4 ms·

Ads are part of a social contract you have with the publisher of the site.

by eli 12y ago

alextgordon 12y ago
Ads are a form of manipulation that somehow we have been convinced is acceptable for the mere act of reading.
- krapp 12y ago
  Almost every form of communication between people is an attempt at manipulation. For instance, your comment is attempting to manipulate people into seeing advertising is a form of brainwashing. As attempts at manipulation go, though, advertising is at least up front and overt about its intentions. Can anyone say the same about politics, the media, even Hacker News?
  - alextgordon 12y ago
    The difference is that I honestly believe that advertising is manipulative (and I think there is good evidence!). I don't stand to gain any money if I convince you. I am not, I hope, spreading falsehoods. I'm certainly not preying on your innate desires for food or sex. I'm not installing malware on your computer. I'm not building a profile of your interests. I'm not autoplaying a video if you mouseover this comment! For the record, I am perfectly happy with ads that are just the name of the product and a static picture (a la the Deck).
    - krapp 12y ago
      I can certainly agree with you that there should be no place for malware, aggressive or intrusive advertising on the web. I'm not convinced that they're effective enough that they're dangerous, though. I'm more concerned by viral advertising than I am web banners. Arguably, the only reason viral marketing exists is that advertising is so useless, otherwise, online. And realistically, not everyone advertising is trying to deceive. There's nothing necessarily wrong with trying to convince someone to buy your product if you think you have a product worth selling.
  - tomp 12y ago
    I disagree; all communication has a purpose, but manipulation is communication that intentionally conceals it's true purpose and tries to deceive you. For example, saying "buy tickets for concert of band X at venue Y at time Z" or "if you have haemorrhoids, buy drug W", are "good", non-manipulative ads. On the other hand, "click here to earn 1000 a day", "you are 1000th visitor, you win", or displaying an image of a happy family in an attempt to anchor your brand to the viewer's idea of happiness is "bad", manipulative kind of advertising. I don't oppose "good" advertising; I just think it should be limited (to information boards, Google, Craigslist, ...). However, most advertising is the bad kind, and I categorically oppose it.
barrkel 12y ago
I'm suspicious of products that are heavily promoted. If anything, I'm doing the ad purchaser a favour by not having their blinking ads shoved down my throat. Pretty much any form of animation on a page causes me to stop reading it, until I can find some way of eliminating it. Too many ads are animated to risk going without an adblocker, flash blocking and disabling of autoplay etc. And it's not just ads. It's currently fashionable to have all sorts of slide overs as you near the end of an article. Those cause me to stop reading too, until I've killed the elements that caused the slide over. Similarly with floating page headers (vertical space is at a premium), floating social button menus, etc. And of course, then there's custom fonts. For years, I viewed the web with custom font downloading disabled, until the near ubiquity of FontAwesome forced me to concede. But I still run a plugin to disable font choices, and will run pages through a Readable bookmarklet if the designer has prioritized style over legibility. I don't really see the relationship between me and site publishers as a social contract. It's much more hostile than that. They try to ram an incredible amount of crap into my sensory input, and I defend myself from their assault every way I can.
jumpwah 12y ago
Honestly I just see it as blocking a list of domains or whatever right? I mean yeah if you care about the site and the loss in revenue of you using adblock may hurt you too if the site is hampered/dies, and so it may be in your interest to not use adblockers. But, in my opinion of course, I don't think it's 'immoral' to block ads and stop their revenue if you don't care about it, we should have the ability to block domains right? The question is whether or not it's right to do so, if I'm thinking correctly. But believe it or not, I'm actually quite new to this 'debate'(?), just my first raw thoughts on this. I guess it's probably not as simple as what I just said..

Ads are part of a social contract you have with the publisher of the site.

by eli 12y ago

Ads are part of a social contract you have with the publisher of the site.

alextgordon 12y ago

Ads are a form of manipulation that somehow we have been convinced is acceptable for the mere act of reading.

krapp 12y ago
Almost every form of communication between people is an attempt at manipulation. For instance, your comment is attempting to manipulate people into seeing advertising is a form of brainwashing. As attempts at manipulation go, though, advertising is at least up front and overt about its intentions. Can anyone say the same about politics, the media, even Hacker News?
- alextgordon 12y ago
  The difference is that I honestly believe that advertising is manipulative (and I think there is good evidence!). I don't stand to gain any money if I convince you. I am not, I hope, spreading falsehoods. I'm certainly not preying on your innate desires for food or sex. I'm not installing malware on your computer. I'm not building a profile of your interests. I'm not autoplaying a video if you mouseover this comment! For the record, I am perfectly happy with ads that are just the name of the product and a static picture (a la the Deck).
  - krapp 12y ago
    I can certainly agree with you that there should be no place for malware, aggressive or intrusive advertising on the web. I'm not convinced that they're effective enough that they're dangerous, though. I'm more concerned by viral advertising than I am web banners. Arguably, the only reason viral marketing exists is that advertising is so useless, otherwise, online. And realistically, not everyone advertising is trying to deceive. There's nothing necessarily wrong with trying to convince someone to buy your product if you think you have a product worth selling.
- tomp 12y ago
  I disagree; all communication has a purpose, but manipulation is communication that intentionally conceals it's true purpose and tries to deceive you. For example, saying "buy tickets for concert of band X at venue Y at time Z" or "if you have haemorrhoids, buy drug W", are "good", non-manipulative ads. On the other hand, "click here to earn 1000 a day", "you are 1000th visitor, you win", or displaying an image of a happy family in an attempt to anchor your brand to the viewer's idea of happiness is "bad", manipulative kind of advertising. I don't oppose "good" advertising; I just think it should be limited (to information boards, Google, Craigslist, ...). However, most advertising is the bad kind, and I categorically oppose it.

barrkel 12y ago

I'm suspicious of products that are heavily promoted. If anything, I'm doing the ad purchaser a favour by not having their blinking ads shoved down my throat. Pretty much any form of animation on a page causes me to stop reading it, until I can find some way of eliminating it. Too many ads are animated to risk going without an adblocker, flash blocking and disabling of autoplay etc. And it's not just ads. It's currently fashionable to have all sorts of slide overs as you near the end of an article. Those cause me to stop reading too, until I've killed the elements that caused the slide over. Similarly with floating page headers (vertical space is at a premium), floating social button menus, etc. And of course, then there's custom fonts. For years, I viewed the web with custom font downloading disabled, until the near ubiquity of FontAwesome forced me to concede. But I still run a plugin to disable font choices, and will run pages through a Readable bookmarklet if the designer has prioritized style over legibility. I don't really see the relationship between me and site publishers as a social contract. It's much more hostile than that. They try to ram an incredible amount of crap into my sensory input, and I defend myself from their assault every way I can.

jumpwah 12y ago

Honestly I just see it as blocking a list of domains or whatever right? I mean yeah if you care about the site and the loss in revenue of you using adblock may hurt you too if the site is hampered/dies, and so it may be in your interest to not use adblockers. But, in my opinion of course, I don't think it's 'immoral' to block ads and stop their revenue if you don't care about it, we should have the ability to block domains right? The question is whether or not it's right to do so, if I'm thinking correctly. But believe it or not, I'm actually quite new to this 'debate'(?), just my first raw thoughts on this. I guess it's probably not as simple as what I just said..