Ben is an independent researcher and consultant — combining software engineering, law, and economics to explore and improve some of the Internet’s biggest problems. at Microsoft, where he advised the company at the intersection of software, economics, and public policy. From 2007 to 2018, Ben was a faculty member at Harvard Business School, where he studied and taught about the economics of online markets — aiming to understand both how online markets function and also how they might improve. Full biography.
Research by category:
- ad platforms
- advertising
- advertising fraud
- adware
- affiliate marketing
- artificial intelligence
- bias
- certifications
- competition
- consumer protection
- copyright
- data portability
- decentralized marketplaces
- deception
- disclosures
- discovery and document retention
- display marketing
- educational technology
- domain names
- entrepreneurship
- filtering
- geofencing
- internet infrastructure
- license agreements
- marketing
- marketplaces
- naming names
- network effects
- payments
- policy
- privacy
- regulation
- retransmission
- search engines
- security
- trademark
- transportation
- trust
- adult
- kids
- genres
- specific companies
- site admin
Browse all entries. Site search.
Recent research:
- Cookie-Stuffing and Low-Intention Traffic in advertising fraud, affiliate marketing
- How Adware Manipulates Attribution to Monetize a Merchant’s Own Traffic in advertising fraud, adware, affiliate marketing
- Podcast: Lessons in Taking Down Affiliate Fraud in advertising fraud, affiliate marketing
- Advertising Fraud Detection at VPT Digital in advertising fraud, revenue sources, affiliate marketing, site admin
- Honey’s Contractual Breaches and Value (or Lack of It) to Merchants in advertising fraud, loyalty, affiliate marketing, consumer protection, naming names, advertising security
- Teen Safety, Uber’s Protests, and the Democratic Process in consumer protection, decentralized marketplaces, ride-hailing, kids, Uber
- Revisiting Litigation Alleging Google Discovery Violations in discovery and document retention, Google
- On Geofencing at Polymarket in geofencing, policy, regulation
- Impact of GitHub Copilot on code quality in artificial intelligence, Microsoft
- What I’m working on in site admin
- My next chapter in site admin
- The Effect of Microsoft Copilot in a Multi-lingual Context in artificial intelligence, Microsoft