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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 consequ

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.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - AngryData 2y ago
    In my experience nearly every decent product ive ever wanted I either sought out myself first or found through word-of-mouth, almost none of it through marketing materials which these days I completely disregard because it is 99.99% bullshit. And I believe word-of-mouth would be even more effective and useful if mass advertising simply didn't exist to pollute peoples thoughts and preferences with a bunch of deceptive marketing garbage. I firmly believe over 99% of marketing could be easily replaced by simple word-of-mouth if it wasn't drowned out by marketing materials and advertisements.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Agreed. If anything, excessive ads are an indication of a product whose design or implementation was neglected because it's easier to paper over the deficit with ads.
  - yetihehe 2y ago
    Stand on a corner and approach some people holding a big plate with tasty things. If those things are tasty enough, you will have some free advertising to their friends (almost like influencers, but more organic).
  - drawkward 2y ago
    as if we don't have the internet for that. at this stage of communications development, advertising should all be on a pull-based, rather than push-based model.
- gausswho 2y ago
  And that person you pay fakes the numbers on your invoice, because everyone else does.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I understand that, but what's your point? It doesn't get less sleazy when it happens to be a cause that I like. Maybe I have terrible taste. Why should I be allowed to subject people to my terrible taste without their consent? Why should being rich increase my ability to do so? If it's actually such a good idea it should be possible to spread it consensually--that is, unless the intervening space was weaponized against us by advertisers.
alganet 2y ago
Language offers the same risks. People can talk stuff to me without my consent. That alone doesn't make it evil. The goal of separating, conceptually, the vector from the virus, is to better understand how the virus works. The greed and manipulation that took over the advertisement industry was not born from it and will not die with it. It's a thing that uses it, I want to make this thing more visible.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Well you have to draw a line somewhere. It's not evil to share your opinion to somebody who hasn't asked for it but there's a certain degree of amplification beyond which it's a problem. The circumstances of evolution and the laws of physics have placed limits on how many people you can influence without help, so there's a handy line already drawn. The simplest way forward is to just use that line to define advertising. Sure, the willingness to coerce transcends advertising, and I agree that exposing it in all it's forms is worth doing, but I'm a hacker not a priest or a politician, so I'm just trying to direct my efforts where they have a shot at being effective.
  - alganet 2y ago
    > The circumstances of evolution and the laws of physics have placed limits on how many people you can influence without help, so there's a handy line already drawn. That line drawn by "nature" also place limits on a lot more stuff humans do, good stuff. I wouldn't want to go back to the laws of the wilderness. Unless we're being selective on what can cross the line or not, but that's would be an arbitrary line as much as any other. You can fight advertisement all you want, I encourage it. I sometimes do it too. However, I am fully aware that it won't solve the issue of systematic greed and manipulation. If you allow me to be cheesy for a moment, I would say that the fight against advertisement does not work as previously advertised.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      I too would not want to accept nature's constraints in all cases, it's just the "get the word out" case where I think it's a well placed boundary. One could still put a lot of work into crafting their message, but if propagation beyond earshot could only be achieved with the unpaidfor consent of the propagator... I think we'd find that the human way of doing it for a million years actually outperforms the internet in most areas that matter (that is, supposing that once the issue authentically had your attention you could then use the internet to confirm/correct whatever memetic mutations accrued and get the story straight--word of mouth for notification, computers for replication). I don't expect it to solve greed, I just want to be able to hear myself think so that I can more clearly think about how I'll interfere with greed in non-advertising dimensions.

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.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- AngryData 2y ago
  In my experience nearly every decent product ive ever wanted I either sought out myself first or found through word-of-mouth, almost none of it through marketing materials which these days I completely disregard because it is 99.99% bullshit. And I believe word-of-mouth would be even more effective and useful if mass advertising simply didn't exist to pollute peoples thoughts and preferences with a bunch of deceptive marketing garbage. I firmly believe over 99% of marketing could be easily replaced by simple word-of-mouth if it wasn't drowned out by marketing materials and advertisements.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Agreed. If anything, excessive ads are an indication of a product whose design or implementation was neglected because it's easier to paper over the deficit with ads.
- yetihehe 2y ago
  Stand on a corner and approach some people holding a big plate with tasty things. If those things are tasty enough, you will have some free advertising to their friends (almost like influencers, but more organic).
- drawkward 2y ago
  as if we don't have the internet for that. at this stage of communications development, advertising should all be on a pull-based, rather than push-based model.
gausswho 2y ago
And that person you pay fakes the numbers on your invoice, because everyone else does.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I understand that, but what's your point? It doesn't get less sleazy when it happens to be a cause that I like. Maybe I have terrible taste. Why should I be allowed to subject people to my terrible taste without their consent? Why should being rich increase my ability to do so? If it's actually such a good idea it should be possible to spread it consensually--that is, unless the intervening space was weaponized against us by advertisers.

alganet 2y ago

Language offers the same risks. People can talk stuff to me without my consent. That alone doesn't make it evil. The goal of separating, conceptually, the vector from the virus, is to better understand how the virus works. The greed and manipulation that took over the advertisement industry was not born from it and will not die with it. It's a thing that uses it, I want to make this thing more visible.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Well you have to draw a line somewhere. It's not evil to share your opinion to somebody who hasn't asked for it but there's a certain degree of amplification beyond which it's a problem. The circumstances of evolution and the laws of physics have placed limits on how many people you can influence without help, so there's a handy line already drawn. The simplest way forward is to just use that line to define advertising. Sure, the willingness to coerce transcends advertising, and I agree that exposing it in all it's forms is worth doing, but I'm a hacker not a priest or a politician, so I'm just trying to direct my efforts where they have a shot at being effective.
- alganet 2y ago
  > The circumstances of evolution and the laws of physics have placed limits on how many people you can influence without help, so there's a handy line already drawn. That line drawn by "nature" also place limits on a lot more stuff humans do, good stuff. I wouldn't want to go back to the laws of the wilderness. Unless we're being selective on what can cross the line or not, but that's would be an arbitrary line as much as any other. You can fight advertisement all you want, I encourage it. I sometimes do it too. However, I am fully aware that it won't solve the issue of systematic greed and manipulation. If you allow me to be cheesy for a moment, I would say that the fight against advertisement does not work as previously advertised.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    I too would not want to accept nature's constraints in all cases, it's just the "get the word out" case where I think it's a well placed boundary. One could still put a lot of work into crafting their message, but if propagation beyond earshot could only be achieved with the unpaidfor consent of the propagator... I think we'd find that the human way of doing it for a million years actually outperforms the internet in most areas that matter (that is, supposing that once the issue authentically had your attention you could then use the internet to confirm/correct whatever memetic mutations accrued and get the story straight--word of mouth for notification, computers for replication). I don't expect it to solve greed, I just want to be able to hear myself think so that I can more clearly think about how I'll interfere with greed in non-advertising dimensions.