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the internet ad industry is raking billions from all over the world into the USA, how can you call that unproductive.
by kobalsky 2y ago
the internet ad industry is raking billions from all over the world into the USA, how can you call that unproductive.
- elzbardico 2y agoBecause is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.
- otabdeveloper4 2y agoIf you owned a small business you'd be singing a very different tune.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoHi. I own a business. I still find ads to be cancer.
- wuliwong 2y agoYou think all businesses should just spread awareness by word of mouth? Can you put a sign on your store or is that an ad? What if you don't have a store? Yes, advertising can be really awful but that doesn't meaning all advertising is "cancer." If you have a good business that creates actual value for people, advertising it can actually be seen as a good thing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- meiraleal 2y agoIt is clear we are talking about modern digital ads. Ads in magazines aren't as bad, but manipulating public opinion to sell the ads were/are. That's what Google/FB do at an absurd large scale right now.
- ambicapter 2y agoThat's a problem that advertising both created and feeds off of.
- tivert 2y ago> If you owned a small business you'd be singing a very different tune. The problem with advertising is that a little bit done honestly is actually good and fine. What we actually have way, way too much, and it's often dishonest and manipulative. It's a similar thing with finance. It's necessary, but way too many talented people are spending their energies on it. Black and white thinking doesn't really capture the situation, and ends up creating a lot of noise (BAN IT ALL vs. IT'S ALL GOOD AND YOU LOVE IT, FIGHT!). Honestly, I think it might be a good thing to put caps on the number of people that can work in sectors like that (and further limit the number of very smart people working in them), to direct talented people to more productive and socially beneficial parts of the economy.
- tantalor 2y agoThose "US STEM grads have their skills wasted" are solving those problems (optimal ad load, bad ads, etc.) but its a very hard problem. Don't be so dismissive.
- tivert 2y agoThere are "very hard problems" that don't need to be solved, or are far lower priority than other problems. Hard doesn't imply being "productive, useful and beneficial to society."
- otabdeveloper4 2y agoMaybe 1 percent of Google's headcount is actually working on ad technology. There isn't some brain drain problem where people are doing ads instead of curing cancer.
- int_19h 2y agoDirectly working. But then you have all the vehicles that, in the grand scheme of things, exist solely to enable ads and make data mining for them easier, such as Chrome and Android. Then there are products that exist primarily to lock you into the Google ecosystem so that you're forced to interact with the rest of it. At the end of the day, if most of company's income is from ads, it can be safely assumed that whatever else it does is somehow about ads even if it doesn't contribute directly. Well, or else Google is incredibly inept.
- anonzzzies 2y agoOwn a small business, still cancer. Will never use and lo and behold, all runs fine.
- threeseed 2y agoMost small businesses do not have the luxury of ready made distribution channels. Especially if it's an ecommerce business.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoA business’s viability outside of advertising doesn’t change the morality of advertising. Regardless of which side of the camp you fall on, you can’t argue that ads are “good” just because some businesses need them to survive. In fact, I’d wager if a business NEEDS ads to survive, it’s probably a net negative on society as a whole. I won’t die on that hill, but that’s my hunch.
- threeseed 2y agoYour entire premise is ridiculous. Advertising is nothing more than bringing attention to your product to your target customer. And without this so called immoral behaviour I fail to see how any business works.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoUh… sure that’s an oversimplified reduction. We were specifically discussing advertising within the context of Google and online advertising. It’s not even debated that advertising as it exists with Google, for the sake of profit at all costs is a net-negative in society. It’s not the same as putting a sign by the road.
- anonzzzies 2y agoThat's when you call any type of promotion advertising, in that case, sure, there is some innocent advertising. People here are (obviously) talking about 'modern' advertising which is what google/fb etc are doing which is just plain bad for everyone except for Google shareholders (I would imagine, besides money, it's not even good for the people working on it as it must do your head in to be a brilliant engineer and then working on tech so miserable and foul as that).
- tester756 2y agoI disagree There is good and bad advertising. I'd want to receive ads for things that I'm really interested in.
- pythonguython 2y agoI can’t relate to that. When I see a banner ad I find it obtrusive whether it’s from Bank of America or my favorite HAM radio company. If I’m in the market for a product I value hearing the testimonials of people in my life rather than an advertisement.
- tester756 2y agoI'm mostly thinking about finding things that you werent even aware that they do exist
- layer8 2y agoI’m trying to think of anything I find useful that I stumbled upon thanks to ads over the past twenty years or so, and I’m pretty much drawing a blank. It certainly seems negligible. The problem with prohibiting ads is how to prevent (or even define) payed hidden promotions. But tracking and targeted ads could be prohibited, which would already make things much more civil and less relevant as a tech profit center.
- tester756 2y ago>I’m trying to think of anything I find useful that I stumbled upon thanks to ads over the past twenty years or so, and I’m pretty much drawing a blank. It certainly seems negligible. Maybe the ad is good when you arent even aware that you were influenced by it? like Cola vs Pepsi, McDonald vs KFC, etc.
- frickinLasers 2y agoThe one case where I find ads useful, when word of mouth isn't an option, is in a static image on a site (review site, blog, whatever) where I'm researching a thing. The ad would be related to that thing, doesn't need to know a thing about me other than I'm browsing that page, and is related to the content on that page. I click on those ads sometimes.
- AlgorithmicTime 2y ago[dead]
- whatever1 2y agoSetting aside the moral aspect which is highly subjective and seems to have a price tag (for example tech CEOs quit any sort of morals for a good paycheck), the productivity question is a measurable one. Aka does advertising as a whole increase total consumption or is it a zero sum game (aka send bigger slice of the same pie to a competitor) From what I know advertising does increase total demand aka more things/services need to be produced and sold on aggregate.
- bee_rider 2y agoSome of the demand induced by ads is useful; people becoming aware of stuff they didn’t know exists, and finding that it provides a useful service for them. But most ads are trying to convince you to buy their brand’s version of a product that you already know of, or (even worse!) a new version of an old product. Any demand induced there is just wastefulness. If Amazon can figure out that I’m interested in headphones, I already know more actual information about headphones than their ads will give me.
- layer8 2y ago> for example tech CEOs quit any sort of morals for a good paycheck An alternative explanation is that prospective tech CEOs who are willing to overlook morals are scarcer and thus mandate higher salaries. ;)
- addcommitpush 2y agoIs increasing total consumption something positive?
- whamlastxmas 2y agoBy that definition, war is extremely productive
- bluGill 2y agoAt least a few evil people attack once in a while thus proving some defense is needed so they they are not completely unproductive/useless. Much as I wish they were not needed.
- tehjoker 2y agowhat evil ppl? what attack?
- bluGill 2y agoPutin is attacking Ukraine right now. There have been various coups and attempted coups around the world. Nigeria and South Korea both come to mind.
- tehjoker 2y agoThis is not our concern? The US is safe.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoAs far as I can tell, the war hasn’t killed Putin, and instead killed tens of thousands of men in their 20s and lots of innocent families
- nateglims 2y agoIt is though, more value is generated by the MIC than is put in and war has yet to ruin the productive capacity of the United States. The societal ills of this are why it’s popular to call America an evil empire
- wuliwong 2y ago
- hashishen 2y agoa profitable market can still be unproductive if the overall result is a nuisance to society on almost every level
- mportela 2y agolike the healthcare industry in the US
- bee_rider 2y agoIt doesn’t produce any things.
- kibwen 2y agoEven worse, because advertising is a Red Queen's Race where the only limit on expense is what your competitors are spending, it's actually worse than unproductive because it increases company expenses without increasing product quality, leading to higher costs on everything for everyone.
- concordDance 2y agoYou cannot be serious it. All of the ad tech companies produce a service people want otherwise no one would use them! There may be other services that might be better if not for network effects, but it is trivially true that a search engine is better for most people than no search engine at all. And that is what is produced.
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoThe same could be said of tobacco companies. You might want to rethink your argument.
- RobotToaster 2y agoIt's parasitic, not productive. A tick can contain a lot of blood, doesn't mean it produced that blood.
- concordDance 2y agoTicks do not require the consent of the host to drink blood. Things like Google and Facebook cannot be parasitic, every dollar gained is a voluntary exchange with no threats. People choose to use Google and gain something from doing so.
- mjamesaustin 2y agoYep if the host agreed to die, then the market is a success. We've discovered the most efficient outcome – sucking the customer dry until they die! Thank you to the free market for delivering us this efficient result. Remember kids – thousands dying from lack of healthcare isn't a bug of the system, it's a feature. This has been determined as necessary, nay even beneficial, by market forces that can never be wrong.
- concordDance 2y agoHackernews has finally declined to the level of reddit. :(
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoStealing is raking billions every year as well, yet I wouldn't call it productive.
- avgDev 2y agoHow do you feel about online gambling? Imo, profits != productive or to a benefit of society.