About Mason Pelt

Writer, Filmmaker, Public Health & Privacy Advocate

Mason Pelt is a writer and filmmaker whose work sits at the the intersection of narrative and impact. He works with the nonprofit Project Hand Up furthering the mission of creating engaging education content for children covering difficult topics. To make up for, or perhaps because of a prior career in advertising, Pelt is a staunch advocate and educator regarding privacy from big tech and ad tech. The through lines of life are research and storytelling.

I am currently focused on writing. I’ve long been something of a writer, with work appearing in outlets like Business Insider, SiliconANGLE, and TechCrunch, among others. My current project is a book examining the rise of dictators in every facet of life, from petty to powerful. It uses the life and times of Joseph Stalin (the one-time seminarist turned revolutionary turned dictator) who, like so many tyrants in another world, might have simply ended up a finance bro with the same personality and ethics.

I’m a Board Member for Project HAND UP (Healthy Africa A New Directive Using Puppets) a nonprofit organization that created the majority of COVID-19 public service announcements in Kenya. The organization has also produced substantial edutainment material on topics like HIV/AIDS, parasitic worms, and fire safety, winning multiple Kalasha Awards from the Kenya Film Commission, among other accolades. review

I’m an avid juggler, in fact I hold a world record for most balls juggled on a pogostick. Long before Project HAND UP was winning awards, I worked on indie films including (perhaps the only even slightly notable example) handling most VFX for Shelter the winner of Best Narrative Feature at Williamsburg Independent Film Festival 2012. To work in independent film work is to have a résumé of hard, unpublished work.

My addiction to eating put me in a decade-long spiral. First in commercial production, and later in social media and ads management. I’ve managed a over $100 million in paid media spend and worked on some genuinely interesting projects along the way. By age 20 I had worked on both Superbowl and Olympic ad campaigns. Eventually I moved to more product-focused roles, and now these skills particularly crafting messaging, and knowledge of how the ad tech sausage factory works, fuel my advocacy.

The path from a start in video & photo production to writing a book about Stalin is complicated. From news segments to corporate videos to seeing the back-end of an ad-fueled corporate surveillance dragnet, into warning people not to give up privacy for convenience, and planning the best way to explain fire safety to a child is bizarre. None of it is linear, and all of it is connected

I remember feeling honored as a teenager getting my National Press Photographers Association card. I remember having to care about makeup when I did social media work for major brands. From aspirations to be Steven Spielberg, to Carl Bernstein, to David Ogilvy to Cory Doctorow. I have a more complex relationship with my own career than can ever be explained.

The Through Line: Dictators, Data, and Defense

My current advocacy for digital privacy from big tech and big government is informed directly by my background. My years in the advertising world taught me how messaging systems and ad tech infrastructure function. Even simple acts of resistance, like using Signal or Quad9 for DNS, offer an off-switch from the surveillance state of enshittification boiling slowly around us.

The public heath work, is in all the ways that matter, the skills of production and advertising by another name, with another goal. Many skill sets can be used to make the world better or worse, deepening on how they are used.

My forthcoming book is an active project examining the management styles of dictators across every aspect of human life. The parallels between autocrats on the political left, such as Joseph Stalin, on the right, such as Francisco Franco, and petty tyrants like the overbearing boss or the insurance company CEO are numerous. The book seeks to arm the reader with the tools to recognize and survive such figures.

The only constants of my career are research and story telling in some way or another.

Recent Notes