When I was growing up we had news sources we could trust. Under The Fairness Doctrine, news on the radio, TV, and in print was partial and fair. But in 1987 during the Reagan administration, this was repealed, leading to alternative media and more misinformation than ever before. And now with the internet, we are truly in the wild west of sharing information, collecting data, and trying to maintain privacy. Big companies take advantage of that from all angels with their marketing, which is now ultra-targeted (and often in ways you wouldn’t even be able to recognize). 

Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I sit down with Andy Russell to talk about what data really means, who has yours, how they got it, and how they use it. Andy is a digital media, ad-tech, marketing-tech, and data science innovator and pioneer as well as a self-taught Behavioral Economist. He has invested in, incubated, or run over 50 technology companies, including Daily Candy, Thrillist, Tasting Table, Idealbite, PureWow, Zynga, Betaworks, Business Insider, Sailthru, RapLeaf and LiveRamp, SpongeCell, AdRoll, and Bounce Exchange. He is the Founder and Chairman of Trigger Media, InsideHook, and Fevo. 

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Here are more of the details from our interview: 

• How much do sites like Facebook and Google watch our online actions and what are they doing with the information? (8:30)

• Why we have an unregulated internet (14:14)

• What does data really mean, who has yours, and how did they get it? (18:26)

• The repeal of The Fairness Doctrine and the regulation that alleviates digital platforms from responsibility for third-party content posted on their sites (24:42)

• The sale of your information by “Big Data” to Facebook and Google (27:27)

• How a computer or database can “know you better than you know yourself” (34:04)

• The current state of our personal data and political digital advertising (39:50)

• What we can learn from the Rwandan genocide (1:04:51)

• What you can do to know whether you’re being falsely advertised to (1:09:51)

• Should Facebook and Google get rid of political ads? (1:17:55)

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