5 ms·

The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons was that people actually liked a

• colordrops 5y ago
  I remember this. "People want personalized information on products they are interested in. How else would they find out about them?" As if people would be at a loss buying a car or breakfast cereal or a pair of shoes without ads.
  • babypuncher 5y ago
    It makes sense in isolated situations, like Netflix recommending content based on previous content you liked on their platform. I think it becomes creepy once that data leaves the domain where I originally generated it.
    • colordrops 5y ago
      Is that really an ad though? A recommendation on the platform itself isn't an ad IMO.
      • pueblito 5y ago
        That’s definitely an ad
      • ipaddr 5y ago
        It is and many get paid for it. You think those top prime picks are most viewed/best rate.. no they are picked by an editor for a variety of reasons some include clauses in deals or money spent/relationship with the studio.
        • scarface74 5y ago
          That’s not how Netflix works. Netflix pays a one time fee for content to be in its platform. It’s not a pay per play deal like Spotify.
      • Smoosh 5y ago
        If nothing else it is an ad to coerce you into watching more shows on Netflix.
  • notriddle 5y ago
    I do think there's a reasonable argument for ads, since people don't always know what they could be looking for [1]. Independent magazines can serve a similar purpose, but the difference is between an organization that claims to be unaffiliated with the manufacturer, and needs to be constantly policed to make sure they aren't lying about it, and just being up-front about your affiliation, and only needing to be constantly policed to make sure you aren't lying about the product itself. Unfortunately, web ads suck. Because there isn't enough Gatekeeping(tm), I can't buy things from web ads, because the probability of it being a scam is too high. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mLxyIXpSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mLxyIXpSY
    • colordrops 5y ago
      If they didn't know what they could be looking for, perhaps they didn't really need the thing in the first place. If the product is good enough, then it should grow in usage through word of mouth.
      • netizen-936824 5y ago
        This exactly, most of this stuff will just end up taking up space in someone's basement for 20 years used maybe once or twice. Its not only a waste of money but raw materials and energy
      • tehjoker 5y ago
        I'm very anti-advertising but I think from a production standpoint this is yes and no. Without advertising, it doesn't make sense to put in the capital expenditure to create new products that require a high upfront cost because there's no demand for it. Advertising is used to create demand. Under a different economic model, this feature of the production environment would not be as necessary.
        • colordrops 5y ago
          Perhaps the capital expenditure shouldn't have been made in the first place. Our earth is careening towards an environmental cliff. We don't need people finding more ways emit CO2 into the atmosphere. If people really need the thing they'll find it and word will get around.
  • malfist 5y ago
    Full disclosure, I run ad blocker, I love my ad blocker. I get what you're trying to say, but here's a counter example. I have a hobby of astrophography. I live in a rural area without many other people nearby interested in the stars, much less a highly technical hobby like astrophography. Asking on message boards like cloudynights, or reddit gets you a lot of well meaning beginners offering advice outside of their skill level. I'm currently building an observatory and I need input on which mount to use in my observatory. I don't have a good concept of what to buy for it as I've only dealt with really beginner mounts and I'm not a beginner anymore, and there's no astrophography retail stores within travel distance. Online advice is poor and hard to weed out those who are beginners meaning well and those who actually know what they're talking about. However, to pull us back to what we're talking about here, I get a magazine for the industry called Sky and Telescope and it has ads. To me, ads are one of the best things about that magazine because it lets me know what options I have that I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, or have any way to compare. Though to be fair, ads in a magazine don't spy on you, don't infect your computer, don't move and steal attention and don't follow you around. But I think there is a place for targeted, well behaved ads.
    • netizen-936824 5y ago
      Why not go to a university website with an astro dept and email some people?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • colordrops 5y ago
      I get what you are saying, and as a young hobbyist back in the day I loved perusing ads in specialist magazines. These days though I'm a much more informed and involved buyer, and have found that ads are usually not a great indicator of the best product or service for a particular need. I don't agree that online advice is worse than ads. It's a matter of doing the legwork to find the right place online for a particular interest, and also cross-referencing multiple sources to avoid getting caught by astroturfing. Ads are biased by their design and nature, and in most cases the placer of the ad has zero interest in making sure you choose the best product. They want you to buy their product even if it's not the best fit.
• onion2k 5y ago
  The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons.. There's quite a lot of HN readers who work for businesses that derive most of their revenue from ads (Google, Facebook, content companies, etc) so there's always going to be people here who are willing to stand up for ads. The famous Upton Sinclair quote is quite appropriate - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
  • bambax 5y ago
    Sure, but they must still exist -- yet we don't seem to hear them anymore.
    • ratww 5y ago
      You still see from time to time, but such posts often get downvoted.
    • exhilaration 5y ago
      I would bet that most Google and Facebook employees use adblockers.
      • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        When I worked at one of the above, it was part of the process for reporting an ads bug. First, disable your adblocker.
    • lubesGordi 5y ago
      Allusions, Michael.
• hattmall 5y ago
  There was a time when I purposely unblocked Facebook ads because they were actually showing me some interesting content and products in a fairly non-invasive way. And occasionally I still get those but lately almost all ads I see are some interesting headline that then takes me to a page with an for nonsense products every paragraph and an extremely fluffy article to tell me that dinosaurs had feathers / the Romans had steam engines or something similar.
  • withinboredom 5y ago
    Yeah, I remember good ads there. Used to be the only reason I went on Facebook. I just checked to see what ads it would show these days. They were terrible and 4-5 of them had some hilarious typos in them.
• robryan 5y ago
  Around 2011 or so this was me. I generally didn't ad block and thought that seeing a few ads was a reasonable price for the free content online. Ads became ridiculous though and lost any sense of balance, the web became borderline unusable without one. I have sold on eBay for over a decade and at some point the desktop site became so slow as to be unusable with ad blocking. No idea who at eBay thinks getting in the way of sales to spam people with banner ads is a good idea.