Research: The User and The Beast

Joana Moll · Artist & Researcher, ES · Bio

This research is part of a larger project exploring new paradigms for understanding Ad Tech, the Internet's primary business model. The project will focus on how Ad Tech amplifies the military- industrial-security complex's surveillance abilities, subtly merging military and civilian sectors and leading to a silent militarization of civil society.

In April 2022, an article published by The Intercept[1] revealed that Anomaly Six, a media intelligence company based in the US, was able to track the precise movements of CIA and NSA agents. Far from using opaque sources of data, the location of the agents was possible by combining unclassified satellite images with commercial advertising data, acquired from the Ad Tech (Advertising Technology) ecosystem.

Despite being the primary business model of the Internet, the Ad Tech industry is surprisingly unknown to most of its users. In essence, Ad Tech is a term that encompasses a wide range of technologies and strategies used to advertise digitally, and it generates most of the revenues for companies such as Facebook and Google. Although Ad Tech is a highly complex ecosystem, build of an ample spectrum of technical processes, products and companies, its primary resource is user data. Thus, data extraction processes are vital to this industry, consolidating Ad Tech as the world's leading industry in processing and commodifying user data, or in other words, as a major enabler for mass and centralized surveillance. Yet, despite the extraordinary importance of Ad Tech within the global economy, its methods and processes are extremely opaque and thus incredibly difficult to control and regulate.

Even though the main business model of digital advertising relies on exchanging user data between companies to serve tailor-made ads to internet users, Anomaly Six exposes a clear example of the crucial role of Ad Tech in enhancing the surveillance capabilities of the military-industrial-security complex, reinforcing a co-dependency that silently (yet incisively) blurs the boundaries between the military and the civilian sectors. This silent militarization of the civil society is particularly critical, posing significant threats to democratic processes by benefiting totalitarian modes of operating at a global scale, exemplified through firms like Anomaly Six. Joana Moll will focus on developing a thorough and comprehensive analysis on the existing entanglements that exist between Ad Tech and the military-industrial-security complex.

Joana Moll’s research is part of a larger project whose main goal (or radical gesture) is to create new paradigms to enact and apprehend Ad Tech, so that more democratic and sustainable ways of inhabiting these systems can arise. To achieve this, the project intends to embody an extended map of Ad Tech through a collective performance. The current map of Ad Tech mostly addresses its techno-economic aspects, but these are also grounded in critical relationships to natural resources, the generation of emotions, and (future) politics. Thus, this project intends to extend this map by including the underlying affective, political and material dimensions of the industry.

[1]  Biddle, Sam, Jack, Poulson, et al. “American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo’d Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA.” The Intercept, Apr. 2022. Accessed 30 Jan. 2023.

The initial research phase of “The User and The Beast” has been developed within RED ACTS, a network promoted by the UOC and Hub d’Art, Ciència i Tecnologia, Hac Te, with the support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, and in collaboration with CCCB and Hangar. Her current project is funded with kind support of Brian O’Kelley and Elizabeth Rovere, 6 Grace Court Alley, Brooklyn, NY 11201.