Harriet brings to light the dark underside of the digital advertising world and the measures that need to be taken to ensure that authentic journalism is funded while fake news is starved, allowing for a better-informed society.
In today’s show, we are joined by Harriet Kingaby, she is the Co-chair of Conscious Advertising Network (CAN) a non-profit organization that is involved with making sure that ethics catch up with the technology of modern advertising. She also is a Mozilla fellow and recently researched the effects of A.I enhanced advertising alongside the organisation consumers international.
Harriet brings to light the dark underside of the digital advertising world and the measures that need to be taken to ensure that authentic journalism is funded while fake news is starved, allowing for a better-informed society. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of complexity to the situation due to how the purchasing of advertising space has changed over the years. Harriet does a splendid job of explaining to us what the barriers are, what we stand to lose if changes aren’t implemented and how our society can grow if they are.
One of the key points brought up within the show was the power that consumers have to control the digital advertising world. An estimated 41% of UK internet users are using an Ad-blocker to roam the internet without interruption, this was said to be the “biggest consumer boycott of all time” by the Ad contrarian. However there are knock-on effects to using such measures and while it may restrict funding to fake new articles you may find yourself accidentally restricting funding for real journalism that’s lifeblood is advertising revenue. Potential solutions to this problem are discussed in this episode.
Quotes:
“Biggest consumer boycott of all time”
“Advertising now follows you round the internet”
“Advertising engagement isn’t a holistic approach”
Links mentioned in the podcast
Timestamps:
Speaker 1: In this episode, recorded on the third of April 2020 I spoke with Harriet Kingaby. She's the co chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, a voluntary coalition of organizations from across the advertising ecosystem on a mission to ensure the ethics catches up with the technology of modern advertising. She's also a Mozilla fellow studying the unintended consequences of A.I. enhanced advertising alongside the organization, Consumers International. Harriet has worked as a brand purpose strategist at various communications agencies in London, including Media Bounty on as a co founder of Barco, where she helped brands big and small to make positive changes around climate change and social issues. I met Harriet at a climateaction.tech London meet up where she was part of a panel discussion on women impact makers in climate. Now, I've actually worked in the advertising industry, so a lot of what she said resonated with me. Our conversation reminded me of just how complex and nuanced the advertising world is I now understand that through that complexity, advertising is often unknowingly funding climate than nihilism on that. By cutting off the funding, you remove some of the incentives to create climate denial content. Let's dive straight in. Hi, Harriet, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi Asim, great to be here.
Speaker 1: Awesome. What is the climate problem that you are solving?
Speaker 2: The climate problem that I'm solving is looking at the funding model for climate misinformation. So we all we all kind of get on use from various different sources online. Andi, how credible or otherwise? Those sources are really very because the Internet is this fantastic platform for free speech and forgetting those ideas out there. But unfortunately there is a their economic gains to be had by posting fake news and this information around, you know, kind of precedent and kind of in a day to day topics on climate misinformation. Sadly, is one of those Andi I work a lot with advertisers to try and understand how we can stop advertising appearing next to climate misinformation and therefore inadvertently funding it
Speaker 1: are really interesting. So why is it worth solving this problem? How big of an issue is climate misinformation.
Speaker 2: Well, im cop, 26 is coming up, and suddenly it's just been postponed until next year. But it's basically going to be one of the most most important climate kind of conventions since the Paris Agreement in 2015. And so we feel like this is gonna be a bit of a focal point for, you know, kind of everybody. Essentially, if you can, if you're campaigning for action on climate change, but also those that would rather see no action happen it all. And you know they come from various different sources. It's some people who just want to make some money through advertising on the Internet. You've got more organized structures of people who, for various reasons, be that monetary be that political would rather that we didn't solve the problem. Um, and we even the organization that I kind of co chair was formed in 2018 and at that time we come soft launched at the U. N. Global Compact on Migration in Marrakech on At that time, there was a huge targeted misinformation campaign that suggested that that, uh, immigrant, that if that bloke you and compact was passed that actually would become illegal to criticise immigration, which was complete rubbish. But it was featured heavily on various different platforms. Went up to the recommendation algorithms of particular platforms. It was even featured in in kind of tabloid newspapers in the UK It eventually caused the collapse of the Belgian government on It meant that lots of organ of countries, from Chile through teeth, the US through to Poland backed out of signing this camp this compact. So we know just what you know, kind of an impact. These kind of this kind of targeted misinformation campaigns can have on really, really important global agreements. And unfortunately, if you look at those articles, if you look at those videos, they will be inadvertently funded by advertising, often by brands that actually would much rather see, you know, that have great diversity inclusion policies would much rather see, you know, kind of action around, you know, kind of safe, safe, safe migration and refugees on the same thing for, you know, kind of having science, uh, state science based climate targets. So what we want to make sure is that advertising isn't part of this cycle and isn't in adversity. Funding this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: so that's really interesting. So if there is misinformation out there on a website in some format, it's getting traffic and therefore the Algren support adverts on that website and therefore those advertised off funding the misinformation, the first place. And you actually mentioned something else. You wanted to even think about it. From that perspective off, people just want to make money. And so perhaps there they just know that this is Clickbait. It gets a lot of traffic and then this funding advertising Very interesting. So how is the conscious advertising network can? How is that helping to solve this?
Speaker 2: So can we are a voluntary coalition of around 80 organisations were on a mission to make sure the ethics catches up with the technology of modern advertising. And the way that we've done that is by writing six manifestos which look at various areas where we feel like advertising can do better. So there everything, everything from Children's welfare through to fake news, hate speak and sent our fraud on diversity and inclusion on what we've done is we've signed posted Teoh initiatives that already out there that can help advertisers, you know, kind of really look at their supply chain in a more detailed way. I'll leave also could have filled in the gaps. So if, for example, in the hate speech manifest A, we don't we were having lots of discussions around what constituted hate speech and people feeling very concerned about stymieing free speech. And so what we've done is we've pointed people. Teoh kind of U N. Guidance On what? What? What constitutes hate speech on? Did you know there to help people really understand what the red lines are? So we've been doing that for about we launched in June last year. We're looking at getting advertisers to sign up and put this in a way, request for proposals that go out. So we just change the way that, you know, the advertising supply chain is is kind of monitored, and we change what what advertisers were asking of their agencies and other vendors to do. Andi, you know, we've had a great response over the last year. We've kind of grown an awful lot. Andare fake news manifesto in particular, looks at three things advertisers can do to tackle this kind of misinformation. So it's things like treating premium publishers who they trust differently to, uh, random websites. On the open Web, for example, Andi also means things like thinking about the metrics and the way that they measure the success off of particular campaigns. Because we know that really just focusing on, you know, kind of engagement with your advertising isn't, ah, holistic measure of success and can lead toe to some of these. You know, these failures that we've seen?
Speaker 1: Could you take me and the rest of the audience on a little bit of a journey regarding a different players in the advertising industry? I have been a little bit of work in there in the past, and I know it can be quite a complex, intricate field. So you just take us on a journey by the different players involved?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, and it's incredibly complicated. It's something that I've got in a big learning curve around in the last in the last two years. So basically what I used to happen with advertising is it used to get used to be kind of directly bought. So if you wanted to put your brand up on a billboard somewhere on a tell it you know, television network, Then you could actually just phone up the billboard company of the television network or, you know, and say to them, Right, we want to buy this many units, etcetera. And what's happened with the digitization of advertising is actually, it's not that advertising gets necessarily gets directly bought on a platform anymore. Actually, what happens is it follows you around the Internet, so I'm going to see really different efforts to you. You're going to see really different efforts to me based on things like our browsing history, the things we like on social media, you know, kind of all that kind of stuff. Um, and it sounds like a really simple switch, but it's it's unbelievably complicated. So when I signed on to a website, there's this whole auction that happens in like, no set, no time. It'll that determines the ever that I'm going to see. And it's why. Sometimes you get going slower pages loading because you've got this kind of whole process going on in the background. And so your advertisers like a response talked about. They're the ones who were giving money to this kind of online. The technology providers who were kind of essentially kind of providing the information and hosting this this online auction. And then on the other end, you've got the publishers who received some money from from that from that whole transaction as well. So it's a bit like an eBay on eBay auction happening every time I you know, I got a new website.
Speaker 1: So let's say ah, website owner is a publisher than an advertiser is just saying I want these adverts put somewhere, but they don't necessarily have a clear line of sight regarding where that adverts gonna be placed. Cause just from an advertiser perspective, I'm just going into a black box of an auction, and it's just gonna come out the other side wherever it's going to go. Does that sound about right?
Speaker 2: Yes. And what's happening is advertisers are going I want to reach, uh, women in their mid thirties who, you know, kind of live in particular areas and, like, I don't know, walking their dogs on. So therefore, when you're when it will be when If you know someone like me who likes all of those things is on the Web seen, it kind of goes to a website. Then there's going to be a, you know, kind of that auction kind of based on based on that information, because someone's gonna go, we've got one here and then that's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Give me battle amongst all the advertisers you all want to target people like you and the person willing to play the highest price is going to get to show the advert e.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, is it so this. I think it's the second highest price so that you don't get ridiculous. You could good ridiculous amounts of money and grab everything, but it's that that's the process behind it.
Speaker 1: So what you've done is you basically created a step manifestos that guide of the sign posted with other things, perhaps by the U. N. For instance, the fake news one and you're getting advertises to sign up to this or who along the chain. Are you wanting to sign up to these?
Speaker 2: So our main focus is advertises because they you know that it's their brand essentially, and it's them, you know, kind of. It's there and money that's kind getting poured into this system. Andi, I've worked for I've worked for agent season you know, when we when When our client says they want something, you know, we will do our best to give it to them. So although we've got a really broad mix of people signed up, it's the advertisers. You have the power within that system. We've also got agency signed up because often we've had people say, Hey, you know, we want we want to sign up. We want to try, try this out. But that means all of our agencies have to change their behavior. So then their agencies will sign up and start start implementing or manifestos in the work that they do. We've also got the tech vendors. So you, the online auction system we mentioned earlier on the people involved with that they can sign up and look at ways that they can make sure that they're the process by which they're buying and selling that space is and, you know, it kind of is more ethical on Ben. We don't necessarily have, uh, we don't have publishers necessarily. But we do talk to publishers quite a lot because obviously they're really important. The really important, But I think is that we've got lots of civil society members. So people like show races and red card tell Mama and those kind of organizations are signed up as well, because what we're finding is we talk a lot in the industry about brand safety. But issues with with advertising are actually affecting humans. So we we talked to our groups about human safety because, for example, if hate speech is being funded by advertising, it's creating a market for hate speech, which the U. N has identified. Then you've got organizations like Tell Mama you're having a really having even harder a time getting their message across and doing their work than they would do before. Um, and so we feel it's really, really important to bring civil society to the table. So we've got that that, you know, kind of human and diverse input in a way that we wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you're speaking, it makes complete sense to me. I don't know why single advertiser would ever want tohave there advert displayed on any kind of climate misinformation or definitely hate speech or any of these things. The brand damage is huge. Just from a screen shot of that. Yeah, So what stage is the conscious advertising network at gonna have any people? It's a nonprofit, isn't it to describe the actual organization to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually So we are. And we've got around 18 members your public on those lazy people in working up to going public because it's quite a quite a meaty thing. T sign up to Andi. We've We've been around for about 2.5 years, but we officially launched in June last year. Andi, Andi! In that time, we've kind of grown grown a lot. We re and re worked. Ah, a couple of our manifestoes, Teoh, because these issues are changing all the time. So we've just reworked or fake news manifesto to represent things like the rising climate denial that we've that we've seen in climate misinformation. Andi, we've we worked way review and rework the manifestos periodically with kind of experts in the field. So are fake news. Fake news. Misinformation Manifesto has just been put reviewed by various of our members. He working mark in these areas divesting inclusion was recently updated by creative equals, and Ali handed that on alongside advertising because there's a whole new and this whole new areas around media buying that we haven't included in there. So we just keep these things going on. The idea is to at least be, you know, kind of a so far ahead of mapping out this achievable leadership position kind of assess faithfully as we can.
Speaker 1: Excellent. So are there any concrete examples of success? Is that you can point?
Speaker 2: We've seen when, for example, HP a couple of years ago, they asked, they decided that they wanted more representation and they wanted their adverts to be more inclusive and diverse. Andi. They managed to get the whole agency kind of roster. Teoh change their hiring strategies to change the way that they they kind of assessed the successes of campaigns and each piece or a big uptick in its brand affinity and things like that. So we know that when you know the Advertising Age's industry puts its mind to things, it can do things, and it can make change really creatively and quickly. And that's the kind of stuff that we're we're trying to facilitate.
Speaker 1: Brilliant. I think you mentioned early one also, and it's something I think, for our listeners Russia recording this on the third of April 20 twenties, when the mitts off the Corona pandemic and you mentioned only one about a covert. This information. Just today I managed to find myself going down the rabbit hole off Twitter off five g Corona virus. Some sort misinformation has gone around that five g causes Corona virus or something along those lines and even saw the video today about somebody harassing people in laying Internet five Dr Cable, which is not even five g, saying that's going to cause Corona virus. I think this seems to be some misinformation happening out there as well. What have you noticed on this base? And you mentioned Iran. That's something you've seen an uptick in and
Speaker 2: definitely a coronavirus. Misinformation is really, really dangerous. And it's in some cases, it's coming from, you know, in inverted commas, trusted new sources we've seen. We've seen links things linking five G and Corona virus on new sources that that I think should know better. To be honest with you on bond, Alan Rusbridger actually tweeted this morning that this is a rehearsal for some of the climate change misinformation we're going to see, and we've got a few problems here. So there's been a big conversation this weekend last week about advertisers blocking Corona virus news on trusted websites. So I think it was. The Washington Post was running a its front page with no adverts on it, because advertisers had been adding Corona virus to their block lists on the the technology that they used to try and avoid content. This, uh, you know, kind of unsavory was actually blocking hard news. So there's been a big debate around that on advertisers. I think no, they can't should be kind of hard. We need hard news. In a time like this, we need great reporting and quality journalists, and I think that's a huge responsibility by advertisers to make sure that that's funded. I would love to see them lean into a bit more. Andi, you know, you were talking about this kind of five g. I saw that video as well. Where there's a woman harassing these people laying cable like that's been a That's one of the many hoaxes that's originated on online. Andi. There's got to be better filtering of that stuff, better ability to kind of application of technology, so that we recognize when these words appear together, the sentiment of articles and try and avoid kind of advertising there. And that's some of the stuff that we see when you know kind of advertising on the on the open Web. It's obviously more difficult on social media because it's difficult to regulate these you seen against. But again, there's a big coordinated effort here that's needed between advertisers between the platforms themselves who were hosting this stuff, Um, and you know, better strategies and more open communication and more accountability around, you know, fixing this problem and so of ours, for example, did a big a big piece of research last year that looked at how climate misinformation flowed through YouTube and what they found was really disturbing. They found that the fake news was that misinformation was actually recommended more heavily by the recommendation algorithms because it's salaciousness and because it it you know it. It gets reactions from people on. Unfortunately, that's rewarded. So there is a swell as the advertisers, you know, kind of thinking more cleverly about how they're spending their money. There's also these, you know, this is also needs to be action from the platforms, and you have seen around Corona virus, you know, kind of Twitter and YouTube behaving slightly mawr slightly more like publishers by kind of alerting people to trusted information. So there's a whole load of action being taken. It's just that we're we're making. We want to make sure that we're learning lessons from what's happening right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Yeah, I'm glad there are things happening in this base. It sounds like from a technical perspective as well, because even though you've signed a manifesto, it sounds like there are actually technical difficulties, such as kind of a hard keyword search of Cove. It is going to find the good articles and the bad articles. Can you speak for a little bit about some of the technical challenges and solutions to solving this?
Speaker 2: I can certainly try. I'm not a technical person said, but I'm kind of aware of the broad brush things. So if you're blocking by keywords, it's over. It could be a very blunt instrument. So if you're blocking Corona virus, you're blocking everything. The bad stuff and the good stuff. If you're on a lots of organizations have been encouraged or have created these really long block lists, which aren't necessarily helpful. It means that lots of the Web isn't isn't being funded in the way it could be. And I think there's also ah issue with the application of the technology, So I don't I think it can be more subtle and more nuanced. Certainly I have spoken to providers that use things like AI is a brilliant report by check into fake news and how that travels through the Internet. If anyone is interested in it, some great stats around just how much business is a losing and how much democracy is being destabilized by fake news and misinformation online there. But you know, if you use providers that are that, you kind of are able to offer some more new once, then I think that's, you know, kind of that is a good way. And I think there's a strategic role here as well around when do we deploy these technologies? So if where deploying these technologies to dio you know, to buy advertising on really trusted new sources, then you know, do we really need to be blocking things on The Washington Post? I mean, maybe if you're an airline company and you want to avoid the word crash, but not for all buys. So I think there is a slightly more nuanced strategy behind the way that media could be bought and sold. That would help Teoh kind of solve some of these issues as well. And that's what we're advocating for in the manifesto that organizations think a bit more with a bit more nuance about the relationships that they have with these publishers and the technologies they they deploy.
Speaker 1: I see. So on one level it's getting more information regarding where your advert is going to be placed, which exposes your publisher, and you're going to spend money anyway. If you're choosing not to see that information right now, it doesn't necessarily mean you can get that information. So getting that information, it sounds like I get that from what you described. The nuance get the nuance of where you advert is going to get published, and then the intelligent regarding where you put the efforts to check more thoroughly because you, as you say, like, well, street journalists, not the worst publication in the world.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And there's there's also technology technological fixes, which can help with things like advertisers not knowing where their advertising is going. There are technologies which will track that you tracked the transactions and track the publishers the where the adverts appearing. And they're really useful in stopping things like fraud. Because frauds is the second biggest funder of organized crime behind the drugs trade, it's and it's it runs to billions as well. Because we spent 330 billion last year on digital advertising. Andi, like a significant amount that is being lost a fraud. So these technological fixes they you know they can be applied and they can be deployed. We just need toe embed the use of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's money to be made or say that a lot of money tomato saves. But there are deep financial incentives to make. This work makes the success.
Speaker 2: If you're. If anyone's interested in in that in more detail, there's them. There's a woman called Nandhini Jammy, who is the co founder of Sleeping Giants and her newsletter branded is brilliant for breaking down the problem. Some of these problems into really like understandable bite size kind of comments, so I'd really recommend anyone that's interested in that. Just sign up to branded as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think just just this conversation with you now is is reminding me again of how conflicts this industry is and an inside all that complexity. That's way a love, evil conserve. I've it takes sometimes one pack. So, yeah, I'll definitely like to get that. Plus a number of your things that you've mentioned. We'll get them in the show. Notes for myself is all in for other people to read later on. So how does conscious advertising network scale? How did you get from where you are right now to perhaps the maximum potential that you could achieve?
Speaker 2: So are and we see ourselves as a temporary intervention, like we don't want to be around as the conscious advertising network in, you know, kind of five years time. We think that, you know, our goal is to get as many footsie 100 companies signed up as we can in the UK and then you think about that. I think about if this needs to go to go wider and essentially, what we really need is we need advertisers. We need the people with money to sign up and say, Hey, we're going to give this a try, because when you sign upto the conscious advertising network, you're not saying I'm perfect in these six areas. What you're saying is I'm committing Teoh trying to improve the way that we work in these six areas. Um, and it's essentially, if we can do that, if we can get enough advertisers signed up, then we can change the way that this supply chain is kind of is conducted on. We can fix some of these problems or at least go some way to fixing some of these problems because, as you said, some of them are super complex. Andi can no only fund more healthy Internet, but we can, you know, way can also create advertising that's more effective on that reaches people in a more meaningful way. Eso I feel like this is just a big It's just a big win around. But we need people to take that leap of faith and say We're going to sign up in support on bond. It's worth mentioning again that this is a voluntary initiative as well. I'm up until now and you know this dear myself. My co chair, Jake, the steering Committee We've all done done this in our spare time on. So there's no cost to it'll Onda. We just We just feel like we want as many kind of big advertisers to sign up as possible. Give it a go on. And, you know, we feel like that That's gonna be go somewhere, at least to fixing the problem.
Speaker 1: And so what are some of the risks, then? What would stop you from reaching that goal?
Speaker 2: Say, I think it's a quite a prospect to se Teoh a marketing department. Um, here is six ways that actually you're affecting your your affecting the Internet on detention society. That's that's a change in the way that we often talk about this thing, these things. So we used Teoh. You know, when we work in advertising you used to kind of talking about Well, actually we didn't meet this. We didn't need this this target or you know that we it looks like we might have annoyed people away from kind of engaging with our adverts. Worth noting that global ad blocking is up is, you know, kind of upper around 41%. I think, in the tickets in the UK is around 41%.
Speaker 1: Wow!
Speaker 2: And the ad contrarians called it the biggest consumer boycott of all time. So, you know, we used to. We used to trying to work out how to annoy people less and get people in the right moments toe to get the results we want. We're not used to thinking about Well, actually, this is having human rights impacts. This is funding climate misinformation. But on this, this could be hurting our brands. So I think the risk is that we don't embrace that, and we don't see that by just acknowledging that and taking some simple steps. We can make a difference. It's not a threat. It's not a you know, kind of like advertising is bad, it's not. It funds the Internet, it funds the great things that we enjoy. It funds quality journalism and all that stuff, And it creates on do you know kind of beds relationships with brands that we that we that we really enjoy having around. But unless we just step up and say OK, we've got some things wrong so far, but we can we can put them right now I feel like there's the biggest risk there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't realized ab looking was that pervasive? I do it Matthews and that lookers or myself. But then again, there are also the ad blockers. They do. Let's an ad platforms through. I have adverts on my website, which come through unethical advertising platform, which are allowed through the ad blocker Onda. That's quite interesting as well. That targeted ad blocking is a way of yourself choosing not to fund certain services and certain things you don't want to bomb.
Speaker 2: But it also cuts in funding to things you might want to fund as well. So it's that double edged, double edged sword.
Speaker 1: I would really like an ad blocker, which would only allow adverts through for brands that I consider to be ethical. Then I allow them through on any platform I'm on. So there's an idea for your listener to create that something I'm perfectly happy with.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's move on. If you don't mind, let's look a little bit about your background and what inspired you to launch conscious advertising network in the first place?
Speaker 2: Great. So I mean by background, I'm actually sustainability Communications crescent. Um, I studied environment of science at university, and all I wanted to do was welcome climate change on bond. I ended up slightly and by accident, working in working, writing about a tech. Andi, I'm So you're sitting in a room talking about advertising with a sustainability training, and you're going That doesn't seem right. Like all this. This really contradicts what I know about creating great brands and all of that stuff. And so that was kind of what first led me to question things. And then I met a conference. I met a co chair Jake on. We have the same kind of soapbox toe to thump on the day, and we kind of I said, Okay, well, we need to kind of keep talking about this. And so, you know, we essentially start going for coffees on do you know, kind of it ended up with about 12 with trying to meet, and so we ended up kind of starting this, uh, starting the cunts advertising network. Out of that, um, I was also involved in the in in a kind of the remain campaign as well, from a kind of an independent campaign angle. So I saw from
Speaker 1: Brexit is just that then that is not our business. For the remain campaign was their campaign to remain within the EU. So you're part of that campaign?
Speaker 2: I was We were responsible for the Boris and Trump mule appeared around the around the thing.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 2: No one can ever and see it, but so I, you know, kind of from that angle I saw this, This kind of we put our heart and soul into it, made some great content, but what we didn't we didn't really think office like the, you know, kind of the placement on the media side of things and how that actually could be, could be was being exploited by the other side. So I definitely went through a sharp learning curve in the aftermath of that. And it made me realize that actually, these these issues are are so intertwined on we have to play play. This isn't the Internet like, in a way, because the other side are So that's how you know, kind of we're gonna change. We're gonna kind of make sure that we kind of get the change that we want around things like climate change
Speaker 1: I think as you were speaking to me again, I was just reminded about how you are. Advertising is the thing that powers the Internet, like I talk about electricity as well, that electricity is something the also powers everything that we see around us. But we don't see it. We don't understand it and incredibly complex network, and it also is something that causes a lot of climate damage. But we don't really don't see we're not involved with their on advertising. Itself also is pervasive is everywhere. We need it. This supports our Internet, and yet we don't know what's happening behind and we don't know how. It perhaps has an impact on climate. So many other issues as well. And it's all these things are hidden behind behind us through a thin veil on an incredibly complex, which is what stops people from digging too deep inside him. That's where all these problems I'm also solutions, are as well, which is, I thought, I add just now. So also one of things I like to ask, and it's a challenge. I have quite often is that the climate spaces hard. You've been in it for a long time, and it's something you've been wanting to do for a long time. For me, it could be quite tough times. You're dealing with quite serious issues. At the same time, you're dealing with quite big challenges, some seemingly insurmountable on also people on both sides that not supportive as they should be. What are some of the things that you do to stay motivated? What keeps you motivated?
Speaker 2: What keeps me motivated? That's a really good question. Um, I think there's a part. Part of it is and just just can do anything else, which is a you know, just something within me. I think, honestly, it's things. It's the little pieces of joy. So is meeting really good people and having these great conversations with people where you're like, Oh, like I hadn't thought of battle? This is the way of solving this problem that I just thought, you know, over just never have thought of in a 1,000,000 years on. I think that's part of the wonderful thing about seeing that kind of tech industry join this space issues. You hear these amazing solutions or these ways of doing things, and you just think gosh, that's think that's incredible. And so I think it's staying. Staying inspired is definitely a big one. Andi. I think there's also a flip side of just occasionally really allowing myself to kind of go down the rabbit hole of seeing what those I really disagree with or doing ongoing. Okay, that's the That's the other side on when I say disagree with, I mean willfully. I think I feel like they willfully I don't want their leader, that this ulterior motives for them from them, perhaps not wanting the change so that it gives me a little Sprinkle of, you know, uh, no energy as well. Um, And it was so I think, during, you know, just like, you know, just looking, looking after looking after yourself a little bit at something, you learn as you get older Smith, like, just eat well and get some exercise. And, you know, don't drink too much when you're feeling terrible. That kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: Yeah, you actually write. I've had to get very good a meditation, going for a run, looking after yourself. They're important as well, but I also do one of things. There's a lot of things I don't like about Twitter on one of things that do respect about it is you can go and see the other side. Now it's something I do as well. Just go down the rabbit holes, a Twitter. And it is quite shocking the conversations that you start seeing there, but also more importantly, you do see it from their perspective. And you see the conversations that happening on what they actually really do you believe in, and that helps you recognize that it's not. We'd like to tell us those these stories about evil people on villains, and we're in this drama. And no, it's just people. Just some people are saying one things, And if you were saying other things and yeah, that's the world
Speaker 2: that's what social media is encouraging us not to do. It's kind of almost encouraging us to polarize and say we were right in your room. Andi, the Juliette You write the joy of things like Twitter, and but I think just daily life is realized them, you know, kind of talking to people about stuff you're passionate about, realizing that not everyone is as passionate about it. Know everyone wants the same stuff, but there's always stuff that we connect over, you know, kind of some of my some of my best friends don't in any way share the same political views is me. But we don't connect over that. We connect over different things. They might not clear about care about climate change, but they do care about their family. And they do care about, you know, the welfare of their kids. So it's just like it's a good you know, It is a good thing to remember that were wonderfully different. And the only way that we will do, you know, kind of sort out this thing that is climate change is by framing it in different ways, working with everyone, starting where they are and really just, you know, kind of embracing the fact that we're all different and that is great. And but yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so just the last question is that something you've read recently a person are listening? Should follow a I thought you hard or just ask for our listeners that you want to share before you leave?
Speaker 2: Definitely. So there is. There was an article published yesterday in the Financial Times by Yuval Noah Harari, Andi in it he makes the point about the world we want to see after Corona virus Andi In it, he talks all about Theo. The potentially the the use of surveillance to really kind of to monitor people and how that can be a fantastic thing on how it can be on how we shouldn't actually think that it's either privacy or our health. Andi on picks that in quite a beautiful way, and I know that we've been seeing all this stuff about co video. It's in like, you know, kind of people can't be trusted online, and it picks apart why that could be a dangerous, a dangerous position for us to adopt when we've got governments that might sweep in and use that to their advantage. So if you won't read anything, I reckon that's that's That's the thing that brought me joy this morning.
Speaker 1: Brilliant allowed that linked to the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Harry. This has been a really fascinating conversation. Amazing to hear all the things that conscious advertising network is doing, and I'm really glad that you're focusing on this. It's a really important topic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you. so much has been great.
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