4 ms·

I get the feeling we are seeing the social media shake out start. The Facebook boycott was noticeable for brands that don't do well from that channel (ie the b

I get the feeling we are seeing the social media shake out start. The Facebook boycott was noticeable for brands that don't do well from that channel (ie the big winner in Facebook is Walmart - because facebook puts effort into tracking of a advert for an item results in that phone walking into a store and buying that item) So unless "influencers" can drive sales (and show they can) we will see more of this :-) Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-)

clouddrover 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That sounds awful.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  if you only see adverts that you would want to buy but did not know about before the advert, I would like that personally.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    How do they know what you want to buy without extensively tracking and surveilling you? Why would you like to be surveilled all day, every day? What advert do you think would ever be worth that?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The logical conclusion of this would seem to be a system where Amazon just buys the stuff for you it thinks you should be buying....
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      yes that is the logical conclusion if the logic also includes a provision that Amazon is always correct in its supposition, otherwise not so much. Also I might like to get ads from other companies than Amazon, maybe it should be other companies doing the buying then.... Also of course it would have to have your understanding of your personal finances baked in so that it would make the absolutely correct decision as to what you would like to buy, but are not sure if you can afford right at the moment. I mean I would like to get an ad for something I might like to get for my birthday and not buy it, you know the more I think about it I don't think the logical conclusion that you claim follows at all from what I stated...
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't being entirely serious there. I think I was getting cross thread contamination from a discussion on 1984 and was contemplating the ultimate consumerist dystopia...
        082349872349872 6y ago
        Speaking of cross thread contamination, I think the only person in Brave New World who budgets for anything is The Savage, when he pulls his peaceful Kaczynski at the end. (then again, I'm pretty sure soma overdosing means saving for retirement is not a thing.)
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Depends what the mechanism of operation is. If I tell you there's a home burglary every second, and home CCTV can keep you safe - have I improved your life? Or have I created fear in you, then charged you $$$ to feel like you did before you saw my advert?
    - true_religion 6y ago
      I'm not sure how the mechanism of operation has any effect here? Products like security cameras do a certain thing, and advertisements inform you of that thing. If that thing is risk avoidance, then you need to judge for yourself if its worth it. For example, consider advertisements for flu shots and other immunizations. They create fear, by informing people about legitimate risks. Then is it wrong to advertise optional immunizations? As an aside, I recently bought a Ring camera and later had an attempted burglary. The camera did its job, and woke us up for suspicious activity so our car wasn't stolen as a result.
      - hyperdimension 6y ago
        No disrespect to you, but I've heard that "inform you about products you might be interested about" argument so many times it's starting to grate on me. Think back to the advertisements (I'm thinking about the ones in Byte magazine in particular right now [not sure if it was ever distributed internationally, but you can definitely find issues in the Internet Archive.] They showed maybe a picture of a product and paragraphs and paragraphs extolling the product's virtues. I despise the modern adtech industry, but I have zero problem with that old type of ad. They helped fund a magazine I liked; I was informed about a product I may not have known existed, and most of all, no one knew if I read the ad or not or how many words of the copy I read, how long I was looking at it, my sentiment while reading the ad... It was a win-win scenario. In fact, every now and then I even like to look at old back issues of those types of magazines, sometimes to just read the ads. That's not the type of advertisement I despise now. My main point is that the entire 'Oh, well ads on (e.g.) Facebook, they simply inform you about a new product for sale' argument people toss around in defence of ads now falls flat to me now. At its core, it's essentially a motte-and-bailey argument (if you haven't heard of that before, look it up; you'll see it everywhere.) The entire ad-tech industry is rife with click fraud, which begets endless and invisible tracking, data brokers, databases everywhere, analytics, ad auctions where they bid upon your eyeballs. That's when the media companies, the advertisers, and Google and Facebook frolic about the bailey. As soon as you accuse them of their secretive tracking and data collection, they run right up to the motte and tell you, "Well, hey! We're just trying to give you relevant and useful information about products you might not know about!" Well, that sounds reasonable. You acquiesce, and they run back into the bailey and continue to monetize your eyeballs. That's what I find most dishonest about modern ads. They claim to be performing a social good, but behind our backs they go back to collecting every piece of our being that they can measure. -- EDIT: I'd never install a Ring device, but I'd be being way too ideological to not have the empathy to say I wasn't glad your car was stolen. That's good to hear. :)
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) One way in which that scenario could arise is if advertising can effectively get you to buy whatever it's peddling, even if it's not in your interest to do so. I fear we're somewhat there already, and that it may only get worse.
_Microft 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. Wouldn't it be easier if they shipped it directly to your place and debited your credit card automatically? /s
- jankotek 6y ago
  Actually that would be amazing. But it has to solve privacy, cover cost of wrong items and never ship crocked fakes.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    It would be terrible because without going through the decision process myself, how would I even know that what I got is what I would have chosen?
    - jankotek 6y ago
      In US you have 500 types of soda, but at the end it is just a soda. The same applies for tools, house stuff etc. There are more important things in life than decision process.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  A subscription might work. You pay us $x a month and we use AI-magic to decide which products to send you. But you'd have to have either a very good model or a very good way of handling returns.
  - dagw 6y ago
    Isn't that basically what book clubs and the like have been doing for at least 80+ years?
- encom 6y ago
  This service already exists, and has predictably also gone bankrupt. LootCrate™ will ship you a selection of plastic garbage monthly! Very cool!
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) Firstly, the entire Web of the past 20 years is a failed experiment for that (or success, depends on your perspective). Secondly, to really reach this goal, imagine a web with 10x more invasive tracking than today's web...
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Just imagine where you can be directed to valuable high quality independent information about products you might be interested in without having to be strongarmed, manipulated, or cargo culted into spending your money on them. That might be nicer.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
> That might be nice :-) Only for the vendor, personally I don't want to see adverts that are more likely to influence my behaviour.

clouddrover 6y ago

> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That sounds awful.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
if you only see adverts that you would want to buy but did not know about before the advert, I would like that personally.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  How do they know what you want to buy without extensively tracking and surveilling you? Why would you like to be surveilled all day, every day? What advert do you think would ever be worth that?
- arethuza 6y ago
  The logical conclusion of this would seem to be a system where Amazon just buys the stuff for you it thinks you should be buying....
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    yes that is the logical conclusion if the logic also includes a provision that Amazon is always correct in its supposition, otherwise not so much. Also I might like to get ads from other companies than Amazon, maybe it should be other companies doing the buying then.... Also of course it would have to have your understanding of your personal finances baked in so that it would make the absolutely correct decision as to what you would like to buy, but are not sure if you can afford right at the moment. I mean I would like to get an ad for something I might like to get for my birthday and not buy it, you know the more I think about it I don't think the logical conclusion that you claim follows at all from what I stated...
    - arethuza 6y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't being entirely serious there. I think I was getting cross thread contamination from a discussion on 1984 and was contemplating the ultimate consumerist dystopia...
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        Speaking of cross thread contamination, I think the only person in Brave New World who budgets for anything is The Savage, when he pulls his peaceful Kaczynski at the end. (then again, I'm pretty sure soma overdosing means saving for retirement is not a thing.)
- michaelt 6y ago
  Depends what the mechanism of operation is. If I tell you there's a home burglary every second, and home CCTV can keep you safe - have I improved your life? Or have I created fear in you, then charged you $$$ to feel like you did before you saw my advert?
  - true_religion 6y ago
    I'm not sure how the mechanism of operation has any effect here? Products like security cameras do a certain thing, and advertisements inform you of that thing. If that thing is risk avoidance, then you need to judge for yourself if its worth it. For example, consider advertisements for flu shots and other immunizations. They create fear, by informing people about legitimate risks. Then is it wrong to advertise optional immunizations? As an aside, I recently bought a Ring camera and later had an attempted burglary. The camera did its job, and woke us up for suspicious activity so our car wasn't stolen as a result.
    - hyperdimension 6y ago
      No disrespect to you, but I've heard that "inform you about products you might be interested about" argument so many times it's starting to grate on me. Think back to the advertisements (I'm thinking about the ones in Byte magazine in particular right now [not sure if it was ever distributed internationally, but you can definitely find issues in the Internet Archive.] They showed maybe a picture of a product and paragraphs and paragraphs extolling the product's virtues. I despise the modern adtech industry, but I have zero problem with that old type of ad. They helped fund a magazine I liked; I was informed about a product I may not have known existed, and most of all, no one knew if I read the ad or not or how many words of the copy I read, how long I was looking at it, my sentiment while reading the ad... It was a win-win scenario. In fact, every now and then I even like to look at old back issues of those types of magazines, sometimes to just read the ads. That's not the type of advertisement I despise now. My main point is that the entire 'Oh, well ads on (e.g.) Facebook, they simply inform you about a new product for sale' argument people toss around in defence of ads now falls flat to me now. At its core, it's essentially a motte-and-bailey argument (if you haven't heard of that before, look it up; you'll see it everywhere.) The entire ad-tech industry is rife with click fraud, which begets endless and invisible tracking, data brokers, databases everywhere, analytics, ad auctions where they bid upon your eyeballs. That's when the media companies, the advertisers, and Google and Facebook frolic about the bailey. As soon as you accuse them of their secretive tracking and data collection, they run right up to the motte and tell you, "Well, hey! We're just trying to give you relevant and useful information about products you might not know about!" Well, that sounds reasonable. You acquiesce, and they run back into the bailey and continue to monetize your eyeballs. That's what I find most dishonest about modern ads. They claim to be performing a social good, but behind our backs they go back to collecting every piece of our being that they can measure. -- EDIT: I'd never install a Ring device, but I'd be being way too ideological to not have the empathy to say I wasn't glad your car was stolen. That's good to hear. :)

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) One way in which that scenario could arise is if advertising can effectively get you to buy whatever it's peddling, even if it's not in your interest to do so. I fear we're somewhat there already, and that it may only get worse.

_Microft 6y ago

> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. Wouldn't it be easier if they shipped it directly to your place and debited your credit card automatically? /s

jankotek 6y ago
Actually that would be amazing. But it has to solve privacy, cover cost of wrong items and never ship crocked fakes.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  It would be terrible because without going through the decision process myself, how would I even know that what I got is what I would have chosen?
  - jankotek 6y ago
    In US you have 500 types of soda, but at the end it is just a soda. The same applies for tools, house stuff etc. There are more important things in life than decision process.
im3w1l 6y ago
A subscription might work. You pay us $x a month and we use AI-magic to decide which products to send you. But you'd have to have either a very good model or a very good way of handling returns.
- dagw 6y ago
  Isn't that basically what book clubs and the like have been doing for at least 80+ years?
encom 6y ago
This service already exists, and has predictably also gone bankrupt. LootCrate™ will ship you a selection of plastic garbage monthly! Very cool!

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

> Just imagine a world where you only see an advert that you are extremely likely to buy. That might be nice :-) Firstly, the entire Web of the past 20 years is a failed experiment for that (or success, depends on your perspective). Secondly, to really reach this goal, imagine a web with 10x more invasive tracking than today's web...

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Just imagine where you can be directed to valuable high quality independent information about products you might be interested in without having to be strongarmed, manipulated, or cargo culted into spending your money on them. That might be nicer.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

> That might be nice :-) Only for the vendor, personally I don't want to see adverts that are more likely to influence my behaviour.