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I'm starting to consider any company whose revenue primarily comes from ads to be immoral. It's the business of hijacking people's minds. Part of this means sti

I'm starting to consider any company whose revenue primarily comes from ads to be immoral. It's the business of hijacking people's minds. Part of this means stimulating the worst aspects of thinking: addiction, fear, pain, all that ads seek to satisfy.

riquito 7y ago
You open a business. You sell something or offer a service. Day one is "let people know that I exist". Pretty much every form this take is advertising. No business live without making its customers aware of it. It's not immoral in specializing on how to advertise. It's immoral to overstep some boundaries when doing it. Disclosure: I worked in a company whose primary revenue was selling tools to create ads.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Discovery is a problem that can be solved in a million other methods. If (hypothetically, somehow) ads were outlawed from existence tomorrow, a thriving industry of independent reviewers would instantly pop up to serve the need of product discovery. Painting the advertising industry as "humble startup putting up a sign in the downtown square" is also disingenuous. Most advertisements you see are done by big corporations. What's the excuse of Coca-Cola or McDonalds to plaster the streets with psychologically-crafted pictures of their unhealthy products, then?
  - riquito 7y ago
    > If (hypothetically, somehow) ads were outlawed from existence tomorrow, a thriving industry of independent reviewers would instantly pop up to serve the need of product discovery. Hardly. You buy a domain name, put something on it and then what, wait for an independent reviewer to monitor the registrars? And that review would be discovered how? > Painting the advertising industry as "humble startup putting up a sign in the downtown square" is also disingenuous. Most advertisements you see are done by big corporations. What's the excuse of Coca-Cola or McDonalds to plaster the streets with psychologically-crafted pictures of their unhealthy products, then? I have no idea how did you reach that conclusion from what I wrote.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    "If (hypothetically, somehow) ads were outlawed from existence tomorrow, a thriving industry of independent reviewers would instantly pop up to serve the need of product discovery." By "independent reviewers", you mean bought youtube influencers, right? Because that's what's often happening in industries where external reviews plays a big role.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  I don't think there is any way to get rid of ads from society, as you say. I don't think ads were that big of a problem historically. The problem is that the recent (20ish years) era where the fast response of internet ads (a click on the ad immediately tell you it worked), compared to a tv ad (you wait a month to infer ad effectiveness from the revenue numbers), has enabled rapid A/B testing of ad design. What that means is that ad design is rapidly iterated upon to maximize revenue of the company [1]. We also know from first principles that ads can have negative influences on people (making people dissatisfied with their bodies or lives, or making them engage in medically harmful behavior like smoking etc etc.). Now, there is very little legal regulation of what can be in an ad, except that factual statements in the ad are true; and ad creators rarely self-regulate. So you have one variable A=product revenue. You have another variable B=negative psychological impact on viewers of ads. The ad optimization process only optimizes A, and places almost no constraints on B while doing so. Guess what? A significant percentage of ads end up with both high A and B. This is the problem. I am not proposing any solutions, but the problem exists. [1]. Also the techniques learned from internet ads are applied to tv, print and billboard ads.
andrepd 7y ago
You're absolutely correct, but leave it to "the market" and it will drill through your very self if it finds a dime at the bottom.

riquito 7y ago

You open a business. You sell something or offer a service. Day one is "let people know that I exist". Pretty much every form this take is advertising. No business live without making its customers aware of it. It's not immoral in specializing on how to advertise. It's immoral to overstep some boundaries when doing it. Disclosure: I worked in a company whose primary revenue was selling tools to create ads.

andrepd 7y ago
Discovery is a problem that can be solved in a million other methods. If (hypothetically, somehow) ads were outlawed from existence tomorrow, a thriving industry of independent reviewers would instantly pop up to serve the need of product discovery. Painting the advertising industry as "humble startup putting up a sign in the downtown square" is also disingenuous. Most advertisements you see are done by big corporations. What's the excuse of Coca-Cola or McDonalds to plaster the streets with psychologically-crafted pictures of their unhealthy products, then?
- riquito 7y ago
  > If (hypothetically, somehow) ads were outlawed from existence tomorrow, a thriving industry of independent reviewers would instantly pop up to serve the need of product discovery. Hardly. You buy a domain name, put something on it and then what, wait for an independent reviewer to monitor the registrars? And that review would be discovered how? > Painting the advertising industry as "humble startup putting up a sign in the downtown square" is also disingenuous. Most advertisements you see are done by big corporations. What's the excuse of Coca-Cola or McDonalds to plaster the streets with psychologically-crafted pictures of their unhealthy products, then? I have no idea how did you reach that conclusion from what I wrote.
- yyyk 7y ago
  "If (hypothetically, somehow) ads were outlawed from existence tomorrow, a thriving industry of independent reviewers would instantly pop up to serve the need of product discovery." By "independent reviewers", you mean bought youtube influencers, right? Because that's what's often happening in industries where external reviews plays a big role.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
I don't think there is any way to get rid of ads from society, as you say. I don't think ads were that big of a problem historically. The problem is that the recent (20ish years) era where the fast response of internet ads (a click on the ad immediately tell you it worked), compared to a tv ad (you wait a month to infer ad effectiveness from the revenue numbers), has enabled rapid A/B testing of ad design. What that means is that ad design is rapidly iterated upon to maximize revenue of the company [1]. We also know from first principles that ads can have negative influences on people (making people dissatisfied with their bodies or lives, or making them engage in medically harmful behavior like smoking etc etc.). Now, there is very little legal regulation of what can be in an ad, except that factual statements in the ad are true; and ad creators rarely self-regulate. So you have one variable A=product revenue. You have another variable B=negative psychological impact on viewers of ads. The ad optimization process only optimizes A, and places almost no constraints on B while doing so. Guess what? A significant percentage of ads end up with both high A and B. This is the problem. I am not proposing any solutions, but the problem exists. [1]. Also the techniques learned from internet ads are applied to tv, print and billboard ads.

andrepd 7y ago

You're absolutely correct, but leave it to "the market" and it will drill through your very self if it finds a dime at the bottom.