6 ms·

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Advertisement is a pollution, a parasite, a cancer on modern society that we've all put up with for too long. It mak

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Advertisement is a pollution, a parasite, a cancer on modern society that we've all put up with for too long. It makes our physical and online spaces uglier. They waste space. They waste electricity. They waste computational resources. They waste brain space for the people viewing them. The most aggressive advertisers often sell low-quality services/products or outright scams, which harms those least educated and poorest individuals. They encourage people to spend outside of their means. They make people feel they need a product or else they're lesser or ugly or poor or a bad friend or a bad spouse or a bad parent or whatever it is they're preying on. And don't even get me started on advertising for medication. The fact that's not illegal is insane.

lolinder 2y ago
Yeah, a lot of people in tech have gotten fixated on privacy as the problem with advertisement. You get companies like Mozilla that have come to the conclusion that we need ads but we also need privacy, so maybe we need privacy-preserving ads! For me, privacy isn't even half the problem with ads. Billboards along highways are dangerous. Ads represent a ridiculous percentage of the paper sent via snail mail today, most of which gets immediately thrown away (or best case, recycled). Ads on web pages prevent me from actually reading the content on the page, and incentivize an insane writing style that I frankly don't want to read even with an ad blocker. Ads are bad, in and of themselves. Avoiding tracking doesn't solve their fundamental issue. As G.K. Chesterton put it in 1920 [0]: > Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm
zerotolerance 2y ago
It is difficult to overstate how important advertising is in every economy.
- dekken_ 2y ago
  No, it's easy to misunderstand what makes a functional, prosperous economy. People need to have the capacity to find things. Today we have the internet, and search engines. If people want something, they can look. In this way, all parties consent, otherwise advertisements are harassment.
  - rangerelf 2y ago
    > In this way, all parties consent, otherwise advertisements are harassment. ABSOLUTELY this. Advertisements use MY bandwidth, MY compute resources, MY time, MY space, to harass me by showing me things I have zero interest in, all the while interrupting what I'm doing, distracting me, and then having the gall to tell me "but think of the poor publishers!!". They have caused the appearance of an industry that's a pox on all ("influencers") who behave like society owes them the space, time, attention and deference that for whatever reason they think they need. And for a cherry on top, it makes everything more expensive because WE pay for all of it.
    - dekken_ 2y ago
      I think we agree ;) Thinking about advertiser bytes on my ethernet cables, makes me feel, compromised. I did not consent. It must end.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    > People need to have the capacity to find things. There's a previous step: People need to know that there is such a thing to find. Some advertising (I'll call it "base" advertising, though there may be a better term) is just information. "Hey, everybody, there's this new thing called a mobile phone!" "Hey, everybody, there's this new disease called AIDS that you really had better alter your behavior to avoid, because it's deadly." There's a second kind, which I will call "us" advertising: "Hey, everybody, we have the best mobile phones! Available now at WalMart!" We don't need the second kind, at all. I'm not sure, but I suspect the first kind is at least somewhat useful. (You can still probably call it harassment, though. Useful, but still harassment.)
Galanwe 2y ago
> And don't even get me started on advertising for medication. The fact that's not illegal is insane. In most of Europe, advertising for medication, tobacco, alcohol, gambling and trading is prohibited.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
>Advertisement is a pollution, a parasite, a cancer on modern society A lot of people don't know this, but advertising existed in ancient society as well: https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/advertising-in-ancient-rome/ https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/advertising-in-ancient... Although there are many modern-born societal ills, advertising is not one of them, as it's far older than modernity. There's something essential about advertising - not essential as in required or necessary - but essence-ial as in the essence or spirit of advertising has existed for thousands of years. I think it's important to understand this because, although you can ban the particulars: billboards, youtube ads, and so forth, the spirit of advertising will persist, as Lindy things tend to do, only it will be expressed in different forms.
- ccppurcell 2y ago
  Something can be a cancer in modern times and have existed long ago. For example: cancer.
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  Advertising may have existed since ancient times, but nothing like what we have today. With better technology has come the ability to do so far more aggressively than anything that was possible back then.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
    Before radio, advertising in places like London was wild, far surpassing what we are used to. Ads covered the buildings up to the 3rd floor. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising_in_Britain#/media/File:Parrywatercolour.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising_in_Brit...
- pessimizer 2y ago
  This Roman stuff is barely advertising. They're talking about the signs on the front of buildings advertising what goes on in those buildings, and a guy who got rich selling garum having a mosaic on the floor of his own home that said that his garum was awesome. The last citation in the article is just bizarre, interpreting graffiti as advertisements for oneself. The profession of advertising is only recent, and afaik advertising itself didn't really exist at all until the dawn of patent medicines, that since they were all frauds could only differentiate by circulating their dishonest claims as widely as possible. > I think it's important to understand this because, although you can ban the particulars: billboards, youtube ads, and so forth, the spirit of advertising will persist, as Lindy things tend to do, only it will be expressed in different forms. So, I think that this is a misunderstanding that it is important to avoid. There was Roman advertising if 1) you think that merchants decorating the inside of their own houses with art referring to the things that they got rich selling is advertising, 2) you think that inns and restaurants having their own names painted on their outside walls, and possibly having names that implied self-praise is advertising, and/or 3) you think that writing graffiti is self-advertising. I think the idea that advertising is a force that will automatically express itself through other equally intrusive channels if suppressed is a made up story.
underdeserver 2y ago
People on HN forget that ads fund lots of things. Ads are why Google is free, Gmail is free, docs are free, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are free. You are all free to pay for search and subscriptions to websites you follow. (Today paid search is even reportedly better.) Personally I'm waiting for the micropayment platform that lets me pay a cent or two per paywalled/ad supported article instead, but most people are happy with this tradeoff.
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  'Free' is relative. Those services are still making money - just with you as the product. IMO that's even more ammunition as to why this is a problem. This system has enabled a vast amount of personal data collection and erosion of privacy for the sake of the product being 'free'.
  - underdeserver 2y ago
    Again, it's more complicated than that. What does "you are the product" actually mean, really? How does it tangibly affect people's lives? I'm sure the tradeoff is worth it for some people, and not worth it for others. It's just not simple, and I don't know what the split looks like.
    - Krasnol 2y ago
      It is "worth it for some people" because those people don't understand how they're the product, how it influences what they see if they go on some homepage where their data is being used to manipulate their behaviour, how they lose money because of that manipulation, etc. It will become worse now with LLMs feeding on their data. Soon it will be cheap to gather this data and use it for all kinds of scoring processes. All those things aim for gaining as much money as possible from those people who use services which seem _free_ to them but actually aren't. Maybe at that point people will realise that they'd up paying less if they pay for those services....at which point they'll learn about the other cancer: which is companies which need to generate more profit every quarter and who make their services more and more expensive...and so on. #capitalism
mihaaly 2y ago
They lie and deceive on purpose and draw a lot of money for it! A lot! That everyone pays but mostly those suffer from the advertismenet and don't see the benefit of it (end user), making a product more expensive than should be.
Krasnol 2y ago
The fact that the measurement for good advertisement is how good it steals our attention should be enough to forbid it. It's psychological rape.

lolinder 2y ago

Yeah, a lot of people in tech have gotten fixated on privacy as the problem with advertisement. You get companies like Mozilla that have come to the conclusion that we need ads but we also need privacy, so maybe we need privacy-preserving ads! For me, privacy isn't even half the problem with ads. Billboards along highways are dangerous. Ads represent a ridiculous percentage of the paper sent via snail mail today, most of which gets immediately thrown away (or best case, recycled). Ads on web pages prevent me from actually reading the content on the page, and incentivize an insane writing style that I frankly don't want to read even with an ad blocker. Ads are bad, in and of themselves. Avoiding tracking doesn't solve their fundamental issue. As G.K. Chesterton put it in 1920 [0]: > Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm

zerotolerance 2y ago

It is difficult to overstate how important advertising is in every economy.

dekken_ 2y ago
No, it's easy to misunderstand what makes a functional, prosperous economy. People need to have the capacity to find things. Today we have the internet, and search engines. If people want something, they can look. In this way, all parties consent, otherwise advertisements are harassment.
- rangerelf 2y ago
  > In this way, all parties consent, otherwise advertisements are harassment. ABSOLUTELY this. Advertisements use MY bandwidth, MY compute resources, MY time, MY space, to harass me by showing me things I have zero interest in, all the while interrupting what I'm doing, distracting me, and then having the gall to tell me "but think of the poor publishers!!". They have caused the appearance of an industry that's a pox on all ("influencers") who behave like society owes them the space, time, attention and deference that for whatever reason they think they need. And for a cherry on top, it makes everything more expensive because WE pay for all of it.
  - dekken_ 2y ago
    I think we agree ;) Thinking about advertiser bytes on my ethernet cables, makes me feel, compromised. I did not consent. It must end.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  > People need to have the capacity to find things. There's a previous step: People need to know that there is such a thing to find. Some advertising (I'll call it "base" advertising, though there may be a better term) is just information. "Hey, everybody, there's this new thing called a mobile phone!" "Hey, everybody, there's this new disease called AIDS that you really had better alter your behavior to avoid, because it's deadly." There's a second kind, which I will call "us" advertising: "Hey, everybody, we have the best mobile phones! Available now at WalMart!" We don't need the second kind, at all. I'm not sure, but I suspect the first kind is at least somewhat useful. (You can still probably call it harassment, though. Useful, but still harassment.)

Galanwe 2y ago

> And don't even get me started on advertising for medication. The fact that's not illegal is insane. In most of Europe, advertising for medication, tobacco, alcohol, gambling and trading is prohibited.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

>Advertisement is a pollution, a parasite, a cancer on modern society A lot of people don't know this, but advertising existed in ancient society as well: https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/advertising-in-ancient-rome/ https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/advertising-in-ancient... Although there are many modern-born societal ills, advertising is not one of them, as it's far older than modernity. There's something essential about advertising - not essential as in required or necessary - but essence-ial as in the essence or spirit of advertising has existed for thousands of years. I think it's important to understand this because, although you can ban the particulars: billboards, youtube ads, and so forth, the spirit of advertising will persist, as Lindy things tend to do, only it will be expressed in different forms.

ccppurcell 2y ago
Something can be a cancer in modern times and have existed long ago. For example: cancer.
Night_Thastus 2y ago
Advertising may have existed since ancient times, but nothing like what we have today. With better technology has come the ability to do so far more aggressively than anything that was possible back then.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
  Before radio, advertising in places like London was wild, far surpassing what we are used to. Ads covered the buildings up to the 3rd floor. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising_in_Britain#/media/File:Parrywatercolour.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising_in_Brit...
pessimizer 2y ago
This Roman stuff is barely advertising. They're talking about the signs on the front of buildings advertising what goes on in those buildings, and a guy who got rich selling garum having a mosaic on the floor of his own home that said that his garum was awesome. The last citation in the article is just bizarre, interpreting graffiti as advertisements for oneself. The profession of advertising is only recent, and afaik advertising itself didn't really exist at all until the dawn of patent medicines, that since they were all frauds could only differentiate by circulating their dishonest claims as widely as possible. > I think it's important to understand this because, although you can ban the particulars: billboards, youtube ads, and so forth, the spirit of advertising will persist, as Lindy things tend to do, only it will be expressed in different forms. So, I think that this is a misunderstanding that it is important to avoid. There was Roman advertising if 1) you think that merchants decorating the inside of their own houses with art referring to the things that they got rich selling is advertising, 2) you think that inns and restaurants having their own names painted on their outside walls, and possibly having names that implied self-praise is advertising, and/or 3) you think that writing graffiti is self-advertising. I think the idea that advertising is a force that will automatically express itself through other equally intrusive channels if suppressed is a made up story.

underdeserver 2y ago

People on HN forget that ads fund lots of things. Ads are why Google is free, Gmail is free, docs are free, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are free. You are all free to pay for search and subscriptions to websites you follow. (Today paid search is even reportedly better.) Personally I'm waiting for the micropayment platform that lets me pay a cent or two per paywalled/ad supported article instead, but most people are happy with this tradeoff.

Night_Thastus 2y ago
'Free' is relative. Those services are still making money - just with you as the product. IMO that's even more ammunition as to why this is a problem. This system has enabled a vast amount of personal data collection and erosion of privacy for the sake of the product being 'free'.
- underdeserver 2y ago
  Again, it's more complicated than that. What does "you are the product" actually mean, really? How does it tangibly affect people's lives? I'm sure the tradeoff is worth it for some people, and not worth it for others. It's just not simple, and I don't know what the split looks like.
  - Krasnol 2y ago
    It is "worth it for some people" because those people don't understand how they're the product, how it influences what they see if they go on some homepage where their data is being used to manipulate their behaviour, how they lose money because of that manipulation, etc. It will become worse now with LLMs feeding on their data. Soon it will be cheap to gather this data and use it for all kinds of scoring processes. All those things aim for gaining as much money as possible from those people who use services which seem _free_ to them but actually aren't. Maybe at that point people will realise that they'd up paying less if they pay for those services....at which point they'll learn about the other cancer: which is companies which need to generate more profit every quarter and who make their services more and more expensive...and so on. #capitalism

mihaaly 2y ago

They lie and deceive on purpose and draw a lot of money for it! A lot! That everyone pays but mostly those suffer from the advertismenet and don't see the benefit of it (end user), making a product more expensive than should be.

Krasnol 2y ago

The fact that the measurement for good advertisement is how good it steals our attention should be enough to forbid it. It's psychological rape.