Publicis Groupe, the French advertising conglomerate that led the 2018 seed round for news blacklist organization NewsGuard, has signed a $2.2 billion deal to acquire LiveRamp, an ad-tech company whose former head of products argued in Forbes that ad-blocking technology was part of the tech industry’s fight against racism. The deal would bring together two companies with a history of support for online censorship.
In December 2020, Anneka Gupta, LiveRamp’s then-head of products and platforms published a column in Forbes under the headline “Tech’s Greatest Asset In The Fight Against Racism Is Inclusive Product Development.” It opens by complaining that the tech sector is overwhelmingly white and male, and...
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