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What's that quote again from that early engineer? The smartest, highest paid engineers, and they fucking work on making you view more ads. We're living in an e

What's that quote again from that early engineer? The smartest, highest paid engineers, and they fucking work on making you view more ads. We're living in an embarrassing era of massively misallocated resources.

inciampati 5y ago
This is even more true today, with a decade of research into the ROI of advertising showing that it isn't even making money for those who buy it. What a sad waste of energy and imagination. We can do better.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Can we? As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others which have been tried. Similarly, capitalism is the worst form of economics -- except for all the others which have been tried. I mean, it's obvious to an external observer that a prisoner's dilemma, sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, or other coordination problem can best be solved by all sides cooperating. But the reason they're called dilemmas and problems is that there's no clear way for participants in the system to solve them. It's not like anyone actually likes the system. But no one has (nor could be trusted to use) the power to coordinate an action of the sort that could end it. This is just the state of the world right now, we opened Pandora's box with web technology and pulled out the undesirable factoid "It's lucrative to run individual profiling and sell ads." Society has a limited ability to push an agenda against incentives; pushing past tech giant privacy invasion and attention abuse is not something we are capable of doing right now. I think the only thing that can be hoped to change this equilibrium is to change the playing field. Change technology, improving adblockers, anti-tracking tools, and encryption. Educate kids and those willing to listen about the harms of advertising. The current generations of adult Americans grew up with roadside, TV, and radio ads, they view web ads as an extension of that and don't think about the privacy implications of that, but a kid who grows up in the Internet era aware that their activity is tracked and profiled (unless they use particular encryption tech and VPNs) will have a very different attitude, and perhaps eventually this abuse will be unprofitable.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    Early in his term, Trump flirted with the idea of changing quarterly earnings reports for public companies to be biannual instead. I think that potentially could have had the largest shift in corporate behavior ever seen. Potentially force companies to think more long term...or it could have been the same rat race, just 3 months longer. Who knows. Too bad that nothing came of it.
  - monetus 5y ago
    I think about how we live in an era of information, not communication, frequently. Have you heard of pol.is or vtaiwan? https://pol.is/home https://pol.is/home https://info.vtaiwan.tw https://info.vtaiwan.tw I have a lot of hope, as well as paranoia, that implementations of semantic analysis in those direct referendum/republic programs will generate more rational collective action.
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      I had not heard of those, thanks for sharing. I agree that informative tech that allows more rational collective action is the way forward, but I also share your paranoia that semantic analysis will be another hazard that empowers actors with misaligned goals.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Advertising is a way to backdoor surveillance in a post-Snowden era when people are wise to TLSing All the Things. The dollars were never a real concern imo.
ssss11 5y ago
This 100%

inciampati 5y ago

This is even more true today, with a decade of research into the ROI of advertising showing that it isn't even making money for those who buy it. What a sad waste of energy and imagination. We can do better.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
Can we? As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others which have been tried. Similarly, capitalism is the worst form of economics -- except for all the others which have been tried. I mean, it's obvious to an external observer that a prisoner's dilemma, sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, or other coordination problem can best be solved by all sides cooperating. But the reason they're called dilemmas and problems is that there's no clear way for participants in the system to solve them. It's not like anyone actually likes the system. But no one has (nor could be trusted to use) the power to coordinate an action of the sort that could end it. This is just the state of the world right now, we opened Pandora's box with web technology and pulled out the undesirable factoid "It's lucrative to run individual profiling and sell ads." Society has a limited ability to push an agenda against incentives; pushing past tech giant privacy invasion and attention abuse is not something we are capable of doing right now. I think the only thing that can be hoped to change this equilibrium is to change the playing field. Change technology, improving adblockers, anti-tracking tools, and encryption. Educate kids and those willing to listen about the harms of advertising. The current generations of adult Americans grew up with roadside, TV, and radio ads, they view web ads as an extension of that and don't think about the privacy implications of that, but a kid who grows up in the Internet era aware that their activity is tracked and profiled (unless they use particular encryption tech and VPNs) will have a very different attitude, and perhaps eventually this abuse will be unprofitable.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Early in his term, Trump flirted with the idea of changing quarterly earnings reports for public companies to be biannual instead. I think that potentially could have had the largest shift in corporate behavior ever seen. Potentially force companies to think more long term...or it could have been the same rat race, just 3 months longer. Who knows. Too bad that nothing came of it.
- monetus 5y ago
  I think about how we live in an era of information, not communication, frequently. Have you heard of pol.is or vtaiwan? https://pol.is/home https://pol.is/home https://info.vtaiwan.tw https://info.vtaiwan.tw I have a lot of hope, as well as paranoia, that implementations of semantic analysis in those direct referendum/republic programs will generate more rational collective action.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    I had not heard of those, thanks for sharing. I agree that informative tech that allows more rational collective action is the way forward, but I also share your paranoia that semantic analysis will be another hazard that empowers actors with misaligned goals.
Lammy 5y ago
Advertising is a way to backdoor surveillance in a post-Snowden era when people are wise to TLSing All the Things. The dollars were never a real concern imo.

ssss11 5y ago

This 100%