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This is the kind of hyperbolic metaphor that's part of the problem. Is online ad spending a net negative for all of society, or a net positive? It allowed mil

This is the kind of hyperbolic metaphor that's part of the problem. Is online ad spending a net negative for all of society, or a net positive? It allowed millions of web sites to fund themselves and publish content for free, which enabled millions of other people, many of whom don't have a lot of money to pay for content, to access it. Many of those people would never respond to the ads, so in effect, they were subsidized by those who would respond to the ads. I grew up poor myself in Baltimore city, I could never had afforded to pay for any online content. My parents couldn't even afford cable. We watched broadcast television only. I got all my books from public libraries or used book stores. If most of the services that exist today were behind paywalls and I were still poor, that content would be off limits to me. On the flip side, advertising used to be incredibly wasteful for small businesses. If you're a local dress shop, bakery, or piano teacher, it was much harder for you to "target" people who were highly likely to use your services. Instead, you had to place much more generic ads in many different channels like signage, local newspaper classifieds, the yellow book, circulars, direct mail, and so on. The more precise web based advertising is a revolution for smaller businesses to limit their costs, track campaigns, iterate and test what works, and reach customers cheaper and faster. Is your local bakery saving money and bringing in more local business, evil? Way too much of the rhetoric on HN lately IS literally drinking the cool aid. It's people taking theoretical damage scenarios and way over-inflating them into actual harm. It's worse than the anti-vaxxers who inflate minute risks, or the anti-GMO crowd, who bridge a sledgehammer when a scalpel is needed. The downside of making ad spending less efficient, or erecting pay walls, is going to be greater centralization of the web. Because if you need to do untargeted advertising, than the greatest efficiency comes from reaching the most number of eyeballs. If you need to get paywall subscribers, most small brands won't be able to convince people to pay $10/mo for subscribers, so this will force small publishers into the arms of large consolidators who sell subscriptions, and then dole out pennies, just like the record industry did to musicians. So those wishing for the destruction of the ad supported web as it exists today are really, in effect, creating the unintended consequence of even bigger publishing oligarchies tomorrow, while the little guy is squeezed out by lower margins and higher costs. These regulations aren't really going to punish Google, Facebook, or the other large players very much. They'll survive. It's the mid-sized and smaller companies who will face the greater challenges.

wruza 8y ago
I don’t get it. If I need bakery, I search for it. In either general search engine or in local advertizing app that shows map locations and customer reviews. It’s not ‘80s anymore. I don’t need my local bakery, barbershop and meat market to pop up everywhere once I googled for steak types or haircuts. It is of no use to me; it is of use to those who want to oversell their product (which is average). Removing ads spam competition allows product competition for small products. All the heat comes from those who want to push instead of provide. It is so obviously wrong.
- deleted 8y ago
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tpm 8y ago
>"Is online ad spending a net negative for all of society, or a net positive?" I don't have a precise answer for that question. I would love to read a good analysis. >It allowed millions of web sites to fund themselves Not sure about that number. > which enabled millions of other people, many of whom don't have a lot of money to pay for content, to access it. Many of those people would never respond to the ads, so in effect, they were subsidized by those who would respond to the ads. Yes, and it also allowed centralized ad agencies (google, fb, twitter...) to gather and mine their data, to behave irresponsibly and give us the Age of Anger fueled by social and video sites extracting value from human interaction while disregarding the huge social costs of all this.
Mirioron 8y ago
You basically described cable TV in the second part of your post.
sedachv 8y ago
> Is your local bakery saving money and bringing in more local business, evil? Your comment accuses people who are opposed to surveillance capitalism of being "hyperbolic" "anti-vaxxers" talking about "theoretical damage" but the only scenarios you provide to argue your case come from your imagination. "Think of the small businesses!" is not an argument for surveillance capitalism. I have worked in adtech on and off for about a decade. The first adtech company I worked for specialized in software for agencies/directories advertising on behalf of small business. In fact most small business owners do not have the knowledge and time to effectively market using online advertising. It is very easy to spend all of a small online advertising budget without getting any results. The bigger players have much greater advantages and leverage over small businesses in Internet advertising than they did pre-Internet. In fact this enables the very centralization you hypothesize: the small business discovery space is captured by Yelp, Google's business listings, Facebook pages, etc., in a way that the Yellow Pages never matched. There is no way for a small business today to effectively compete in digital marketing with franchises and national chains. The statistics support my experience: there are now less small businesses around than at any time since the 1970s: http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-near-40-year-low/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-nea... Of the small businesses I see having success with Internet advertising today, they are also organized differently. Instead of being a traditional small business than happens to do X, they are run like Internet marketing firms that happen to market X. This is more like the TV infomercial business model. A client of mine leases offices from WeWork. All the offices have glass walls, so you can really see everything about a business. Just from walking around the halls, I see a number of small apparel startups (no production equipment for making samples, no patterns hanging around, no supplies - just some computers for doing marketing), a home improvement gadget than 15 years ago would have been "As Seen on TV" (no actual tools around though - again, only computers for doing marketing), and a couple of fad diet meal substitute companies (I don't see them preparing their gloop in the communal kitchen...). Literally the exact opposite of what you describe is the reality. Surveillance capitalism is driving a decline of small businesses and centralization into oligopolies. > I got all my books from public libraries or used book stores. If most of the services that exist today were behind paywalls and I were still poor, that content would be off limits to me. It really does not surprise me that you missed the point here too. Your first sentence contradicts your second. In fact, books from independent publishers and periodicals are available from public libraries. Public libraries also have subscriptions to digital journals and information databases. Publishing worked fine (in fact, in many ways better) before the surveillance capitalism oligopoly, and it will survive and thrive once the surveillance capitalism oligopoly is dismantled.

wruza 8y ago

I don’t get it. If I need bakery, I search for it. In either general search engine or in local advertizing app that shows map locations and customer reviews. It’s not ‘80s anymore. I don’t need my local bakery, barbershop and meat market to pop up everywhere once I googled for steak types or haircuts. It is of no use to me; it is of use to those who want to oversell their product (which is average). Removing ads spam competition allows product competition for small products. All the heat comes from those who want to push instead of provide. It is so obviously wrong.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

tpm 8y ago

>"Is online ad spending a net negative for all of society, or a net positive?" I don't have a precise answer for that question. I would love to read a good analysis. >It allowed millions of web sites to fund themselves Not sure about that number. > which enabled millions of other people, many of whom don't have a lot of money to pay for content, to access it. Many of those people would never respond to the ads, so in effect, they were subsidized by those who would respond to the ads. Yes, and it also allowed centralized ad agencies (google, fb, twitter...) to gather and mine their data, to behave irresponsibly and give us the Age of Anger fueled by social and video sites extracting value from human interaction while disregarding the huge social costs of all this.

Mirioron 8y ago

You basically described cable TV in the second part of your post.

sedachv 8y ago

> Is your local bakery saving money and bringing in more local business, evil? Your comment accuses people who are opposed to surveillance capitalism of being "hyperbolic" "anti-vaxxers" talking about "theoretical damage" but the only scenarios you provide to argue your case come from your imagination. "Think of the small businesses!" is not an argument for surveillance capitalism. I have worked in adtech on and off for about a decade. The first adtech company I worked for specialized in software for agencies/directories advertising on behalf of small business. In fact most small business owners do not have the knowledge and time to effectively market using online advertising. It is very easy to spend all of a small online advertising budget without getting any results. The bigger players have much greater advantages and leverage over small businesses in Internet advertising than they did pre-Internet. In fact this enables the very centralization you hypothesize: the small business discovery space is captured by Yelp, Google's business listings, Facebook pages, etc., in a way that the Yellow Pages never matched. There is no way for a small business today to effectively compete in digital marketing with franchises and national chains. The statistics support my experience: there are now less small businesses around than at any time since the 1970s: http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-near-40-year-low/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-nea... Of the small businesses I see having success with Internet advertising today, they are also organized differently. Instead of being a traditional small business than happens to do X, they are run like Internet marketing firms that happen to market X. This is more like the TV infomercial business model. A client of mine leases offices from WeWork. All the offices have glass walls, so you can really see everything about a business. Just from walking around the halls, I see a number of small apparel startups (no production equipment for making samples, no patterns hanging around, no supplies - just some computers for doing marketing), a home improvement gadget than 15 years ago would have been "As Seen on TV" (no actual tools around though - again, only computers for doing marketing), and a couple of fad diet meal substitute companies (I don't see them preparing their gloop in the communal kitchen...). Literally the exact opposite of what you describe is the reality. Surveillance capitalism is driving a decline of small businesses and centralization into oligopolies. > I got all my books from public libraries or used book stores. If most of the services that exist today were behind paywalls and I were still poor, that content would be off limits to me. It really does not surprise me that you missed the point here too. Your first sentence contradicts your second. In fact, books from independent publishers and periodicals are available from public libraries. Public libraries also have subscriptions to digital journals and information databases. Publishing worked fine (in fact, in many ways better) before the surveillance capitalism oligopoly, and it will survive and thrive once the surveillance capitalism oligopoly is dismantled.