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> would you rather have ads from services which know nothing about you? Yes, absolutely. Advertisements are not something I seek out. In fact, I do my best t

> would you rather have ads from services which know nothing about you? Yes, absolutely. Advertisements are not something I seek out. In fact, I do my best to minimize any exposure to them. If they know about me, they are more effective. I understand that I am not immune to the ability of advertising and marketing to influence behavior. I'd rather start a purchasing decision with zero information than from a biased position because of brand familiarity or other psychological tricks. If you consider advertising to be the commercial implementation of psychological tactics designed to manipulate your behavior based on decades of data and research, why _would_ you want to provide advertisers with greater ability to manipulate you? If it's just "show vegan ads to vegan people" why is advertising such a cornerstone of modern infrastructure? I trust the big advertising networks less than a sleazy used-car salesman.

kthejoker2 9y ago
Advertising is part of the modern infrastructure because almost every service charges zero dollars for use. So you're asking the wrong question: why won't people pay for social networks?
- heroprotagonist 9y ago
  That's a non-starter. There hasn't been a large social network with an ad-free, analytics-free option you could pay for.
kelnos 9y ago
I don't think that's what the parent is talking about, though. I'm like you: I have adblocker software installed everywhere I can, and when ads on mobile FB and IG show up, I do my best to immediate click the "dismiss ad"/"this isn't relevant to me" button before I even have a chance to look at it. If I visit a site employing anti-adblocking software to require me to disable my adblocker, I close the tab and never go back. I hate advertising in every form and do my best to avoid it. For me (and you), companies building up ad targeting data for us is useless because we aren't receptive, so it just amounts to some creepy company collecting data on us for no good reason -- or worse, to attempt to find our advertising weak spots and make it through our defenses. I think the parent is more talking about people who are ok with advertising, and who might actually find it valuable. In that light, I think, rationally, it's better to have targeted ads (assuming the targeting is done well), than untargeted. It might be creepy how the ad companies are able to do their targeting, but the end result should be much better. A vegan isn't going to want to see an ad for a local butcher, and a childless person has no use for ads for baby clothes.

kthejoker2 9y ago

Advertising is part of the modern infrastructure because almost every service charges zero dollars for use. So you're asking the wrong question: why won't people pay for social networks?

heroprotagonist 9y ago
That's a non-starter. There hasn't been a large social network with an ad-free, analytics-free option you could pay for.

kelnos 9y ago

I don't think that's what the parent is talking about, though. I'm like you: I have adblocker software installed everywhere I can, and when ads on mobile FB and IG show up, I do my best to immediate click the "dismiss ad"/"this isn't relevant to me" button before I even have a chance to look at it. If I visit a site employing anti-adblocking software to require me to disable my adblocker, I close the tab and never go back. I hate advertising in every form and do my best to avoid it. For me (and you), companies building up ad targeting data for us is useless because we aren't receptive, so it just amounts to some creepy company collecting data on us for no good reason -- or worse, to attempt to find our advertising weak spots and make it through our defenses. I think the parent is more talking about people who are ok with advertising, and who might actually find it valuable. In that light, I think, rationally, it's better to have targeted ads (assuming the targeting is done well), than untargeted. It might be creepy how the ad companies are able to do their targeting, but the end result should be much better. A vegan isn't going to want to see an ad for a local butcher, and a childless person has no use for ads for baby clothes.