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The hard part of this narrative is that all of us work for companies that do some things we wouldn’t consider our “values”. Take simply advertising, for example

by dahart 4y ago

The hard part of this narrative is that all of us work for companies that do some things we wouldn’t consider our “values”. Take simply advertising, for example, we all hate ‘em, we all use ad blockers, and our employers all advertise. Of course by ‘all’ I mean ‘most’ or ‘a lot’, take your pick, I’m not making claims about literally every last one, I know there’s a wide variation of experience, but chances are high that your employer routinely has to do things you wouldn’t want to do, right? This is true even when your employer is you. :) I feel like it gets even worse when you start a business and become a walking self-contradiction. That’s when I started doing things, like advertising, and adding analytics, stuff I normally don’t like as a user. (The problem, of course: advertising and analytics work.) Maybe these things are below the threshold of values we’d quit over, and maybe some companies can be pretty extreme, but I think there’s a fuzzy gray line between the small values we overlook and the values we care enough to decline employment over, or at least I can see that in myself.

bombcar 4y ago
I think there's a reasonable way to be "both sides" on the advertising thing. If you look at the normal website that "runs ads" they're almost all universally low-value, low-quality crap ads for crap companies. I'm talking about the ads you find on places like https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki for example; they're basically noise and useless. The ads in YouTube videos I don't even really mind as much, at least someone took some time to make professional ones.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Better, more effective ads are still mostly about selling people garbage they don't need. Youtube runs a lot of crypto ads, dubious political ads, and so on.
  - hamburglar 4y ago
    Oddly enough I’ve seen a lot of YouTube ads but can’t remember ever seeing any for crypto. I get an absolute shit-ton that are obviously aimed at people with school-age kids (example: the guy who wants to show me how flerbly can polish up his rough draft of his book report every five minutes). I think the statement “YouTube runs a lot of _____ ads” is more a statement about what YouTube thinks about you (or maybe your IP address) than it is a statement about YouTube.
    - foobiekr 4y ago
      No. Just because you aren't seeing them doesn't mean they're not there. They show me crypto ads because I enjoy watching the insanity and so think I'm a mark. So what? Is Youtube OK because they only show scams to people they think are vulnerable to them? Google and Facebook are incredibly evil companies, all in all, and it's purely the money that makes people in tech pretend otherwise. As a group we'd "well actually" defend Enron if they paid well and had a good cafe.
      - hamburglar 4y ago
        > No. Just because you aren't seeing them doesn't mean they're not there. If you think that I was somehow denying that YouTube shows crypto ads, you’ve missed my point entirely. YouTube doesn’t “show a lot of crypto ads,” YouTube shows YOU lots of crypto ads. > As a group we'd "well actually" defend Enron if they paid well and had a good cafe. What are you talking about? Have I offended you into talking complete nonsense?
        foobiekr 4y ago
        I see that you didn't reply to the part where I noted to you that it doesn't matter if they show them to _me_ and not _you_. Youtube is still running these ads, and they are skeevy as hell. Again, from a question of company ethics, what is the point of noting that it's focused on people the algorithm thinks are vulnerable? Does that somehow make it better or change the point?
        hamburglar 4y ago
        I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive about this. I don't claim that this makes it any better. I don't claim they're not there. I'm just making the observation that the characterization "youtube runs a lot of crypto ads" isn't really universal; it's based on who's viewing it. It's not a defense of youtube; it's an observation about its nature, neither positive nor negative. Apparently you vehemently disagree with this observation, and I'm not sure why. Please reread my original response without emotionally inferring a bunch of stuff I'm not saying and tell me whether a response of "No." is really warranted.
hamburglar 4y ago
Your thoughts about advertising are very surprising to me. If I use an ad blocker, it has zero to do with me thinking advertising is “wrong” and everything to do with me thinking they’re an annoyance that I understand the business purpose of, but given the proper tools, I can opt out of having to experience them. It’s actually a completely un-nuanced decision that avoids any sort of judgment about the goodness or badness of advertising. In fact, it probably would be better to say that I acknowledge that advertising actually helps me by funding some things I use while I can sidestep the negatives, making ad blocking fundamentally hypocritical. If I truly thought ad-driven business models were bad and wanted to demonstrate that on moral grounds, shouldn’t I also stop patronizing businesses that are entirely based on them?
- mikkergp 4y ago
  I'm not surprised you disagree, but I am surprised your surprised someone would think advertising is wrong. Have you never heard the phrase "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product?" A quick google search shows lots of articles adjacent to "Marketing is evil", at least in my ecosphere, lots of talk in the way that companies manipulate psychology to increase ad clicks/impressions.
  - hamburglar 4y ago
    Of course I’ve heard that sort of sentiment. I just think it has nothing to do with why people run ad blockers.

by dahart 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

I think there's a reasonable way to be "both sides" on the advertising thing. If you look at the normal website that "runs ads" they're almost all universally low-value, low-quality crap ads for crap companies. I'm talking about the ads you find on places like https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki for example; they're basically noise and useless. The ads in YouTube videos I don't even really mind as much, at least someone took some time to make professional ones.

foobiekr 4y ago
Better, more effective ads are still mostly about selling people garbage they don't need. Youtube runs a lot of crypto ads, dubious political ads, and so on.
- hamburglar 4y ago
  Oddly enough I’ve seen a lot of YouTube ads but can’t remember ever seeing any for crypto. I get an absolute shit-ton that are obviously aimed at people with school-age kids (example: the guy who wants to show me how flerbly can polish up his rough draft of his book report every five minutes). I think the statement “YouTube runs a lot of _____ ads” is more a statement about what YouTube thinks about you (or maybe your IP address) than it is a statement about YouTube.
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    No. Just because you aren't seeing them doesn't mean they're not there. They show me crypto ads because I enjoy watching the insanity and so think I'm a mark. So what? Is Youtube OK because they only show scams to people they think are vulnerable to them? Google and Facebook are incredibly evil companies, all in all, and it's purely the money that makes people in tech pretend otherwise. As a group we'd "well actually" defend Enron if they paid well and had a good cafe.
    - hamburglar 4y ago
      > No. Just because you aren't seeing them doesn't mean they're not there. If you think that I was somehow denying that YouTube shows crypto ads, you’ve missed my point entirely. YouTube doesn’t “show a lot of crypto ads,” YouTube shows YOU lots of crypto ads. > As a group we'd "well actually" defend Enron if they paid well and had a good cafe. What are you talking about? Have I offended you into talking complete nonsense?
      - foobiekr 4y ago
        I see that you didn't reply to the part where I noted to you that it doesn't matter if they show them to _me_ and not _you_. Youtube is still running these ads, and they are skeevy as hell. Again, from a question of company ethics, what is the point of noting that it's focused on people the algorithm thinks are vulnerable? Does that somehow make it better or change the point?
        hamburglar 4y ago
        I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive about this. I don't claim that this makes it any better. I don't claim they're not there. I'm just making the observation that the characterization "youtube runs a lot of crypto ads" isn't really universal; it's based on who's viewing it. It's not a defense of youtube; it's an observation about its nature, neither positive nor negative. Apparently you vehemently disagree with this observation, and I'm not sure why. Please reread my original response without emotionally inferring a bunch of stuff I'm not saying and tell me whether a response of "No." is really warranted.

hamburglar 4y ago

Your thoughts about advertising are very surprising to me. If I use an ad blocker, it has zero to do with me thinking advertising is “wrong” and everything to do with me thinking they’re an annoyance that I understand the business purpose of, but given the proper tools, I can opt out of having to experience them. It’s actually a completely un-nuanced decision that avoids any sort of judgment about the goodness or badness of advertising. In fact, it probably would be better to say that I acknowledge that advertising actually helps me by funding some things I use while I can sidestep the negatives, making ad blocking fundamentally hypocritical. If I truly thought ad-driven business models were bad and wanted to demonstrate that on moral grounds, shouldn’t I also stop patronizing businesses that are entirely based on them?

mikkergp 4y ago
I'm not surprised you disagree, but I am surprised your surprised someone would think advertising is wrong. Have you never heard the phrase "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product?" A quick google search shows lots of articles adjacent to "Marketing is evil", at least in my ecosphere, lots of talk in the way that companies manipulate psychology to increase ad clicks/impressions.
- hamburglar 4y ago
  Of course I’ve heard that sort of sentiment. I just think it has nothing to do with why people run ad blockers.