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I find this quote is always used in a really over the top way. I don't find free services that show me ads I can easily ignore scary. People talk about ads and

I find this quote is always used in a really over the top way. I don't find free services that show me ads I can easily ignore scary. People talk about ads and recommendation systems like they're going to brainwash you into buying things you never actually wanted as if you have zero critical thinking skills.

savanaly 9y ago
I know right? Additionally, ads do serve an economic purpose. As a reductio ad absurdum, picture a world with all advertisement banned. If you were an inventor or innovator who came up with a superior product or streamlined some process and inclined to start your own business to compete on cost or quality, your options are a lot more limited if you can't buy ads. People are rightfully concerned about the privacy invasion from precisely targeted ads. But they should decouple that concern from the benefits of more targeted ads which are more efficient, because that benefit is real. It does not just benefit businesses either (which are, after all, owned by people in the end), advertisement will increase consumer surplus in many cases as well.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  > As a reductio ad absurdum, picture a world with all advertisement banned. If you were an inventor or innovator who came up with a superior product or streamlined some process and inclined to start your own business to compete on cost or quality, your options are a lot more limited if you can't buy ads. Yeah, I don't understand what people who peddle this quote expect individuals/companies to do to get their product noticed if ads are unethical apparently. You're just meant to rely on word of mouth starting from nothing? I don't see what's wrong with telling people about your product to see if they're interested. Ads in specific newspapers, posters in a street, handing out leaflets in a certain area, ads during a specific TV show etc. are all forms of targeted marketing as well.
  - blub 9y ago
    I think you must have missed the last ~15 years and where the advertising industry has turned more and more to spying on the customers of their real customers for profit. The misconduct of the players in the ad business is legendary. If I were you, I would try to educate myself before continuing to write here.
    - seanwilson 9y ago
      Obviously I'm against spying on people. You can show people ads in ways that isn't invading their privacy.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        It's not just privacy. It's also attention that's invaded. Among the many buzzwords of recent years is the "attention economy". It has already existed for quite a long time (newspapers selling ad space are actually selling their readers' eyeballs), but since a few years ago, ad companies have the technology to optimize for maximum attention. The effects of attention economy can be witnessed in reports of people quitting Facebook temporarily as a kind of detox, or the general uncluttering movement (caused by sensory overload which is in turn caused by attention parasites like social networks, and our generally hectic lifestyle). In my opinion, the costs of the attention economy outweigh its benefits.
        seanwilson 9y ago
        > The effects of attention economy can be witnessed in reports of people quitting Facebook temporarily as a kind of detox, or the general uncluttering movement (caused by sensory overload which is in turn caused by attention parasites like social networks, and our generally hectic lifestyle). In my opinion, the costs of the attention economy outweigh its benefits. I don't think the solution here is to somehow stop people making products like Facebook though...if you're using Facebook to an unhealthy degree and letting it consume all your attention you should work on yourself in my opinion as you'll just find something else to fill that gap. Facebook has had a positive impact on my social life for example and I don't feel addicted to it.
- blub 9y ago
  Advertising, and in particular online advertising is but one way of spreading the word about a product. If there were no ads, information about products would spread through specialist magazines or website, word of mouth, fairs, etc. Almost anything is better than an ad, which nowadays is just some abstract crap designed to feel one connected to the brand. Take the latest Google phone ad: it consists basically 99% of people doing (arguably) interesting things. It barely tells one what the product is and why it's useful. That's what ads are nowadays, attempts at emotional manipulation.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    > Take the latest Google phone ad: it consists basically 99% of people doing (arguably) interesting things. It barely tells one what the product is and why it's useful. That's what ads are nowadays, attempts at emotional manipulation. As a counterpoint: if you consider that emotional manipulation, then there are many people (myself included) who enjoy being emotionally manipulated. I often consciously choose to "reward" ads that captured my attention in the first 3 seconds by not scrolling by or skipping them, and letting them get their full impression on me. Good on them for being interesting. I rather like feeling connected to the brands I enjoy.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Great! So you wouldn't mind deliberately searching for and accessing such ads, much like everyone else does for the content they enjoy, right?
      - apetresc 9y ago
        No, that would be a waste of time. I'd rather just watch it as a form of payment for the thousands-of-dollars-worth of free services I access every day.
      - dsacco 9y ago
        That's a weird cognitive jump. On the one hand, to answer your direct charge - I absolutely don't mind seeking out and accessing some ads (I've gone to some brands' website or YouTube channel - such as Old Spice - just to watch their ads before, and I've sought out Superbowl ads to rewatch because they're funny). On the other hand, as a dialectic note, I find your reasoning to be strange and fallacious (specifically, a fallacy of excluded middle or false dilemma). I don't see any reason why someone must be compelled to seek out things they enjoy instead of enjoying them passively. Phrased another way, it is possible to enjoy things as a passive exercise when they would become tedious or unenjoyable as an active exercise. You don't seem to acknowledge this possibility.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  I'd agree with you if ads were only about discovering new products. But the vast, vast majority of advertisements we are fed everyday are about products we already know about. "Ford is selling cars! They come out with new ones from time to time." Seriously? You don't say! "Merck has a yet another drug for some disease they made up." Wow, really? Who knew? Coca-Cola is selling the same sugar water they've been selling for decades." Come on--get real, not Coca-Cola!
- arximboldi 9y ago
  I think you have an idealized and false idea of what advertising is. I don't remember ever seeing an ad showing a new invention. That is actually not the purpose of advertising. You can't understand a new concept in the time lapse of an ad. In fact, you'll see that new inventions normally become popular via other means (targeting niches firsts via specialized magazines, conferences, etc.) and only use advertising when they already have an established business and market. The fact is, most advertising is just about manipulating peoples feelings. The first kind is about brand aggrandizing, trying to change how people feel about a specific brand--this brand is "quality", "fresh", "young", "elite", whatever. The second one is about stimulating demand, normally trying to make people need things they did not need before: "you are fat! buy our cream!", "your life is boring! buy our holiday packages!", "you look ugly, buy our clothes!", "you could be healthier eating our pro-active meta-splendidous yogurt!", etc. In either case, the goal is to make you feel bad, incomplete, until you spend your money on more shit. Personally, I would love to live in a world with almost zero advertising. I am from Spain and one of the things I love about Berlin, where I live, is the low amount of advertising in the streets compared to anywhere I lived before. That is changing slowly though. But I have seen pictures of DDR Berlin and there is literally no ads. Of course, sadly that package came with the STASI and other horrible things. That aside, I would love to be able to walk the streets without having to look at ads telling me to buy shit over pictures impossible women in lingerie, rich men in expensive cars, smiling youngsters partying together, families on vacation in the Bahamas, etc. I know people that consider such world dull, gray, etc. But for me, it would bring some kind of new zen to urban life. Ironically now, thanks to the Internet, advertisers themselves (and security agencies) are tracking our lifes in ways the STASI could not even dream of. The grass is always greener on the other side, but if you try hard enough you can always get the worst of both worlds.
  - jhoechtl 9y ago
    Concerning DDR Berlin: That era of time was operated in planing mode. Plans were made what to produce in what quantity. There was in theory no need for ad because there was little choice what to buy. Still I sympathisize with your comment in a very positive sense.
  - icebraining 9y ago
- gaius 9y ago
  You can visit that world right now if you want. It's called Cuba. A couple of weeks there and returning to the ad-soaked West is VERY weird, let me tell you...
sintaxi 9y ago
Seeing ads don't brainwash you. Seeing ads that are targeted to you based on the content you consume and your browsing patterns brainwashes you.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  > Seeing ads don't brainwash you. Seeing ads that are targeted to you based on the content you consume and your browsing patterns brainwashes you. I know to be extra skeptical of claims in ads and to do proper research before I buy things. Friends and family give recommendations all the time which I apply critical thinking skills to as well...I don't just blindly do things people suggest to me. Have you honestly ever felt you've been brainwashed by ads somehow?
  - blub 9y ago
    This is an extremely naive point of view. Advertising influences purchasing behaviour and feelings about particular brands. You can apply critical thinking skills left, right, up, down and sideways, it won't matter if you're flooded with ads for Samsung. And if you somehow figure out that Samsung's products have a tendency to catch fire, Coca Cola will get you. And if you figure out that Coke is sugary crap, one of the other tens of thousands of products will get you. Because you're probably not applying critical thinking skills to pick your toilet paper, detergent, dog food, toothbrushes, light bulbs and so on and you're not doing that non stop. People that think they're immune to advertising are ironically the easiest to influence, like fish in a barrel.
    - rosser 9y ago
      The far more insidious part of (some) advertising is how it makes "consumers" feel about themselves. Poke that little nugget of self-doubt someone carries (because we all do), and then tell them you have just the thing to make it better. You don't even have to be explicit about it; just show them people onto whom they can project not suffering that doubt, and associate those people, and the fantasy of feeling that way too, with your product. Cha-ching! EDIT: phrasing.
    - 9y ago
onion2k 9y ago
It's the ubiquitous and often insidious profiling of everything you do that's scary. The ads are just part of the mechanism of how the profiling is paid for and delivered. The data about what you do, as the basis of a model of your future behaviour, is what has the potential to be incredibly damaging.
rosser 9y ago
It's not about being scary. Why on earth would you think that? It's about creating cognizance of the fact that someone else is making money off your behavior. You can be scared of that if you want, but creating that fear is certainly not the aim. I personally think things which increase people's general cognizance of the world around them are net goods. There's damned little enough of that as it is.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  > It's not about being scary. Why on earth would you think that? Telling someone they've been tricked and have been turned into a product is ominous sounding to me.
  - rosser 9y ago
    > ...to me. That's your choice, consciously or otherwise. There's no trickery here. It's not like this is being hidden from people. It's just not widely recognized.
    - saimiam 9y ago
      Sin of omission vs commission.. When a cop doesn't explicitly read you your Miranda rights because they want you to incriminate yourself by delaying access to counsel, they aren't lying per se. You are expected to know that cops can exploit you but you, naively, expect good faith behavior from them. FD - see my profile.
  - stubish 9y ago
    It is ominous. You are being farmed. If you are not aware what the service is costing you, you are being exploited. Are there some more benign terms to use to spin this? Or are the correct terms negatively loaded for a reason? This is particularly important if you believe minors should not be able to enter contracts. By using 'free' services, they are selling something unknowingly, maybe something they can't get back. "additional terms or product requirements (including age requirements) may apply" is there for a reason; an attempt to avoid liability.
egypturnash 9y ago
So When the real product is eyeballs on ads You start to optimize for that. You get users to keep reloading. You get users to stick around. Because the more pages they load, the more money you make. It doesn't matter why people keep reloading. Doesn't matter if they're being shown things they really need. Doesn't matter if they're being shown truth or lies. Doesn't matter if they're reloading a lot because they're in the middle of a flame war. Doesn't matter if they're left happier or stressed out by using your product. It just matters that they saw a lot of ads. This is why the much-loathed algorithmic timelines happen: here's something a lot of your circles spent time engaging with, maybe you'll like it too! Stick around. See more ads.
- deleted 9y ago
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- lazaroclapp 9y ago
  Not completely untrue. But if the model is a paid subscription the same pressures apply: doesn't matter why the user keeps paying their subscription, so long as they pay. Incentives are almost never perfectly aligned between information providers and information consumers. .
  - donmatito 9y ago
    The incentives for "as long as you're happy with our services, you'll keep paying us" may not be 100% aligned with user interest (see: services difficult to unsubscribe and so on) but they seem much better than the alternatives.
    - dsabanin 9y ago
      But doesn't "as long as you're happy with our services, you'll be using our product and we get to show you ads and make money" work the same way?
      - donmatito 9y ago
        At first, probably, yes. But then you start to optimize for different things, because the interests are not aligned : you want "engaged eyeballs" on your service, which may or may not be best for the user. Hence tactics like gamification, notifications, the whole Hooked model, and so on. Of course we can debate on the definition of what is "best" for the user. Maybe users like and need clickbait headlines and fake news. But to me it's just a softer version of "Maybe users like gambling machines and being addicted to cigarettes"
trophycase 9y ago
The fact that the companies that sell these ads are wildly profitable suggests otherwise.
- dsacco 9y ago
  There is no a priori reason to conclude advertisements are brainwashing people based on their profitability.
- beagle3 9y ago
  Two of those wildly profitable companies, namely Google and Facebook, are monopolies in their niche, and can thus extract a rent that would seem untenable if competition were around. Are there any other wildly profitable companies that sell ads?
dingo_bat 9y ago
> I don't find free services that show me ads I can easily ignore scary. Please tell me how to ignore google search and google maps.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I think seanwilson is saying that the ads are easily ignorable.
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  By like ... not using them?
- RandomKid 9y ago
  By using duckduckgo and openstreetmap. I've been using both for many years and they are quite good, I would say.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    On iOS luckily enough I found Apple Maps to have crossed the good enough threshold for most of my purposes and area, except for the occasional live and timetable transit info.
- logicallee 9y ago
  Google search: alight your eye on the first result that is not clearly and distinctly marked "Ad" (you may have to scroll.) For example I did this search since I expected it to be heavily ad-based: http://i.imgur.com/j4ezbjF.png http://i.imgur.com/j4ezbjF.png everything above the fold (visible in my browser) was an ad. I then scrolled down and got to the organic search results: http://i.imgur.com/hlVB36Q.png http://i.imgur.com/hlVB36Q.png Those are not advertisements. There is nothing to ignore. Google is not paid to show me those, and they fight link-spammers every day to attempt to get the best organic results. I find Google's search results ads to be exceedingly easy to ignore. I also find them useful and sometimes click them.
cooervo 9y ago
If you think ads don't work in you it means they are doing a great job in lying to you and deceiving. Ads and marketing are more subtle than you can imagine. Some example: * You don't need to change toothbrush every 6 months, that's BS. Toothbrushes are plastic they are going to last hundreds of year more after we are all dead. * You don't need to put so much toothpaste on your toothbrush, it was Colgate ads that started showing people putting a fat and thick long toothpaste on toothbrushes to encourage more use/consuming of toothpaste. * The alkasetzer guys wanted to double sells, what did they do started showing commercials of people throwing 2 tablets instead of one. * Also shampoo and hairproducts, they started showing people putting a ton of shampoo in their hands and making bubbles in their head. Actually you don't need that much shampoo.
- dmurray 9y ago
  I'm sure you're right in general, but I notice a huge difference between a new toothbrush and one that's I've used for a couple of months. The bristles are stiffer and straighter. If my gums are sensitive, the new one will make them bleed, which is probably a good thing. Sure, it hasn't physically decomposed, but there's no reason to expect a $1 piece of plastic to keep the same performance after hundreds of thousands of abrasions in a wet, acidic, bacteria-ridden environment.
  - mstade 9y ago
    Bleeding gums are NOT a good thing. Bleeding gums may be a sign of inflammation, gingivitis, which ultimately could lead to loss of teeth if untreated. Always go with the softest brush you can find, to spare your gums, and also try not to use all that much tooth paste. You really don't need more than just a thin flat spread over the brush, or a ball about the size of a small pea. If your gums often bleed after brushing, you should go see a dentist. Even if it doesn't happen every day, please go. Source: my father is a dentist and I worked for him a number of years in the past, so picked up a few things.
    - l0b0 9y ago
      He's not my dad, but that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what my dentist said. Yes, healthy gums don't bleed, but if they do that's usually a sign you're not brushing enough.
Bakary 9y ago
The danger comes from the illusion that you are somehow above the influence.
jacobwilliamroy 9y ago
My concern is mainly that my attention is such a huge source of revenue for facebook. So much so that their advertising revenue is consistently several times more than their actual cost of revenue [0][1]. The gap is so wide, it's hard not to feel like I'm being robbed every time I see an ad on one of these "free" websites. [0]Earnings release: https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2017/Facebook-Reports-First-Quarter-2017-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... [1]Q1 2017 income statement (excel spreadsheet): https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/FB-Q1'17-Income-Statement.xlsx https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/FB...
InclinedPlane 9y ago
It's far scarier than you have considered. Is it going to ruin you as a person? No, but it creates an incentive structure which is warped. Consider media (news or otherwise). If ads are how dollars are made then quality, and accuracy, is only important in so far as it serves as a vehicle for bringing in eyeballs. Consider 3 different examples of content. The first is expensive to make but high quality and people value it highly, they consider it extremely important. The second is inexpensive to make and low quality, people don't care about it much if at all. The third is also inexpensive and low quality but people generally dislike it. The important thing to understand here is that ads incentivize the 2nd and 3rd types of content over the first. When people pay for their content directly they will pay more for higher quality and more important content (if they are able). When content is just a vehicle for advertising it's much easier to turn a profit on content that is easy to produce and yet has a mass appeal (clickbait, humor, tabloids). And, as we see, that's the sort of thing that becomes plentiful easily today. Stuff that takes a lot of work to get right struggles while stuff that is trivial and salacious blooms. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
RodericDay 9y ago
The whole point is that even if they are easy to ignore for you, they aren't easy to ignore for others. I find it callous to decry the poor decision-making of poor people, eg: someone buying a fashion accessory when they're struggling to pay rent, and then go on to defend advertisers in a cavalier buyer-beware kind of way.
wodenokoto 9y ago
A better quote is "Privacy is a currency for which you don't know the exchange rate" I think it is better, because you are a customer, you just don't pay with cash. Instead you pay with your privacy, and as normal users, we really don't have a good concept of what that is worth.
brandonmenc 9y ago
What's scary is that ads may only be worth a fraction of what people are currently paying for them, and all the free services you use will be immediately underfunded and disappear once this is discovered.

savanaly 9y ago

I know right? Additionally, ads do serve an economic purpose. As a reductio ad absurdum, picture a world with all advertisement banned. If you were an inventor or innovator who came up with a superior product or streamlined some process and inclined to start your own business to compete on cost or quality, your options are a lot more limited if you can't buy ads. People are rightfully concerned about the privacy invasion from precisely targeted ads. But they should decouple that concern from the benefits of more targeted ads which are more efficient, because that benefit is real. It does not just benefit businesses either (which are, after all, owned by people in the end), advertisement will increase consumer surplus in many cases as well.

seanwilson 9y ago
> As a reductio ad absurdum, picture a world with all advertisement banned. If you were an inventor or innovator who came up with a superior product or streamlined some process and inclined to start your own business to compete on cost or quality, your options are a lot more limited if you can't buy ads. Yeah, I don't understand what people who peddle this quote expect individuals/companies to do to get their product noticed if ads are unethical apparently. You're just meant to rely on word of mouth starting from nothing? I don't see what's wrong with telling people about your product to see if they're interested. Ads in specific newspapers, posters in a street, handing out leaflets in a certain area, ads during a specific TV show etc. are all forms of targeted marketing as well.
- blub 9y ago
  I think you must have missed the last ~15 years and where the advertising industry has turned more and more to spying on the customers of their real customers for profit. The misconduct of the players in the ad business is legendary. If I were you, I would try to educate myself before continuing to write here.
  - seanwilson 9y ago
    Obviously I'm against spying on people. You can show people ads in ways that isn't invading their privacy.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      It's not just privacy. It's also attention that's invaded. Among the many buzzwords of recent years is the "attention economy". It has already existed for quite a long time (newspapers selling ad space are actually selling their readers' eyeballs), but since a few years ago, ad companies have the technology to optimize for maximum attention. The effects of attention economy can be witnessed in reports of people quitting Facebook temporarily as a kind of detox, or the general uncluttering movement (caused by sensory overload which is in turn caused by attention parasites like social networks, and our generally hectic lifestyle). In my opinion, the costs of the attention economy outweigh its benefits.
      - seanwilson 9y ago
        > The effects of attention economy can be witnessed in reports of people quitting Facebook temporarily as a kind of detox, or the general uncluttering movement (caused by sensory overload which is in turn caused by attention parasites like social networks, and our generally hectic lifestyle). In my opinion, the costs of the attention economy outweigh its benefits. I don't think the solution here is to somehow stop people making products like Facebook though...if you're using Facebook to an unhealthy degree and letting it consume all your attention you should work on yourself in my opinion as you'll just find something else to fill that gap. Facebook has had a positive impact on my social life for example and I don't feel addicted to it.
blub 9y ago
Advertising, and in particular online advertising is but one way of spreading the word about a product. If there were no ads, information about products would spread through specialist magazines or website, word of mouth, fairs, etc. Almost anything is better than an ad, which nowadays is just some abstract crap designed to feel one connected to the brand. Take the latest Google phone ad: it consists basically 99% of people doing (arguably) interesting things. It barely tells one what the product is and why it's useful. That's what ads are nowadays, attempts at emotional manipulation.
- dsacco 9y ago
  > Take the latest Google phone ad: it consists basically 99% of people doing (arguably) interesting things. It barely tells one what the product is and why it's useful. That's what ads are nowadays, attempts at emotional manipulation. As a counterpoint: if you consider that emotional manipulation, then there are many people (myself included) who enjoy being emotionally manipulated. I often consciously choose to "reward" ads that captured my attention in the first 3 seconds by not scrolling by or skipping them, and letting them get their full impression on me. Good on them for being interesting. I rather like feeling connected to the brands I enjoy.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Great! So you wouldn't mind deliberately searching for and accessing such ads, much like everyone else does for the content they enjoy, right?
    - apetresc 9y ago
      No, that would be a waste of time. I'd rather just watch it as a form of payment for the thousands-of-dollars-worth of free services I access every day.
    - dsacco 9y ago
      That's a weird cognitive jump. On the one hand, to answer your direct charge - I absolutely don't mind seeking out and accessing some ads (I've gone to some brands' website or YouTube channel - such as Old Spice - just to watch their ads before, and I've sought out Superbowl ads to rewatch because they're funny). On the other hand, as a dialectic note, I find your reasoning to be strange and fallacious (specifically, a fallacy of excluded middle or false dilemma). I don't see any reason why someone must be compelled to seek out things they enjoy instead of enjoying them passively. Phrased another way, it is possible to enjoy things as a passive exercise when they would become tedious or unenjoyable as an active exercise. You don't seem to acknowledge this possibility.
ryandrake 9y ago
I'd agree with you if ads were only about discovering new products. But the vast, vast majority of advertisements we are fed everyday are about products we already know about. "Ford is selling cars! They come out with new ones from time to time." Seriously? You don't say! "Merck has a yet another drug for some disease they made up." Wow, really? Who knew? Coca-Cola is selling the same sugar water they've been selling for decades." Come on--get real, not Coca-Cola!
arximboldi 9y ago
I think you have an idealized and false idea of what advertising is. I don't remember ever seeing an ad showing a new invention. That is actually not the purpose of advertising. You can't understand a new concept in the time lapse of an ad. In fact, you'll see that new inventions normally become popular via other means (targeting niches firsts via specialized magazines, conferences, etc.) and only use advertising when they already have an established business and market. The fact is, most advertising is just about manipulating peoples feelings. The first kind is about brand aggrandizing, trying to change how people feel about a specific brand--this brand is "quality", "fresh", "young", "elite", whatever. The second one is about stimulating demand, normally trying to make people need things they did not need before: "you are fat! buy our cream!", "your life is boring! buy our holiday packages!", "you look ugly, buy our clothes!", "you could be healthier eating our pro-active meta-splendidous yogurt!", etc. In either case, the goal is to make you feel bad, incomplete, until you spend your money on more shit. Personally, I would love to live in a world with almost zero advertising. I am from Spain and one of the things I love about Berlin, where I live, is the low amount of advertising in the streets compared to anywhere I lived before. That is changing slowly though. But I have seen pictures of DDR Berlin and there is literally no ads. Of course, sadly that package came with the STASI and other horrible things. That aside, I would love to be able to walk the streets without having to look at ads telling me to buy shit over pictures impossible women in lingerie, rich men in expensive cars, smiling youngsters partying together, families on vacation in the Bahamas, etc. I know people that consider such world dull, gray, etc. But for me, it would bring some kind of new zen to urban life. Ironically now, thanks to the Internet, advertisers themselves (and security agencies) are tracking our lifes in ways the STASI could not even dream of. The grass is always greener on the other side, but if you try hard enough you can always get the worst of both worlds.
- jhoechtl 9y ago
  Concerning DDR Berlin: That era of time was operated in planing mode. Plans were made what to produce in what quantity. There was in theory no need for ad because there was little choice what to buy. Still I sympathisize with your comment in a very positive sense.
- icebraining 9y ago
gaius 9y ago
You can visit that world right now if you want. It's called Cuba. A couple of weeks there and returning to the ad-soaked West is VERY weird, let me tell you...

sintaxi 9y ago

Seeing ads don't brainwash you. Seeing ads that are targeted to you based on the content you consume and your browsing patterns brainwashes you.

seanwilson 9y ago
> Seeing ads don't brainwash you. Seeing ads that are targeted to you based on the content you consume and your browsing patterns brainwashes you. I know to be extra skeptical of claims in ads and to do proper research before I buy things. Friends and family give recommendations all the time which I apply critical thinking skills to as well...I don't just blindly do things people suggest to me. Have you honestly ever felt you've been brainwashed by ads somehow?
- blub 9y ago
  This is an extremely naive point of view. Advertising influences purchasing behaviour and feelings about particular brands. You can apply critical thinking skills left, right, up, down and sideways, it won't matter if you're flooded with ads for Samsung. And if you somehow figure out that Samsung's products have a tendency to catch fire, Coca Cola will get you. And if you figure out that Coke is sugary crap, one of the other tens of thousands of products will get you. Because you're probably not applying critical thinking skills to pick your toilet paper, detergent, dog food, toothbrushes, light bulbs and so on and you're not doing that non stop. People that think they're immune to advertising are ironically the easiest to influence, like fish in a barrel.
  - rosser 9y ago
    The far more insidious part of (some) advertising is how it makes "consumers" feel about themselves. Poke that little nugget of self-doubt someone carries (because we all do), and then tell them you have just the thing to make it better. You don't even have to be explicit about it; just show them people onto whom they can project not suffering that doubt, and associate those people, and the fantasy of feeling that way too, with your product. Cha-ching! EDIT: phrasing.
  - 9y ago

onion2k 9y ago

It's the ubiquitous and often insidious profiling of everything you do that's scary. The ads are just part of the mechanism of how the profiling is paid for and delivered. The data about what you do, as the basis of a model of your future behaviour, is what has the potential to be incredibly damaging.

rosser 9y ago

It's not about being scary. Why on earth would you think that? It's about creating cognizance of the fact that someone else is making money off your behavior. You can be scared of that if you want, but creating that fear is certainly not the aim. I personally think things which increase people's general cognizance of the world around them are net goods. There's damned little enough of that as it is.

seanwilson 9y ago
> It's not about being scary. Why on earth would you think that? Telling someone they've been tricked and have been turned into a product is ominous sounding to me.
- rosser 9y ago
  > ...to me. That's your choice, consciously or otherwise. There's no trickery here. It's not like this is being hidden from people. It's just not widely recognized.
  - saimiam 9y ago
    Sin of omission vs commission.. When a cop doesn't explicitly read you your Miranda rights because they want you to incriminate yourself by delaying access to counsel, they aren't lying per se. You are expected to know that cops can exploit you but you, naively, expect good faith behavior from them. FD - see my profile.
- stubish 9y ago
  It is ominous. You are being farmed. If you are not aware what the service is costing you, you are being exploited. Are there some more benign terms to use to spin this? Or are the correct terms negatively loaded for a reason? This is particularly important if you believe minors should not be able to enter contracts. By using 'free' services, they are selling something unknowingly, maybe something they can't get back. "additional terms or product requirements (including age requirements) may apply" is there for a reason; an attempt to avoid liability.

egypturnash 9y ago

So When the real product is eyeballs on ads You start to optimize for that. You get users to keep reloading. You get users to stick around. Because the more pages they load, the more money you make. It doesn't matter why people keep reloading. Doesn't matter if they're being shown things they really need. Doesn't matter if they're being shown truth or lies. Doesn't matter if they're reloading a lot because they're in the middle of a flame war. Doesn't matter if they're left happier or stressed out by using your product. It just matters that they saw a lot of ads. This is why the much-loathed algorithmic timelines happen: here's something a lot of your circles spent time engaging with, maybe you'll like it too! Stick around. See more ads.

deleted 9y ago
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lazaroclapp 9y ago
Not completely untrue. But if the model is a paid subscription the same pressures apply: doesn't matter why the user keeps paying their subscription, so long as they pay. Incentives are almost never perfectly aligned between information providers and information consumers. .
- donmatito 9y ago
  The incentives for "as long as you're happy with our services, you'll keep paying us" may not be 100% aligned with user interest (see: services difficult to unsubscribe and so on) but they seem much better than the alternatives.
  - dsabanin 9y ago
    But doesn't "as long as you're happy with our services, you'll be using our product and we get to show you ads and make money" work the same way?
    - donmatito 9y ago
      At first, probably, yes. But then you start to optimize for different things, because the interests are not aligned : you want "engaged eyeballs" on your service, which may or may not be best for the user. Hence tactics like gamification, notifications, the whole Hooked model, and so on. Of course we can debate on the definition of what is "best" for the user. Maybe users like and need clickbait headlines and fake news. But to me it's just a softer version of "Maybe users like gambling machines and being addicted to cigarettes"

trophycase 9y ago

The fact that the companies that sell these ads are wildly profitable suggests otherwise.

dsacco 9y ago
There is no a priori reason to conclude advertisements are brainwashing people based on their profitability.
beagle3 9y ago
Two of those wildly profitable companies, namely Google and Facebook, are monopolies in their niche, and can thus extract a rent that would seem untenable if competition were around. Are there any other wildly profitable companies that sell ads?

dingo_bat 9y ago

> I don't find free services that show me ads I can easily ignore scary. Please tell me how to ignore google search and google maps.

icebraining 9y ago
I think seanwilson is saying that the ads are easily ignorable.
piyush_soni 9y ago
By like ... not using them?
RandomKid 9y ago
By using duckduckgo and openstreetmap. I've been using both for many years and they are quite good, I would say.
- lloeki 9y ago
  On iOS luckily enough I found Apple Maps to have crossed the good enough threshold for most of my purposes and area, except for the occasional live and timetable transit info.
logicallee 9y ago
Google search: alight your eye on the first result that is not clearly and distinctly marked "Ad" (you may have to scroll.) For example I did this search since I expected it to be heavily ad-based: http://i.imgur.com/j4ezbjF.png http://i.imgur.com/j4ezbjF.png everything above the fold (visible in my browser) was an ad. I then scrolled down and got to the organic search results: http://i.imgur.com/hlVB36Q.png http://i.imgur.com/hlVB36Q.png Those are not advertisements. There is nothing to ignore. Google is not paid to show me those, and they fight link-spammers every day to attempt to get the best organic results. I find Google's search results ads to be exceedingly easy to ignore. I also find them useful and sometimes click them.

cooervo 9y ago

If you think ads don't work in you it means they are doing a great job in lying to you and deceiving. Ads and marketing are more subtle than you can imagine. Some example: * You don't need to change toothbrush every 6 months, that's BS. Toothbrushes are plastic they are going to last hundreds of year more after we are all dead. * You don't need to put so much toothpaste on your toothbrush, it was Colgate ads that started showing people putting a fat and thick long toothpaste on toothbrushes to encourage more use/consuming of toothpaste. * The alkasetzer guys wanted to double sells, what did they do started showing commercials of people throwing 2 tablets instead of one. * Also shampoo and hairproducts, they started showing people putting a ton of shampoo in their hands and making bubbles in their head. Actually you don't need that much shampoo.

dmurray 9y ago
I'm sure you're right in general, but I notice a huge difference between a new toothbrush and one that's I've used for a couple of months. The bristles are stiffer and straighter. If my gums are sensitive, the new one will make them bleed, which is probably a good thing. Sure, it hasn't physically decomposed, but there's no reason to expect a $1 piece of plastic to keep the same performance after hundreds of thousands of abrasions in a wet, acidic, bacteria-ridden environment.
- mstade 9y ago
  Bleeding gums are NOT a good thing. Bleeding gums may be a sign of inflammation, gingivitis, which ultimately could lead to loss of teeth if untreated. Always go with the softest brush you can find, to spare your gums, and also try not to use all that much tooth paste. You really don't need more than just a thin flat spread over the brush, or a ball about the size of a small pea. If your gums often bleed after brushing, you should go see a dentist. Even if it doesn't happen every day, please go. Source: my father is a dentist and I worked for him a number of years in the past, so picked up a few things.
  - l0b0 9y ago
    He's not my dad, but that's pretty much exactly the opposite of what my dentist said. Yes, healthy gums don't bleed, but if they do that's usually a sign you're not brushing enough.

Bakary 9y ago

The danger comes from the illusion that you are somehow above the influence.

jacobwilliamroy 9y ago

My concern is mainly that my attention is such a huge source of revenue for facebook. So much so that their advertising revenue is consistently several times more than their actual cost of revenue [0][1]. The gap is so wide, it's hard not to feel like I'm being robbed every time I see an ad on one of these "free" websites. [0]Earnings release: https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2017/Facebook-Reports-First-Quarter-2017-Results/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/... [1]Q1 2017 income statement (excel spreadsheet): https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/FB-Q1'17-Income-Statement.xlsx https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/FB...

InclinedPlane 9y ago

It's far scarier than you have considered. Is it going to ruin you as a person? No, but it creates an incentive structure which is warped. Consider media (news or otherwise). If ads are how dollars are made then quality, and accuracy, is only important in so far as it serves as a vehicle for bringing in eyeballs. Consider 3 different examples of content. The first is expensive to make but high quality and people value it highly, they consider it extremely important. The second is inexpensive to make and low quality, people don't care about it much if at all. The third is also inexpensive and low quality but people generally dislike it. The important thing to understand here is that ads incentivize the 2nd and 3rd types of content over the first. When people pay for their content directly they will pay more for higher quality and more important content (if they are able). When content is just a vehicle for advertising it's much easier to turn a profit on content that is easy to produce and yet has a mass appeal (clickbait, humor, tabloids). And, as we see, that's the sort of thing that becomes plentiful easily today. Stuff that takes a lot of work to get right struggles while stuff that is trivial and salacious blooms. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

RodericDay 9y ago

The whole point is that even if they are easy to ignore for you, they aren't easy to ignore for others. I find it callous to decry the poor decision-making of poor people, eg: someone buying a fashion accessory when they're struggling to pay rent, and then go on to defend advertisers in a cavalier buyer-beware kind of way.

wodenokoto 9y ago

A better quote is "Privacy is a currency for which you don't know the exchange rate" I think it is better, because you are a customer, you just don't pay with cash. Instead you pay with your privacy, and as normal users, we really don't have a good concept of what that is worth.

brandonmenc 9y ago

What's scary is that ads may only be worth a fraction of what people are currently paying for them, and all the free services you use will be immediately underfunded and disappear once this is discovered.