5 ms·

Free market cannot work without propagation of information. Curious what kind of mechanism you envision to solve that problem: public service anouncements in pl

by srean 9y ago

Free market cannot work without propagation of information. Curious what kind of mechanism you envision to solve that problem: public service anouncements in place of ads ?

legopelle 9y ago
I imagine a single state-owned database where merchants enter detailed product information. The consumers may then query the database at their leisure.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- KGIII 9y ago
  Which government would you trust to do that?
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I'd trust the UK civil service to do that. The hardest but would probably be verification -- does that lasagne really only have beef in, was the cocoa for that chocolate actually grown in a Fairtrade farm, in Ivory Coast, etc..
    - KGIII 9y ago
      I'm American. I don't even trust my government to do math properly.
  - gaius 9y ago
    The French, bring back Le Minitel!
    - KGIII 9y ago
      And if there is a change in the political spectrum, will you still trust them? My government lost my security clearance application to who knows who. In return, I got some credit monitoring and a form letter.
- hesarenu 9y ago
  India has something similar. Datakart app from gs1 has product related information. You can scan using barcodes.
amelius 9y ago
If ads were the only type of information, we were already doomed. For example, why do you think reviews are so important? Also, you are reading articles through HN, not by watching ads for them first. Then there is the age-old word-of-mouth. Or seeing products in action with friends. I could go on and on.
- srean 9y ago
  I see that you have a very practical and scalable solution out there. We will gush about a movie/product/service launch on television and call it news. One might even consider incentivising people to write positive reviews, we will just not call them ads. Why havent we seen any of these yet ? I have my review-blocker, post-blocker, word-of-mouth blocker startups still in waiting.
  - amelius 9y ago
    Incentivized reviews == ads == bad Are you saying that ads are okay simply because we have no means to eradicate them?
  - zaptheimpaler 9y ago
    There are farms of blogs with junk content and reviews that exist purely for ad revenue and referral marketing. Online communities have sockpuppets doing the same shit. Respected news papers have "submarine" PR pieces promoting one product or another. The fake positive reviews you mention already exist - both on blogs and sites like Amazon, App Store etc. In this vast sea of noise, it is very hard to find good information. These massive industries keep churning out ads in a million different forms & keep blurring the lines between ad/content with a motive to sell and trustworthy content from a real person without ulterior motives. Its a constant never-ending war on trustworthy content and erodes the webs utility as a whole. In the past 10 years the web has become more and more of an artificially curated garden to sell you shit and keep you clicking.. and despite many protests about ads, they remain invasive and pervasive. They ignore all these concerns and keep ramping it up. So I don't think twice about using AdNaseaum.
    - 9y ago
psyc 9y ago
I can't recall a time when ads ever provided useful information about products, as opposed to psychologically conditioned brand awareness.
- neotek 9y ago
  How about providing knowledge of the mere existence of the product? How is that not useful?
  - clarry 9y ago
    If it really did that. In practice, it doesn't. Not for me anyway. It's like firing an assault rifle at the sky and hoping there's someone to catch the bullet, where ever it might land. It's just spam about products I'm never going to buy and don't need to know about. By all means, give me all the ads when I'm actually looking for a product to buy. The sad thing is that when I do that, all the ads tend to be irrelevant. Even on sites like amazon, which should know what I'm looking for. They have these sponsored product placements that are supposed to be relevant to my search. In practice, they hardly ever are. And if they're somewhat relevant, they're still not relevant enough for me to consider purchase. Online ads do an incredibly bad job of providing useful knowledge about the mere existence of a product. In practice, I always need to turn to reviews, forums, word-of-mouth, etc. etc. etc., and finding useful information in the infinite sea of ad-spam is quite frustrating.

by srean 9y ago

Free market cannot work without propagation of information. Curious what kind of mechanism you envision to solve that problem: public service anouncements in place of ads ?

legopelle 9y ago

I imagine a single state-owned database where merchants enter detailed product information. The consumers may then query the database at their leisure.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
KGIII 9y ago
Which government would you trust to do that?
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I'd trust the UK civil service to do that. The hardest but would probably be verification -- does that lasagne really only have beef in, was the cocoa for that chocolate actually grown in a Fairtrade farm, in Ivory Coast, etc..
  - KGIII 9y ago
    I'm American. I don't even trust my government to do math properly.
- gaius 9y ago
  The French, bring back Le Minitel!
  - KGIII 9y ago
    And if there is a change in the political spectrum, will you still trust them? My government lost my security clearance application to who knows who. In return, I got some credit monitoring and a form letter.
hesarenu 9y ago
India has something similar. Datakart app from gs1 has product related information. You can scan using barcodes.

amelius 9y ago

If ads were the only type of information, we were already doomed. For example, why do you think reviews are so important? Also, you are reading articles through HN, not by watching ads for them first. Then there is the age-old word-of-mouth. Or seeing products in action with friends. I could go on and on.

srean 9y ago
I see that you have a very practical and scalable solution out there. We will gush about a movie/product/service launch on television and call it news. One might even consider incentivising people to write positive reviews, we will just not call them ads. Why havent we seen any of these yet ? I have my review-blocker, post-blocker, word-of-mouth blocker startups still in waiting.
- amelius 9y ago
  Incentivized reviews == ads == bad Are you saying that ads are okay simply because we have no means to eradicate them?
- zaptheimpaler 9y ago
  There are farms of blogs with junk content and reviews that exist purely for ad revenue and referral marketing. Online communities have sockpuppets doing the same shit. Respected news papers have "submarine" PR pieces promoting one product or another. The fake positive reviews you mention already exist - both on blogs and sites like Amazon, App Store etc. In this vast sea of noise, it is very hard to find good information. These massive industries keep churning out ads in a million different forms & keep blurring the lines between ad/content with a motive to sell and trustworthy content from a real person without ulterior motives. Its a constant never-ending war on trustworthy content and erodes the webs utility as a whole. In the past 10 years the web has become more and more of an artificially curated garden to sell you shit and keep you clicking.. and despite many protests about ads, they remain invasive and pervasive. They ignore all these concerns and keep ramping it up. So I don't think twice about using AdNaseaum.
  - 9y ago

psyc 9y ago

I can't recall a time when ads ever provided useful information about products, as opposed to psychologically conditioned brand awareness.

neotek 9y ago
How about providing knowledge of the mere existence of the product? How is that not useful?
- clarry 9y ago
  If it really did that. In practice, it doesn't. Not for me anyway. It's like firing an assault rifle at the sky and hoping there's someone to catch the bullet, where ever it might land. It's just spam about products I'm never going to buy and don't need to know about. By all means, give me all the ads when I'm actually looking for a product to buy. The sad thing is that when I do that, all the ads tend to be irrelevant. Even on sites like amazon, which should know what I'm looking for. They have these sponsored product placements that are supposed to be relevant to my search. In practice, they hardly ever are. And if they're somewhat relevant, they're still not relevant enough for me to consider purchase. Online ads do an incredibly bad job of providing useful knowledge about the mere existence of a product. In practice, I always need to turn to reviews, forums, word-of-mouth, etc. etc. etc., and finding useful information in the infinite sea of ad-spam is quite frustrating.