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Wow. A- Ads do not manipulate people into buying things against their own interests. Businesses who sell great products that people want don't just magically

Wow. A- Ads do not manipulate people into buying things against their own interests. Businesses who sell great products that people want don't just magically find their customers. They find customers with ads. B- You're free to use an ad-blocker, and websites are free to block your use of the site. C- I assume you enjoy the web, and that a lot of effort is put into the sites that you enjoy. Do you expect all of this for free?

frenchy 9y ago
> A- Ads do not manipulate people into buying things against their own interests. Businesses who sell great products that people want don't just magically find their customers. They find customers with ads. I think that's a pretty rosy description of things. Advertisements are an effective way to influence peoples' choices. Sometimes good products get advertised, sure; and sometimes when you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, you get lucky and land in a pile of snow. > B- You're free to use an ad-blocker, and websites are free to block your use of the site. > > C- I assume you enjoy the web, and that a lot of effort is put into the sites that you enjoy. Do you expect all of this for free? Absolutely! I don't think many reasonable people would object to anything here. I personally don't block ads on most of the sites I enjoy, and I have to problem with websites paywall-ing me if I use adblock.
rdiddly 9y ago
A - counterpoint: Great products can succeed without ads. The customers find YOU. Crap needs to be advertised. B - yup, and bye C - yup "Content" of any type is just not worth much anymore. It's plentiful and cheap. What's worth something is eyeballs. As the price of content, of all sorts, approaches zero, the work is taken over by amateurs. Old timers have seen an amateur web and are absolutely not afraid of its coming back.
- manigandham 9y ago
  > Great products can succeed without ads. This is exceedingly rare and anyone at a major company will tell you that marketing and sales is usually more important for success than the actual product and it's qualities.
  - mrep 9y ago
    Prime example: oracle
clouddrover 9y ago
> I assume you enjoy the web, and that a lot of effort is put into the sites that you enjoy. Do you expect all of this for free? But where things get murky is when the primary value of a site is the content generated by its users. Why should I look at ads when I'm going to the effort of creating the content?
- manigandham 9y ago
  Because you get the value of the content created by other users. You are absolutely free to not contribute anything or even visit if you don't get any value from it, but someone is providing the service in the first place and there is nothing wrong with monetizing that service with advertising.
  - clouddrover 9y ago
    > but someone is providing the service in the first place And I'm paying for that too with my ISP charges. Why should I pay for the data usage incurred by viewing an ad?
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    > nothing wrong with monetizing that service with advertising True, except for the various ways that advertising is typically unethical in manipulative design, the unjust and problematic imbalance of power between platform owners and the communities who use the platforms, the fact that ads are usually tied to privacy-invading tracking… besides those sorts of things, nothing's wrong. > You are absolutely free to not contribute anything or even visit This rhetoric needs to die. You are free to not go to the grocery store and buy food, unless of course you want food besides that you can grow on your own as a subsistence farmer. I suppose the fact that grocers operate at scale with very organized corporate models in order to consolidate their economic power while consumers are divided into being individual shoppers is totally irrelevant to the market factors here‽ If the supply side were divided into individual programmers etc. while consumers were all organized into powerful consumers' unions with near-monopsony, it would then be equally ridiculous and insulting to say "hey, you individual programmer — if you don't want to make the specific product the consumers' union wants to use, you don't have to; you are free to choose what you make".
quadrangle 9y ago
Point A is as valid as any sort of baseless religious claim. It's a delusional fantasy. Do you think people need ads to know that McDonald's sells burgers? Try talking to anyone who actually creates advertisements for a living. Try investigating even the tiniest bit to check whether your hypothetical models actually match reality. Say I know that I want a new refrigerator. Is it in my interest to see carefully crafted ads promoting whichever products have the highest ad budget? No, I want to see objective information in order to choose the best product. And that's just one of the most benign examples, whereas ads often promote things nobody needs at all. You think cartoon characters connected with sugary cereals are giving kids useful information about the food‽
a3_nm 9y ago
> websites are free to block your use of the site Well, they're free to try. It's not completely trivial. (The resulting cat-and-mouse game would probably be won by publishers in principle, but an unbeatable solution would require significant changes in ad distribution.)

frenchy 9y ago

> A- Ads do not manipulate people into buying things against their own interests. Businesses who sell great products that people want don't just magically find their customers. They find customers with ads. I think that's a pretty rosy description of things. Advertisements are an effective way to influence peoples' choices. Sometimes good products get advertised, sure; and sometimes when you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, you get lucky and land in a pile of snow. > B- You're free to use an ad-blocker, and websites are free to block your use of the site. > > C- I assume you enjoy the web, and that a lot of effort is put into the sites that you enjoy. Do you expect all of this for free? Absolutely! I don't think many reasonable people would object to anything here. I personally don't block ads on most of the sites I enjoy, and I have to problem with websites paywall-ing me if I use adblock.

rdiddly 9y ago

A - counterpoint: Great products can succeed without ads. The customers find YOU. Crap needs to be advertised. B - yup, and bye C - yup "Content" of any type is just not worth much anymore. It's plentiful and cheap. What's worth something is eyeballs. As the price of content, of all sorts, approaches zero, the work is taken over by amateurs. Old timers have seen an amateur web and are absolutely not afraid of its coming back.

manigandham 9y ago
> Great products can succeed without ads. This is exceedingly rare and anyone at a major company will tell you that marketing and sales is usually more important for success than the actual product and it's qualities.
- mrep 9y ago
  Prime example: oracle

clouddrover 9y ago

> I assume you enjoy the web, and that a lot of effort is put into the sites that you enjoy. Do you expect all of this for free? But where things get murky is when the primary value of a site is the content generated by its users. Why should I look at ads when I'm going to the effort of creating the content?

manigandham 9y ago
Because you get the value of the content created by other users. You are absolutely free to not contribute anything or even visit if you don't get any value from it, but someone is providing the service in the first place and there is nothing wrong with monetizing that service with advertising.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  > but someone is providing the service in the first place And I'm paying for that too with my ISP charges. Why should I pay for the data usage incurred by viewing an ad?
- quadrangle 9y ago
  > nothing wrong with monetizing that service with advertising True, except for the various ways that advertising is typically unethical in manipulative design, the unjust and problematic imbalance of power between platform owners and the communities who use the platforms, the fact that ads are usually tied to privacy-invading tracking… besides those sorts of things, nothing's wrong. > You are absolutely free to not contribute anything or even visit This rhetoric needs to die. You are free to not go to the grocery store and buy food, unless of course you want food besides that you can grow on your own as a subsistence farmer. I suppose the fact that grocers operate at scale with very organized corporate models in order to consolidate their economic power while consumers are divided into being individual shoppers is totally irrelevant to the market factors here‽ If the supply side were divided into individual programmers etc. while consumers were all organized into powerful consumers' unions with near-monopsony, it would then be equally ridiculous and insulting to say "hey, you individual programmer — if you don't want to make the specific product the consumers' union wants to use, you don't have to; you are free to choose what you make".

quadrangle 9y ago

Point A is as valid as any sort of baseless religious claim. It's a delusional fantasy. Do you think people need ads to know that McDonald's sells burgers? Try talking to anyone who actually creates advertisements for a living. Try investigating even the tiniest bit to check whether your hypothetical models actually match reality. Say I know that I want a new refrigerator. Is it in my interest to see carefully crafted ads promoting whichever products have the highest ad budget? No, I want to see objective information in order to choose the best product. And that's just one of the most benign examples, whereas ads often promote things nobody needs at all. You think cartoon characters connected with sugary cereals are giving kids useful information about the food‽

a3_nm 9y ago

> websites are free to block your use of the site Well, they're free to try. It's not completely trivial. (The resulting cat-and-mouse game would probably be won by publishers in principle, but an unbeatable solution would require significant changes in ad distribution.)