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Everything is an "attack" on our attention. It's not a very useful distinction. I clicked the link because the title caught my attention. I come to this websit

Everything is an "attack" on our attention. It's not a very useful distinction. I clicked the link because the title caught my attention. I come to this website because it has a rotation of good content, all of which is more likely than not to catch and hold my attention, keeping it from something else. I also don't generally agree that all ads are bad, which may put me in the minority

GavinMcG 6y ago
Even accepting that everything counts as an attack, there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  I put "attack" in scare-quotes for a reason. I don't see any of these things as an "attack". If I did, I wouldn't do them.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    Well then you're not really engaging with the parent comment. The author said they "decide to direct my attention to this website" and used "attack" because they "didn't agree to getting my attention diverted." The useful distinction is between the content you came to the website to direct your attention toward, and things that tear your attention away.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
  >there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place. We can even go one step further and say there can't be an ad attacking your attention when the page itself doesn't exist at all. The bulk of the internet wouldn't exist if not for ads. Things like youtube almost certainly could not exist, with how expensive it is to store data, provide bandwidth, develop the site itself. It's only thanks to ads that the internet is where it is today.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    Which is why the parent comment acknowledged that "Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it". The fact that ads got us here doesn't mean that we should uncritically accept that business model going forward.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Hmm, I'm very anti-ads; they're a scourge on society. However, a genuine report of "I read this book, you can get it here" isn't really any different attention-wise if it has a referral code. Now, the problem is there's no way to know if it was motivated at all (nor to what extent) by the promise of a referral fee. So it could be noise and not a genuine referral based on intrinsic qualities of the product. I've advertised things on my blog, using referral codes, because that helps me defray hosting charges (I've largely stopped as the income is far too low in recent years; I've also mostly moved my content to third party sites with open licenses) but they've always been genuine either comparative reviews (which I was doing to help me decide what to get) or recommendations based on something I use. I'm putting that link there anyway, the company might as well pay me if anyone follows it. "For example I used to use Digital Ocean to spin up a Minecraft server for occasional use, recently I've been using Vultr for the same - it seems substantially cheaper, and there was a good deal on for a free month." Suppose that true comment had referral links, would it really be intrinsically worse?

GavinMcG 6y ago

Even accepting that everything counts as an attack, there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place.

jedimastert 6y ago
I put "attack" in scare-quotes for a reason. I don't see any of these things as an "attack". If I did, I wouldn't do them.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  Well then you're not really engaging with the parent comment. The author said they "decide to direct my attention to this website" and used "attack" because they "didn't agree to getting my attention diverted." The useful distinction is between the content you came to the website to direct your attention toward, and things that tear your attention away.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
>there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place. We can even go one step further and say there can't be an ad attacking your attention when the page itself doesn't exist at all. The bulk of the internet wouldn't exist if not for ads. Things like youtube almost certainly could not exist, with how expensive it is to store data, provide bandwidth, develop the site itself. It's only thanks to ads that the internet is where it is today.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  Which is why the parent comment acknowledged that "Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it". The fact that ads got us here doesn't mean that we should uncritically accept that business model going forward.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

Hmm, I'm very anti-ads; they're a scourge on society. However, a genuine report of "I read this book, you can get it here" isn't really any different attention-wise if it has a referral code. Now, the problem is there's no way to know if it was motivated at all (nor to what extent) by the promise of a referral fee. So it could be noise and not a genuine referral based on intrinsic qualities of the product. I've advertised things on my blog, using referral codes, because that helps me defray hosting charges (I've largely stopped as the income is far too low in recent years; I've also mostly moved my content to third party sites with open licenses) but they've always been genuine either comparative reviews (which I was doing to help me decide what to get) or recommendations based on something I use. I'm putting that link there anyway, the company might as well pay me if anyone follows it. "For example I used to use Digital Ocean to spin up a Minecraft server for occasional use, recently I've been using Vultr for the same - it seems substantially cheaper, and there was a good deal on for a free month." Suppose that true comment had referral links, would it really be intrinsically worse?