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This is unfortunate. Adtech is a cancer. We don't need to give it time to adapt, we need to shut it down.
by ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This is unfortunate. Adtech is a cancer. We don't need to give it time to adapt, we need to shut it down.
- idiotallover 6y agoThe only cancer is people spewing compost without any depth to their thinking. Adtech has powered things since dawn of civilization. Here educate yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising If you just flat out ban shit without nuanced understanding, you hurt people more than help. Facebook will pivot, they will charge people for video or gaming or oculus. But there will be no shopify, no tv shows, no radio shows and no DTC companies which number in the thousands and will eventually be in the millions. So just becuase you have some vendetta against facebook, should everyone else suffer for your stupidity?
- baddox 6y ago> If you just flat out ban shit without nuanced understanding, you hurt people more than help. Absolutely. We should have understanding and we ban shit that is harmful.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoShowing some ads is one thing. Tracking every aspect of people's lives is another entirely. And that's what adtech has only become since the internet enabled it to do so.
- dcdevito 6y agoGood riddance to that, I say. Ad tech is bad user experience, period. We don’t need it. Don’t try to belittle someone for their opinion. Ass.
- matthewmacleod 6y agoIf you just flat out ban shit without nuanced understanding I’m sure you appreciate the irony of this given your “banning invasive tracking will be the end of civilisation” shtick. Let’s compromise and permit advertising generally, while absolutely working as hard as possible to crush creepy and abusive practices, like secretly tracking individuals without their permission. Seems like everybody could reasonably sign up to that.
- criddell 6y agoYou're equating ad-tech with advertising. They aren't the same thing.
- akerro 6y agoOH no, I'm so sorry for ads now. Poor, poor ads, let's make it easy for them to be more annoying and less regulated for once after years of being intrusive, bringing malware, tracking people across portals and devices, and still being flipping unreliable.
- monadic2 6y agoMost of humanity's ills have been around for a long time.
- godzillabrennus 6y agoIt pays for the modern web. It is probably in need of more transparency and clear user defined controls but hardly a cancer.
- chadlavi 6y agoeconomic engine !== automatically good. The Triangle Trade was an economic engine, too.
- dcdevito 6y agoAnd the modern web is a giant mess and an awful user experience.
- loceng 6y agoBy your logic the conclusion is that the modern web is heavily cancerous, which arguably it is. There are other ways to pay for innovation and tools, to be preventative-proactive so cancer can't exist or at least not thrive.
- amadeuspagel 6y agoClearly those unspecified other ways aren't working well enough, or ads wouldn't be so dominant.
- Nextgrid 6y agoThe problem is that the advertising way is "cheating" in the sense that its victims are not aware they're being exploited; otherwise this article wouldn't have been written and the proposed UI change (which aims to shine light on what the advertising industry is doing with your personal data) wouldn't cause such an uproar. There are areas where a totally "free market" doesn't work in the long-term benefit of society and regulation typically steps in. This is why for example health and safety is a thing (even though not caring about that would make businesses more profitable) or that in most civilized countries you are not allowed to dump toxic waste in the river even though it's cheaper than paying to have it recycled.
- 6y ago
- baby 6y agoDo you realize the number of free services that one uses thanks to ads? Not everyone can afford to pay for these. I for one use gmail, google maps, google calendar, google docs, etc. Every day
- mc32 6y agoSure, those people can “opt in” if they choose. The point is that it should default to not track unless the user knowingly and willingly chooses to be tracked (in exchange for services if you like).
- b1476 6y agoThere are plenty of free alternatives to Google that don’t rely on ads and respect your privacy.
- sujinge9 6y agoWhat are some free products that don't rely on ads?
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoMost OSS I suppose.
- b1476 6y agoGmail -> ProtonMail free tier Google Maps -> Open Street Maps (although I personally use Ordnance Survey Maps) Google Docs -> I use LibreOffice because I don’t need the cloud functionality Google Calendar -> I currently use a Synology NAS to host my own but I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Proton Calendar As a disclaimer to this I actually pay for ProtonMail and OSMaps because they’re products I use daily and feel that they deserve the money, however they do have free tiers and there are free alternatives to most Google software. I’d strongly suggest looking into de-Googling, there’s an entire subreddit dedicated to it.
- ogre_codes 6y agoLiterally every service the previous poster mentioned has an ad free/ tracking free alternative which ships with the iPhone. Aside from that, there are too many "free products" without advertising to list them so you'd need to be more specific.
- njitram 6y agoAds will definitely not disappear, only the tracking aspect. It will be more contextual ads probably, related to what page your are looking at, less related to you as an individual.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoAnd that is both a user-respecting and effective way to advertise!
- dialtone 6y agoThis would have been true for this change as well, clearly if Apple chose a different path means that it's not as clear cut as you imply here. And yeah contextual and stuff is nice but will simply not drive the same revenue for publishers.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThis isn't true, targeted advertising only gets publishers about 4% more revenue, despite adtech's claims it's over 50%. And when adtech is banned, revenues will stabilize around remaining activity.
- dialtone 6y agoYou deliberately choose to ignore all of the studies that disagree with you except the one that you agree with that has very obvious flaws. Here's a summary of the literature[1]. Personalized ads have become popular because they perform better for the buyer, and that makes buyers willing to pay more to show them to their customers. Buyer goals align with conversions. The history of advertising online started with contextual, there is zero evidence to support the claim that revenue will only drop 4% when any company submitting bids for contextual vs personalized ads can show you that the CPMs they are willing to pay can easily be 2-3x if not even higher for high worth users. [1]: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1juu6UBguR7ru1Rhfyor9knFBFsyLNP6FmIiXcJKyJZM/edit#slide=id.g604c6519b1_0_1 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1juu6UBguR7ru1Rhfyor9...
- samfisher83 6y agoIt's a large reason why software engineers are making a lot of money.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoMoney made by taking advantage of others is unethical money. If your salary is propped up by adtech, you shouldn't be making that money.