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> It was highly targeted advertising on targets which were highly susceptible to be turned This doesn't gel with me... how many people saw the ads, how many ti

> It was highly targeted advertising on targets which were highly susceptible to be turned This doesn't gel with me... how many people saw the ads, how many times, and of those, how many were actually influenced by it? Going by my sample size of two (my sister and my wife) they both claim that they never even look at ads that appear on screen. I honestly am calling bullshit on the whole ad industry here... show me evidence that a significant number of people are influenced by ads that makes it worth spending money on (if unbiased data actually exists). Are there any advertisers out there that are seeing a quantifiable return on their ad spend?

fsociety 6y ago
It is bullshit I agree. We all know what the intent is with an advertisement. You don’t have to be a “tech-elite” to understand ads. There should be more transparency around how ads are displayed on the internet.. but giving researchers full access to a user’s data and their friend’s data is a pretty poor one. Can’t a better system be designed for this? Content, however, is very dangerous and it’s not clear what a good solution is. It’s not clear what the purpose of content is on the internet.
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  > It’s not clear what the purpose of content is on the internet Something I have pointed out to others in the past, and on here too, is that the Internet existed just fine before all these ad-related sites appeared. Of course, nothing on the scale of FB, Google etc, but I'd argue that we're worse off now than before. When you rely on advertising you then have to make sure that every piece of content works towards making the advertising worthwhile. You then maximise SEO, and clicks and focus on metrics and bullshit like engagement (whatever that means). You have to calculate whether a blog post or article is worth doing because your sponsors now care about that: you stop making content for the love/joy/sake of the content and everything becomes bait for your ads. 20 years ago, the only ads were about punching a monkey and finding out that I was the 1 millionth visitor to a website and could click the ad to claim my prize :)

fsociety 6y ago

It is bullshit I agree. We all know what the intent is with an advertisement. You don’t have to be a “tech-elite” to understand ads. There should be more transparency around how ads are displayed on the internet.. but giving researchers full access to a user’s data and their friend’s data is a pretty poor one. Can’t a better system be designed for this? Content, however, is very dangerous and it’s not clear what a good solution is. It’s not clear what the purpose of content is on the internet.

_Understated_ 6y ago
> It’s not clear what the purpose of content is on the internet Something I have pointed out to others in the past, and on here too, is that the Internet existed just fine before all these ad-related sites appeared. Of course, nothing on the scale of FB, Google etc, but I'd argue that we're worse off now than before. When you rely on advertising you then have to make sure that every piece of content works towards making the advertising worthwhile. You then maximise SEO, and clicks and focus on metrics and bullshit like engagement (whatever that means). You have to calculate whether a blog post or article is worth doing because your sponsors now care about that: you stop making content for the love/joy/sake of the content and everything becomes bait for your ads. 20 years ago, the only ads were about punching a monkey and finding out that I was the 1 millionth visitor to a website and could click the ad to claim my prize :)