3 ms·

Fucking gross. The industrial advertising complex needs to die. Advertising supported business models are the root of so many of our problems. It's turned news

Fucking gross. The industrial advertising complex needs to die. Advertising supported business models are the root of so many of our problems. It's turned news into ragebait political bubble machines. It's why we have an epidemic of screen addiction and social isolation. They spy on us and sell our weaknesses to the highest bidder. Drug companies literally spend more on advertising than actually developing drugs. Billboards clutter up the landscapes and digital ads litter all our screens. It is a blight on humanity and future generations are going to look back on us with the deepest pity on how we voluntarily did this to ourselves just to not pay for anything (directly).

thfuran 2y ago
It's not going anywhere without being legally banished, and of the two major parties in the US, one is fairly pro-corporate and the other is anti-regulation. I don't think there's going to be improvement here in the US in the near future. But I do think advertising should be almost entirely disallowed.
lancesells 2y ago
> It's why we have an epidemic of screen addiction and social isolation. Advertising isn't why this happens. Massive greed, immoral behavior, and natural human behavior to be entertained and distracted is why you get screen addiction. Netflix changing it's model to ads based is because they make more money that way, not because viewers get more addicted from ads. Meta makes an absurd profit every quarter but two years from now they'll inject more ads into your feed to make more profit. Corporations have record profits and record stock prices, and then fire thousands of people only to get rewarded with their stock price going up. The entire system is just set up wrong. And IMO Perplexity is fucking gross way more than advertising.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Ads kind of are the reason though. Algorithmic feeds are found in every social media product because they create nearly infinite ad space "inventory". If your feed was limited to stuff people you know post you could spend an hour, read it all, and be done for a while. But if you're not "engaged" you're not viewing ads. Metrics like "eyeballs" and "engagement" are important to social media products because they're proxies for the quality and quantity of ad space inventory you can sell to advertisers.
sourcepluck 2y ago
Good to see it stated so clearly! I don't know if I agree that we "voluntarily" did it, it seems like more of a situation where you give people one option and say "pick". We are at fault for not saying "no", though. But otherwise, straight down the line.

thfuran 2y ago

It's not going anywhere without being legally banished, and of the two major parties in the US, one is fairly pro-corporate and the other is anti-regulation. I don't think there's going to be improvement here in the US in the near future. But I do think advertising should be almost entirely disallowed.

lancesells 2y ago

> It's why we have an epidemic of screen addiction and social isolation. Advertising isn't why this happens. Massive greed, immoral behavior, and natural human behavior to be entertained and distracted is why you get screen addiction. Netflix changing it's model to ads based is because they make more money that way, not because viewers get more addicted from ads. Meta makes an absurd profit every quarter but two years from now they'll inject more ads into your feed to make more profit. Corporations have record profits and record stock prices, and then fire thousands of people only to get rewarded with their stock price going up. The entire system is just set up wrong. And IMO Perplexity is fucking gross way more than advertising.

AlexandrB 2y ago
Ads kind of are the reason though. Algorithmic feeds are found in every social media product because they create nearly infinite ad space "inventory". If your feed was limited to stuff people you know post you could spend an hour, read it all, and be done for a while. But if you're not "engaged" you're not viewing ads. Metrics like "eyeballs" and "engagement" are important to social media products because they're proxies for the quality and quantity of ad space inventory you can sell to advertisers.

sourcepluck 2y ago

Good to see it stated so clearly! I don't know if I agree that we "voluntarily" did it, it seems like more of a situation where you give people one option and say "pick". We are at fault for not saying "no", though. But otherwise, straight down the line.