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It would be wonderful if clever mortgage fraudsters could figure out a way to wreck the entire housing economy. Burn the whole thing down. It will make housing

It would be wonderful if clever mortgage fraudsters could figure out a way to wreck the entire housing economy. Burn the whole thing down. It will make housing more affordable. Actually that happened in 2008 and caused a terrible recession that effected more than just bankers. Perhaps introducing regulation would be a better way of dealing with unscrupulous ad firms.

FussyZeus 7y ago
What regulations would you propose? Ad-tech is doing what advertising does, only better. They've taken the industry to its logical conclusions; a catastrophic surveillance system deployed to sell you shit. The problem isn't ad-tech, it's not the surveillance, it's not even the data leaks or viruses; advertising itself is the problem. There's no amount of regulation that is going to make it "good," at best, it will remain a tumor on our free market system until it is excised once and for all. That is, assuming it doesn't kill it outright in its seemingly endless race to the bottom.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Banning advertising would be the greatest imaginable victory for big brands and the end of small B2C business. The advertising that has already happened would get culturally locked in forever (would anybody forget Coca Cola?) and it would be illegal for new market entrants to change it.
  - FussyZeus 7y ago
    I mean, this is just the logical conclusion of capitalism. A few monstrous companies dominating industry. It was held back from eating itself some time ago when a bunch of massive corps were broken up, but that doesn't happen anymore. Ironically, big business propaganda about how great big business is has swayed the public so far away from regulating it that there's now nothing standing in the way of capitalists destroying the capitalist system.
dcolkitt 7y ago
The alternative to regulation is if innovators could figure out a model where micro-transactions or payment for content actually work. Because it's not like advertising is even that lucrative to begin with. Even Facebook, which is the king of ad monetization, only does about $120 annual ARPU for American users (and a lot less in other regions). That sounds like a lot until you realize the average user spends 38 minutes a day on the site. That's 30 cents per hour of use. That comes with the clutter of the ads, the loss of privacy from all the tracking, much slower page loads, and lower content quality since the content algorithm's optimizing to maximize ad spend rather than user delight. I'd posit that the vast majority of Facebook users be much happier with $0.30 an hour for the much better ad-free experience. And that's even in the most extreme ad-tilted case. Now consider a run-in-the-mill site like Reddit. Their annual ARPU is only about $1.00. That means Reddit's literally monetizing fractions of a penny per hour of use. I'm absolutely positive that all but those who are so cheap they're on verging on mentally ill, would pay one penny an hour to use Reddit.

FussyZeus 7y ago

What regulations would you propose? Ad-tech is doing what advertising does, only better. They've taken the industry to its logical conclusions; a catastrophic surveillance system deployed to sell you shit. The problem isn't ad-tech, it's not the surveillance, it's not even the data leaks or viruses; advertising itself is the problem. There's no amount of regulation that is going to make it "good," at best, it will remain a tumor on our free market system until it is excised once and for all. That is, assuming it doesn't kill it outright in its seemingly endless race to the bottom.

whatshisface 7y ago
Banning advertising would be the greatest imaginable victory for big brands and the end of small B2C business. The advertising that has already happened would get culturally locked in forever (would anybody forget Coca Cola?) and it would be illegal for new market entrants to change it.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  I mean, this is just the logical conclusion of capitalism. A few monstrous companies dominating industry. It was held back from eating itself some time ago when a bunch of massive corps were broken up, but that doesn't happen anymore. Ironically, big business propaganda about how great big business is has swayed the public so far away from regulating it that there's now nothing standing in the way of capitalists destroying the capitalist system.

dcolkitt 7y ago

The alternative to regulation is if innovators could figure out a model where micro-transactions or payment for content actually work. Because it's not like advertising is even that lucrative to begin with. Even Facebook, which is the king of ad monetization, only does about $120 annual ARPU for American users (and a lot less in other regions). That sounds like a lot until you realize the average user spends 38 minutes a day on the site. That's 30 cents per hour of use. That comes with the clutter of the ads, the loss of privacy from all the tracking, much slower page loads, and lower content quality since the content algorithm's optimizing to maximize ad spend rather than user delight. I'd posit that the vast majority of Facebook users be much happier with $0.30 an hour for the much better ad-free experience. And that's even in the most extreme ad-tilted case. Now consider a run-in-the-mill site like Reddit. Their annual ARPU is only about $1.00. That means Reddit's literally monetizing fractions of a penny per hour of use. I'm absolutely positive that all but those who are so cheap they're on verging on mentally ill, would pay one penny an hour to use Reddit.