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I hope that whole industry just dies and the hordes of wasted software engineers can instead be used on something that actually adds value to society.

BoorishBears 8y ago
And all the other software developers working on things directly and indirectly funded by that industry should what? Take up knitting?
- 131012 8y ago
  I suggest they keep coding, but useful stuff and stop the wasteful surveillance.
  - Kye 8y ago
    Startup idea: AdRev for knitting patterns.
- Kye 8y ago
  They can do what people put out of work by new technology created by those same coders do. And knitting. Nothing wrong with knitting.
- cyborgx7 8y ago
  If you already acknowledge that it's just a bullshit job because people need to make money to live, maybe they could do something that is not actively harmful.
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    What the fuck are you talking about? How many people in this industry indirectly rely on companies like Google for employment? What percentage of mobile app development is paid for with ads? What percentage of web development is paid for with ads? How many open source projects are contributed to by developers who work at companies that rely on ads to you, pay their actual bills How many “side projects” on this site are paid for with ads How many projects are B2B where the other B is in ads, or relied on ads, or relies on something that relies on ads. Sometimes I love HN but then I remember how, frankly, full of shit some people are. We’ve built this house of cards on ads. If ads go, the industry will collapse into a shadow of itself and half of you won’t get to eat. It’s nice to act like ads are just this evil thing devs invented but surprise surprise, they’re a form of payment because people don’t like to pay for stuff. Remove the way people pay for stuff and suddenly this industry where you make 6 figures for jerking off to javascript frameworks doesn’t make sense.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Take it down a notch? Lots of sites sell things, which is enough reason to make those sites. Millions of sites are representing businesses (restaurant etc). No, the web isn't going away because joe shmoe can't put up ads. Its so cheap to put up a website anyway, folks do it for many reasons.
      - BoorishBears 8y ago
        How do you think those people sell? Or their customers find them? Where do people search for sites representing businesses? The Software industry would retract almost to the point of death relative to its current size without ads.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        I surely never follow ads. Most sites I find by word-of-mouth I think?
        BoorishBears 8y ago
        Good for you, you can go ahead and prop up the industry with your word of mouth.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        … or by using goods and services found through the web. Which makes it worthwhile for folks to put up web sites.
    - cyborgx7 8y ago
      This industry does as much harm as it does good. It will be good for it if you can't make money anymore by getting people to look in your direction long enough to show people something they might actually want to spend money on.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- Arwill 8y ago
  Also take up working on things funded directly or indirectly by some other more valuable industry.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Say what you want, but sweaters don't spy on people.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Hip, disruptive startup: "Hold our beer."
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Then in a decade our new sardonic message board reference will be, "Yes, the software engineering industry cratered. But for a beautiful moment in time, we stopped serving ads." I don't think the parent commenter disagrees with you about spying. I think they're trying to highlight the fundamental tension of the is-ought problem at play here. Your normative claim is that it's good to limit activity which reduces consumer privacy. The positive conclusion is that to achieve this moral imperative, we'd have to either radically repurpose existing software engineers or radically reduce the industry. Your point about spying isn't wrong. But I think history shows us that taking away (or reducing) peoples' livelihood while telling them, "well at least you're no longer a moral hazard!" isn't productive. It's too extreme. If you want to actually reduce the negative externalities caused by digital advertising, you can't realistically tell software engineers to take up knitting.
    - cyborgx7 8y ago
      How about we built a society in which people don't have to choose between loosing their livelyhood and being a moral hazard. In the meantime, I'm not going to cry about the deaths of immoral industries.
      - throwawaymath 8y ago
        Okay. Again, you're highlighting an is-ought problem. I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist. I'm saying we can't just "build a society in which people don't have to choose between losing their livelihood and being a moral hazard." It is at the very least extremely nontrivial and not at all straightforward, even if everyone agrees it's not ideal. I'm not asking you to "cry about the deals of immoral industries" - rather as a pragmatist, I'm asking you to consider that unless we have a concrete way forward, suggesting to kill the industry is not productive. Categorically speaking, advertising as a problem has several notable properties: 1. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it is harmful (contrast with e.g. murder), 2. Reasonable people can disagree about how harmful it is (contrast with e.g. financial fraud), 3. It enables a significant portion (perhaps the majority?) of growth in the tech sector, which itself has empowered the lion's share of economic growth in the past decade, 4. There are few opportunities even within tech which will both pay comparably and which are not either directly or indirectly funded by advertising profits. Of those opportunities, some (such as fintech) are similarly disagreeable to another subset of the population. The state of the world we live in is such that problems with these characteristics cannot be realistically solved by reducing or taking away the livelihoods of people who enable the problems to exist. I'm not telling you to not care about the problem. I'm also not telling you it can't be fixed. But I am telling you that you can't be so cavalier about what solving the problem entails if you actually want it to change.
- krageon 8y ago
  If you are working on propping up the ad industry I certainly won't lie awake at night if you are inconvenienced by it dying.
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    You’re pretty short sighted huh? I don’t work with ads. But we have B2C clients that wouldn’t exist without the ad industry, in fact how would people know we exist without the ad industry? How many of your customers are funded by ads, or use tools funded by ads, or have customers of their own that are? Not to mention stuff most people use, like GMail, Google Search, “free” apps We’re part of an ecosystem, you can’t point at the shitty parts and get all uppity, you are on the same ship
    - krageon 8y ago
      I appreciate that it's easy to misconstrue what I said as a personal attack on you, but I was actually talking about the "you" as in any of the audience. If it doesn't apply to you, great! Let's keep it that way. In keeping with the guidelines of this website, I think it's fair to not immediately resort to personal attacks as a retaliation for a perceived slight. As for the rest of your reply: I have not and continue to not get reliable statistical information that outlines exactly how ads help businesses. Mostly because the people that work in the ad industry just don't really seem to care about accurate numbers. If they did, it seems to me they would invest a bit more time and effort into understanding what makes a measurement accurate and how you make such a measurement. That then neatly ties into your claim that basically every business I know wouldn't exist without advertising, which I would classify as the kind of extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Of which there is none. As for the claim that I am all "uppity": If that means questioning when people do things that I see as wrong, I think that is a virtue.
      - BoorishBears 8y ago
        > If that means questioning when people do things that I see as wrong, I think that is a virtue. It doesn’t and it isn’t. You’re waxing poetic about simple hypocrisy.
thatguyagain 8y ago
+1
manigandham 8y ago
Like what? Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? What would you rather have people do?
- cyborgx7 8y ago
  >Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? By itself? No, not at all. At least not more valuable than giving the same people the same money for doing nothing. >What would you rather have people do? Literally anything not actively harmful.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    You seem to misunderstand how marketing works. Creating customers is how companies grow and requires advertising, so creating those channels is filling a business need. Throwing money at people doesn't change that need. >> Literally anything not actively harmful. "Literally" must be the most overused word in English today, but a vague description like that is completely unproductive to any discussion and doesn't even begin to get over the subjective interpretation of "harmful".
    - cyborgx7 8y ago
      You seem to misunderstand what this thread is about. This thread is not about "marketing". It is about personalised targeted ads.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        Yea I get it. Advertising is a subset of marketing, and efficiently connecting people with a message inherently involves targeting. There's a reason 2 of the biggest companies on the planet are ad networks.
        cyborgx7 8y ago

BoorishBears 8y ago

And all the other software developers working on things directly and indirectly funded by that industry should what? Take up knitting?

131012 8y ago
I suggest they keep coding, but useful stuff and stop the wasteful surveillance.
- Kye 8y ago
  Startup idea: AdRev for knitting patterns.
Kye 8y ago
They can do what people put out of work by new technology created by those same coders do. And knitting. Nothing wrong with knitting.
cyborgx7 8y ago
If you already acknowledge that it's just a bullshit job because people need to make money to live, maybe they could do something that is not actively harmful.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  What the fuck are you talking about? How many people in this industry indirectly rely on companies like Google for employment? What percentage of mobile app development is paid for with ads? What percentage of web development is paid for with ads? How many open source projects are contributed to by developers who work at companies that rely on ads to you, pay their actual bills How many “side projects” on this site are paid for with ads How many projects are B2B where the other B is in ads, or relied on ads, or relies on something that relies on ads. Sometimes I love HN but then I remember how, frankly, full of shit some people are. We’ve built this house of cards on ads. If ads go, the industry will collapse into a shadow of itself and half of you won’t get to eat. It’s nice to act like ads are just this evil thing devs invented but surprise surprise, they’re a form of payment because people don’t like to pay for stuff. Remove the way people pay for stuff and suddenly this industry where you make 6 figures for jerking off to javascript frameworks doesn’t make sense.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Take it down a notch? Lots of sites sell things, which is enough reason to make those sites. Millions of sites are representing businesses (restaurant etc). No, the web isn't going away because joe shmoe can't put up ads. Its so cheap to put up a website anyway, folks do it for many reasons.
    - BoorishBears 8y ago
      How do you think those people sell? Or their customers find them? Where do people search for sites representing businesses? The Software industry would retract almost to the point of death relative to its current size without ads.
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        I surely never follow ads. Most sites I find by word-of-mouth I think?
        BoorishBears 8y ago
        Good for you, you can go ahead and prop up the industry with your word of mouth.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        … or by using goods and services found through the web. Which makes it worthwhile for folks to put up web sites.
  - cyborgx7 8y ago
    This industry does as much harm as it does good. It will be good for it if you can't make money anymore by getting people to look in your direction long enough to show people something they might actually want to spend money on.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
Arwill 8y ago
Also take up working on things funded directly or indirectly by some other more valuable industry.
darkpuma 8y ago
Say what you want, but sweaters don't spy on people.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Hip, disruptive startup: "Hold our beer."
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Then in a decade our new sardonic message board reference will be, "Yes, the software engineering industry cratered. But for a beautiful moment in time, we stopped serving ads." I don't think the parent commenter disagrees with you about spying. I think they're trying to highlight the fundamental tension of the is-ought problem at play here. Your normative claim is that it's good to limit activity which reduces consumer privacy. The positive conclusion is that to achieve this moral imperative, we'd have to either radically repurpose existing software engineers or radically reduce the industry. Your point about spying isn't wrong. But I think history shows us that taking away (or reducing) peoples' livelihood while telling them, "well at least you're no longer a moral hazard!" isn't productive. It's too extreme. If you want to actually reduce the negative externalities caused by digital advertising, you can't realistically tell software engineers to take up knitting.
  - cyborgx7 8y ago
    How about we built a society in which people don't have to choose between loosing their livelyhood and being a moral hazard. In the meantime, I'm not going to cry about the deaths of immoral industries.
    - throwawaymath 8y ago
      Okay. Again, you're highlighting an is-ought problem. I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist. I'm saying we can't just "build a society in which people don't have to choose between losing their livelihood and being a moral hazard." It is at the very least extremely nontrivial and not at all straightforward, even if everyone agrees it's not ideal. I'm not asking you to "cry about the deals of immoral industries" - rather as a pragmatist, I'm asking you to consider that unless we have a concrete way forward, suggesting to kill the industry is not productive. Categorically speaking, advertising as a problem has several notable properties: 1. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it is harmful (contrast with e.g. murder), 2. Reasonable people can disagree about how harmful it is (contrast with e.g. financial fraud), 3. It enables a significant portion (perhaps the majority?) of growth in the tech sector, which itself has empowered the lion's share of economic growth in the past decade, 4. There are few opportunities even within tech which will both pay comparably and which are not either directly or indirectly funded by advertising profits. Of those opportunities, some (such as fintech) are similarly disagreeable to another subset of the population. The state of the world we live in is such that problems with these characteristics cannot be realistically solved by reducing or taking away the livelihoods of people who enable the problems to exist. I'm not telling you to not care about the problem. I'm also not telling you it can't be fixed. But I am telling you that you can't be so cavalier about what solving the problem entails if you actually want it to change.
krageon 8y ago
If you are working on propping up the ad industry I certainly won't lie awake at night if you are inconvenienced by it dying.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  You’re pretty short sighted huh? I don’t work with ads. But we have B2C clients that wouldn’t exist without the ad industry, in fact how would people know we exist without the ad industry? How many of your customers are funded by ads, or use tools funded by ads, or have customers of their own that are? Not to mention stuff most people use, like GMail, Google Search, “free” apps We’re part of an ecosystem, you can’t point at the shitty parts and get all uppity, you are on the same ship
  - krageon 8y ago
    I appreciate that it's easy to misconstrue what I said as a personal attack on you, but I was actually talking about the "you" as in any of the audience. If it doesn't apply to you, great! Let's keep it that way. In keeping with the guidelines of this website, I think it's fair to not immediately resort to personal attacks as a retaliation for a perceived slight. As for the rest of your reply: I have not and continue to not get reliable statistical information that outlines exactly how ads help businesses. Mostly because the people that work in the ad industry just don't really seem to care about accurate numbers. If they did, it seems to me they would invest a bit more time and effort into understanding what makes a measurement accurate and how you make such a measurement. That then neatly ties into your claim that basically every business I know wouldn't exist without advertising, which I would classify as the kind of extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Of which there is none. As for the claim that I am all "uppity": If that means questioning when people do things that I see as wrong, I think that is a virtue.
    - BoorishBears 8y ago
      > If that means questioning when people do things that I see as wrong, I think that is a virtue. It doesn’t and it isn’t. You’re waxing poetic about simple hypocrisy.

thatguyagain 8y ago

manigandham 8y ago

Like what? Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? What would you rather have people do?

cyborgx7 8y ago
>Is generating trillions in economic activity and allowing billions of people to be employed and connected not adding value? By itself? No, not at all. At least not more valuable than giving the same people the same money for doing nothing. >What would you rather have people do? Literally anything not actively harmful.
- manigandham 8y ago
  You seem to misunderstand how marketing works. Creating customers is how companies grow and requires advertising, so creating those channels is filling a business need. Throwing money at people doesn't change that need. >> Literally anything not actively harmful. "Literally" must be the most overused word in English today, but a vague description like that is completely unproductive to any discussion and doesn't even begin to get over the subjective interpretation of "harmful".
  - cyborgx7 8y ago
    You seem to misunderstand what this thread is about. This thread is not about "marketing". It is about personalised targeted ads.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      Yea I get it. Advertising is a subset of marketing, and efficiently connecting people with a message inherently involves targeting. There's a reason 2 of the biggest companies on the planet are ad networks.
      - cyborgx7 8y ago