Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas - Fringe 2023 Evil Google Sells Your Words!

Take one top academic, some dangerous ideas, add one comedian and it’s the force of nature that is the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas (CODI).

Hosted by comedian Susan Morrison, and now in its eleventh year, CODI is sixty minutes of rapid-fire research from some of the finest minds in the country.

How does Google earn its money? And how has the company become such a central player in controversies such as biased search results and fake news stories? The answer is simple: Google makes its money by selling words to advertisers. Artist and researcher Dr Pip Thornton (The University of Edinburgh) calls this linguistic capitalism: every word you search for on Google is auctioned to the highest bidder. Join Pip in a critical, poetic and interactive exploration not only of what words are worth to Google, but what they are worth to you.