The Click Trap

Omnipresent in our daily experience, digital advertising has ballooned into a half-trillion dollar segment of the modern economy. The Click Trap reveals how the digital advertising industry, monopolized by only a handful of big tech and social media companies, is leading to catastrophic material harm, both on and offline. 

The concept of the "free internet" has facilitated an infrastructure built around advertising. Google, originally non-monetized, developed an ad-based model that was so successful that the biggest tech companies all followed suit. Tracking users via cookies across their internet usage, individuals are now targeted by hyper-specific advertisements, which can change depending on factors as fluid as the building they're in. "Data brokers" have emerged to sell groups of consumer data to anyone who requests it, with the most "valuable" demographics netting the highest prices.

Advertisers want to make sure that they are receiving the highest engagement possible, and with extremist and low-quality content generating the most clicks, the spread of hate, misinformation, and disinformation has been turbocharged by digital industries eager to profit from them. At the same time, cyber scammers across the globe are using programmatic advertising to target specific groups of vulnerable internet users. Additionally, US-based companies expand into emerging markets bringing with them these profitable models, consequently exacerbating political issues in cultures with which they have no familiarity. The powerful technology behind the advertising industry has profound and far-reaching consequences: shaping the outcome of elections, fueling genocidal violence, polarizing communities, and allowing ordinary people to be cheated by scammers without any criminal repercussions.

Testimony from politicians, journalists, academics, digital activists and a scam victim whose life was turned upside down give unique insight into how and why this murky industry continues to flourish. Is there a way to make online advertising more ethical? Is there a way to better protect internet users? Can hate-speech be effectively de-monitized and de-platformed? Is it time to hold big tech platforms to account? The Click Trap demonstrates that change can be possible, but that for now at least, those who hold the reigns are content to continue business as usual until regulators catch up to their destructive practices. 

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FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT: "Like many people, I was curious about how online ads actually end up on my screen: who or what is placing them there? How exactly does this happen? And what could a better understanding of these processes tell me about the (problematic) ways technology and humans interact? These questions led me down a rabbit hole and into the murky, complex world of programmatic advertising, an almost entirely automated trillion-dollar industry which influences our lives, both on- and offline, in ways it’s hard to even imagine. Suddenly I found myself with more questions than answers. 

I began speaking to experts on the subject to find out more, all of whom repeated the same thing: people have no idea how online advertising works and the harm it’s doing - if they did, they’d be outraged. This idea became the guiding principle for The Click Trap. I now know that a complex system of machines, algorithms and software places an ad in front of my eyes – yet I want to stress that this system is designed and implemented by humans and has real human consequences. I don’t believe that any other documentary has tackled this urgent issue in such an ambitious way.

Although we should be worried, it isn’t all bleak. I’ve been truly inspired by the stories of digital activists fighting back against big tech monopolies and the European legislators pushing for greater regulation. THE CLICK TRAP is released in 2024, the same year the Digital Services Act legislation will come into effect. The timing couldn’t be better. I want this film to be part of the critical conversations already happening in parliaments, amongst friends and in workplaces across the globe. And I believe it will. I’m confident our audience will feel strongly invested in this story. Ultimately, this documentary is not about technology, it's about human beings. It deals with issues that directly and indirectly affect us all, as consumers, workers, business owners, voters, social media users and technology lovers, or haters. We’re all implicated, in the problem and in the solution.”