3 ms·

Yeah… it’s awful. The user is often not the end customer of any software, so it’s not optimized for their benefit.

by dartos 2y ago

amelius 2y ago
So, kill the advertising monetization scheme.
- andrepd 2y ago
  The more I think of it the more I conclude that advertisement truly is the root of so much that is rotten in the modern world.
  - Dansvidania 2y ago
    advertising is a necessity, IMO. The problem is the adversarial way it is done. How would you exercise your free choice of products, if you don't know about them? Selling and advertising could be and has been done in a "positive-sum" way, it's just not as effective. I would point to the _under-regulated_ stock market as the problem, causing short term profit being highly incentivised... but then again that's a slippery slope too and I don't have the macro-economics chops to propose where exactly is the problem and how to fix it :/
    - amelius 2y ago
      > How would you exercise your free choice of products, if you don't know about them? The problem is that advertising does two things: 1. inform people of the availability of the product/service 2. persuade people to buy said product Point 2 is the evil part. Note however that we can easily remove 2 but still have 1. For example, show the information when the user wants to see it, as opposed to shoving it in their face (distraction) when they were doing something else. We could bring back yellow pages. Or have dedicated websites where users can search for products and services. It is not rocket science.
      - Dansvidania 2y ago
        I don't disagree, but I would still argue that it would not work as well. The only way I'd see this working would be with heavy government intervention, and I think the british figure of speech for that is "fat chance".
        amelius 2y ago
        Yes, government should intervene here. But there is another figure of speech that goes like "don't let good be the enemy of perfect" ...
        Dansvidania 2y ago
        what would be the "good-not-perfect" solution?
        card_zero 2y ago
        Keeping it in a designated place, where you have to go to look for it deliberately? Like yellow pages, as suggested? Sounds good to me. When advertising was new, people really liked it. It sold newspapers, it was the thing people wanted before news.
        amelius 2y ago
        It probably needs more thought but fines for anyone who does not comply. You will still get ads that slip through, but it can be a good start. I'd also like to point at tobacco commercials which are banned in many countries now. This ban works (it's probably not perfect but I cannot remember seeing such an ad recently, even online).
    - noirscape 2y ago
      I think advertising is a necessity, but like many things, there's an expected boundary in place for where, how and how often you expect ads. Take TV for example; advertising is expected during commercial breaks, which are clearly marked as such, around here are regulated for the public TV channels (so they can't interrupt regular programming) and have an explicit intro/outro segment to make it clear when regular programming resumes. Radio follows similar rules here. Same with things like magazine ads; they're marked as separate from the page, usually explicitly don't follow the magazines style and are usually only a small part of the magazine. By contrast, digital advertising's most insidious trick is that no such boundaries exist. Ads must be shoved everywhere in as many places as possible. You got some whitespace? Fill it with ads, ads and even more ads. People use adblockers? Directly insert your ad into the content and call it a sponsorship. People are looking at ads? We gotta track all of it so we can allegedly improve the clickthrough ratio and profile them, privacy be damned. It's an industry entirely based on taking a hand when offered a finger to make a line go up. Ads aren't inherently the problem, the entire problem is the gluttony, greed and avarice that's embedded in the digital ads industry. (Which is funny given how much digital ad payout rates are a seeming race to the bottom, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if most sites that run ads still aren't even sustained by them anymore.)

Yeah… it’s awful. The user is often not the end customer of any software, so it’s not optimized for their benefit.

by dartos 2y ago

Yeah… it’s awful. The user is often not the end customer of any software, so it’s not optimized for their benefit.

amelius 2y ago

So, kill the advertising monetization scheme.

andrepd 2y ago
The more I think of it the more I conclude that advertisement truly is the root of so much that is rotten in the modern world.
- Dansvidania 2y ago
  advertising is a necessity, IMO. The problem is the adversarial way it is done. How would you exercise your free choice of products, if you don't know about them? Selling and advertising could be and has been done in a "positive-sum" way, it's just not as effective. I would point to the _under-regulated_ stock market as the problem, causing short term profit being highly incentivised... but then again that's a slippery slope too and I don't have the macro-economics chops to propose where exactly is the problem and how to fix it :/
  - amelius 2y ago
    > How would you exercise your free choice of products, if you don't know about them? The problem is that advertising does two things: 1. inform people of the availability of the product/service 2. persuade people to buy said product Point 2 is the evil part. Note however that we can easily remove 2 but still have 1. For example, show the information when the user wants to see it, as opposed to shoving it in their face (distraction) when they were doing something else. We could bring back yellow pages. Or have dedicated websites where users can search for products and services. It is not rocket science.
    - Dansvidania 2y ago
      I don't disagree, but I would still argue that it would not work as well. The only way I'd see this working would be with heavy government intervention, and I think the british figure of speech for that is "fat chance".
      - amelius 2y ago
        Yes, government should intervene here. But there is another figure of speech that goes like "don't let good be the enemy of perfect" ...
        Dansvidania 2y ago
        what would be the "good-not-perfect" solution?
        card_zero 2y ago
        Keeping it in a designated place, where you have to go to look for it deliberately? Like yellow pages, as suggested? Sounds good to me. When advertising was new, people really liked it. It sold newspapers, it was the thing people wanted before news.
        amelius 2y ago
        It probably needs more thought but fines for anyone who does not comply. You will still get ads that slip through, but it can be a good start. I'd also like to point at tobacco commercials which are banned in many countries now. This ban works (it's probably not perfect but I cannot remember seeing such an ad recently, even online).
  - noirscape 2y ago
    I think advertising is a necessity, but like many things, there's an expected boundary in place for where, how and how often you expect ads. Take TV for example; advertising is expected during commercial breaks, which are clearly marked as such, around here are regulated for the public TV channels (so they can't interrupt regular programming) and have an explicit intro/outro segment to make it clear when regular programming resumes. Radio follows similar rules here. Same with things like magazine ads; they're marked as separate from the page, usually explicitly don't follow the magazines style and are usually only a small part of the magazine. By contrast, digital advertising's most insidious trick is that no such boundaries exist. Ads must be shoved everywhere in as many places as possible. You got some whitespace? Fill it with ads, ads and even more ads. People use adblockers? Directly insert your ad into the content and call it a sponsorship. People are looking at ads? We gotta track all of it so we can allegedly improve the clickthrough ratio and profile them, privacy be damned. It's an industry entirely based on taking a hand when offered a finger to make a line go up. Ads aren't inherently the problem, the entire problem is the gluttony, greed and avarice that's embedded in the digital ads industry. (Which is funny given how much digital ad payout rates are a seeming race to the bottom, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if most sites that run ads still aren't even sustained by them anymore.)