8 ms·

I mean showing you ads for diapers because you googled "best diapers" falls under that same category and I daresay isn't evil at all

munk-a 3y ago
I am pretty convinced that modern advertising - from the most inane and innocent to tracking users 24/7 pretty clearly falls under evil. Gone are the days of advertising trying to raise product awareness and convert purchases - that field now exists to create demand. It induces desires in the recipients that play on psychological factors like FOMO to create customers out of thin air - and that process causes we the consumer to pay a constant attention tax and suffer higher levels of stress in our daily lives. Advertising is evil.
- andrepd 3y ago
  I'm not a radical about many subjects, but I'm certainly radically anti-advertising.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  Advertising is nudge theory without the do-gooder mystique
- sublinear 3y ago
  You do realize all forms of media embed advertising directly into the content going right back to the beginning, right? There's nothing modern about it. Showing you a product when you actually want to see it is the most effective way to induce demand. All your favorite shows, movies, youtube personalities, etc. still do this.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Well, seeing that: - I use ad blockers for my browser on both mobile and PC - pay for the ad free version of all of my streaming providers - don’t use apps that have ads and don’t have a method to pay to get rid of them
    - dylan604 3y ago
      If you think that the product that the lead actor in the series your marathoning through on your streaming provider isn't there on purpose, then you've just not been paying attention. There's a reason shows blur out logos on people's clothing or the crew covers them up with grip tape, or set dressers turn the cans/bottles/boxes of products around so the main logos are not visible. Even having copyrighted posters on the wall in frame can cause licensing issues.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - gremlinunderway 3y ago
    This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts don't just highlight functionality, they use mass market analytics to play emotionally driven messaging and visuals so that you associate that feeling with the car ad. Do you know what Bernays called what services he offered before the word got tarnished? Propaganda.
    - c23gooey 3y ago
      The documentary "Century of Self" by Adam Curtis [0] certainly opened my eyes to the damage that Bernays has inflicted on society in general. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
      - anjel 3y ago
        Same. Filed under haunting things you can never unknow.
      - jakeogh 3y ago
        Two years after the 'Century Of Self', Adam released 'The Power Of Nightmares' (2004): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U It explores the power fear has to shape behavior.
    - stOneskull 3y ago
      > Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund and then bernays' nephew started netflix
Rygian 3y ago
Those two categories are really far away from each other. Googling X is a voluntary act to search for X. Speaking about X with a friend, while the phone sits in a bag nearby, has exactly zero connotations of wanting to search for X.
kelnos 3y ago
Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all. To me, that's evil. Sure, there are varying degrees of this evil, but IMO even the least-objectionable advertising out there still can't be called "good". In my experience, the case where advertising gets you to buy something that ends up being materially useful, that you would not have bought (or found a substitute for) without that advertising, is the exception, not the rule. Oh, and to address your specific example: if you search "best diapers", and get shown ads for diapers, that absolutely is evil, because some ad-presentation algorithm is pushing you toward whatever diapers will generate the most money for the ad network, likely not toward which diapers are best. Not to mention that "best" often means different things to different people, and the ad networks only care about that insofar it increases their profit.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". (i know, i know, but i like it) > To me, that's evil. Bill Hicks on marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". That makes me think of this Paul Graham piece on "the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news." [0] [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
    - nick-of-time 3y ago
      He makes one really good insight: > If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all. Followed quickly by being hopelessly naïve about the future: > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.
RHSeeger 3y ago
Sure, if you take the most benign examples, it doesn't sound so bad. But it's so much worse than that. Going back to 2012 for "acting on data analysis gone wrong" Target Sends Coupons to Pregnant Girl and Unawares Dad Explodes https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-coupons-to-pregnant-girl-and-unawares-dad-explode.html https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-c... > Pole had identified about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy. And things just get worse from there, as companies figure out more and more ways they can extract information from the information they have about you, and share it with each other.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  But that story was made up. (Not that Target does data analysis - the specific "teenage girl had sex!" anecdote).
_factor 3y ago
No no no. First we start with trusted brands you know and love. We use the trust you have in them to slowly build a market around them. With our ad strategy, you’ll start seeing our product as related to Trusted Brand A. You will start seeing comments and reviews for our Brand in the same browsing contexts more and more until our Brand is now correlated enough to Trusted Brand A to remove purchase inhibitions. After that, we just wait. We know we have you. It’s just a matter of time till you need a product like ours (you’re already our target demo), or an impulse buy occurs. Without evening knowing it. You’ve been manipulated into trusting our brand, and you’ll think it was all an organic choice. Nothing malicious or dangerous here.. move along.

munk-a 3y ago

I am pretty convinced that modern advertising - from the most inane and innocent to tracking users 24/7 pretty clearly falls under evil. Gone are the days of advertising trying to raise product awareness and convert purchases - that field now exists to create demand. It induces desires in the recipients that play on psychological factors like FOMO to create customers out of thin air - and that process causes we the consumer to pay a constant attention tax and suffer higher levels of stress in our daily lives. Advertising is evil.

andrepd 3y ago
I'm not a radical about many subjects, but I'm certainly radically anti-advertising.
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
Advertising is nudge theory without the do-gooder mystique
sublinear 3y ago
You do realize all forms of media embed advertising directly into the content going right back to the beginning, right? There's nothing modern about it. Showing you a product when you actually want to see it is the most effective way to induce demand. All your favorite shows, movies, youtube personalities, etc. still do this.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Well, seeing that: - I use ad blockers for my browser on both mobile and PC - pay for the ad free version of all of my streaming providers - don’t use apps that have ads and don’t have a method to pay to get rid of them
  - dylan604 3y ago
    If you think that the product that the lead actor in the series your marathoning through on your streaming provider isn't there on purpose, then you've just not been paying attention. There's a reason shows blur out logos on people's clothing or the crew covers them up with grip tape, or set dressers turn the cans/bottles/boxes of products around so the main logos are not visible. Even having copyrighted posters on the wall in frame can cause licensing issues.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- gremlinunderway 3y ago
  This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts don't just highlight functionality, they use mass market analytics to play emotionally driven messaging and visuals so that you associate that feeling with the car ad. Do you know what Bernays called what services he offered before the word got tarnished? Propaganda.
  - c23gooey 3y ago
    The documentary "Century of Self" by Adam Curtis [0] certainly opened my eyes to the damage that Bernays has inflicted on society in general. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
    - anjel 3y ago
      Same. Filed under haunting things you can never unknow.
    - jakeogh 3y ago
      Two years after the 'Century Of Self', Adam released 'The Power Of Nightmares' (2004): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U It explores the power fear has to shape behavior.
  - stOneskull 3y ago
    > Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund and then bernays' nephew started netflix

Rygian 3y ago

Those two categories are really far away from each other. Googling X is a voluntary act to search for X. Speaking about X with a friend, while the phone sits in a bag nearby, has exactly zero connotations of wanting to search for X.

kelnos 3y ago

Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all. To me, that's evil. Sure, there are varying degrees of this evil, but IMO even the least-objectionable advertising out there still can't be called "good". In my experience, the case where advertising gets you to buy something that ends up being materially useful, that you would not have bought (or found a substitute for) without that advertising, is the exception, not the rule. Oh, and to address your specific example: if you search "best diapers", and get shown ads for diapers, that absolutely is evil, because some ad-presentation algorithm is pushing you toward whatever diapers will generate the most money for the ad network, likely not toward which diapers are best. Not to mention that "best" often means different things to different people, and the ad networks only care about that insofar it increases their profit.

myshpa 3y ago
> Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". (i know, i know, but i like it) > To me, that's evil. Bill Hicks on marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > I've heard somewhere that ads are rich people screaming "give me money". That makes me think of this Paul Graham piece on "the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news." [0] [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - nick-of-time 3y ago
    He makes one really good insight: > If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all. Followed quickly by being hopelessly naïve about the future: > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.

RHSeeger 3y ago

Sure, if you take the most benign examples, it doesn't sound so bad. But it's so much worse than that. Going back to 2012 for "acting on data analysis gone wrong" Target Sends Coupons to Pregnant Girl and Unawares Dad Explodes https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-coupons-to-pregnant-girl-and-unawares-dad-explode.html https://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com/2012/02/target-sends-c... > Pole had identified about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a "pregnancy prediction" score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy. And things just get worse from there, as companies figure out more and more ways they can extract information from the information they have about you, and share it with each other.

lazyasciiart 3y ago
But that story was made up. (Not that Target does data analysis - the specific "teenage girl had sex!" anecdote).

_factor 3y ago

No no no. First we start with trusted brands you know and love. We use the trust you have in them to slowly build a market around them. With our ad strategy, you’ll start seeing our product as related to Trusted Brand A. You will start seeing comments and reviews for our Brand in the same browsing contexts more and more until our Brand is now correlated enough to Trusted Brand A to remove purchase inhibitions. After that, we just wait. We know we have you. It’s just a matter of time till you need a product like ours (you’re already our target demo), or an impulse buy occurs. Without evening knowing it. You’ve been manipulated into trusting our brand, and you’ll think it was all an organic choice. Nothing malicious or dangerous here.. move along.