5 ms·

Advertising is a virus that will infect every ecosystem

alganet 2y ago
It's more like the ideal vector for some nasty stuff. There's nothing inherently wrong with it but folks doing evil stuff love it.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Watch "the economics of happiness" if you think there's nothing wrong with advertising. Sure, maybe it can be done without manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough, but if you're into maximizing revenue you're not going to simply advertise "here's our invention, take it or leave it" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1687905/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1687905/
  - alganet 2y ago
    I believe there's nothing _inherently_ wrong with advertising. > but if you're into maximizing revenue In the space of ideas, there is a way for advertisement to exist without revenue. Even without money! > manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough You can do all of that _without_ advertising.
    - SllX 2y ago
      > You can do all of that _without_ advertising. I want to double-emphasize this. Most advertising sucks, but the effect it has on people is not unique to advertising. Given your five senses, you are being consistently and constantly blasted with information people want to put in front of you in the hopes of effecting your future behavior in a way that makes you think that you’ve talked yourself into it. But given a non-intrusive ad that isn’t trying to also surveil you and isn’t making demands on your attention, they can be informative. The problem is that non-intrusive ads that don’t make demands on your time and attention don’t support advertising-reliant companies with market caps as big as TV broadcasters, and if you want to also be as big as Google or Facebook, you also need the surveillance aspect of it, so if we ever get our shit together as a society and do something about that and they haven’t diversified their revenue streams sufficiently, they’re in for a very bad time.
    - _factor 2y ago
      I can’t think of any positives of advertising that are not solely to the benefit of the advertiser. That knife you bought because it looked cool, not the sharpest or most suited for your tasks. Cheerios aren’t really good for your heart. Dentists don’t universally recommend your flavored grain-infused fluoride paste. It’s legalized lying where high end marketing companies are so good at it you might as well not try with a small budget. It’s not just bad from any angle, it’s also entrenched.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    > manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough Unfortunately, social media is much more effective at ruining people's self-image and happiness than advertisers could ever dream to be
    - drawkward 2y ago
      what is the type of social media you are citing but advertising by a different name?
      - listenallyall 2y ago
        I think it is reasonably well-documented that social media contributes to people feeling like they are less happy, less accomplished, less upwardly-mobile, less smart or influential than peers. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook all tend to show people succeeding at careers, relationships, investing, leisure, and non-stop exposure to all of that - despite lots of it being fake, staged, insincere - reduces the viewer's self image.
  - BrenBarn 2y ago
    > Sure, maybe it can be done without manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough, but if you're into maximizing revenue you're not going to simply advertise "here's our invention, take it or leave it" Well, yes, that's it exactly. The problem is not advertising, it's trying to maximize revenue. That is the virus that is killing our world.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > more like the ideal vector for some nasty stuff Advertising is mosquitoes. Fits.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I think there's something inherently wrong with it. At it's core is a fundamental disregard for consent which harms people after prolonged exposure. The consequences of turning control of over our technology to people with an incentive to degrade our sense of dopamine hygiene have been very bad and continue to worsen. Whatever legitimate needs ads can meet we can find better ways to meet. That is, if we could only get a break from life in a Skinner box.
  - mvkel 2y ago
    Imagine there is a cause, mission, or vision that you care deeply about. And you want larger numbers of people to care about it, too. And you're willing to pay someone to help you distribute the message that will persuade those people to care. That's advertising. There's a tobacco lobby. There's also an anti-tobacco lobby.
    - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
      Imagine you're a small burger place that opened somewhere other than the center of town and you want people to at least know there's a new option besides slop from McDonald's.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        In our world, where the advertisers are already making so much noise that the only way to be heard is to pay an advertiser to shout louder than the others... yes, that's probably what you have to do. But in the absence of all of that noise in the first place, I think we could design something that does a much better job than ads do. As it is you have to pit your bank account against McDonald's and compete for attention, but think about how much money you could save (or spend on tastier things) if it was instead the quality of your burger that determined how widely known you ended up being. I don't have the game theoretic secret sauce that would make that happen, but I believe that it's out there and that it would be cheaper and more effective than what we're doing if we just collectively stopped tolerating ads of any kind and focused on solving the where-can-I-get-a-good-burger type problems directly.
- drawkward 2y ago
  No, advertising is the nasty stuff. the vector is obviously our communications infrastructure. (of course, this doesn't mean that advertising itself cannot also be a vector.) advertising is designed to manipulate without consent.
  - alganet 2y ago
    There is a difference in abstraction level between our discourses. I am talking more abstractly, about a system and how it works. You're talking more specifically about one of the states of such system. We both intend to change the state of that system, but we're going different ways about it. I totally get your point. Maybe some day you'll get mine.
    - drawkward 2y ago
      >I am talking more abstractly, about a system and how it works. You're talking more specifically about one of the states of such system. Wao...such smart! Thank you for the mansplain! >Maybe some day you'll get mine. This made me barf in my mouth a little.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
There are still many mysteries to unravel about viruses, they may be more important to a functioning ecosystem than we realize, and there are useful tricks which only they can do. I think it's more like lead poisoning.
- drawkward 2y ago
  lead poisoning does not evolve to fit into new ecosystems.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    The industries that cause it do. I just think it's better to avoid equating it with a force of nature. We're doing this harm to ourselves. We could stop if we wanted. Viruses we're stuck with.
    - drawkward 2y ago
      i did not ask for advertising on my TV home screen; it wasn't there when i bought it. my time on the web predates advertising. i have never once asked for a billboard to ruin a landscape, or an ad above my urinal.

It's more like the ideal vector for some nasty stuff. There's nothing inherently wrong with it but folks doing evil stuff love it.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Watch "the economics of happiness" if you think there's nothing wrong with advertising. Sure, maybe it can be done without manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough, but if you're into maximizing revenue you're not going to simply advertise "here's our invention, take it or leave it" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1687905/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1687905/
- alganet 2y ago
  I believe there's nothing _inherently_ wrong with advertising. > but if you're into maximizing revenue In the space of ideas, there is a way for advertisement to exist without revenue. Even without money! > manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough You can do all of that _without_ advertising.
  - SllX 2y ago
    > You can do all of that _without_ advertising. I want to double-emphasize this. Most advertising sucks, but the effect it has on people is not unique to advertising. Given your five senses, you are being consistently and constantly blasted with information people want to put in front of you in the hopes of effecting your future behavior in a way that makes you think that you’ve talked yourself into it. But given a non-intrusive ad that isn’t trying to also surveil you and isn’t making demands on your attention, they can be informative. The problem is that non-intrusive ads that don’t make demands on your time and attention don’t support advertising-reliant companies with market caps as big as TV broadcasters, and if you want to also be as big as Google or Facebook, you also need the surveillance aspect of it, so if we ever get our shit together as a society and do something about that and they haven’t diversified their revenue streams sufficiently, they’re in for a very bad time.
  - _factor 2y ago
    I can’t think of any positives of advertising that are not solely to the benefit of the advertiser. That knife you bought because it looked cool, not the sharpest or most suited for your tasks. Cheerios aren’t really good for your heart. Dentists don’t universally recommend your flavored grain-infused fluoride paste. It’s legalized lying where high end marketing companies are so good at it you might as well not try with a small budget. It’s not just bad from any angle, it’s also entrenched.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- listenallyall 2y ago
  > manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough Unfortunately, social media is much more effective at ruining people's self-image and happiness than advertisers could ever dream to be
  - drawkward 2y ago
    what is the type of social media you are citing but advertising by a different name?
    - listenallyall 2y ago
      I think it is reasonably well-documented that social media contributes to people feeling like they are less happy, less accomplished, less upwardly-mobile, less smart or influential than peers. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook all tend to show people succeeding at careers, relationships, investing, leisure, and non-stop exposure to all of that - despite lots of it being fake, staged, insincere - reduces the viewer's self image.
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  > Sure, maybe it can be done without manipulating people's self-image into thinking they're not good enough, not beautiful enough, not wealthy enough, but if you're into maximizing revenue you're not going to simply advertise "here's our invention, take it or leave it" Well, yes, that's it exactly. The problem is not advertising, it's trying to maximize revenue. That is the virus that is killing our world.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> more like the ideal vector for some nasty stuff Advertising is mosquitoes. Fits.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I think there's something inherently wrong with it. At it's core is a fundamental disregard for consent which harms people after prolonged exposure. The consequences of turning control of over our technology to people with an incentive to degrade our sense of dopamine hygiene have been very bad and continue to worsen. Whatever legitimate needs ads can meet we can find better ways to meet. That is, if we could only get a break from life in a Skinner box.
- mvkel 2y ago
  Imagine there is a cause, mission, or vision that you care deeply about. And you want larger numbers of people to care about it, too. And you're willing to pay someone to help you distribute the message that will persuade those people to care. That's advertising. There's a tobacco lobby. There's also an anti-tobacco lobby.
  - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
    Imagine you're a small burger place that opened somewhere other than the center of town and you want people to at least know there's a new option besides slop from McDonald's.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      In our world, where the advertisers are already making so much noise that the only way to be heard is to pay an advertiser to shout louder than the others... yes, that's probably what you have to do. But in the absence of all of that noise in the first place, I think we could design something that does a much better job than ads do. As it is you have to pit your bank account against McDonald's and compete for attention, but think about how much money you could save (or spend on tastier things) if it was instead the quality of your burger that determined how widely known you ended up being. I don't have the game theoretic secret sauce that would make that happen, but I believe that it's out there and that it would be cheaper and more effective than what we're doing if we just collectively stopped tolerating ads of any kind and focused on solving the where-can-I-get-a-good-burger type problems directly.
drawkward 2y ago
No, advertising is the nasty stuff. the vector is obviously our communications infrastructure. (of course, this doesn't mean that advertising itself cannot also be a vector.) advertising is designed to manipulate without consent.
- alganet 2y ago
  There is a difference in abstraction level between our discourses. I am talking more abstractly, about a system and how it works. You're talking more specifically about one of the states of such system. We both intend to change the state of that system, but we're going different ways about it. I totally get your point. Maybe some day you'll get mine.
  - drawkward 2y ago
    >I am talking more abstractly, about a system and how it works. You're talking more specifically about one of the states of such system. Wao...such smart! Thank you for the mansplain! >Maybe some day you'll get mine. This made me barf in my mouth a little.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

There are still many mysteries to unravel about viruses, they may be more important to a functioning ecosystem than we realize, and there are useful tricks which only they can do. I think it's more like lead poisoning.

drawkward 2y ago
lead poisoning does not evolve to fit into new ecosystems.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  The industries that cause it do. I just think it's better to avoid equating it with a force of nature. We're doing this harm to ourselves. We could stop if we wanted. Viruses we're stuck with.
  - drawkward 2y ago
    i did not ask for advertising on my TV home screen; it wasn't there when i bought it. my time on the web predates advertising. i have never once asked for a billboard to ruin a landscape, or an ad above my urinal.