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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

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. :)

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. :)