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Ben Edelman

Ben Edelman

Actor and producer

Jul 31, 2026

5:38
Can you define adware for the audience?
5:40
Yeah, especially during the rise of Internet security problems.
5:46
Windows PCs were all messed up.
5:48
They were too easy to hack.
5:49
It was too easy to put some junk on a user's computer.
5:52
It was advantageous for the advertising people who put it there, who probably weren't the most mainstream of ad tech guys.
6:00
They're sort of, you know... hanging on by the fringes at best.

5 MINS LATER

11:12
Do you just surf around the web on an unsecured PC and see what happens? What's the itch that gets you scratching?
0:00
But here, what you see that happened, quote-unquote, wrong, is something from which they so brazenly benefit.
0:05
It's an awfully convenient bug.
0:08
[upbeat music]
1:15
Ben, maybe you can give us a sense of what has happened so far and what you've observed with FIA in the affiliate world as an affiliate versus the networks, the brands, and make sense of just the facts that you have found so far and what's happening for people so they understand what it is.
1:33
Yeah.
1:34
So far, the allegations against FIA have been in two categories.
1:38
One, To be sure, somewhat more than just allegations.
1:41
I mean, there's evidence, there's meat to it.
1:45
First and maybe most serious, certainly most surprising for this outside of the realm of typical affiliate misconduct that one catches when looking in the space is forced clicks.
1:57
the FIIA iOS Safari plugin.

28 MINS LATER

29:54
What's your take on them as a partner type and trying to piece together what's been done well and what's not working in the browser extension world?
3:32
Correct? Correct.
3:33
That's exactly right.
3:34
So there's a bunch of people in the world, including network quality teams at the networks, some merchants, and then some independent people like me who do it either, frankly, as, I don't know, a hobby, just for fun, or sometimes do it on a paid basis.
3:48
Networks or merchants could contract people like me.
3:51
Historically, I did a bunch of that.
3:52
These days, a little bit less.
3:54
But we look for violations.

12 MINS LATER

15:54
So curious to get your perspective on that piece as well.

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