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I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of justifying their involvement in something prima facie unethical -- in writing, no less -- and

I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of justifying their involvement in something prima facie unethical -- in writing, no less -- and fail to address the actual ethical issue. As other have noted in comments, the problem is not with advertising in general, but with the specific way in which Google advertises. I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering: why? What was the point of this exercise? The result is closer to a self-indictment than an apology.

crumbshot 6y ago
> I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering: why? What was the point of this exercise? I reckon it was mostly a brag about (1) how he earns over half a million dollars a year for inflicting this upon us all and (2) how much more charitable he is than most of the rest of us.
- solipsism 6y ago
  This comes across as incredibly salty. If the arguments are bad, explain why. Or don't.
- omginternets 6y ago
  I have a more charitable interpretation. My impression is that the author is dealing with an ethical dilemma that most of us have not had to contend with, and that this essay is an attempt to resolve it. The problem is that its selectively truthful, of course, which renders the whole exercise moot. Even though the author landed on a position in which he is not at fault, it's not going to buy him any peace of mind.
  - crumbshot 6y ago
    > I have a more charitable interpretation. My impression is that the author is dealing with an ethical dilemma that most of us have not had to contend with, and that this essay is an attempt to resolve it. That's a good point and I agree that the essay does attempt this. But with opening his piece by letting us all know about his huge income and hefty charitable donations, I felt rather overshadowed the rest of his arguments.
- jefftk 6y ago
  > he earns over half a million dollars a year nit: that's my family's joint income. My individual income is at https://www.jefftk.com/money https://www.jefftk.com/money (I've been putting my income online since 2008 when my salary was $65k. https://www.jefftk.com/p/salary-publicy https://www.jefftk.com/p/salary-publicy for why I think more people should share their incomes.)
  - senbarryobama 6y ago
    Did you have a competing offer to get those sign on RSUs at Google?
- bogwog 6y ago
  I found it interesting that the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is that he gives money to charity. If you feel like you need to donate to charity to justify your actions, maybe your actions are evil? There has to be some level of guilt involved in that decision, at the very least. Which is to say, I don't blame him for what he does. If someone dangled all that money in my face I can't say I wouldn't be tempted to take it, even if people call me evil. However, the mental gymnastics to write an article like this does bother me. It's the same stuff probably everyone else in ads and other evil industries does to justify their actions. Reading something non-satirical like this makes me feel less good about the world.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    > the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is that he gives money to charity The reason that I work (as opposed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement) is so I can donate, which is why I start with that piece of the explanation.
    - burkaman 6y ago
      People aren't asking you "why do you choose to work on ads rather than not work at all", they're asking "why do you work on ads rather than a different area". In that context, the fact that you work to donate is not relevant, since you could switch to a different area and continue to donate.
      - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
        Few areas pay as well, and someone's gonna do it. This is a rational way to maximize his capacity to influence his world as much as possible. Let's not blame engineers for what is effectively a political issue. If ads are an issue, let's get the law to handle it.
        burkaman 6y ago
        Engineers are not somehow separate from society. When you say "let's get the law to handle it", that "us" includes engineers. Politics is just people, including engineers, figuring out how to organize society. If you think something is wrong, the first step is to not do it. If you think it's so wrong it should be illegal, you can take the optional second step of trying to change the law. There are some circumstances where you think something is wrong, but not doing it would be impossible or require really drastic life changes. For example, maybe you think driving a gas-powered car is wrong because it contributes to climate change, but you can't afford to buy an electric car or move somewhere that doesn't require a car. This is not one of those cases. The author has 10 years of experience at Google and could easily find a very well paying job either at another department inside Google, or at another company.
solipsism 6y ago
<deleted for being dumb>
- omginternets 6y ago
  Huh? The prima facie part means "at first glance". I deliberately chose that turn of phrase to suggest that it might prove not to be unethical, on closer inspection. The problem, of course, is that this closer inspection didn't happen.
  - solipsism 6y ago
    Yeah you're right. Sorry!
    - omginternets 6y ago
      No worries, my friend :)
- notsobig 6y ago
  This would be an appropriate place to disclose your glaring conflict of interest.
DoctorNick 6y ago
It's written more for the benefit of the author than anyone else.
falcolas 6y ago
> the problem is not with advertising in general I disagree. Advertising is intrusive and designed to convince you to do things you wouldn't normally do. It's large scale psychological manipulation that's only considered ethical because we've been doing it for so long.
- jnwatson 6y ago
  But so is essentially all interaction with your environment. Every interaction you have with essentially everyone might change your behavior. The only difference is the scale. The problem is that the power of targeted advertising has been democratized (irony intended) to allow everyone to do it. It is capable enough that it can end peaceful democracies.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    > But so is essentially all interaction with your environment My every interaction with my environment doesn't involve millions of trained professionals bent to the sole purpose of influencing my actions. Outside of ads, that is.
    - antasvara 6y ago
      Might be a difference of opinion, but what do you propose as an alternative to funding free things like news sites, videos on the internet, and even cable television channels. I'm not saying that ads are particularly ethical, but I struggle to think of a replacement that isn't more paywalls. This is an easy decision to make for people that have the money, but is much harder for the majority of Americans. A Vox article [1] estimates that this would add an average of $35 a month, assuming every US adult paid this cost (which is a bold assumption). [1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/24/18715421/internet-free-data-ads-cost https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/24/18715421/internet-free-...
  - chakhs 6y ago
    Only if you think everyone around you is trying to deceive you. Ads are designed to push you into taking unreasonable and uninformed decisions by showing advantages only and amplifying them and deliberately hiding the cons.
jollybean 6y ago
"involvement in something prima facie unethical" - except that it's not. Ads are the consumers choice. Given a choice between paying for something or ads, they will chose the ads. So they get ads. That's mostly why we are where we are. Many of the negative externalisatons are a matter of application, moreover, there are a variety of opinions on what is appropriate and not. For example, I don't care if Facebook uses my behaviour on Facebook to decide what ads to run, as long as that is otherwise anonymous, private and protected. Others will have differing opinions but I think most regular Americans, Europeans etc. have a variety of views but mostly not centred around the notion that ads are inherently evil.
apetrovic 6y ago
The second paragraph begins with how much the author gives to charity. So I'm assuming that the author is very aware about ethic questions, and the whole piece is about painting the whole privacy intruding industry that dominates the entire world in pinkish colors.
- floatrock 6y ago
  Sounded like buying indulgences to me. "My sins are forgiven as long as I tithe some of my profits". Buys your way out of the issue, doesn't change the lifestyle.
  - loeg 6y ago
    He'd have more take-home income if he worked outside of ad-tech and didn't give 50% of income to charity. So from a utilitarian perspective, I think I'm basically fine with this? Even if ads are "evil" (I am skeptical), they are very much a first-world problem compared with major global problems like malaria, clean drinking water, and hygienic bathrooms.
    - floatrock 6y ago
      The trick to the utilitarian calculation is to include the externalities of all the work he's putting in -- an engineer's salary is only a subset of the value they create for the company. The question is really how do you count all that excess "value", and is it good-value or evil-value. Once upon a time, the culture over there explicitly stated that they didn't want it to be evil... the bikeshedding going on here is opinions about the current implications of it all.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Yes, and in this he contradicts himself because that statement is a tacit admission of the ethical problems, yet the rest is basically a justification of all of it.
- br3akaway 6y ago
  The advertising industry is bad enough that it's not necessary to exaggerate by saying things like "dominates the entire world". Unless you do indeed mean that, in which case, how do you define it?
cm2012 6y ago
Ok, what is the actual ethical issue? Who are Google and Facebook hurting with their ad targeting and data collection?
jefftk 6y ago
> fail to address the actual ethical issue Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure which one is yours?
- beervirus 6y ago
  Spying on users. Running code they didn’t ask for on their computers to spy on them.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Did you not read the second half of the article?
    - beervirus 6y ago
      I read it. It’s great that he’s working on something that is alleged to be a little less horrible. Doesn’t make it good, or even acceptable.
      - fastball 6y ago
        Well until you have a better alternative...
        beervirus 6y ago
        Ad blockers and legislation.
        fastball 5y ago
        I kinda mean a better alternative to funding all this stuff. As pointed out in the OP, ads are actually a progressive model while the oft-cited alternative ("just charge people for what they use") is fairly regressive. The is actually what I like about Brave's solution, which is: - no ads by default. - if you have money and want to pay for the content you consume, you can load money into the browser and have it automatically dispense to publishers/creators based on which content you consume for how long, determined locally on your machine so no privacy leakage there. - or if you don't have enough to justify paying all those creators directly you can turn on (again) privacy focused ads, where analysis for targeting only happens locally in the browser. But from what I've seen, HN really hates Brave so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
ma2rten 6y ago
Have you considered that people might have different world views? Some might find 1. all advertising unethical 2. targeted advertising unethical 3. not consider advertising unethical 4. consider the product that is being advertised
blablabla123 6y ago
To be fair it's not that ads are making anyone physically suffer. It might be an annoyance for some people or even considered a privacy threat. But it's not undisputed. That said, when I was a kid with no credit card ads were the only possibility to register a domain, host a website or for that matter even receive a fax. ;)
dmayle 6y ago
I think the problem probably lies with the difference between your point of view versus his. Advertising is not 'prima facie' unethical. It's actually a societal good. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but if you can set aside your emotions with regards to the discussion, and view it from a distance, it's not too hard to show. To start off, I've never actually met anyone who doesn't want advertising at all (despite their claims). They just use the term advertising to refer to those kinds of advertisements they don't like, or find too intrusive. Advertising is, at it's base, finding a way to deliver a message to someone who is doing something else. Thus, getting rid of advertising means no more signs on buildings (yes, being forced to read the name of a store as you walk down the street is a form of advertising). Even if you were willing to accept how difficult this would make it to discover businesses (life harder for the end user), this would make it nigh impossible for new entrants to any market. That means that pretty much all commerce would be funneled into a few catch-all stores, and not only would the economy suffer, but consumer power would be greatly diminished. Advertising indirectly improves the quality of life of people who have more time than money. (Generally the less money you have in total, the more advertising benefits you.) This is because advertising as a source of revenue is a useful tool to amortize the cost of a product over many users. Free-to-watch TV would be mostly non-existent without advertising, not to mention all of the internet services like search and news; also consider free newspapers like the Metro or 20 Minutes. That doesn't mean that I don't understand what people really get worked up about. Let's forget spam and obnoxious blinking signs, or having to punch the monkey. It's like how knives are great in the hands of chefs, but not murderers. Crime is crime, and someone like the poster of this article is not trying to defend those kinds of practices. Let's get into what people tend to get really worked up about: customized advertising. However, it's not the customized advertising that really bothers people, it's the fear of abuse of tracking. In a world where customized advertising was perfected, you would see 95% less ads. Why? Every ad you see that isn't a match is a waste for everyone involved. The business doesn't want to pay, because you aren't interested, and the user doesn't want to see it, because it's distracting and wastes your time. But still, tracking, that bothers you, right? You don't want an advertiser to know your kink, right? Well, what if the advertiser is the store that happens to serve whatever your kink is? People shop in adult stores, and they have no problem letting the store know that they're interested in their wares, so clearly it's not just the stores learning that is the problem. The problem is the abuse. People want to choose who they trust to share information with, and don't wish to risk. But... if you're clicking on an ad from some store that delivers your own brand of kink, you're okay sharing that with them, so what's the problem? Well, as an example, maybe if you're a teacher you don't want your community to know that you like buying purple teddy bears because it might cost you your job. You're okay shopping in a purple teddy bear store... but if the purple teddy bear store had advertising that only targeted teachers, suddenly someone knows that you're a teacher that likes purple teddy bears, and you consider that dangerous. So yes, abuse is a problem. This is why advertisers actively engage in trying to solve the abuse problem. This is why the advertising industry is looking for ways to move forward. Yes, they also fight the change, because in their own eyes, they're trustworthy (to at least their own standards), and change is hard and expensive. But that doesn't make advertising unethical, 'prima facie' or otherwise.
austincheney 6y ago
Exactly. The greatest problem with ads isn’t the horrible code or even the resource consuming stalking. Those are just symptoms of something long decayed and separated from reality. The biggest problem is that you are shipping and forcing something users, in most cases, don’t want. It’s like pornography and illicit drugs in that yes eventually there are some beneficial edge case side effects, but almost universally it is bad. In order to increase market penetration you must become more bad and simultaneously sell it as a positive. This isn’t a universal truth. Users are willing to accept advertising as a payment in exchange for media or something similar. This isn’t evil so long as it isn’t violating privacy, is immediately apparent without deception, and is voluntarily accepted by the audience.
crazygringo 6y ago
> something prima facie unethical Citation needed. You're criticizing the author for not addressing the "actual ethical issue", yet you yourself are failing to even state what you think it is. There is absolutely zero societal consensus that advertising is unethical, in the way there is a consensus that fraud or murder are. To the contrary -- there is vast disagreement around the ethics of online advertising, delicately balancing concerns around societal good, access to information, funding, factuality, bias, tracking, privacy, and consent. The incredible complexity of the issues involved is pretty much proof that there is nothing merely "prima facie" at all.

crumbshot 6y ago

> I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering: why? What was the point of this exercise? I reckon it was mostly a brag about (1) how he earns over half a million dollars a year for inflicting this upon us all and (2) how much more charitable he is than most of the rest of us.

solipsism 6y ago
This comes across as incredibly salty. If the arguments are bad, explain why. Or don't.
omginternets 6y ago
I have a more charitable interpretation. My impression is that the author is dealing with an ethical dilemma that most of us have not had to contend with, and that this essay is an attempt to resolve it. The problem is that its selectively truthful, of course, which renders the whole exercise moot. Even though the author landed on a position in which he is not at fault, it's not going to buy him any peace of mind.
- crumbshot 6y ago
  > I have a more charitable interpretation. My impression is that the author is dealing with an ethical dilemma that most of us have not had to contend with, and that this essay is an attempt to resolve it. That's a good point and I agree that the essay does attempt this. But with opening his piece by letting us all know about his huge income and hefty charitable donations, I felt rather overshadowed the rest of his arguments.
jefftk 6y ago
> he earns over half a million dollars a year nit: that's my family's joint income. My individual income is at https://www.jefftk.com/money https://www.jefftk.com/money (I've been putting my income online since 2008 when my salary was $65k. https://www.jefftk.com/p/salary-publicy https://www.jefftk.com/p/salary-publicy for why I think more people should share their incomes.)
- senbarryobama 6y ago
  Did you have a competing offer to get those sign on RSUs at Google?
bogwog 6y ago
I found it interesting that the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is that he gives money to charity. If you feel like you need to donate to charity to justify your actions, maybe your actions are evil? There has to be some level of guilt involved in that decision, at the very least. Which is to say, I don't blame him for what he does. If someone dangled all that money in my face I can't say I wouldn't be tempted to take it, even if people call me evil. However, the mental gymnastics to write an article like this does bother me. It's the same stuff probably everyone else in ads and other evil industries does to justify their actions. Reading something non-satirical like this makes me feel less good about the world.
- jefftk 6y ago
  > the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is that he gives money to charity The reason that I work (as opposed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement) is so I can donate, which is why I start with that piece of the explanation.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    People aren't asking you "why do you choose to work on ads rather than not work at all", they're asking "why do you work on ads rather than a different area". In that context, the fact that you work to donate is not relevant, since you could switch to a different area and continue to donate.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      Few areas pay as well, and someone's gonna do it. This is a rational way to maximize his capacity to influence his world as much as possible. Let's not blame engineers for what is effectively a political issue. If ads are an issue, let's get the law to handle it.
      - burkaman 6y ago
        Engineers are not somehow separate from society. When you say "let's get the law to handle it", that "us" includes engineers. Politics is just people, including engineers, figuring out how to organize society. If you think something is wrong, the first step is to not do it. If you think it's so wrong it should be illegal, you can take the optional second step of trying to change the law. There are some circumstances where you think something is wrong, but not doing it would be impossible or require really drastic life changes. For example, maybe you think driving a gas-powered car is wrong because it contributes to climate change, but you can't afford to buy an electric car or move somewhere that doesn't require a car. This is not one of those cases. The author has 10 years of experience at Google and could easily find a very well paying job either at another department inside Google, or at another company.

solipsism 6y ago

omginternets 6y ago
Huh? The prima facie part means "at first glance". I deliberately chose that turn of phrase to suggest that it might prove not to be unethical, on closer inspection. The problem, of course, is that this closer inspection didn't happen.
- solipsism 6y ago
  Yeah you're right. Sorry!
  - omginternets 6y ago
    No worries, my friend :)
notsobig 6y ago
This would be an appropriate place to disclose your glaring conflict of interest.

DoctorNick 6y ago

It's written more for the benefit of the author than anyone else.

falcolas 6y ago

> the problem is not with advertising in general I disagree. Advertising is intrusive and designed to convince you to do things you wouldn't normally do. It's large scale psychological manipulation that's only considered ethical because we've been doing it for so long.

jnwatson 6y ago
But so is essentially all interaction with your environment. Every interaction you have with essentially everyone might change your behavior. The only difference is the scale. The problem is that the power of targeted advertising has been democratized (irony intended) to allow everyone to do it. It is capable enough that it can end peaceful democracies.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > But so is essentially all interaction with your environment My every interaction with my environment doesn't involve millions of trained professionals bent to the sole purpose of influencing my actions. Outside of ads, that is.
  - antasvara 6y ago
    Might be a difference of opinion, but what do you propose as an alternative to funding free things like news sites, videos on the internet, and even cable television channels. I'm not saying that ads are particularly ethical, but I struggle to think of a replacement that isn't more paywalls. This is an easy decision to make for people that have the money, but is much harder for the majority of Americans. A Vox article [1] estimates that this would add an average of $35 a month, assuming every US adult paid this cost (which is a bold assumption). [1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/24/18715421/internet-free-data-ads-cost https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/24/18715421/internet-free-...
- chakhs 6y ago
  Only if you think everyone around you is trying to deceive you. Ads are designed to push you into taking unreasonable and uninformed decisions by showing advantages only and amplifying them and deliberately hiding the cons.

jollybean 6y ago

"involvement in something prima facie unethical" - except that it's not. Ads are the consumers choice. Given a choice between paying for something or ads, they will chose the ads. So they get ads. That's mostly why we are where we are. Many of the negative externalisatons are a matter of application, moreover, there are a variety of opinions on what is appropriate and not. For example, I don't care if Facebook uses my behaviour on Facebook to decide what ads to run, as long as that is otherwise anonymous, private and protected. Others will have differing opinions but I think most regular Americans, Europeans etc. have a variety of views but mostly not centred around the notion that ads are inherently evil.

apetrovic 6y ago

The second paragraph begins with how much the author gives to charity. So I'm assuming that the author is very aware about ethic questions, and the whole piece is about painting the whole privacy intruding industry that dominates the entire world in pinkish colors.

floatrock 6y ago
Sounded like buying indulgences to me. "My sins are forgiven as long as I tithe some of my profits". Buys your way out of the issue, doesn't change the lifestyle.
- loeg 6y ago
  He'd have more take-home income if he worked outside of ad-tech and didn't give 50% of income to charity. So from a utilitarian perspective, I think I'm basically fine with this? Even if ads are "evil" (I am skeptical), they are very much a first-world problem compared with major global problems like malaria, clean drinking water, and hygienic bathrooms.
  - floatrock 6y ago
    The trick to the utilitarian calculation is to include the externalities of all the work he's putting in -- an engineer's salary is only a subset of the value they create for the company. The question is really how do you count all that excess "value", and is it good-value or evil-value. Once upon a time, the culture over there explicitly stated that they didn't want it to be evil... the bikeshedding going on here is opinions about the current implications of it all.
ineedasername 6y ago
Yes, and in this he contradicts himself because that statement is a tacit admission of the ethical problems, yet the rest is basically a justification of all of it.
br3akaway 6y ago
The advertising industry is bad enough that it's not necessary to exaggerate by saying things like "dominates the entire world". Unless you do indeed mean that, in which case, how do you define it?

cm2012 6y ago

Ok, what is the actual ethical issue? Who are Google and Facebook hurting with their ad targeting and data collection?

jefftk 6y ago

> fail to address the actual ethical issue Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure which one is yours?

beervirus 6y ago
Spying on users. Running code they didn’t ask for on their computers to spy on them.
- fastball 6y ago
  Did you not read the second half of the article?
  - beervirus 6y ago
    I read it. It’s great that he’s working on something that is alleged to be a little less horrible. Doesn’t make it good, or even acceptable.
    - fastball 6y ago
      Well until you have a better alternative...
      - beervirus 6y ago
        Ad blockers and legislation.
        fastball 5y ago
        I kinda mean a better alternative to funding all this stuff. As pointed out in the OP, ads are actually a progressive model while the oft-cited alternative ("just charge people for what they use") is fairly regressive. The is actually what I like about Brave's solution, which is: - no ads by default. - if you have money and want to pay for the content you consume, you can load money into the browser and have it automatically dispense to publishers/creators based on which content you consume for how long, determined locally on your machine so no privacy leakage there. - or if you don't have enough to justify paying all those creators directly you can turn on (again) privacy focused ads, where analysis for targeting only happens locally in the browser. But from what I've seen, HN really hates Brave so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

ma2rten 6y ago

Have you considered that people might have different world views? Some might find 1. all advertising unethical 2. targeted advertising unethical 3. not consider advertising unethical 4. consider the product that is being advertised

blablabla123 6y ago

To be fair it's not that ads are making anyone physically suffer. It might be an annoyance for some people or even considered a privacy threat. But it's not undisputed. That said, when I was a kid with no credit card ads were the only possibility to register a domain, host a website or for that matter even receive a fax. ;)

dmayle 6y ago

I think the problem probably lies with the difference between your point of view versus his. Advertising is not 'prima facie' unethical. It's actually a societal good. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but if you can set aside your emotions with regards to the discussion, and view it from a distance, it's not too hard to show. To start off, I've never actually met anyone who doesn't want advertising at all (despite their claims). They just use the term advertising to refer to those kinds of advertisements they don't like, or find too intrusive. Advertising is, at it's base, finding a way to deliver a message to someone who is doing something else. Thus, getting rid of advertising means no more signs on buildings (yes, being forced to read the name of a store as you walk down the street is a form of advertising). Even if you were willing to accept how difficult this would make it to discover businesses (life harder for the end user), this would make it nigh impossible for new entrants to any market. That means that pretty much all commerce would be funneled into a few catch-all stores, and not only would the economy suffer, but consumer power would be greatly diminished. Advertising indirectly improves the quality of life of people who have more time than money. (Generally the less money you have in total, the more advertising benefits you.) This is because advertising as a source of revenue is a useful tool to amortize the cost of a product over many users. Free-to-watch TV would be mostly non-existent without advertising, not to mention all of the internet services like search and news; also consider free newspapers like the Metro or 20 Minutes. That doesn't mean that I don't understand what people really get worked up about. Let's forget spam and obnoxious blinking signs, or having to punch the monkey. It's like how knives are great in the hands of chefs, but not murderers. Crime is crime, and someone like the poster of this article is not trying to defend those kinds of practices. Let's get into what people tend to get really worked up about: customized advertising. However, it's not the customized advertising that really bothers people, it's the fear of abuse of tracking. In a world where customized advertising was perfected, you would see 95% less ads. Why? Every ad you see that isn't a match is a waste for everyone involved. The business doesn't want to pay, because you aren't interested, and the user doesn't want to see it, because it's distracting and wastes your time. But still, tracking, that bothers you, right? You don't want an advertiser to know your kink, right? Well, what if the advertiser is the store that happens to serve whatever your kink is? People shop in adult stores, and they have no problem letting the store know that they're interested in their wares, so clearly it's not just the stores learning that is the problem. The problem is the abuse. People want to choose who they trust to share information with, and don't wish to risk. But... if you're clicking on an ad from some store that delivers your own brand of kink, you're okay sharing that with them, so what's the problem? Well, as an example, maybe if you're a teacher you don't want your community to know that you like buying purple teddy bears because it might cost you your job. You're okay shopping in a purple teddy bear store... but if the purple teddy bear store had advertising that only targeted teachers, suddenly someone knows that you're a teacher that likes purple teddy bears, and you consider that dangerous. So yes, abuse is a problem. This is why advertisers actively engage in trying to solve the abuse problem. This is why the advertising industry is looking for ways to move forward. Yes, they also fight the change, because in their own eyes, they're trustworthy (to at least their own standards), and change is hard and expensive. But that doesn't make advertising unethical, 'prima facie' or otherwise.

austincheney 6y ago

Exactly. The greatest problem with ads isn’t the horrible code or even the resource consuming stalking. Those are just symptoms of something long decayed and separated from reality. The biggest problem is that you are shipping and forcing something users, in most cases, don’t want. It’s like pornography and illicit drugs in that yes eventually there are some beneficial edge case side effects, but almost universally it is bad. In order to increase market penetration you must become more bad and simultaneously sell it as a positive. This isn’t a universal truth. Users are willing to accept advertising as a payment in exchange for media or something similar. This isn’t evil so long as it isn’t violating privacy, is immediately apparent without deception, and is voluntarily accepted by the audience.

crazygringo 6y ago

> something prima facie unethical Citation needed. You're criticizing the author for not addressing the "actual ethical issue", yet you yourself are failing to even state what you think it is. There is absolutely zero societal consensus that advertising is unethical, in the way there is a consensus that fraud or murder are. To the contrary -- there is vast disagreement around the ethics of online advertising, delicately balancing concerns around societal good, access to information, funding, factuality, bias, tracking, privacy, and consent. The incredible complexity of the issues involved is pretty much proof that there is nothing merely "prima facie" at all.