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To be clear, I'm not saying that advertising under whatever slop chatgpt outputs is killing humanity, I'm more thinking of the industry as a whole. They use lie
by m4ck_ 9mo ago
To be clear, I'm not saying that advertising under whatever slop chatgpt outputs is killing humanity, I'm more thinking of the industry as a whole. They use lies and deception to influence behavior and push products; even if they're fully aware that the claims they're making are blatant lies and the products are harmful. If that industry disappeared humanity would be better off for it.
and to be fair the industry doesn't need to be banned, just heavily regulated, fully transparent, and there should be exponential consequences for their lies (such as, claiming cigarettes are healthy while knowing they're addictive and cause cancer; anyone involved in decisions like that should be in Angola growing tobacco for 13 cents an hour.)
- simianwords 9mo agoNo I don't think humanity would be better off without ads. Google became what it is with ads.
- layer8 9mo agoGoogle having become what it is doesn’t seem like a good argument.
- simianwords 9mo agoGo to any third world country, peep into their phones and you will realise - they are using android - google maps - youtube Not to mention Waymo and LLM's literally came out of Google. Google will go down as one of the most important institutions in the last 100 years.
- piva00 9mo agoIf it weren't Google it would be someone else providing those services, Google Maps didn't invent GIS for the masses (I worked at a GIS company that was widely used in the country I lived way before Google Maps existed). To me the biggest impact of Google in the history of mankind was making Internet search actually good. Android wasn't invented there, YouTube wasn't invented there, they had the capital to scale those but I don't think it's their greatest achievement compared to Search in the early 2000s.
- amitav1 9mo agoGoogle is one the most important institution of the Internet era. Talk all you'd like about "OoOoH tHeY aDvErTiSe" or "tHeiR aLgOrItHm Is GeTtInG wOrSe" but at the end of the day, Google still brought knowledge to more people than anything before (apart from maybe Gutenberg).
- boelboel 9mo agoMore knowledge, more misinformation. Hard to know if a world without google would be better or worse.
- simianwords 9mo agoPessimistic way to look at things. If you think misinformation is at the same level as information then you need to give this some thought.
- amitav1 9mo agoI mean, to steelman their point, there's a lot more misinformation than information on Google. I still personally think that it's a worthwhile trade though