sustainable behaviors. That's when regulation became inevitable. No one has done as much as @iab to impose strict privacy regulations.
• And to make things more fun, the article that @r2rothenberg cited as supporting his point of view, is … calling for a stricter application of #GDPR.
• If this is not a metaphor for the position of @ iab, I do not know what it is.

The next time Facebook explains how it can self-regulate its access to data, I suggest you copy all this thread.

Aram Zucker-Scharff, aka the Director of Advertising Engineering at The Washington Post, also echoed Berjon's view of the vacuum left by the IAB in cleaning up the frightening online advertising complex.

His punch is more of a blow, but no less painful for the current leaders of the IAB.

"I rarely say that, but it's a must read," he writes in a quote tweet pointing to Berjon's entire thread.

Another commercial leader of leading publishers also told us that they "totally agree with Robin", although they do not want to record today.

In an interesting twist to this "mixed badociation of the online ad industry vs people working with ads and data in the real publishers" slugfest, Rothenberg responded over Berjon, thanking him literally for the absolute fight.

"Yes, thank you – that's exactly where we are and why these parts are important! ", He tweeted, presumably still stunned and confused because of all the blows he had just taken."@iab supports the competitiveness of hundreds of small publishers, retailers and brands in our global workforce. We appreciate the recognition and your explorations,@robinberjon. "

Rothenberg also took the time to thank columnist Bloomberg Leonid Bershidsky, who chipped in the wire to point out that the article Rothenberg had furiously retweeted actually stipulated that the RGPD "should be applied more rigorously against large companies, without the RGPP itself being bad or wrong".

Who is Bershidsky? Uh, just the article author Rothenberg tried to nega-spin. So … uh … possessed.

But there is more! Berjon tweeted a response to Rothenberg's message thank you for what the latter has torturously termed "your explorations" – I mean, the mind is stunned by what he was thinking to come to this euphemism – thanking him for overturning its position on the GDPR and reverse its previous emptiness of leadership on the support of securely enforced online privacy laws.

"It's great to hear that you're now supporting a strict GDPR enforcement, "he wrote. "That's what helps the little ones the most. A good next step in this conversation would be a @iab statement to transpose the GDPR into US federal law. Do you want to start writing something?

We asked the IAB whether, in light of Rothenberg's tweet, he now wants to share a public statement in favor of transposing the GDPR into US law. We will be sure to update this post if there is something written there.

We also badyzed the vinegar blows of this epic fight – as an insurance policy against any further attempts by the IAB to press the Delete tweet button. (In addition, you may want to print it and frame it.)

Some readings about light can be found here: