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I get the argument that corporations ought to take responsibility for where their money goes, but I feel like this is a bit similar to if I buy a cookie and the
by fareesh 10y ago
I get the argument that corporations ought to take responsibility for where their money goes, but I feel like this is a bit similar to if I buy a cookie and the cookie baker buys a house and the former owner of the house buys a gun and kills some people - is it reasonable to hold me partly responsible for contributing to it? Should we want that level of control in our lives? What's the average degrees of Kevin Bacon between someone and an unscrupulous person? Do we reserve this kind of judgement for felons or white collar criminals as well?
From what I understand of online targeted advertising is that it's a way for corporations to target the viewer, as opposed to the video they are watching. I have a diverse array of interests and watch a whole bunch of videos on YouTube on a variety of subjects. I am not defined by a single video or channel.
As per my understanding, I am the commodity. If I am a history buff and I want to watch an Adolf Hitler speech for academic reasons or just curiosity, by casting aspersions on the channel or the video, you are effectively casting aspersions on me! Is the value of my time tainted because of one video or channel?
In my experience, when I look at something on Amazon, I invariably see an ad for it later on on some other site. It's clear to me that this is a connection between Amazon and me via the ad network. It puzzles me as to why there seems to be this outdated mentality about how this works, which incorrectly associates the ad with the page instead of the user.
- devoply 10y agoThe point of all of this is social control by corporations and their owners and managers over the culture. Corporations hold most of the money and they only give it to people who distribute money according to what the owners and managers of the corporations feel is worthy because they do what the corporations want or more specifically what their owners and managers want. That locks out any sub-culture outside of social control and relegates them to lower/poorer levels of society, economically. That might control bad things, but it might also censor things which are not mainstream global corporate culture.
- blowski 10y agoI think (correct me if I'm wrong) that the distasteful publishers were receiving money from the adverts. So the headlines were technically correct to say "Marks & Spencer gives money to homophobic terrorists". There is a link in Google's advertising model between the page and the advert - the video is the placeholder on which the publisher is placing its advert. I accept that the solution is difficult, but Google designed and benefits enormously from this system, so it's reasonable to expect them to do something about it.
- skywhopper 10y agoI think there's two factors at work here. Number one, the ad buyers have a brand image they wish to control, and therefore they have an interest in ensuring that their brand is not associated with content they think would tarnish their image. Even if every ad-viewer consciously knew that the ads did not imply endorsement of the content, there are subconscious factors to consider (factors which form the basic premise of a huge percentage of corporate advertising--eg that positive subconscious associations with brand imagery is one of the purposes of advertising). Second, this is a (needed) power play on the part of ad buyers. Google has growing control over huge swaths of online and mobile advertising. Ad buyers need to push back, questioning the value of this sort of advertising and demanding more control over where their ads are displayed. Why should they trust Google to do the job of deciding where their ads belong for them? Google has proven time and again that they trust their own AI and machine learning tools far more than they should. And the longer they wait, the worse it's going to get.