5 ms·

In our society many of us subconsciously or sometimes consciously turn down the volume of our own conscience, because we'd rather not come face to face with our

In our society many of us subconsciously or sometimes consciously turn down the volume of our own conscience, because we'd rather not come face to face with our hypocrisy, our complicity with banal and not so banal evil [1], because we don't want to give up the benefits. In the Internet tech community, its ultimate manifestation is how we pretend we do not earn our livelihoods from advertising, something most of us deep down know to be evil [2]. [1] The Banality of Systemic Evil, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality-of-systemic-evil/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality... [2] No free lunch, no free web, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624666

swombat 13y ago
None of the businesses that I have run have ever made money by advertising...
- eevilspock 13y ago
  Excellent. I was of course using the royal "we". I don't work for an ad-supported product either. Anymore at least. I quit. Still, even with my hardcore stance against it, I take advantage of many "free" ad supported products rather than supporting businesses by paying directly. Perhaps you are better than I.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    As long as you don't buy stuff based on ads, and unless the product benefits from network effects, you are just making ad-supported products less profitable by using them, and hence contributing to their demise - either the ads are pay-per-click, and then you are just raising its costs without providing returns, or they're pay-per-view and then you're making the ads less valuable for advertisers (and hence less profitable for the service). It's the people clicking on the ads that are keeping them alive.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> In the Internet tech community, it's ultimate manifestation is how we pretend we do not earn our livelihoods from advertising, something most of us deep down know to be evil [2]. Thank you for calling out this one. I've been harshly criticized in the past for pointing out Google, which is beloved amongst geeks, is ultimately an advertising machine, and the reason they push many positive/geeky initiatives is because they have total consciousness of that ("Don't be Evil") and don't want to lose their talent pool.
- visakanv 13y ago
  I once started a "so, what how do YOU earn a living?" on r/hailcorporate, where people complain about blatant corporate influences. Most of them work in marketing/advertising. Myself included. It's not so black and white, of course- I do sincerely believe that I'm trying to be a force for good- and that's probably what a lot of politicians genuinely believe, too. RE: Google, I think it's totally okay to be an advertising machine if you build something like search. As long as search itself is not compromised. In which case we (speaking for the non-techies here) would still have to suck our thumbs until something better came along.
Karunamon 13y ago
Mmm.. I disagree with the assertion (both yours and the link to the other comment) that advertising is evil. There are types of advertising that are evil (that which is extremely manipulative or false/misleading), but suggesting that showing me a picture of a specific brand of hamburger, telling me why it's awesome, and suggesting that I buy one, is somehow morally wrong, doesn't even pass the laugh test. Only sith deal in absolutes. (How meta.)
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Extremely manipulative or false/misleading advertising is extremely evil. Slightly manipulative or false/misleading advertising is slightly evil. 99% of advertising isn't about the product itself as much as about how you will feel or be perceived if only you buy it. Even the web is full of that, there isn't a day where not a landing page gets posted on HN which is full of fluff instead of simply factually describing what the product does, not to mention how it compares to the 500 other products that do the exact same thing. Advertising, for the most part, is designed to route around the informed decision making process, and trying to associate the product with other things, instead of a detailed description of it. That you suggest that makes up the minority of advertising, or that there is a honest, factual way to "suggest" someone buy a burger, is what's laughable to me. Compare such stuff to, say, the description of a table in a catalogue; material, dimensions, a photo of it without a person in it = "kbye, and thx for not wasting my time or trying to push nonsense into my brain". Anything beyond that is evil in my books, and evil being subjective, you don't really get to decide about that either. I can explain why I consider it evil, I just did, and just saying "nope" is not sufficient to convince me otherwise.
bcoates 13y ago
Users, given the choice between paying for things and being inundated with ads, overwhelmingly choose the ads. I don't get it either, but advertising isn't some conspiracy, it's giving the people what they want. Ambitious social reform programs have left enough literal and metaphorical bodies in their wake that I want none of that. Your linked argument that advertising makes things more expensive doesn't work out; ultimately businesses need to create awareness of their products and there's a zero-sum game for attention to be won. These costs will be borne by the purchasers of products no matter what you do. As technological progress makes design, manufacturing and distribution cheaper but advertising no more cost effective, there's a sort of Amdahl's law pushing advertising's share of costs up. That said, advertising and advertising-supported products sound like an incredibly dreary thing to work on, so I'll continue letting someone else do the "stuff for which users are not willing to pay" thing.

swombat 13y ago

None of the businesses that I have run have ever made money by advertising...

eevilspock 13y ago
Excellent. I was of course using the royal "we". I don't work for an ad-supported product either. Anymore at least. I quit. Still, even with my hardcore stance against it, I take advantage of many "free" ad supported products rather than supporting businesses by paying directly. Perhaps you are better than I.
- icebraining 13y ago
  As long as you don't buy stuff based on ads, and unless the product benefits from network effects, you are just making ad-supported products less profitable by using them, and hence contributing to their demise - either the ads are pay-per-click, and then you are just raising its costs without providing returns, or they're pay-per-view and then you're making the ads less valuable for advertisers (and hence less profitable for the service). It's the people clicking on the ads that are keeping them alive.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> In the Internet tech community, it's ultimate manifestation is how we pretend we do not earn our livelihoods from advertising, something most of us deep down know to be evil [2]. Thank you for calling out this one. I've been harshly criticized in the past for pointing out Google, which is beloved amongst geeks, is ultimately an advertising machine, and the reason they push many positive/geeky initiatives is because they have total consciousness of that ("Don't be Evil") and don't want to lose their talent pool.

visakanv 13y ago
I once started a "so, what how do YOU earn a living?" on r/hailcorporate, where people complain about blatant corporate influences. Most of them work in marketing/advertising. Myself included. It's not so black and white, of course- I do sincerely believe that I'm trying to be a force for good- and that's probably what a lot of politicians genuinely believe, too. RE: Google, I think it's totally okay to be an advertising machine if you build something like search. As long as search itself is not compromised. In which case we (speaking for the non-techies here) would still have to suck our thumbs until something better came along.

Karunamon 13y ago

Mmm.. I disagree with the assertion (both yours and the link to the other comment) that advertising is evil. There are types of advertising that are evil (that which is extremely manipulative or false/misleading), but suggesting that showing me a picture of a specific brand of hamburger, telling me why it's awesome, and suggesting that I buy one, is somehow morally wrong, doesn't even pass the laugh test. Only sith deal in absolutes. (How meta.)

PavlovsCat 13y ago
Extremely manipulative or false/misleading advertising is extremely evil. Slightly manipulative or false/misleading advertising is slightly evil. 99% of advertising isn't about the product itself as much as about how you will feel or be perceived if only you buy it. Even the web is full of that, there isn't a day where not a landing page gets posted on HN which is full of fluff instead of simply factually describing what the product does, not to mention how it compares to the 500 other products that do the exact same thing. Advertising, for the most part, is designed to route around the informed decision making process, and trying to associate the product with other things, instead of a detailed description of it. That you suggest that makes up the minority of advertising, or that there is a honest, factual way to "suggest" someone buy a burger, is what's laughable to me. Compare such stuff to, say, the description of a table in a catalogue; material, dimensions, a photo of it without a person in it = "kbye, and thx for not wasting my time or trying to push nonsense into my brain". Anything beyond that is evil in my books, and evil being subjective, you don't really get to decide about that either. I can explain why I consider it evil, I just did, and just saying "nope" is not sufficient to convince me otherwise.

bcoates 13y ago

Users, given the choice between paying for things and being inundated with ads, overwhelmingly choose the ads. I don't get it either, but advertising isn't some conspiracy, it's giving the people what they want. Ambitious social reform programs have left enough literal and metaphorical bodies in their wake that I want none of that. Your linked argument that advertising makes things more expensive doesn't work out; ultimately businesses need to create awareness of their products and there's a zero-sum game for attention to be won. These costs will be borne by the purchasers of products no matter what you do. As technological progress makes design, manufacturing and distribution cheaper but advertising no more cost effective, there's a sort of Amdahl's law pushing advertising's share of costs up. That said, advertising and advertising-supported products sound like an incredibly dreary thing to work on, so I'll continue letting someone else do the "stuff for which users are not willing to pay" thing.