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I'm completely anti advert. They declared war on civilization 20 years ago and don't deserve to be treated as anything but a parasitic cultural disease. It didn

I'm completely anti advert. They declared war on civilization 20 years ago and don't deserve to be treated as anything but a parasitic cultural disease. It didn't have to be this way, but that's where they took us.

robertlagrant 3y ago
As long as you avoid things that are paid for by ads, there's no moral problem.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  We're under no moral obligation to play by their rules. Read Rules for Radicals.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  Advertising is inherently immoral and it's our moral obligation to drive advertisers into bankruptcy. All advertisers are liars. Even when they're not directly saying untrue things, they're presenting a one-sided view of the truth, to the extent of being intentionally misleading. The harm done by these lies is incalculable. The distraction. The loss of self-esteem caused by ads always telling us we aren't enough, don't have enough. The fear caused by ads telling us we'll lose what we have. The loss of financial stability on things we don't need or want. And that's just what ads are. That's not even talking about how advertising is done, with a million dishonest tricks to jam themselves in front of you or gather your data to lie to you more interestingly and convincingly. The only good ad is a blocked ad that cost the advertisers money.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    > Advertising is inherently immoral and it's our moral obligation to drive advertisers into bankruptcy. I agree with this on principle, but in reality I wonder how we'll pay for content online if this were to happen. Micropayments will never be a thing, and subscriptions don't make sense for random one-off videos or articles.
    - hughesjj 3y ago
      > Micropayments will never be a thing Why not? I'd love to see something like "I donate xx CPU cycles upon viewing this content" or something. Computebis a resource, same with networking, and there's already a lot of them demanded by shitty ad platforms. I'd much rather donate those cycles to BOINC or hell, even ETH over ads
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Isn't that just gating websites with crypto payments?
        hughesjj 3y ago
        That would be gating websites with contributing to a crypto mining pool, although crypto microtransactions are indeed a way the web could evolve to handle non ad payments, and I'm surprised (but also kinda thankful) that the web 3.0 people never pushed that possibility. Right now, I'm saying that compute is useful. If you've ever used BOINC or folding@home, you've seen the "download some data, do some work, upload the data" paradigm in action. Idk. Right now, the only paradigms I'm seeing are "paywall, totally free, or sell your data" for accessing web content. I wish there was another alternative of "sell my computer" or "sell my bandwidth" (like maybe acting as a cache for can). I get those are easier to abuse, but I'd still love to at least see some content provider exploring such options.
        kerkeslager 3y ago
        Cryptocurrencies would be an extremely poor way to implement micropayments, as their high transaction fees make them inefficient and their fluctuations in price make them unsuitable for payment in general. The banking system moves at glacial speed, but I do believe we'll see banking plugins integrated with browsers at some point.
  - blackbear_ 3y ago
    > Advertising is inherently immoral Why? In principle, advertising is a way to propagate information in a market, trying to match offer with demand. Without any such mechanism, markets would be hugely inefficient (i.e., it would be annoying to find a shop selling what you are looking for, since you would need to visit many before finding one that sells that thing). The problem with ads, like you are saying, is that being scummy and dishonest is by far the most effective way of attracting demand.
    - jraph 3y ago
      You can look things up when you need something, you don't need to wait for an ad to annoy you to discover something. What's more, usually, you hear ads for big players, not the small ones, which are often the most interesting. In particular, hearing about NordVPN every other video is not necessary.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Look things up where?
        jraph 3y ago
        On the internet with a search engine, on a map, etc. Or ask friends / family, actually. That's what I do when I need something I don't know where to find. Before the internet you had the yellow pages, I guess, and word of mouth. In any case, I'm pretty sure I never ever ever heard or saw an ad that made be discover something I was interested in. I don't want to allocate any time during which I passively listen or watch ads in the hope it will lead to some epiphany.
    - t0bia_s 3y ago
      And that is a huge part of problem with sustainability and magnification of problems that would otherwise stay local. PFAS, microplastics, pollution... It's all consequence of overproduction of useless things that are consumed by society manipulated by ads. The product is "ad" itself if it is good. If not, you need extra advertisements. For me it is immoral to consume ads.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    This is really extreme and reductionist. Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist. You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything. Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance? The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about.
    - imiric 3y ago
      > Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon By visiting and/or subscribing to cinema listing web sites, subscribing to cinema-related YouTube channels or social media accounts, visiting my local cinema and watching 30 minutes of trailers, seeing cinema listings in the newspaper, or calling Moviefone. > or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral By visiting and/or subscribing to computer-related web sites that announce, review or sell computer peripherals. None of the advances in advertising in the last 50 years have improved my lifestyle or consumer experience. All it's done is improve the efficiency of manufacturing the need for a product, embedding brand names in the consumer subconscious, and manipulating them into buying a specific product, regardless if it solves their problem, or even if it's detrimental to their wellbeing and health. And since the advent of the internet, adtech is responsible for creating and supporting a user data gold rush, violating the privacy of every internet user in the process, as well as enabling hostile forces to use the same system for information warfare. So, no, advertising is not a required or even necessary part of society, and is responsible for incalculable damages caused by the harmful products it promotes. The only reason it is so prevalent is because psychological subversion tactics are very effective, and it's the easiest way for companies to increase revenue.
    - kerkeslager 3y ago
      > Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist. This is a vastly positive tradeoff. The number of products which would improve my life, versus the number of products I am inundated with daily, is a negligible ratio. > You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything. That's true. However, I can rely on independent review sites, and I could probably rely on search engines to find me products that solve problems when I search for them, if they weren't controlled by advertisers. Nobody is saying rely on word-of-mouth. That's a straw man. > Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance? There are a number of movie reviewers I follow, and a few friends who have similar taste in movies as me. I'm not interested in computer peripherals, but if I were, I imagine Wirecutter contains information, and there are probably other similar sites. Advertisers are not helping me find movies to watch or computer peripherals I need. They're helping themselves, and in a way that's aligned with harming me. I never saw an ad for Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was my favorite movie last year--my friend Adam invited me to see it. I did see a ton of astroturfing for White Lotus, which was a complete waste of my time to watch two episodes of. Why would I want ads? Stop this nonsense about how we need ads. We don't. > The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about. God forbid Google return the solution to your problem as a search result, you know, like a functioning search engine. This really is the most absurdly missing-the-point example you could have chosen.
imiric 3y ago
20 years ago? Advertising has corrupted every public medium since the dawn of print media, arguably even before that. In the 19th century, it was quackery and false advertising in newspapers, making snake oil salesmen rich. In the first half of the 20th century, advertising started using propaganda tactics to psychologically manipulate consumers, as pioneered by Edward Bernays[1], making tobacco companies rich. Radio and television amplified their reach and power, fueling modern consumerism. People were hooked on tobacco, corn products, sugar, fast food, and a million other mass produced products. Whether the products were harmful to society was irrelevant. The spice must flow. The internet was another major frontier, where ads could precisely target specific consumer profiles. Adtech was born to give this power to advertisers by facilitating data collection and creating the multi-billion dollar dark data broker market. Adtech was then (ab?)used by local and foreign agents to spread propaganda, disinformation, and conduct psyops at an unprecedented scale, disrupting democratic processes, toppling governments, causing social unrest, and boosting intolerance, xenophobia and racism on a global scale to levels unseen since WWII. And we haven't seen the worst of it yet. Once everyone has their own personal AI that is trained on the most intimate details of each personality, ads will become even more personal and manipulative. Advertisers are salivating at this opportunity, and adtech is surely experimenting with this right now. So, no, I refuse to participate in this perverse system, and subject myself to being psychologically manipulated. Companies and creators who depend on advertising don't deserve my business, attention or respect. [1] This man was evil beyond words. See Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  > advertising started using propaganda tactics to psychologically manipulate consumers Advertising and propaganda have always been the exact same thing, and in at least some latin languages it is plainly called propaganda in all occasions. As in people will say that they work in propaganda and universities offer degrees in propaganda.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    After WWII in US propaganda was renamed to "public relations".
phone8675309 3y ago
I agree with Bill Hicks about what advertisers should be doing other than dreaming up new jingles.

robertlagrant 3y ago

As long as you avoid things that are paid for by ads, there's no moral problem.

mcpackieh 3y ago
We're under no moral obligation to play by their rules. Read Rules for Radicals.
kerkeslager 3y ago
Advertising is inherently immoral and it's our moral obligation to drive advertisers into bankruptcy. All advertisers are liars. Even when they're not directly saying untrue things, they're presenting a one-sided view of the truth, to the extent of being intentionally misleading. The harm done by these lies is incalculable. The distraction. The loss of self-esteem caused by ads always telling us we aren't enough, don't have enough. The fear caused by ads telling us we'll lose what we have. The loss of financial stability on things we don't need or want. And that's just what ads are. That's not even talking about how advertising is done, with a million dishonest tricks to jam themselves in front of you or gather your data to lie to you more interestingly and convincingly. The only good ad is a blocked ad that cost the advertisers money.
- kelnos 3y ago
  > Advertising is inherently immoral and it's our moral obligation to drive advertisers into bankruptcy. I agree with this on principle, but in reality I wonder how we'll pay for content online if this were to happen. Micropayments will never be a thing, and subscriptions don't make sense for random one-off videos or articles.
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    > Micropayments will never be a thing Why not? I'd love to see something like "I donate xx CPU cycles upon viewing this content" or something. Computebis a resource, same with networking, and there's already a lot of them demanded by shitty ad platforms. I'd much rather donate those cycles to BOINC or hell, even ETH over ads
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Isn't that just gating websites with crypto payments?
      - hughesjj 3y ago
        That would be gating websites with contributing to a crypto mining pool, although crypto microtransactions are indeed a way the web could evolve to handle non ad payments, and I'm surprised (but also kinda thankful) that the web 3.0 people never pushed that possibility. Right now, I'm saying that compute is useful. If you've ever used BOINC or folding@home, you've seen the "download some data, do some work, upload the data" paradigm in action. Idk. Right now, the only paradigms I'm seeing are "paywall, totally free, or sell your data" for accessing web content. I wish there was another alternative of "sell my computer" or "sell my bandwidth" (like maybe acting as a cache for can). I get those are easier to abuse, but I'd still love to at least see some content provider exploring such options.
      - kerkeslager 3y ago
        Cryptocurrencies would be an extremely poor way to implement micropayments, as their high transaction fees make them inefficient and their fluctuations in price make them unsuitable for payment in general. The banking system moves at glacial speed, but I do believe we'll see banking plugins integrated with browsers at some point.
- blackbear_ 3y ago
  > Advertising is inherently immoral Why? In principle, advertising is a way to propagate information in a market, trying to match offer with demand. Without any such mechanism, markets would be hugely inefficient (i.e., it would be annoying to find a shop selling what you are looking for, since you would need to visit many before finding one that sells that thing). The problem with ads, like you are saying, is that being scummy and dishonest is by far the most effective way of attracting demand.
  - jraph 3y ago
    You can look things up when you need something, you don't need to wait for an ad to annoy you to discover something. What's more, usually, you hear ads for big players, not the small ones, which are often the most interesting. In particular, hearing about NordVPN every other video is not necessary.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Look things up where?
      - jraph 3y ago
        On the internet with a search engine, on a map, etc. Or ask friends / family, actually. That's what I do when I need something I don't know where to find. Before the internet you had the yellow pages, I guess, and word of mouth. In any case, I'm pretty sure I never ever ever heard or saw an ad that made be discover something I was interested in. I don't want to allocate any time during which I passively listen or watch ads in the hope it will lead to some epiphany.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    And that is a huge part of problem with sustainability and magnification of problems that would otherwise stay local. PFAS, microplastics, pollution... It's all consequence of overproduction of useless things that are consumed by society manipulated by ads. The product is "ad" itself if it is good. If not, you need extra advertisements. For me it is immoral to consume ads.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  This is really extreme and reductionist. Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist. You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything. Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance? The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about.
  - imiric 3y ago
    > Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon By visiting and/or subscribing to cinema listing web sites, subscribing to cinema-related YouTube channels or social media accounts, visiting my local cinema and watching 30 minutes of trailers, seeing cinema listings in the newspaper, or calling Moviefone. > or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral By visiting and/or subscribing to computer-related web sites that announce, review or sell computer peripherals. None of the advances in advertising in the last 50 years have improved my lifestyle or consumer experience. All it's done is improve the efficiency of manufacturing the need for a product, embedding brand names in the consumer subconscious, and manipulating them into buying a specific product, regardless if it solves their problem, or even if it's detrimental to their wellbeing and health. And since the advent of the internet, adtech is responsible for creating and supporting a user data gold rush, violating the privacy of every internet user in the process, as well as enabling hostile forces to use the same system for information warfare. So, no, advertising is not a required or even necessary part of society, and is responsible for incalculable damages caused by the harmful products it promotes. The only reason it is so prevalent is because psychological subversion tactics are very effective, and it's the easiest way for companies to increase revenue.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    > Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist. This is a vastly positive tradeoff. The number of products which would improve my life, versus the number of products I am inundated with daily, is a negligible ratio. > You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything. That's true. However, I can rely on independent review sites, and I could probably rely on search engines to find me products that solve problems when I search for them, if they weren't controlled by advertisers. Nobody is saying rely on word-of-mouth. That's a straw man. > Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance? There are a number of movie reviewers I follow, and a few friends who have similar taste in movies as me. I'm not interested in computer peripherals, but if I were, I imagine Wirecutter contains information, and there are probably other similar sites. Advertisers are not helping me find movies to watch or computer peripherals I need. They're helping themselves, and in a way that's aligned with harming me. I never saw an ad for Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was my favorite movie last year--my friend Adam invited me to see it. I did see a ton of astroturfing for White Lotus, which was a complete waste of my time to watch two episodes of. Why would I want ads? Stop this nonsense about how we need ads. We don't. > The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about. God forbid Google return the solution to your problem as a search result, you know, like a functioning search engine. This really is the most absurdly missing-the-point example you could have chosen.

imiric 3y ago

20 years ago? Advertising has corrupted every public medium since the dawn of print media, arguably even before that. In the 19th century, it was quackery and false advertising in newspapers, making snake oil salesmen rich. In the first half of the 20th century, advertising started using propaganda tactics to psychologically manipulate consumers, as pioneered by Edward Bernays[1], making tobacco companies rich. Radio and television amplified their reach and power, fueling modern consumerism. People were hooked on tobacco, corn products, sugar, fast food, and a million other mass produced products. Whether the products were harmful to society was irrelevant. The spice must flow. The internet was another major frontier, where ads could precisely target specific consumer profiles. Adtech was born to give this power to advertisers by facilitating data collection and creating the multi-billion dollar dark data broker market. Adtech was then (ab?)used by local and foreign agents to spread propaganda, disinformation, and conduct psyops at an unprecedented scale, disrupting democratic processes, toppling governments, causing social unrest, and boosting intolerance, xenophobia and racism on a global scale to levels unseen since WWII. And we haven't seen the worst of it yet. Once everyone has their own personal AI that is trained on the most intimate details of each personality, ads will become even more personal and manipulative. Advertisers are salivating at this opportunity, and adtech is surely experimenting with this right now. So, no, I refuse to participate in this perverse system, and subject myself to being psychologically manipulated. Companies and creators who depend on advertising don't deserve my business, attention or respect. [1] This man was evil beyond words. See Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self.

carlosjobim 3y ago
> advertising started using propaganda tactics to psychologically manipulate consumers Advertising and propaganda have always been the exact same thing, and in at least some latin languages it is plainly called propaganda in all occasions. As in people will say that they work in propaganda and universities offer degrees in propaganda.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  After WWII in US propaganda was renamed to "public relations".

phone8675309 3y ago

I agree with Bill Hicks about what advertisers should be doing other than dreaming up new jingles.