4 ms·

gestures broadly at advertising everywhere OK, I’ll bite, then what is it?

by throwaway5959 3y ago

throwaway14356 3y ago
product information
justinclift 3y ago
Infectious attention cancer?
Const-me 3y ago
Infinite money glitch for big tech, with dramatic externalities pushed to non-consenting general population. These externalities include death of traditional media, extreme levels of political polarization, and climbing suicide rate of teenagers, girls in particular. These things are caused in very large part by the big tech companies maximizing consumption of ads, and efficiency of ads targeting.
- bryan_w 3y ago
  > death of traditional media Well if adverting is so bad, and old media relied on advertising, Tech was doing the world a favor by starving them out. We should be thanking Google for exposing the corruption that was the old media advertising empire
  - krapp 3y ago
    As bad as advertising in old media was, at least it wasn't a platform of targeted surveillance and psychological manipulation. An advertisement was just an advertisement, you could pay attention to it or not, and your attention if it was noted at all was only noted in aggregate. Your radio or tv didn't know who you are, know where you live, develop complex behavioral profiles on you, record all of your browsing, shopping and communication data, listen in on your with microphones or watch you with cameras. Google didn't expose the corruption of old media, rather it supplanted it with even deeper and more insidious corruption.
    - sellmesoap 3y ago
      I wouldn't underestimate the psychological manipulation of old media, but you're right there's a whole industry around gathering and leveraging metrics, it still feels primitive but my imagination always wanders into how you can tie data points together. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of the fence.
  - hedora 3y ago
    The article is about behavioral advertising, which was not feasible with old media technologies. The problem isn’t the ads. The problem is the ad targeting.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > We should be thanking Google for exposing the corruption that was the old media advertising empire But they (and the rest of the industry) have replaced it with an even more egregious and abusive advertising system. Google gets no thanks from me.
- xNeil 3y ago
  The only non-consenting advertising I can think of is public billboards - and I believe those should be banned, most definitely. Every single other type of advertising requires your explicit consent. YouTube? Google? Newspapers? All have your consent.
  - dgb23 3y ago
    This is actually a good point. I can’t avoid billboards. But I can trivially avoid FB/Google/YT etc. I can also use things like uBlock. The internet is open and inherently client focused. That’s a huge feature. We’re ultimately in control.
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    This is good in theory, but does not hold for day-to-day reality. News reports, announcements, updates, etc are often announced and hosted on social media and YouTube. The main news outlets hardly host their own video, and half the useful announcements got made on Twitter first (before Musk torched it lol), so unless “remain deliberately ignorant” is the alternative - which I don’t think it is, then the reality is that you end up on one of these tech giants real quick.
    - developer93 3y ago
      Or take some mildly grey area technical steps to get around it. I don't see too many ads these days between the pihole & newpipe & whatever adblockers I've got on Firefox. Traditional TV when we watch the news is basically it. That not open to everyone I know since you need some technical knowledge to set it up.
  - troupo 3y ago
    > Every single other type of advertising requires your explicit consent. YouTube? Google? Newspapers? All have your consent. How exactly do they have that "consent"?
    - xNeil 3y ago
      You must accept their Terms of Service to use them. These terms of service state that they will show you advertising, and in order to use the website, you must agree to these terms. They have very clear consent.
hightrix 3y ago
Visual and mental pollution.
awsation 3y ago
They Live with the glasses on.
ehnto 3y ago
It is a product, just not for consumers. Other companies buy the product and it is applied onto the consumer, to the consumers distaste. Advertising is itself always balancing on the tradeoff between disgruntling the consumer and the benefit the consumer gets from the media/tool they're actually trying to engage with. It's an implicit bargain for most people, not an explicit one. For me, advertising crossed that line a long time ago. If I had to watch the amount of ads YouTube actually puts in front of you, I wouldn't use it. Thank goodness for ad blockers.
- kranke155 3y ago
  Fair. It’s a business product that’s anti-consumer
JohnFen 3y ago
A service.

gestures broadly at advertising everywhere OK, I’ll bite, then what is it?

throwaway14356 3y ago

product information

justinclift 3y ago

Infectious attention cancer?

Const-me 3y ago

Infinite money glitch for big tech, with dramatic externalities pushed to non-consenting general population. These externalities include death of traditional media, extreme levels of political polarization, and climbing suicide rate of teenagers, girls in particular. These things are caused in very large part by the big tech companies maximizing consumption of ads, and efficiency of ads targeting.

bryan_w 3y ago
> death of traditional media Well if adverting is so bad, and old media relied on advertising, Tech was doing the world a favor by starving them out. We should be thanking Google for exposing the corruption that was the old media advertising empire
- krapp 3y ago
  As bad as advertising in old media was, at least it wasn't a platform of targeted surveillance and psychological manipulation. An advertisement was just an advertisement, you could pay attention to it or not, and your attention if it was noted at all was only noted in aggregate. Your radio or tv didn't know who you are, know where you live, develop complex behavioral profiles on you, record all of your browsing, shopping and communication data, listen in on your with microphones or watch you with cameras. Google didn't expose the corruption of old media, rather it supplanted it with even deeper and more insidious corruption.
  - sellmesoap 3y ago
    I wouldn't underestimate the psychological manipulation of old media, but you're right there's a whole industry around gathering and leveraging metrics, it still feels primitive but my imagination always wanders into how you can tie data points together. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of the fence.
- hedora 3y ago
  The article is about behavioral advertising, which was not feasible with old media technologies. The problem isn’t the ads. The problem is the ad targeting.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > We should be thanking Google for exposing the corruption that was the old media advertising empire But they (and the rest of the industry) have replaced it with an even more egregious and abusive advertising system. Google gets no thanks from me.
xNeil 3y ago
The only non-consenting advertising I can think of is public billboards - and I believe those should be banned, most definitely. Every single other type of advertising requires your explicit consent. YouTube? Google? Newspapers? All have your consent.
- dgb23 3y ago
  This is actually a good point. I can’t avoid billboards. But I can trivially avoid FB/Google/YT etc. I can also use things like uBlock. The internet is open and inherently client focused. That’s a huge feature. We’re ultimately in control.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  This is good in theory, but does not hold for day-to-day reality. News reports, announcements, updates, etc are often announced and hosted on social media and YouTube. The main news outlets hardly host their own video, and half the useful announcements got made on Twitter first (before Musk torched it lol), so unless “remain deliberately ignorant” is the alternative - which I don’t think it is, then the reality is that you end up on one of these tech giants real quick.
  - developer93 3y ago
    Or take some mildly grey area technical steps to get around it. I don't see too many ads these days between the pihole & newpipe & whatever adblockers I've got on Firefox. Traditional TV when we watch the news is basically it. That not open to everyone I know since you need some technical knowledge to set it up.
- troupo 3y ago
  > Every single other type of advertising requires your explicit consent. YouTube? Google? Newspapers? All have your consent. How exactly do they have that "consent"?
  - xNeil 3y ago
    You must accept their Terms of Service to use them. These terms of service state that they will show you advertising, and in order to use the website, you must agree to these terms. They have very clear consent.

hightrix 3y ago

Visual and mental pollution.

awsation 3y ago

They Live with the glasses on.

ehnto 3y ago

It is a product, just not for consumers. Other companies buy the product and it is applied onto the consumer, to the consumers distaste. Advertising is itself always balancing on the tradeoff between disgruntling the consumer and the benefit the consumer gets from the media/tool they're actually trying to engage with. It's an implicit bargain for most people, not an explicit one. For me, advertising crossed that line a long time ago. If I had to watch the amount of ads YouTube actually puts in front of you, I wouldn't use it. Thank goodness for ad blockers.

kranke155 3y ago
Fair. It’s a business product that’s anti-consumer

JohnFen 3y ago

A service.