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I am curious why you avoid ads - personally I view them as a tremendous good for the world, helping people improve their lives by introducing them to products o

I am curious why you avoid ads - personally I view them as a tremendous good for the world, helping people improve their lives by introducing them to products or even just ideas they didn't know existed.

wizzwizz4 2y ago
I also believe advertisements are useful! However, by this definition, the ad industry is not engaged in advertisement.
myrmidon 2y ago
To me, ads are primarily a way to extract more value from ad-viewers by stochastically manipulating their behavior. There is a lot of support in favor. Consider: - Ads are typically NOT consumed enthusiastically or even sought out (which would be the cases if they were strongly mutually beneficial). There are such cases but they are a very small minority. - If product introduction was the primary purpose, then repeatedly bombarding people with well-known brands would not make sense. But that is exactly what is being done (and paid for!) the most. Coca Cola does not pay for you to learn that they produce softdrinks. They pay for ads to shift your spending/consumption habits. - Ads are an inherently flawed and biased way to learn about products, because there is no incentive whatsoever to inform you of flaws, or even to represent price/quality tradeoffs honestly.
throwuxiytayq 2y ago
I tend to view ads as the perfect opposite of what you mentioned; it’s an enormous waste of money and resources on a global scale that provides no tangible benefit for anyone that isn’t easily and cheaply replaced by vastly superior options. If people valued ad viewing (e.g. for product decisions), we’d have popular websites dedicated to ad viewing. What we have instead is an industry dedicated to the idea of forcefully displaying ads to users in the least convenient places possible, and we still all go to reddit to decide what to buy.
- IggleSniggle 2y ago
  We do have such sites though, like Tom's Hardware or Consumer Reports or Wirecutter or what have you. Consumers pay money for these ads to reduce the conflict of interest, but companies still need to get their products chosen for these review pipelines.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Tom's Hardware and Consumer Reports aren't really about ads (or at least that's not what made them popular). they were about trying to determine the truth about products and see past the lies told about them by advertising.
    - duckmysick 2y ago
      Strictly speaking, isn't advertising any action that calls attention to a particular product over another? It doesn't have to be directly funded by a manufacturer or a distributor. I'd consider word-of-mouth a type of advertising as well.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        To me advertising isn't just calling attention to something, it's doing so with the intent to sell something or to manipulate. When it's totally organic the person doing the promotion doesn't stand to gain anything. It less about trying to get you to buy something and usually just people sharing what they enjoy/has worked for them, or what they think you'd enjoy/would work for you. It's the intent behind the promotion and who is intended to benefit from it that makes the difference between friendly/helpful promotion and adversarial/harmful promotion. Word of mouth can be a form of advertising that is directly funded by a manufacturer or a distributor too though. Social media influencers are one example, but companies will pay people to pretend to casually/organically talk up their products/services to strangers at bars/nightclubs, conferences, events, etc. just to take advantage of the increased level trust we put in word of mouth promotion exactly because of the assumption that the intent is to be helpful vs to sell.
- 2y ago
_kb 2y ago
Products (and particularly ideas) can be explored in a pull pattern too. Pushing things—physical items, concepts of identity, or political ideology—in the fashion endemic to the ad industry is a pretty surefire way to end up with an extremely bland society, or one that segments increasingly depending on targeting profile.
asoneth 2y ago
Back when I was a professor I would give a lecture on ethical design near the end of the intro course. In my experience, most people who think critically about ethics eventually arrive at their own personal ethics which are rarely uniform. For example, many years ago I worked on military AI for my country. I eventually decided I couldn't square that with my ethics and left. But I consider advertising to be (often non-consensual) mind control designed to keep consumers in a state of perpetual desire and I'd sooner go back to building military AI than work for an advertising company, no matter how many brilliant engineers work there.
Clubber 2y ago
>I am curious why you avoid ads - personally I view them as a tremendous good for the world, helping people improve their lives by introducing them to products or even just ideas they didn't know existed. I would agree with you if ads were just that. Here's our product, here's what it does, here's what it costs. Unfortunately ads sell the sizzle not the steak. That has been advertising mantra for probably 100 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6HmQ1QVMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6HmQ1QVMw
autoexec 2y ago
Ads are most often manipulation, not information. They are pollution.

wizzwizz4 2y ago

I also believe advertisements are useful! However, by this definition, the ad industry is not engaged in advertisement.

myrmidon 2y ago

To me, ads are primarily a way to extract more value from ad-viewers by stochastically manipulating their behavior. There is a lot of support in favor. Consider: - Ads are typically NOT consumed enthusiastically or even sought out (which would be the cases if they were strongly mutually beneficial). There are such cases but they are a very small minority. - If product introduction was the primary purpose, then repeatedly bombarding people with well-known brands would not make sense. But that is exactly what is being done (and paid for!) the most. Coca Cola does not pay for you to learn that they produce softdrinks. They pay for ads to shift your spending/consumption habits. - Ads are an inherently flawed and biased way to learn about products, because there is no incentive whatsoever to inform you of flaws, or even to represent price/quality tradeoffs honestly.

throwuxiytayq 2y ago

I tend to view ads as the perfect opposite of what you mentioned; it’s an enormous waste of money and resources on a global scale that provides no tangible benefit for anyone that isn’t easily and cheaply replaced by vastly superior options. If people valued ad viewing (e.g. for product decisions), we’d have popular websites dedicated to ad viewing. What we have instead is an industry dedicated to the idea of forcefully displaying ads to users in the least convenient places possible, and we still all go to reddit to decide what to buy.

IggleSniggle 2y ago
We do have such sites though, like Tom's Hardware or Consumer Reports or Wirecutter or what have you. Consumers pay money for these ads to reduce the conflict of interest, but companies still need to get their products chosen for these review pipelines.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Tom's Hardware and Consumer Reports aren't really about ads (or at least that's not what made them popular). they were about trying to determine the truth about products and see past the lies told about them by advertising.
  - duckmysick 2y ago
    Strictly speaking, isn't advertising any action that calls attention to a particular product over another? It doesn't have to be directly funded by a manufacturer or a distributor. I'd consider word-of-mouth a type of advertising as well.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      To me advertising isn't just calling attention to something, it's doing so with the intent to sell something or to manipulate. When it's totally organic the person doing the promotion doesn't stand to gain anything. It less about trying to get you to buy something and usually just people sharing what they enjoy/has worked for them, or what they think you'd enjoy/would work for you. It's the intent behind the promotion and who is intended to benefit from it that makes the difference between friendly/helpful promotion and adversarial/harmful promotion. Word of mouth can be a form of advertising that is directly funded by a manufacturer or a distributor too though. Social media influencers are one example, but companies will pay people to pretend to casually/organically talk up their products/services to strangers at bars/nightclubs, conferences, events, etc. just to take advantage of the increased level trust we put in word of mouth promotion exactly because of the assumption that the intent is to be helpful vs to sell.
2y ago

_kb 2y ago

Products (and particularly ideas) can be explored in a pull pattern too. Pushing things—physical items, concepts of identity, or political ideology—in the fashion endemic to the ad industry is a pretty surefire way to end up with an extremely bland society, or one that segments increasingly depending on targeting profile.

asoneth 2y ago

Back when I was a professor I would give a lecture on ethical design near the end of the intro course. In my experience, most people who think critically about ethics eventually arrive at their own personal ethics which are rarely uniform. For example, many years ago I worked on military AI for my country. I eventually decided I couldn't square that with my ethics and left. But I consider advertising to be (often non-consensual) mind control designed to keep consumers in a state of perpetual desire and I'd sooner go back to building military AI than work for an advertising company, no matter how many brilliant engineers work there.

Clubber 2y ago

>I am curious why you avoid ads - personally I view them as a tremendous good for the world, helping people improve their lives by introducing them to products or even just ideas they didn't know existed. I would agree with you if ads were just that. Here's our product, here's what it does, here's what it costs. Unfortunately ads sell the sizzle not the steak. That has been advertising mantra for probably 100 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6HmQ1QVMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6HmQ1QVMw

autoexec 2y ago

Ads are most often manipulation, not information. They are pollution.