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Google telling us what "better ads" are is like a drug dealer lecturing you about crack quality control. They could have solved it years ago, but made tons of $

Google telling us what "better ads" are is like a drug dealer lecturing you about crack quality control. They could have solved it years ago, but made tons of $ by letting the ad space become the wild west of nagware, malware, and tracking bonanza. If they were to provide a real adblocker, allowing people to opt-in to ads on sites they like, while blocking everything else, I'd have considered it, on the basis that any technology running in-browser must be more fast/efficient than an extension. But this initiative is just them trying to get people to drop their adblocker and get tracked again. All things being equal, I think I'll keep my uBlock extension - at least until Google kicks it out of their web store. I believe that would be the next logical step for them :(

jordigh 9y ago
To me, "better ads" sounds like "humane torture" or "acceptable manipulation". The principle of ads is repugnant to me. There's no way to make it better. I don't need to be psychologically manipulated to buy things I don't need. There's no way to make that manipulation ok. What Google considers acceptable, I consider subtle and even more manipulative, trying to sneak it in where most people won't object to the intrusion.
- neolefty 9y ago
  Any thoughts on how web search should be funded, in an ideal world, if ads are inherently repugnant?
  - jordigh 9y ago
    I find this a really sinister bargain too. Citizen, allow yourself to be manipulated, or capitalism will crumble. Watch this ad designed to make you buy a car, or the website gets it! There are other ways. Ask for donations, like Wikipedia (which as I understand it, is rolling in the dough). Fund it with taxes. Set up a plain ol' paywall and revitalise the slow, inefficient banking system until sending money tiny amounts of money is as easy as clicking "I agree" in an Apple EULA. If we're so strapped for cash that websites will crumble unless we all submit ourselves to the Ludovico technique, surely we have enough of an incentive to work on micropayment technology instead.
  - jasonkostempski 9y ago
    Web search shouldn't be centralized or closed source, it should be made of the same stuff Linux is. Whatever Linux does to keep existing, there should be a community driven web search project that mimics it.
    - neolefty 9y ago
      How could openness coexist with adversarial SOE? Genuine question -- I think it's possible, but how? For example, "Optimizers" currently have to guess at what Google is doing, but if the system was open source, they would know exactly. For another example, modern cryptography actually benefits from openness. Is there a similar possibility for Search?
      - jasonkostempski 9y ago
        I have no clue really but I'd like to see what the results would be like if the presence of anything that makes a site money would count negatively towards it's ranking. Any eCommerce site unless the search is something like "where to buy...". Completely disqualify any site with ad network and tracking scripts. I'd also like to see "text/plain" given the highest ranking. There's not much incentive to game the system if you can't make money off it.
- Corrado 9y ago
  I've mentioned this in another comment, but I think there is a place for well positioned adverts. In the past I've missed out on cultural events (movie premiers, etc.) that I really wanted to know about simply because I don't watch much broadcast TV and use a pretty aggressive Ad blocker. This is generally a great idea and keeps all the crap from streaming into my head but it also stops the rare gem from enriching my life.
  - freeone3000 9y ago
    You might be better served checking the "Events" section of your local paper (which is like an advertisement page, but accurate, targeted, and curated) rather than relying on internet advertisements.
- CM30 9y ago
  Ads aren't necessarily a bad thing, they can be incredibly informative or entertaining in their own right. I mean, have you watched a movie, TV show or game trailer at all? That's an advertisement, yet no one would say all of those are manipulative. Something like this is almost entirely informative for someone looking for information about the product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcdRBHM7kM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcdRBHM7kM And the same goes for quite a few trailers and ads. Oh sure, they obviously want you to buy the product, and will pick the best footage to make it look good, but they also act as a nice quick summary of the story and what you'll actually be getting from it. It's why even the BBC are fine with advertising their own shows in the same way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNnTDiLOd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNnTDiLOd4 And let's not forget how oftentimes these things being posted can be seen as a big event in itself. Something like E3 or a Nintendo Direct is literally just advertising for the company or companies involved. Yet millions of people treat the advertising event in the same way as a hotly anticipated TV show or sporting event, because it provides them a way to see what's been worked on and find out more about something they're interested in. Same sort of thing with the Superbowl ads being a draw in themselves. Or how Disney releasing a trailer for the next new Star Wars film would cause a huge reaction online. So ads in of themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing. They certainly can be if they're exploitative (like, payday loan advertising or sugary foods being advertised in kids shows), lie through the teeth about the product (like No Man's Sky and Aliens Colonial Marines) or harm the consumer or their property (like malware ads and tracking online), but they can also be an art in themselves and a perfectly valid way of learning more about a new product. If online ads were relevant to the content, didn't track the user or try and run scripts on their machine and worked about the same way they do in a real life newspaper or magazine (or the trailers before movies) then that would be acceptable and rightly classed as 'better'.

jordigh 9y ago

To me, "better ads" sounds like "humane torture" or "acceptable manipulation". The principle of ads is repugnant to me. There's no way to make it better. I don't need to be psychologically manipulated to buy things I don't need. There's no way to make that manipulation ok. What Google considers acceptable, I consider subtle and even more manipulative, trying to sneak it in where most people won't object to the intrusion.

neolefty 9y ago
Any thoughts on how web search should be funded, in an ideal world, if ads are inherently repugnant?
- jordigh 9y ago
  I find this a really sinister bargain too. Citizen, allow yourself to be manipulated, or capitalism will crumble. Watch this ad designed to make you buy a car, or the website gets it! There are other ways. Ask for donations, like Wikipedia (which as I understand it, is rolling in the dough). Fund it with taxes. Set up a plain ol' paywall and revitalise the slow, inefficient banking system until sending money tiny amounts of money is as easy as clicking "I agree" in an Apple EULA. If we're so strapped for cash that websites will crumble unless we all submit ourselves to the Ludovico technique, surely we have enough of an incentive to work on micropayment technology instead.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  Web search shouldn't be centralized or closed source, it should be made of the same stuff Linux is. Whatever Linux does to keep existing, there should be a community driven web search project that mimics it.
  - neolefty 9y ago
    How could openness coexist with adversarial SOE? Genuine question -- I think it's possible, but how? For example, "Optimizers" currently have to guess at what Google is doing, but if the system was open source, they would know exactly. For another example, modern cryptography actually benefits from openness. Is there a similar possibility for Search?
    - jasonkostempski 9y ago
      I have no clue really but I'd like to see what the results would be like if the presence of anything that makes a site money would count negatively towards it's ranking. Any eCommerce site unless the search is something like "where to buy...". Completely disqualify any site with ad network and tracking scripts. I'd also like to see "text/plain" given the highest ranking. There's not much incentive to game the system if you can't make money off it.
Corrado 9y ago
I've mentioned this in another comment, but I think there is a place for well positioned adverts. In the past I've missed out on cultural events (movie premiers, etc.) that I really wanted to know about simply because I don't watch much broadcast TV and use a pretty aggressive Ad blocker. This is generally a great idea and keeps all the crap from streaming into my head but it also stops the rare gem from enriching my life.
- freeone3000 9y ago
  You might be better served checking the "Events" section of your local paper (which is like an advertisement page, but accurate, targeted, and curated) rather than relying on internet advertisements.
CM30 9y ago
Ads aren't necessarily a bad thing, they can be incredibly informative or entertaining in their own right. I mean, have you watched a movie, TV show or game trailer at all? That's an advertisement, yet no one would say all of those are manipulative. Something like this is almost entirely informative for someone looking for information about the product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcdRBHM7kM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcdRBHM7kM And the same goes for quite a few trailers and ads. Oh sure, they obviously want you to buy the product, and will pick the best footage to make it look good, but they also act as a nice quick summary of the story and what you'll actually be getting from it. It's why even the BBC are fine with advertising their own shows in the same way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNnTDiLOd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNnTDiLOd4 And let's not forget how oftentimes these things being posted can be seen as a big event in itself. Something like E3 or a Nintendo Direct is literally just advertising for the company or companies involved. Yet millions of people treat the advertising event in the same way as a hotly anticipated TV show or sporting event, because it provides them a way to see what's been worked on and find out more about something they're interested in. Same sort of thing with the Superbowl ads being a draw in themselves. Or how Disney releasing a trailer for the next new Star Wars film would cause a huge reaction online. So ads in of themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing. They certainly can be if they're exploitative (like, payday loan advertising or sugary foods being advertised in kids shows), lie through the teeth about the product (like No Man's Sky and Aliens Colonial Marines) or harm the consumer or their property (like malware ads and tracking online), but they can also be an art in themselves and a perfectly valid way of learning more about a new product. If online ads were relevant to the content, didn't track the user or try and run scripts on their machine and worked about the same way they do in a real life newspaper or magazine (or the trailers before movies) then that would be acceptable and rightly classed as 'better'.