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I'm beginning to believe that it's just impossible to do advertising ethically. The hypothesis is that an advertising firm that attempts to do so will perform

• forward1 3y ago
  All business is inherently unethical and relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery. Advertising is no more evil than the for-profit healthcare system in the US, or the food industry, or really any other industry, when you really stop to consider it. People who think they are operating or working for an "ethical" business are simply unaware or willfully ignorant of its costs. Typically it is the latter, or as Upton Sinclair beautifully put it — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
  • freedomben 3y ago
    what's the ethical alternative? everybody must produce everything they want/need without any sort of trading, and without owning any land? or does the government just force people to work and distribute everything anybody needs?
    • forward1 3y ago
      Must there be an alternative? What if the world is not ethical by design? What does the evidence say about it?
      • radiator 3y ago
        This is quite deep. And delivered in socratic style, nonetheless.
        • forward1 3y ago
          Yet past the sarcasm, you're not able to offer a compelling counter-argument. I wonder, why is that?
      • freedomben 3y ago
        Fair point, but if we're stretching the definition to the point where nothing can be ethical, then there isn't any meaning to the word "ethical" as it relates to a binary "is" or "is not." If we agree that nothing can be fully "ethical," there still should be some continuum on which to place the current system, unless you contend that every system and/or action is ethically equal, which I would further contend erases any meaning of the word rendering the premise moot. So that said, is there any system that is more ethical than the current?
        • forward1 3y ago
          We're not "stretching" anything. I made a simple assertion: business cannot be ethical, but it is inherently exploitative. I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case. Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism. People would rather bury their head in the sand and think they're acting virtuously in this world. The cognitive dissonance here is frankly alarming, if it weren't so expected for entitled first-world engineers.
          • freedomben 3y ago
            > I asked for examples of businesses where this is not the case. Instead of examples, I got back screetching, whining and whataboutism. Please, point out where I did any of that sort. And I asked for an example of a system that is more ethical, and got nothing but dodging and bitching. I don't think you have any ground to stand on to demand examples (certainly from me, who if you care to read again I'm not disputing your position that business can't be ethical, so it makes zero sense to ask me for an example). It seems unreasonable to expect of others what you aren't willing to give yourself. Dare I say that's ... unethical? If you want to complain about the real world, then offer solutions that work in the real world. We can then consider and debate them and maybe get somewhere. If you just want to make philosophical contemplations, I'm actually up for that, but not if you aren't going to even bother getting your arguments straight. You just look like a troll in that case. Actually I changed my mind. I am disputing your contention and here is my example. Please point out where the unethical parts are. Person a and person b are stranded on an island in the South Pacific. There are no other humans around. Person A gets pretty good at catching fish, while person b gets pretty good at harvesting coconuts. Individually, person a can catch six fish and harvest two coconuts. Person b can catch one fish and harvest eight coconuts. Person b is concerned about not getting enough protein, so they approach person a and offer to trade two coconuts for one fish. Person a Agrees, and a mutually agreeable business transaction has taken place. Both parties are better off than they were before. What part of this is unethical? By the way, please don't take offense by any of this. You seem to have thick enough skin to trade barbs, and honestly this has been an interesting discussion (minus some unneeded name calling but that's a minor detail between friends like us)
      • therealdrag0 3y ago
        Funnily I agree with this. But where you go with it sounds like a stubborn “iam14andthisisdeep”. Language and values should be useful for us to make decisions on. Saying everything is bad and there’s no alternative can be true in a sense but it is not useful, and in most discussions just sounds inane.
        • forward1 3y ago
          Yet the true mental adolescence and gymnastics through this post is the abject failure to furnish even one example of a business which can be considered ethical, instead choosing to believe the false notion we can live, work and shop without consequence.
          • therealdrag0 3y ago
            Maybe you’re missing the point. This is like having a conversation with a nihilist. Yes objectively there is no meaning in the universe. It’s all made up. Now what? We have to move on from that. We live in fictions and narratives that are useful for our success. Just calling everything unethical isn’t useful beyond a dorm room mental exercise.
            • forward1 3y ago
              Why does recognizing cruelty and injustice the world have to be "useful"?
              • therealdrag0 3y ago
                I don’t think it does! But you shouldn’t be surprised when people are operating under a different framework when engaging with the world. And discussions won’t go anywhere trying to get different conclusions out of different starting points and motives. If everything is unethical then nothing matters, but people don’t want nothing to matter so they construct shades of grey to make choices and judgements on. Your “um actually everything is unethical” is irrelevant to the game they’re playing. Not to mention it’s absurd a conversation this long hasn’t pointed out the relativity of ethical judgments or event attempted to define what ethical even means.
    • TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
      The ethical alternative is one that balances innovation and entrepreneurship with ecological and social responsibility. You can use resources, invent stuff, and organise people to work on it, but you only get to do it if Reality-Based Accounting rates the project as a net positive for the planet, and you have to share some of the benefits. And if you can't make it happen without being consistently cruel and exploitative to some individuals, groups, or locations, you don't get to do it again. This is not trivial to organise. But it's far more likely to lead to an R&D explosion than the current myopic and manic-depressive comic book version of "the economy" we're all supposed to have irrational faith in.
      • serf 3y ago
        nothing to spur innovation like panning every idea through a global counsel of magicians who know what's best for the planet. aside from global consensus on ideas like 'the planet', it'd require mass labor force control and government assignment, two ideas i'm not thrilled about. I could see it working in a sci-fi novel, but I have a hard time closing the gaps between them and us.
      • therealdrag0 3y ago
        How is aggressive centralized gating supposed to lead to R&D when history shows freedom leads to innovation and prosperity? You don’t need to have faith in anything. The economy exists and is all around us providing great value.
      • verinus 3y ago
        This is so theoretical it will never work in an acceptable way. Because of who will decide is responsible and on what grounds? What will come of it will most likely be analogous to the Communist system where just a central committee was in charge of making all the decisions. and to be quite clear: this system failed utterly and completely. Without the capitalist west there would have been famines in DDR and the east. On what I agree is, that we need a strong state factoring in stuff like ecological consequences via taxation- so the decision to buy or make stuff is distributed.
  • htss2013 3y ago
    My furnace broke after 15 years. I called a business to fix it. They replaced the dead pump motor and it worked again. The repair guy was paid well and I was happy to pay. What exactly is inherently unethical about this?
    • forward1 3y ago
      How about the cost of producing and shipping the new motor pump, and the cost of disposing of the old one? And do you think the individuals who made the motor pump are treated and compensated fairly, or are they likely exploited in third-world dystopia to bring you (but mostly the business) cost savings? And this is saying nothing of the actual use of the furnace and all the energy it requires. And I have yet to see ONE example of a business which does not exploit someone or something, only cognitive dissonance.
      • voisin 3y ago
        So any lack of ethics in the supply chain (which presumably goes back to raw materials) means the entire thing is unethical? I am not sure what definition of ethics this is, but it is so strict as to render everyone and everything unethical, so perhaps not a very useful definition.
        • forward1 3y ago
          If you honestly believe the product is separate from the production and supply chains, you are either woefully misinformed or under the disillusionment of modern capitalist economics.
          • voisin 3y ago
            I didn’t say the product was separate; I merely asked whether you view everything as tainted if its supply chain has any unethical component. Sounds like you do!
            • forward1 3y ago
  • Kon5ole 3y ago
    >All business is inherently unethical Ethics are not a law of nature, it's basically an opinion. Your opinion may be that all business is unethical, but most people disagree. Most people consider it to be ethical to trade money for goods and services at an agreed price, for example. Similarly I think most people would agree that hiding the truth from people in order to have them do things they wouldn't do if they knew the truth, is unethical. Tracking people's activity without telling them that you are doing it would be unethical by that standard.
• treyd 3y ago
  I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be completely useless and the market for that product would be completely efficient (on the consumer side). Of course consumers don't have perfect information, and that's what the marketing industry claims their purpose is to address. But really the role that the marketing industry (at least for typical products and services) actually plays is to selectively give information to consumers to influence their buying decisions against how they would behave in an efficient market. And then it's a very short and slippery slope to just straight up lying about products and manipulating consumers through their insecurities, which we see happening all the time with how the marketing industry has developed for the last few decades especially with online advertisements.
  • TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    It's corporate behaviour modification and social engineering. Perhaps not a surprise to anyone familiar with Bernays and his Propaganda. I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be. The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
    • daddylongstroke 3y ago
      >The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it. Yes, exactly this right here. It was straight up bizarre to grow up with near 0 advertising in commie Eastern Europe and get hit with a shockwave of fairly disgusting ad bullshit when we moved to the US. I was shocked at people putting up with it as if it is something to be tolerated instead of burned to ashes. I continue to be shocked.
      • JetSpiegel 3y ago
        I don't think is socially acceptable in the West to mention the good parts of the other side of the Iron Curtain. You must always mention the Stasi. Even though the Berlin wall came down 30 years ago, the End of History ethos remains.
• dspillett 3y ago
  It might be possible, were it not for the fact that the advertising industry has their customers so convinced that the stalking they do is truly effective compared to a mix of scatter-gun approaches and simply advertising in relevant places. No one will buy advertising services from a company that says “yeah, we don't do that thing that everyone else says is essential”. It doesn't actually have to be effective, those buying advertising services just have to be somewhat convinced that it might be. (I'm separating the ethical matters in advertising from those in selling here, even if spreading awareness through advertising was made less unethical by removing the stalking and other irritations, that still leaves a lot of room for unethical sales techniques)
• fomine3 3y ago
  It's true for pure capitalism. What we need is strict regulation, but some regulation make situation worse.
• wutwutwat 3y ago
  Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising. Advertising is psychological manipulation at scale and it's effective. How does one ethically manipulate someone into doing something they wouldn't do if not influenced to do so? Ethical advertising can't exist, the same way two masses can't occupy the same point in space at the same time.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens. Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.
    • wutwutwat 3y ago
      > Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful. Sure, if that existed in a vacuum, and not in a capitalist economic system where you are rewarded by doing unethical things to generate more profit. In reality, there is no way to successfully deploy ethical advertising. Even if one tried, it could never compete with the ones not being ethical, since they will have higher returns, and infinitely more budget as a result, to make it so your ethical ad is never even shown to a single human eyeball
    • wutwutwat 3y ago
      Although, the sharing of useful information is different than an advertisement, entirely, so such a thing wouldn't be called an ad. Wikipedia exists to share information and inform us of something we might find useful. It doesn't need to be pushed on anyone. It just needs to exist in the open. Anytime something is brought to you that you didn't ask for, demanding your attention, there is motive behind why it's being done, be it a coworker pitching a tool to you trying to get buy-in and force a decision they want to be made in their favor, a flyer of sales happening at the grocery store that's delivered to your door on Sunday, or the blinking square ad impression telling you that if you just give up some of your money, they will provide you with a service that will make you feel like you're making progress on something (and then you'll convince yourself that's true even if it's not because nobody likes to admit they made a mistake and wasted time and/or money). Ads are forced upon us, telling us something, and there is so much motive behind why it's being done, people will spend millions to make sure you see it. Even if it's just a tidbit of info, selling no product, whoever is motivated enough to pay a lot of money for you to see it, has motive to push an agenda which you seeing that info stands to benifet from. It's still manipulation. It's not possible to be ethical. The only example of real world ethical advertising I can think of, would be the million dollar webpage. A webpage of pixels purchased to show an ad, that you have to willingly make the decision to navigate to and look at, and that website no longer exists, which proves my point pretty well imo
• rsync 3y ago
  I disagree. I’m in no hurry to defend advertisers but it’s easy to think of non abusive, morally neutral advertising. Local grocer has a sign hanging in the little league outfield, etc.
• jbverschoor 3y ago
  Google ads used to be great. Just include some ads based on the content you’re looking at. Not based on some weird history and cookies. I don’t mind those ads. But just keep them small, light, non interesting, and don’t sell my data.. be the platform that protects my data when matching up advertisers.
• int_19h 3y ago
  "Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98].* It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." — The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998