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"We cannot afford the advertising business model. The price of free is actually too high. It is literally destroying our society, because it incentivizes automa

"We cannot afford the advertising business model. The price of free is actually too high. It is literally destroying our society, because it incentivizes automated systems that have these inherent flaws." This is ridiculous. If nobody knew that this was happening, we'd be going on with our lives and nothing would be different. Society is not being destroyed by advertisements being delivered more effectively with user data. Whatever they're doing with it, it's preferable to having to pay to use websites. How about the very small vocal minority of people who legitimately care about their data being harvested get to pay every website they want to visit, and the rest of us stick with ads?

mistermann 9y ago
I don't think the author is talking about simple advertising, I think he is talking about the power to influence the public on a mass scale. I think it is fair to say that western societies are more polarized than they were ten years ago, and a reasonable argument can be made that social media has something to do with it. Ad-based business models make it necessary, to a degree at least, for platforms to monetize their user base.
- notahacker 9y ago
  I think it's fair to say Western societies have at least one millennium of being easily roused by pretty crude propaganda and much more polarised when the economy's not going so good. It's not like good old fashioned paid-for newsprint had a reputation for not provoking hysteria on a mass scale, or like the most obnoxious political commentators on the internet don't have Patreon accounts. Nothing to do with the payment model and everything to do with people being willing to influence and others being easily influenced.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    If membership on Facebook was paid rather than ad based, is it not reasonable to think there would be less people available to be influences on that individual platform? Add some more restrictive legislation on what major online platforms are allowed to display to users, and I think it would be a very different ball game.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      So, at least two people disagree with the assertions that: - Facebook being a paid platform for subscribers would reduce subscribers - Adding restrictions to what Facebook was allowed to show users would have some affect Very interesting.
- skybrian 9y ago
  re: "I don't think the author is talking about simple advertising, I think he is talking about the power to influence the public on a mass scale." Isn't that what mass advertisers do? Do you think Coca Cola doesn't want to influence the public? Maybe it's not about the power to do this, but rather what it's used for? Use advertising to sell a good product, and all is forgiven. It might even be considered positive in the case of a public health campaign. Sell a defective, dangerous product, or outright scam, and they will complain about the advertising. (These days, many people are looking at soda rather skeptically.)
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Right, it's persuasion in both cases, but what people are being persuaded to do, and the degree of effectiveness, appears to be different enough now that it might be worthy of a public discussion and perhaps some policy changes. That's my interpretation anyways.
Spooky23 9y ago
You can have functional platforms without the creepy and manipulative behavior that Facebook uses. Facebook would be a better Facebook if it were a service for users instead of advertisers. The problem with Facebook is that it is owned and controlled by an individual whose personality, ethical standards and philosophy seems to be pretty static and problematic in many ways.
joe_the_user 9y ago
Well, everyone can point to their favorite problems in society. If you choose political polarization, loneliness, atomization and despair, this mix can suggest a society "coming apart" and might suggest social media could be a big of this by polarizing dialog, idea bubbles and "lack of real connections". The thing is this picture kind of comes apart if you notice a lot of the polarizing dialogue comes from mainstream with dynamic that's been accelerating for many years, that atomization similarly increased significantly as described by Robert Putnam in Bowling alone and blaming things like the opioid epidemic on social networking is fairly absurd (factors like the loss of high paid industrial jobs and destruction of community are clearly more to blame than Facebook, however you might apportion the overall blame). Moreover, the growing wealth disparity in this country is the elephant the behind a lot of these factors. I'd note that the current wave of anti-Facebook rants seem to have appeared after the Cambridge Analytica "scandal", which allowed a parade of haters to appear with a variety of complaint; Facebook helped Trump win, Facebook sharing annoys because I don't want to engage with people's political rants. https://thebaffler.com/latest/cambridge-analytica-con-levine https://thebaffler.com/latest/cambridge-analytica-con-levine
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  How would elimination of advertising fix online communication platforms. It isn't the ads that is causing the groupthink and polarization, but the abundance of choice in things to follow and voices to listen to. Do you suggest restricting the speech of people online? The polarization and groupthink is even present on online platforms that have no ads whatsoever, like Wikipedia and, to an extent, Hacker News.
  - michaelt 9y ago
    The theory is: Funded by advertising -> commercially incentivised to get as many users as possible and keep them on the site as long as possible -> optimise structure/design/layout/activity feed/suggested content/notifications to do that -> online communication problems. For example, Facebook controls the algorithm that decides which posts appear in your news feed, the order of them, the real name policy, which other users see your posts, and when you receive notifications; Reddit controls which content appears on the front page, the ease of sign-up, and the default subs; Youtube controls which video auto-plays next, and the content and ordering of videos on the homepage, and so on. All of them also have hired moderators, reporting mechanisms, automatic spam filtering; and policies on things like bots, how bans work, what sort of content is allowed/banned, pornography, hate speech, copyright infringement, and so on. So for example, in the pursuit of growth and engagement, companies might turn a blind eye to thousands of bots propping up their user numbers; or promote content that made people angry or mislead them; if doing so produced the best engagement metrics. There's also the problem of funded by advertising -> incentivised to improve ad targeting -> incentivised to push the boundaries on user privacy. I think we're only beginning to see the consequences of this.
mschuster91 9y ago
> Society is not being destroyed by advertisements being delivered more effectively with user data. Oh yes it is. When Russian (and American) Trump, Brexit or other Nazi supporters use targeting to deliver propaganda to those segments of society most vulnerable to it, democracy suffers. The US got Trump, the UK got the Brexit, France the shocking rise of the Front National, we Germans got the AfD fash, Austria the FPÖ, Italy the M5S and Berlusconi rising from the dead, and the situation in Poland or Hungary went to total collapse of democracy. Most of this was enabled by propaganda on social media, especially as many newspapers and other real media outlets get their headlines from Facebook and Twitter trending topics. One thing common to all these "movements": easily shareable (and digestible) "share pics" filled with lies and "alternative facts" creating a massive echo chamber for those lured into it. With an equally massive radicalization feedback loop - like with snuff videos, people always need more extreme stuff.
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  Your suggestion that Brexit, Trump, AfD, etc supporters are more vulnerable to propaganda is naive.
- vk23 9y ago
  I dont understand why this gets downvoted. While all those things might have happend without social media its pretty obvious that targeted advertisment and "social media bubbles" push people into more extreme positions.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > I dont understand why this gets downvoted. I have a suspicion: many people in the tech world do not like it when someone points out that the tech world is very much at fault for what happened. Many people (tm), especially here, believe in the Holy Free Market as the Solution To All Problems... and having someone show them that the total lack of regulation did cause issues is bound to cause discomfort.

mistermann 9y ago

I don't think the author is talking about simple advertising, I think he is talking about the power to influence the public on a mass scale. I think it is fair to say that western societies are more polarized than they were ten years ago, and a reasonable argument can be made that social media has something to do with it. Ad-based business models make it necessary, to a degree at least, for platforms to monetize their user base.

notahacker 9y ago
I think it's fair to say Western societies have at least one millennium of being easily roused by pretty crude propaganda and much more polarised when the economy's not going so good. It's not like good old fashioned paid-for newsprint had a reputation for not provoking hysteria on a mass scale, or like the most obnoxious political commentators on the internet don't have Patreon accounts. Nothing to do with the payment model and everything to do with people being willing to influence and others being easily influenced.
- mistermann 9y ago
  If membership on Facebook was paid rather than ad based, is it not reasonable to think there would be less people available to be influences on that individual platform? Add some more restrictive legislation on what major online platforms are allowed to display to users, and I think it would be a very different ball game.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    So, at least two people disagree with the assertions that: - Facebook being a paid platform for subscribers would reduce subscribers - Adding restrictions to what Facebook was allowed to show users would have some affect Very interesting.
skybrian 9y ago
re: "I don't think the author is talking about simple advertising, I think he is talking about the power to influence the public on a mass scale." Isn't that what mass advertisers do? Do you think Coca Cola doesn't want to influence the public? Maybe it's not about the power to do this, but rather what it's used for? Use advertising to sell a good product, and all is forgiven. It might even be considered positive in the case of a public health campaign. Sell a defective, dangerous product, or outright scam, and they will complain about the advertising. (These days, many people are looking at soda rather skeptically.)
- mistermann 9y ago
  Right, it's persuasion in both cases, but what people are being persuaded to do, and the degree of effectiveness, appears to be different enough now that it might be worthy of a public discussion and perhaps some policy changes. That's my interpretation anyways.

Spooky23 9y ago

You can have functional platforms without the creepy and manipulative behavior that Facebook uses. Facebook would be a better Facebook if it were a service for users instead of advertisers. The problem with Facebook is that it is owned and controlled by an individual whose personality, ethical standards and philosophy seems to be pretty static and problematic in many ways.

joe_the_user 9y ago

Well, everyone can point to their favorite problems in society. If you choose political polarization, loneliness, atomization and despair, this mix can suggest a society "coming apart" and might suggest social media could be a big of this by polarizing dialog, idea bubbles and "lack of real connections". The thing is this picture kind of comes apart if you notice a lot of the polarizing dialogue comes from mainstream with dynamic that's been accelerating for many years, that atomization similarly increased significantly as described by Robert Putnam in Bowling alone and blaming things like the opioid epidemic on social networking is fairly absurd (factors like the loss of high paid industrial jobs and destruction of community are clearly more to blame than Facebook, however you might apportion the overall blame). Moreover, the growing wealth disparity in this country is the elephant the behind a lot of these factors. I'd note that the current wave of anti-Facebook rants seem to have appeared after the Cambridge Analytica "scandal", which allowed a parade of haters to appear with a variety of complaint; Facebook helped Trump win, Facebook sharing annoys because I don't want to engage with people's political rants. https://thebaffler.com/latest/cambridge-analytica-con-levine https://thebaffler.com/latest/cambridge-analytica-con-levine

ghostcluster 9y ago
How would elimination of advertising fix online communication platforms. It isn't the ads that is causing the groupthink and polarization, but the abundance of choice in things to follow and voices to listen to. Do you suggest restricting the speech of people online? The polarization and groupthink is even present on online platforms that have no ads whatsoever, like Wikipedia and, to an extent, Hacker News.
- michaelt 9y ago
  The theory is: Funded by advertising -> commercially incentivised to get as many users as possible and keep them on the site as long as possible -> optimise structure/design/layout/activity feed/suggested content/notifications to do that -> online communication problems. For example, Facebook controls the algorithm that decides which posts appear in your news feed, the order of them, the real name policy, which other users see your posts, and when you receive notifications; Reddit controls which content appears on the front page, the ease of sign-up, and the default subs; Youtube controls which video auto-plays next, and the content and ordering of videos on the homepage, and so on. All of them also have hired moderators, reporting mechanisms, automatic spam filtering; and policies on things like bots, how bans work, what sort of content is allowed/banned, pornography, hate speech, copyright infringement, and so on. So for example, in the pursuit of growth and engagement, companies might turn a blind eye to thousands of bots propping up their user numbers; or promote content that made people angry or mislead them; if doing so produced the best engagement metrics. There's also the problem of funded by advertising -> incentivised to improve ad targeting -> incentivised to push the boundaries on user privacy. I think we're only beginning to see the consequences of this.

mschuster91 9y ago

> Society is not being destroyed by advertisements being delivered more effectively with user data. Oh yes it is. When Russian (and American) Trump, Brexit or other Nazi supporters use targeting to deliver propaganda to those segments of society most vulnerable to it, democracy suffers. The US got Trump, the UK got the Brexit, France the shocking rise of the Front National, we Germans got the AfD fash, Austria the FPÖ, Italy the M5S and Berlusconi rising from the dead, and the situation in Poland or Hungary went to total collapse of democracy. Most of this was enabled by propaganda on social media, especially as many newspapers and other real media outlets get their headlines from Facebook and Twitter trending topics. One thing common to all these "movements": easily shareable (and digestible) "share pics" filled with lies and "alternative facts" creating a massive echo chamber for those lured into it. With an equally massive radicalization feedback loop - like with snuff videos, people always need more extreme stuff.

hyperdunc 9y ago
Your suggestion that Brexit, Trump, AfD, etc supporters are more vulnerable to propaganda is naive.
vk23 9y ago
I dont understand why this gets downvoted. While all those things might have happend without social media its pretty obvious that targeted advertisment and "social media bubbles" push people into more extreme positions.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > I dont understand why this gets downvoted. I have a suspicion: many people in the tech world do not like it when someone points out that the tech world is very much at fault for what happened. Many people (tm), especially here, believe in the Holy Free Market as the Solution To All Problems... and having someone show them that the total lack of regulation did cause issues is bound to cause discomfort.