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Turns out there was so much money in spyware, spam, scummy ad sites, and so on, that the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact th

by asark 7y ago

Turns out there was so much money in spyware, spam, scummy ad sites, and so on, that the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things. All those bad actors won the war. If you want to help run the show, or if you want those who do to shower money on you, those bad activities are what you do. Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. In many ways all the worst things about the mid-period Web are thriving more now than they did then.

nineteen999 7y ago
> the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things The marketing and management arms might have been the ones to make the decision to go "all-in", but it was the web developers who implemented it. Sure, a paycheck is a paycheck and all that, but let's not pretend that the developer community has clean hands in all this.
- millzlane 7y ago
  let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives. Just like there are people out there willing to shoot you in the face for your wallet. There are people willing to write code to spy on you for a paycheck.
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    > let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives Not really, but then I work in emergency services infrastructure and every line of code in our product is intended to help first responders save lives. I agree with the rest of your comments though.
- taurath 7y ago
  The developers and technical people who invented them are the ones who made much the money. Everyone I know who works in ad tech has gone through several acquisitions and is stinking rich - they tend to be on the more sociopathic side though. Just a correlation I’ve seen.
coldpie 7y ago
> Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. Installing NoScript is the new "click to activate Flash." It's a bit of a pain, sure, but it makes the web so much more usable in general. And once you've whitelisted your day-to-day websites, it's almost invisible.
- hjek 7y ago
  Can also recommend ublock origin's built-in script blocker.
api 7y ago
It's really the only business model that ended up working for the Internet at a large scale, at least on the consumer side.
- asark 7y ago
  On the contrary, I think its existence suppresses other business models, by being somewhat more efficient (at concentrating money, that is). The coupling of a scummy ad business model with incredibly large caches of personal data turns out to provide a huge moat against both direct (ad space) and indirect (other business models providing services) competitors, by allowing slightly more effective ads (counters direct competitors) and extra convenience to users (suppresses other business models) while also being "free" (again, suppresses other business models).

by asark 7y ago

nineteen999 7y ago

> the corporate benevolent overlords of the Web went all-in on those exact things The marketing and management arms might have been the ones to make the decision to go "all-in", but it was the web developers who implemented it. Sure, a paycheck is a paycheck and all that, but let's not pretend that the developer community has clean hands in all this.

millzlane 7y ago
let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives. Just like there are people out there willing to shoot you in the face for your wallet. There are people willing to write code to spy on you for a paycheck.
- nineteen999 7y ago
  > let's be real every piece of code written has the ability to destroy lives Not really, but then I work in emergency services infrastructure and every line of code in our product is intended to help first responders save lives. I agree with the rest of your comments though.
taurath 7y ago
The developers and technical people who invented them are the ones who made much the money. Everyone I know who works in ad tech has gone through several acquisitions and is stinking rich - they tend to be on the more sociopathic side though. Just a correlation I’ve seen.

coldpie 7y ago

> Also Flash (in spirit if not in fact—thanks Javascript and modern web frontend development), popups, et c. Installing NoScript is the new "click to activate Flash." It's a bit of a pain, sure, but it makes the web so much more usable in general. And once you've whitelisted your day-to-day websites, it's almost invisible.

hjek 7y ago
Can also recommend ublock origin's built-in script blocker.

api 7y ago

It's really the only business model that ended up working for the Internet at a large scale, at least on the consumer side.

asark 7y ago
On the contrary, I think its existence suppresses other business models, by being somewhat more efficient (at concentrating money, that is). The coupling of a scummy ad business model with incredibly large caches of personal data turns out to provide a huge moat against both direct (ad space) and indirect (other business models providing services) competitors, by allowing slightly more effective ads (counters direct competitors) and extra convenience to users (suppresses other business models) while also being "free" (again, suppresses other business models).