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Even if advertising were to disappear over night, why do you think that would stop the spread of propaganda, corruption of democratic processes, and social unre

by squigz 1y ago

Even if advertising were to disappear over night, why do you think that would stop the spread of propaganda, corruption of democratic processes, and social unrest? I don't really see a connection between the two?

4b11b4 1y ago
It's more like the tech that allows middlemen to insert into everything and be very hyper personalized/targeted
imiric 1y ago
Where did I say that all of those things would stop? What I said is that adtech systems are also used for it. So if they were to disappear overnight, a _proportion_ of those activities, and a pretty large one I reckon, would also disappear.
- squigz 1y ago
  Okay, but my question remains - why? What is the connection between those things and advertising? It seems way more likely to me that they would simply adapt, as they always have.
  - imiric 1y ago
    The connection is that those wishing to influence public opinion can do so by running ad campaigns that target precisely the demographic they wish to manipulate. Adtech doesn't care whether you're promoting products or ideas. This connection should be obvious after the Cambridge Analytica leak. Social media and any media platform also enables the spreading of propaganda, but it's not as systematic as the tools built for advertising.
    - heresie-dabord 1y ago
      In support of your position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
  - blackjack_ 1y ago
    Sure, I can explain. Basically, adtech is the backbone of the attention economy where more clicks = more revenue. So the incentives are to always say the most inflammatory clickbait you can, to incentivize profits. Sensible and boring stable takes and agreement will always be stifled to promote outrage, beefs, and clickbait to maximize revenue. To generalize; stability in any general field like politics or journalism gets turned into obnoxious grandstanding to be more like reality tv to get more attention. In software, people who monetize off advertising are incentivized to build dark patterns maximized on attention grabbing. Whereas without advertising as the main source of revenue, people stop building dark these patterns to steal your attention, as you are paying them directly for a service, so you are the customer instead of the product.
    - chrisweekly 1y ago
      Well put. Also, (tangent), I misread "stable takes" as "table stakes", having never seen that phrasing for the opposite of "hot takes". I like it.
    - 1659447091 1y ago
      So what you are saying is: "incentives are to always say the most inflammatory clickbait you can, to incentivize profits" Therefore in this new setup where people pay sites and not other companies, if I want the most micro-payments coming to my site, I need to say the most inflammatory clickbait things I can? All this does is shift the who pays, and then of course because I want the most money for my site, I will also take a company's ad money and do tiers with the micro payments now. At no point does that change the content people want. Sure, maybe I won't get your micro payment, but that okay because now I have a new scheme that gives me advertisers money and readers money. Now if I find a way to exploit the FOMO of this new gated setup, I win even more and my content doesn't change. These takes always find ways to blame providers and never hold to account the responsibility of consumers. Maybe we focus on the people and why they want the clickbait so bad? I don't have an answer to that, but that's probably because the "solutions" all want to focus on companies giving people exactly what they want instead of helping people become aware of addictive clickbait rage behaviour and patterns. Fox tv station is not the only one that is broadcast into peoples homes, PBS is an option too. And on cable for news, my grandmother had C-SPAN on tv non-stop. Talk about some boring stable tv. (Which I am sure is still an option if thats what people want)
heresie-dabord 1y ago
The finiancial connexion is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Really? They're quite connected. If the architecture of the web changes to one where people only see content that they've asked to see, and that kills advertising, it would also put a significant damper on anyone else whose business involves injecting unwanted content into a viewer's consciousness. Propagandists are the first to come to mind. If it can become prohibitively expensive to sway an election by tampering with people's information, then the alternative (policies that actually benefit the people) will become more popular, leading to reduced unrest. Democracy is having a bad time lately because its enemies have new weapons for use against it. If we break those weapons, it starts working again.

by squigz 1y ago

4b11b4 1y ago

It's more like the tech that allows middlemen to insert into everything and be very hyper personalized/targeted

imiric 1y ago

Where did I say that all of those things would stop? What I said is that adtech systems are also used for it. So if they were to disappear overnight, a _proportion_ of those activities, and a pretty large one I reckon, would also disappear.

squigz 1y ago
Okay, but my question remains - why? What is the connection between those things and advertising? It seems way more likely to me that they would simply adapt, as they always have.
- imiric 1y ago
  The connection is that those wishing to influence public opinion can do so by running ad campaigns that target precisely the demographic they wish to manipulate. Adtech doesn't care whether you're promoting products or ideas. This connection should be obvious after the Cambridge Analytica leak. Social media and any media platform also enables the spreading of propaganda, but it's not as systematic as the tools built for advertising.
  - heresie-dabord 1y ago
    In support of your position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
- blackjack_ 1y ago
  Sure, I can explain. Basically, adtech is the backbone of the attention economy where more clicks = more revenue. So the incentives are to always say the most inflammatory clickbait you can, to incentivize profits. Sensible and boring stable takes and agreement will always be stifled to promote outrage, beefs, and clickbait to maximize revenue. To generalize; stability in any general field like politics or journalism gets turned into obnoxious grandstanding to be more like reality tv to get more attention. In software, people who monetize off advertising are incentivized to build dark patterns maximized on attention grabbing. Whereas without advertising as the main source of revenue, people stop building dark these patterns to steal your attention, as you are paying them directly for a service, so you are the customer instead of the product.
  - chrisweekly 1y ago
    Well put. Also, (tangent), I misread "stable takes" as "table stakes", having never seen that phrasing for the opposite of "hot takes". I like it.
  - 1659447091 1y ago
    So what you are saying is: "incentives are to always say the most inflammatory clickbait you can, to incentivize profits" Therefore in this new setup where people pay sites and not other companies, if I want the most micro-payments coming to my site, I need to say the most inflammatory clickbait things I can? All this does is shift the who pays, and then of course because I want the most money for my site, I will also take a company's ad money and do tiers with the micro payments now. At no point does that change the content people want. Sure, maybe I won't get your micro payment, but that okay because now I have a new scheme that gives me advertisers money and readers money. Now if I find a way to exploit the FOMO of this new gated setup, I win even more and my content doesn't change. These takes always find ways to blame providers and never hold to account the responsibility of consumers. Maybe we focus on the people and why they want the clickbait so bad? I don't have an answer to that, but that's probably because the "solutions" all want to focus on companies giving people exactly what they want instead of helping people become aware of addictive clickbait rage behaviour and patterns. Fox tv station is not the only one that is broadcast into peoples homes, PBS is an option too. And on cable for news, my grandmother had C-SPAN on tv non-stop. Talk about some boring stable tv. (Which I am sure is still an option if thats what people want)

heresie-dabord 1y ago

The finiancial connexion is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

Really? They're quite connected. If the architecture of the web changes to one where people only see content that they've asked to see, and that kills advertising, it would also put a significant damper on anyone else whose business involves injecting unwanted content into a viewer's consciousness. Propagandists are the first to come to mind. If it can become prohibitively expensive to sway an election by tampering with people's information, then the alternative (policies that actually benefit the people) will become more popular, leading to reduced unrest. Democracy is having a bad time lately because its enemies have new weapons for use against it. If we break those weapons, it starts working again.