[HN Gopher] Why I Work on Ads
___________________________________________________________________
Why I Work on Ads
Author : benjaminjosephw
Score : 491 points
Date : 2021-05-06 09:29 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jefftk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jefftk.com)
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Yeah, I still don't like it. I used to not mind ads because they
| were just images, but then came the ones that moved, then the
| ones that made sound, then the ones that injected malicious
| JavaScript. Then I installed an adblocker, then I installed a
| script blocker, then I installed a proxy. Now most websites won't
| work and I'm fine with that.
| blakesterz wrote:
| The question is, what is the alternative? I see two main
| funding models: Paywalls. You pay with your money.
| Ads. You pay with your attention.
|
| I guess That question seems good, but with ads, I don't feel like
| I'm paying with my attention, I'm paying with my personal data.
| I'm paying by sharing what I'm doing with a seemingly infinite
| number of companies who turn around and buy and sell all that
| data and build profiles on me that are then bought or sold. I'm
| paying with my privacy, not my attention.
| jefftk wrote:
| You might be interested in the second half of the post,
| starting with "But the biggest issue I see people raising is
| the privacy impact of targeted ads..."? Browsers are getting
| rid of third-party cookies, and Safari, Edge, and Chrome all
| have proposals for how ads can do many of the same things they
| do today without cross-site tracking.
| lupire wrote:
| Will be be getting a refund of all the personal data
| collected in the past?
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| I'd rather get a nickel for every bit of data that I did
| not give explicitly consent to be collected, and a nickel
| for anytime that bits cross referenced, sold, shared, lost,
| transferred, or otherwise handled in a way that was not
| explicitly defined in the eula..
| amalcon wrote:
| It's also important to realize that with ads, _you also pay
| with your money_ , when you later buy some product (whether due
| to the ad or not). Your attention and personal data are only
| valuable in this context as a way to access your money. The
| _amount_ of money you pay with is unclear and varies from
| person to person, but you still do pay.
| angarg12 wrote:
| I work in ads, not particularly because I like the domain, but
| because it's a great tech challenge. I got the chance to work in
| large scale systems and solve hard problems using fun
| technologies. As an engineer, it's my favourite job so far.
|
| Beyond that, people who ask such things are just taking the moral
| high ground.
| aridiculous wrote:
| Perhaps they are. Or perhaps they're just taking a moral
| position at all.
| beloch wrote:
| The crux of his justification for what he does is that, he
| argues, people wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee for services
| like youtube bundled with complete respect for their privacy.
|
| First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can pay
| for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing for
| your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see
| more ads for youtube premium (if you're not already blocking
| ads).
|
| Second, The real benefit of ads is that it lets small sites that
| might get a single one-time visit from a user monetize that
| visit. A blog with a trending post is not going to be able to
| sell micro-subscriptions to one-time users, but they can get some
| ad revenue. The only current alternative here is begging for
| donations. That takes some effort and can piss off readers.
|
| Ironically, although Kaufman mentions that micropayments are
| hard, Google is one of the few companies currently situated to
| implement them in a way that would actually improve user privacy.
| e.g. If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads
| could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off and
| replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits that
| are running Google Ads.
|
| Of course, it does seem a little bit like a mafia protection
| racket for a company devoted to invading user privacy and selling
| their data to turn around and offer to stop doing that if paid by
| users!
| robbrown451 wrote:
| "First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can
| pay for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing
| for your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely
| see more ads for youtube premium (if you're not already
| blocking ads)."
|
| This doesn't make sense. I mean, you might see ads for YouTube
| premium on other sites, but you aren't seeing them on YouTube.
| You're paying to remove ads on YouTube, not the whole web. (Nor
| does it prevent people from stalking you IRL)
| jefftk wrote:
| _> If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads
| could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off
| and replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits
| that are running Google Ads._
|
| It's not exactly what you're describing, but they've tried
| several (unsuccessful) approaches along these lines with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
|
| (speaking only for myself)
| mssundaram wrote:
| > _If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads
| could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off_
|
| That would be horrible! Data collection and sharing should be
| off by default, and I never want to see a "Premium Internet"
| experience.
| summerlight wrote:
| > First, users do not currently have that choice.
|
| Have you thought about the possibility that there actually was
| a choice and it just miserably failed. Or we can call it a
| "natural selection". One example would be
| https://contributor.google.com/, which never has gained enough
| traction since publishers don't like it. This is simply a hard
| problem. You can build another big tech if you can provide a
| meaningful, scalable alternative.
| joefkelley wrote:
| > _If you buy youtube premium you 'll very likely see more ads
| for youtube premium_
|
| Really? I have youtube premium and I can't recall seeing ads
| for it. Why would they advertise a product to people that
| already have that product?
|
| > _Google Ads could have a flag that turns it 's data
| collection/sharing off and replaces it with micropayments to
| any site that user visits that are running Google Ads._
|
| FWIW, this flag already exists, except you don't have to do
| micropayments: https://adssettings.google.com/
|
| I guess you still see ads with this setting, they're just not
| personalized. Hypothetically you could imagine a "stronger"
| setting that doesn't just do away with personalization, it does
| away with ads altogether by allowing the user to "outbid" any
| advertiser. But I suspect there will be some surprised users
| who get a bill for hundreds of dollars by doing some
| particularly high-value searches like "personal injury lawyer"
| or "mortgage" or something.
|
| And if it were a flat rate, my intuition is that the fee would
| have to be much higher than most would expect or be willing to
| pay.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I understand many of the problems with targeted ads, because
| humans' "idea immune systems" are not great and easily
| manipulated. However I've gotten some targeted ads that I really
| really loved. One was for a baby plate that can't be flung on the
| ground and has saved me at least 50 hours in cleaning through two
| children.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The collection, cataloging, and storage of personal data is the
| issue. We can have effective ads without constantly looking over
| everyone's shoulder and documenting what they do. But obviously,
| the author sees this data collection as beneficial, I
| respectfully disagree. I left advertising because I didn't like
| what I could see on the backend.
| andrepd wrote:
| This ubiquitous and ever-growing surveillance is a catastrophe.
| But to be honest I'm against ads altogether.
| lucasnortj wrote:
| it's almost as if this guy has been asleep for the last decade
| and hasn't realised that the attention economy driven by the ad
| revenue model is destroying civilisation. I don't really care as
| humanity isn't worth saving.
| MaxwellM wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. This was a compelling argument that nudged my
| understanding in a new direction.
|
| I recently started paying creators on Patreon and subscribing to
| news outlets I wanted to support. But within a year, I realized
| that this was inefficient, I didn't like/read/watch most of the
| content that my subscriptions were supporting. As much as I
| wanted to support the content creators and quality journalism, I
| questioned the value of my subscriptions and cancelled - I felt
| like I signed up for a gym membership on Jan 1st that I wasn't
| using anymore.
|
| Ads allow me "to pay" with my attention for only the content that
| I value. I don't like ads, I generally use an ad-blocker, but I
| appreciate the post and the perspective.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Agree with all. Reposting an old comment of mine:
|
| Solving world hunger is obviously better than ads, but I'd say in
| the scheme of things tech people spend their time on, ad
| improvements is middling in importance? It's not the bottom. Good
| ad targeting means:
|
| 1) New small businesses (like Shopify stores) can reach customers
| without going through retail gatekeepers. Ask any Shopify seller,
| nothing beats FB.
|
| 2) New challenger SaaS brands can get in front of customers to
| compete with mammoth corporate brands with worse software (I see
| this all the time on my job).
|
| 3) Without good ad targeting, only bottom hanging fruit
| advertisers that appeal to the lowest common denominator can
| afford to spend. Weight loss, teeth whitening, etc. Good ad
| targeting means a better user experience with ads.
| bobdosherman wrote:
| A lot of this comes down to preferences, and my preference
| ordering would be:
|
| Ads that attempt to take me all the way from
| browsing-->discovery-->potential purchase-->purchase I view as
| always bad. Leave me alone while I'm browsing. Ads that attempt
| to take me from discovery-->potential purchase I view as ok but
| ineffective. At least throw a promo code in that ad next time,
| please and thank you. Ads that successfully take me from
| discovery-->potential purchase-->purchase I view as ok since my
| utility is higher having purchased the product given the payload
| of the ad (and I wouldn't have purchased the product having not
| gotten the ad).
|
| One thing then from my (not necessarily everyones) preferences is
| that displaying an ad to me should only potentially be done if
| the conditional probability of me being in discovery mode is
| higher than the conditional probability of me being in browsing
| mode. And then it comes down to what of me is in that
| conditioning set. Some very fuzzy anonymous slice of me, well ok.
| But better not be PI in there...
|
| But these are just my preferences, and they may not be
| representative. So there's an aggregation problem also. In
| general I'd also prefer if brands shifted the marginal marketing
| dollar towards channels where the disutility of showing me an ad
| when they estimate I'm in discovery mode but I'm actually in
| browsing mode is lowest - so (in my mind) when possible put more
| in influencer marketing versus google display network for
| instance. Ideally this preference is evident in brand's roi calcs
| so it's internalized.
| goertzen wrote:
| I pay for youtube, support some people on patreon and use an
| adblocker. But I still think ads a net positive and a clever
| solution to bootstrapping and continuing to support a relatively
| open online publishing ecosystem.
|
| Thanks for your work and sharing your thoughts jefftk!
| rpicard wrote:
| Just wanted to mention I appreciate seeing a different
| perspective here.
|
| I know there's a lot of negative reaction to it, and I can
| empathize with that because there's a long history of negative
| behavior by the advertising industry. But there's no doubt that
| there are benefits too, and seeing some nuance on HN is always a
| win.
| andrepd wrote:
| I see advertising as intrinsically immoral. So it's not only
| the privacy abuses (which are the most serious part) but
| advertising in general.
| omginternets wrote:
| I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of
| justifying their involvement in something _prima facie_ unethical
| -- in writing, no less -- and fail to address the _actual_
| ethical issue. As other have noted in comments, the problem is
| not with advertising in general, but with the specific way in
| which Google advertises.
|
| I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so
| I'm left wondering: why? What was the point of this exercise? The
| result is closer to a self-indictment than an apology.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > something _prima facie_ unethical
|
| Citation needed.
|
| You're criticizing the author for not addressing the "actual
| ethical issue", yet you yourself are failing to even state what
| you think it is.
|
| There is absolutely _zero_ societal consensus that advertising
| is unethical, in the way there _is_ a consensus that fraud or
| murder _are_.
|
| To the contrary -- there is vast _disagreement_ around the
| ethics of online advertising, delicately balancing concerns
| around societal good, access to information, funding,
| factuality, bias, tracking, privacy, and consent. The
| incredible _complexity_ of the issues involved is pretty much
| proof that there is nothing merely "prima facie" _at all_.
| dmayle wrote:
| I think the problem probably lies with the difference between
| your point of view versus his.
|
| Advertising is not 'prima facie' unethical. It's actually a
| societal good. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but if you
| can set aside your emotions with regards to the discussion, and
| view it from a distance, it's not too hard to show.
|
| To start off, I've never actually met anyone who doesn't want
| advertising at all (despite their claims). They just use the
| term advertising to refer to those kinds of advertisements they
| don't like, or find too intrusive.
|
| Advertising is, at it's base, finding a way to deliver a
| message to someone who is doing something else. Thus, getting
| rid of advertising means no more signs on buildings (yes, being
| forced to read the name of a store as you walk down the street
| is a form of advertising). Even if you were willing to accept
| how difficult this would make it to discover businesses (life
| harder for the end user), this would make it nigh impossible
| for new entrants to any market. That means that pretty much all
| commerce would be funneled into a few catch-all stores, and not
| only would the economy suffer, but consumer power would be
| greatly diminished.
|
| Advertising indirectly improves the quality of life of people
| who have more time than money. (Generally the less money you
| have in total, the more advertising benefits you.) This is
| because advertising as a source of revenue is a useful tool to
| amortize the cost of a product over many users. Free-to-watch
| TV would be mostly non-existent without advertising, not to
| mention all of the internet services like search and news; also
| consider free newspapers like the Metro or 20 Minutes.
|
| That doesn't mean that I don't understand what people really
| get worked up about. Let's forget spam and obnoxious blinking
| signs, or having to punch the monkey. It's like how knives are
| great in the hands of chefs, but not murderers. Crime is crime,
| and someone like the poster of this article is not trying to
| defend those kinds of practices.
|
| Let's get into what people tend to get really worked up about:
| customized advertising. However, it's not the customized
| advertising that really bothers people, it's the fear of abuse
| of tracking. In a world where customized advertising was
| perfected, you would see 95% less ads. Why? Every ad you see
| that isn't a match is a waste for everyone involved. The
| business doesn't want to pay, because you aren't interested,
| and the user doesn't want to see it, because it's distracting
| and wastes your time.
|
| But still, tracking, that bothers you, right? You don't want an
| advertiser to know your kink, right?
|
| Well, what if the advertiser is the store that happens to serve
| whatever your kink is? People shop in adult stores, and they
| have no problem letting the store know that they're interested
| in their wares, so clearly it's not just the stores learning
| that is the problem. The problem is the abuse. People want to
| choose who they trust to share information with, and don't wish
| to risk. But... if you're clicking on an ad from some store
| that delivers your own brand of kink, you're okay sharing that
| with them, so what's the problem?
|
| Well, as an example, maybe if you're a teacher you don't want
| your community to know that you like buying purple teddy bears
| because it might cost you your job. You're okay shopping in a
| purple teddy bear store... but if the purple teddy bear store
| had advertising that only targeted teachers, suddenly someone
| knows that you're a teacher that likes purple teddy bears, and
| you consider that dangerous.
|
| So yes, abuse is a problem. This is why advertisers actively
| engage in trying to solve the abuse problem. This is why the
| advertising industry is looking for ways to move forward.
|
| Yes, they also fight the change, because in their own eyes,
| they're trustworthy (to at least their own standards), and
| change is hard and expensive. But that doesn't make advertising
| unethical, 'prima facie' or otherwise.
| falcolas wrote:
| > the problem is not with advertising in general
|
| I disagree. Advertising is intrusive and designed to convince
| you to do things you wouldn't normally do. It's large scale
| psychological manipulation that's only considered ethical
| because we've been doing it for so long.
| Retric wrote:
| A sign outside a gas station is advertising, but it's hardly
| going to convince someone to buy a car just to buy gas from
| them or drove dramatically more.
|
| Unfortunately, more widespread and effective advertising has
| real costs that end up raising prices. Coke's premium over
| sugar water is backed up by their advertising spend.
|
| Tracking, manipulation, etc are major downsides to
| advertising. But, even purely informative adds on TV aren't
| free.
| falcolas wrote:
| "Last gas station for N miles!"
|
| Whether true or not, it will convince you to top off your
| tank, and potentially purchase some things from the shop.
| Retric wrote:
| Yet, they don't convince you to wildly increase your
| driving or top up a nearly full tank.
|
| To change how much gas you're buying in a lifetime it
| would need to change how far you drive. On the other hand
| T-Shirt advertising can convince you to buy significantly
| more clothes in a lifetime.
|
| It's a qualitative difference even if I didn't express it
| well.
| falcolas wrote:
| If you're going past a gas station, you're already
| driving - they want you to come to stop at _their_ gas
| station.
|
| > To change how much gas you're buying in a lifetime it
| would need to change how far you drive.
|
| City/state/national tourism bureaus are taking care of
| that part. With help from the automobile industry's
| marketing arm.
| Retric wrote:
| You're trying to lump different advertising together. I
| am specifically talking about gas station signs. People
| in EV's don't suddenly buy gas because they saw a large
| BP logo. That choice was made when you bought the car.
|
| It's little different than a hospital sign. People don't
| think hey there's a hospital maybe I should have this
| gaping chest wound taken care of. Which is why they end
| up as H's with a simple arrow rather than list out which
| specific hospital etc.
| jnwatson wrote:
| But so is essentially all interaction with your environment.
| Every interaction you have with essentially everyone might
| change your behavior. The only difference is the scale.
|
| The problem is that the power of targeted advertising has
| been democratized (irony intended) to allow everyone to do
| it. It is capable enough that it can end peaceful
| democracies.
| falcolas wrote:
| > But so is essentially all interaction with your
| environment
|
| My every interaction with my environment doesn't involve
| millions of trained professionals bent to the sole purpose
| of influencing my actions.
|
| Outside of ads, that is.
| antasvara wrote:
| Might be a difference of opinion, but what do you propose
| as an alternative to funding free things like news sites,
| videos on the internet, and even cable television
| channels.
|
| I'm not saying that ads are particularly ethical, but I
| struggle to think of a replacement that isn't more
| paywalls. This is an easy decision to make for people
| that have the money, but is much harder for the majority
| of Americans. A Vox article [1] estimates that this would
| add an average of $35 a month, assuming every US adult
| paid this cost (which is a bold assumption).
|
| [1]
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/24/18715421/internet-
| free-...
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| This insidious equivocating between friends recommending
| things to each-other and companies buying themselves a
| piece of your attention for profit by advertising
| apologists is pretty gross.
| chakhs wrote:
| Only if you think everyone around you is trying to deceive
| you. Ads are designed to push you into taking unreasonable
| and uninformed decisions by showing advantages only and
| amplifying them and deliberately hiding the cons.
| mbesto wrote:
| > designed to convince you to do things you wouldn't normally
| do.
|
| When I search "good USB charger" in Google and get an ad,
| click the ad and make a purchase for a USB charger, how was
| that nothing something I normally would do?
|
| There's absolutely deceptive advertising, but to pretend
| _all_ advertising is "intrusive" and "convincing you to do
| things you wouldn't normally do" is disingenuous.
| falcolas wrote:
| How much toothpaste do you use on your toothbrush?
| Something the size of a pea, or the whole length of your
| toothbrush? 'Cause all you need is the first, but most
| people do the second. Why? Ads.
|
| Why do people have such a great impression of John Deere
| tractors? To the point where there's a whole culture of
| "green iron" and other companies had huge trouble breaking
| into the market? Ads. Ads going back to childhood in the
| form of toys.
|
| Why do folks trust some brands, and not others? Why is
| brand recognition such an influential thing when it comes
| to making purchasing decisions? Why do children beg their
| parents for certain toys? Why do adults pick TGI Friday's
| over the diner next door?
|
| Ads.
|
| EDIT: I think it's worth flipping the question a bit as
| well. Why would companies pay for ads if they had no value,
| if they did not change our behavior? If we'd do something
| naturally, there would be no need for ads in the first
| place.
| mbesto wrote:
| > if they did not change our behavior? If we'd do
| something naturally, there would be no need for ads in
| the first place.
|
| How would you find a USB charger brand if you were
| unaware of any to begin with?
|
| > Why do folks trust some brands, and not others?
|
| So then why even have a brand to begin with? Are you
| suggesting we just ban all advertising altogether? When
| you start a new company, new market, new idea, then what
| would you suggest that _isn 't_ advertising for a company
| to do to explain to customers what it is you do and how
| you may help them?
| falcolas wrote:
| There is a vast world of difference between putting out
| to the public "I sell X" and following you around the
| internet to auctioning a consumer's eyeballs to the
| highest ad bidder. Or intentionally changing your
| behavior with their ads (the toothpaste one being the
| simplest to understand).
|
| Trying to conflate the two as equivalent when someone
| says "ads are toxic" in the context of the online ad
| industry is doing the argument no good.
|
| > How would you find a USB charger brand if you were
| unaware of any to begin with?
|
| Why search for a _brand_ , and not a high quality, well
| reviewed USB charger? To use the original example,
| googling for "good USB charger" and then buying one via
| an ad will not give you any guarantees that the USB
| charger is good. All it guarantees is that they paid the
| most to get your eyeballs on that particular search.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Why search for a brand, and not a high quality, well
| reviewed USB charger?
|
| This is where you lost me. You assume:
|
| 1. There is a free service that allows you to search
| products. PS - it's called Google/Amazon.
|
| 2. There is a free service that allows you to read
| product reviews. PS - it's called Google/Amazon.
|
| > To use the original example, googling for "good USB
| charger" and then buying one via an ad will not give you
| any guarantees that the USB charger is good.
|
| And please do tell me, where does this perfect search
| capability exist in the world that allows one to search
| for goods and services free from all advertising.
|
| Even a Turkish Bazaar merchant will tell you that the
| tube of toothpaste they're selling you last only a month.
| falcolas wrote:
| > where does this perfect search capability exist in the
| world that allows one to search for goods and services
| free from all advertising.
|
| That an alternative is not easily available, does not
| somehow make the existing services ethical.
|
| That said, and the mystical service is called your
| friends/family/neighbors/colleagues/etc. It ain't
| perfect, but it's remarkably effective. In the 2-300
| people in your first and second degree networks, there's
| probably a few anecdotes to help you find a good product.
|
| It even has a neat name: word of mouth.
| bozzcl wrote:
| > Why search for a _brand_ , and not a high quality, well
| reviewed USB charger?
|
| Tangent, but damn I wish reviews were reliable nowadays.
| They've fallen to deceitful practices like fake reviews,
| and are no better than advertising nowadays.
| djoldman wrote:
| If a company has a service or product they want to sell
| and no one knows about it, no one will purchase it.
|
| The minimum advertisement is essentially: "we sell ____."
|
| I guess that could be called manipulative but without it,
| I'm not sure the economy could exist.
| lurkerasdfh8 wrote:
| > only considered ethical because we've been doing it for so
| long.
|
| my take on this is to call advertisements/marketing as "lies"
| on regular conversations. "I watched a lie from nike the
| other day..."
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this,
| so I 'm left wondering: why? What was the point of this
| exercise?_
|
| I reckon it was mostly a brag about (1) how he earns over half
| a million dollars a year for inflicting this upon us all and
| (2) how much more charitable he is than most of the rest of us.
| omginternets wrote:
| I have a more charitable interpretation. My impression is
| that the author is dealing with an ethical dilemma that most
| of us have not had to contend with, and that this essay is an
| attempt to resolve it.
|
| The problem is that its selectively truthful, of course,
| which renders the whole exercise moot. Even though the author
| landed on a position in which he is not at fault, it's not
| going to buy him any peace of mind.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _I have a more charitable interpretation. My impression
| is that the author is dealing with an ethical dilemma that
| most of us have not had to contend with, and that this
| essay is an attempt to resolve it._
|
| That's a good point and I agree that the essay does attempt
| this. But with opening his piece by letting us all know
| about his huge income and hefty charitable donations, I
| felt rather overshadowed the rest of his arguments.
| bogwog wrote:
| I found it interesting that the first thing he says to defend
| his work with ads is that he gives money to charity. If you
| feel like you need to donate to charity to justify your
| actions, maybe your actions are evil? There has to be some
| level of guilt involved in that decision, at the very least.
|
| Which is to say, I don't blame him for what he does. If
| someone dangled all that money in my face I can't say I
| wouldn't be tempted to take it, even if people call me evil.
|
| However, the mental gymnastics to write an article like this
| does bother me. It's the same stuff probably everyone else in
| ads and other evil industries does to justify their actions.
| Reading something non-satirical like this makes me feel less
| good about the world.
| theptip wrote:
| > If you feel like you need to donate to charity to justify
| your actions, maybe your actions are evil?
|
| You're way off base here. The author links to the Effective
| Altruism page on "giving to earn" one link deep in:
| https://www.jefftk.com/donations
|
| This is a well established concept, the idea is that in
| many life situations you can maximize your positive impact
| by taking a well-paying job and putting that money into
| charity.
|
| So the arrow of causation is the opposite to what you are
| claiming; starting with the desire to give to charity, what
| job optimizes the amount that can be given?
|
| It's disheartening to see the cynicism that is being
| directed towards someone that is transparently advocating
| for making the world a better place, and taking the time to
| put their thinking in public to seek feedback on it.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| >If you feel like you need to donate to charity to justify
| your actions...
|
| He specifically said he doesn't do that. Did you finish the
| article?
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| I tend to agree with Bill Hicks on the subject of
| advertising and those who work in the industry:
|
| https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-
| marketing-a...
| rnicholus wrote:
| Very ironic that I had to scroll through an ad midway
| through that article.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> the first thing he says to defend his work with ads is
| that he gives money to charity_
|
| The reason that I work (as opposed to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement) is so I can
| donate, which is why I start with that piece of the
| explanation.
| bobsomers wrote:
| I don't mean to come across as too forward or rude, and
| freely admit that I know nothing about you personally.
| Thank you for making such generous contributions to
| charity!
|
| The way I look at it is like so:
|
| I think most people want to bring a net positive value to
| society. One way of doing that is working on something
| whose intrinsic value to society is neutral or nebulous
| (or just not thinking about it too hard), and
| compensating for that giving the money we make to other
| organizations that are definitely contributing
| positively. While this is better than _not_ doing so, I
| think it misses out on the leverage that exists in what
| we build vs. the money we 're paid for it.
|
| For example, despite making over $500k last year, we know
| your employer thinks you are producing _more_ value than
| that, because otherwise they wouldn 't pay you that much.
| You would be a drag on their income statement otherwise.
| What this means is that even if you donated 100% of your
| salary to charity, you still aren't taking advantage of
| the leverage of what you can _build_ , vs. the fixed
| amount you can _earn_.
|
| If instead, you choose to work on something which is
| inherently good for society, society at large benefits
| from that leverage. You might be paid less, say $200k
| instead of $500k. But since the positive value you
| produce is leveraged you could be contributing, let's
| say, $1M of positive value for society - $200k to pay you
| to live in the bay area ($800k net positive value).
|
| Just something to think about.
| jefftk wrote:
| Minor aside: I don't live in the Bay Area and I'm really
| glad not to!
| megaman821 wrote:
| You are contributing 100% of the value to the person, but
| it is really the person and the situation.
|
| If I increase online sales by 0.1% through optimizing
| something, I am worth millions of dollars to Amazon and
| nearly nothing to Joe Schmoe with a small Shopify site.
| bobsomers wrote:
| > If I increase online sales by 0.1% through optimizing
| something, I am worth millions of dollars to Amazon and
| nearly nothing to Joe Schmoe with a small Shopify site.
|
| Yes, but software skills are fairly fungible. Just
| because you currently work on ads doesn't mean that's all
| your skills are good for, or even that you need to work
| anywhere in ecommerce.
| burkaman wrote:
| People aren't asking you "why do you choose to work on
| ads rather than not work at all", they're asking "why do
| you work on ads rather than a different area". In that
| context, the fact that you work to donate is not
| relevant, since you could switch to a different area and
| continue to donate.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Few areas pay as well, and someone's gonna do it. This is
| a rational way to maximize his capacity to influence his
| world as much as possible.
|
| Let's not blame engineers for what is effectively a
| political issue. If ads are an issue, let's get the law
| to handle it.
| burkaman wrote:
| Engineers are not somehow separate from society. When you
| say "let's get the law to handle it", that "us" includes
| engineers. Politics is just people, including engineers,
| figuring out how to organize society.
|
| If you think something is wrong, the first step is to not
| do it. If you think it's so wrong it should be illegal,
| you can take the optional second step of trying to change
| the law.
|
| There are some circumstances where you think something is
| wrong, but not doing it would be impossible or require
| really drastic life changes. For example, maybe you think
| driving a gas-powered car is wrong because it contributes
| to climate change, but you can't afford to buy an
| electric car or move somewhere that doesn't require a
| car. This is not one of those cases. The author has 10
| years of experience at Google and could easily find a
| very well paying job either at another department inside
| Google, or at another company.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| > The author has 10 years of experience at Google and
| could easily find a very well paying job either at
| another department inside Google, or at another company.
|
| My point is that quitting or getting a different job
| accomplishes nothing. With a multinational corporation
| like Google, they will never struggle to fill roles. If
| you work in these positions, you at least have influence
| on product growth, and you can use the massive amount of
| money earned to lobby against harmful behavior. If you
| quit, you have no internal influence and have less money
| to take political action with, meaning the only way you
| could change things is through legislation.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> he earns over half a million dollars a year_
|
| nit: that's my family's joint income. My individual income is
| at https://www.jefftk.com/money
|
| (I've been putting my income online since 2008 when my salary
| was $65k. https://www.jefftk.com/p/salary-publicy for why I
| think more people should share their incomes.)
| senbarryobama wrote:
| Did you have a competing offer to get those sign on RSUs at
| Google?
| solipsism wrote:
| This comes across as incredibly salty. If the arguments are
| bad, explain why. Or don't.
| ma2rten wrote:
| Have you considered that people might have different world
| views?
|
| Some might find
|
| 1. all advertising unethical
|
| 2. targeted advertising unethical
|
| 3. not consider advertising unethical
|
| 4. consider the product that is being advertised
| apetrovic wrote:
| The second paragraph begins with how much the author gives to
| charity. So I'm assuming that the author is very aware about
| ethic questions, and the whole piece is about painting the
| whole privacy intruding industry that dominates the entire
| world in pinkish colors.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes, and in this he contradicts himself because that
| statement is a tacit admission of the ethical problems, yet
| the rest is basically a justification of all of it.
| br3akaway wrote:
| The advertising industry is bad enough that it's not
| necessary to exaggerate by saying things like "dominates the
| entire world". Unless you do indeed mean that, in which case,
| how do you define it?
| floatrock wrote:
| Sounded like buying indulgences to me.
|
| "My sins are forgiven as long as I tithe some of my profits".
| Buys your way out of the issue, doesn't change the lifestyle.
| loeg wrote:
| He'd have more take-home income if he worked outside of ad-
| tech and didn't give 50% of income to charity. So from a
| utilitarian perspective, I think I'm basically fine with
| this? Even if ads are "evil" (I am skeptical), they are
| very much a first-world problem compared with major global
| problems like malaria, clean drinking water, and hygienic
| bathrooms.
| floatrock wrote:
| The trick to the utilitarian calculation is to include
| the externalities of all the work he's putting in -- an
| engineer's salary is only a subset of the value they
| create for the company.
|
| The question is really how do you count all that excess
| "value", and is it good-value or evil-value. Once upon a
| time, the culture over there explicitly stated that they
| didn't want it to be evil... the bikeshedding going on
| here is opinions about the current implications of it
| all.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> fail to address the actual ethical issue_
|
| Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical
| issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different
| ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure
| which one is yours?
| beervirus wrote:
| Spying on users. Running code they didn't ask for on _their_
| computers to spy on them.
| fastball wrote:
| Did you not read the second half of the article?
| beervirus wrote:
| I read it. It's great that he's working on something that
| is alleged to be a little less horrible. Doesn't make it
| good, or even acceptable.
| fastball wrote:
| Well until you have a better alternative...
| beervirus wrote:
| Ad blockers and legislation.
| austincheney wrote:
| Exactly. The greatest problem with ads isn't the horrible code
| or even the resource consuming stalking. Those are just
| symptoms of something long decayed and separated from reality.
|
| The biggest problem is that you are shipping and forcing
| something users, in most cases, don't want. It's like
| pornography and illicit drugs in that yes eventually there are
| some beneficial edge case side effects, but almost universally
| it is bad. In order to increase market penetration you must
| become more bad and simultaneously sell it as a positive.
|
| This isn't a universal truth. Users are willing to accept
| advertising as a payment in exchange for media or something
| similar. This isn't evil so long as it isn't violating privacy,
| is immediately apparent without deception, and is voluntarily
| accepted by the audience.
| solipsism wrote:
| <deleted for being dumb>
| notsobig wrote:
| This would be an appropriate place to disclose your glaring
| conflict of interest.
| omginternets wrote:
| Huh? The _prima facie_ part means "at first glance". I
| deliberately chose that turn of phrase to suggest that it
| might prove _not_ to be unethical, on closer inspection.
|
| The problem, of course, is that this closer inspection didn't
| happen.
| solipsism wrote:
| Yeah you're right. Sorry!
| omginternets wrote:
| No worries, my friend :)
| blablabla123 wrote:
| To be fair it's not that ads are making anyone physically
| suffer. It might be an annoyance for some people or even
| considered a privacy threat. But it's not undisputed. That
| said, when I was a kid with no credit card ads were the only
| possibility to register a domain, host a website or for that
| matter even receive a fax. ;)
| jollybean wrote:
| "involvement in something prima facie unethical" - except that
| it's not.
|
| Ads are the consumers choice. Given a choice between paying for
| something or ads, they will chose the ads. So they get ads.
| That's mostly why we are where we are.
|
| Many of the negative externalisatons are a matter of
| application, moreover, there are a variety of opinions on what
| is appropriate and not. For example, I don't care if Facebook
| uses my behaviour _on Facebook_ to decide what ads to run, as
| long as that is otherwise anonymous, private and protected.
| Others will have differing opinions but I think most regular
| Americans, Europeans etc. have a variety of views but mostly
| not centred around the notion that ads are inherently evil.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Ok, what is the actual ethical issue? Who are Google and
| Facebook hurting with their ad targeting and data collection?
| DoctorNick wrote:
| It's written more for the benefit of the author than anyone
| else.
| drcongo wrote:
| As the person who originally asked "why" I feel like I ought to
| respond, though much of it is covered by other comments. I used
| to work in more trad advertising, so my question wasn't so much
| an objection to working in advertising itself, but specifically
| Google's version of advertising, which I see as gross overreach
| into people's personal lives.
|
| In other comments people have mentioned YouTube subscriptions as
| being an alternative, it really isn't - OK, you don't see any
| adverts, but they're still harvesting and selling you. That a
| privately owned corporation is allowed to read your messages and
| sell what they find to the highest bidder is vile and honestly
| makes me wonder how we got here.
|
| I quit advertising after only a couple of years because it
| blackened my soul. If I was helping to harvest people's personal
| lives for private profit I can only imagine it would have been
| worse.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > That a privately owned corporation is allowed to read your
| messages and sell what they find to the highest bidder is vile
| and honestly makes me wonder how we got here.
|
| [I work at Google too, not on ads though] Could you clarify
| what you mean by this.
|
| A natural reading of these two things ("reading your messages"
| and "selling to the highest bidder") aren't true. There are
| lots of things you could mean (reading messages could mean
| reading emails, reading comments on Youtube, reading hangouts
| messages, and harvesting that data to sell ads) So I'm curious
| what things Google does that you mean by that.
|
| > you don't see any adverts, but they're still harvesting and
| selling you
|
| This is concretely untrue, even by the stretchy definitions.
| Google (and generally most ad companies) don't sell your data.
| Sometimes people mean sell your eyeballs, in that they gather
| data and then use it to sell your attention, and some people
| find that just as bad.
|
| But if you aren't seeing ads, they're not even doing that.
| There's no one they're selling anything of yours to. Not your
| data, not your attention, nothing.
| ep103 wrote:
| My understanding is this is how people felt about traditional
| advertising during the rise of Madison Avenue as well? Or at
| least, this is how it was portrayed on Mad Men : )
| tomComb wrote:
| Only a couple of years to quit something that blackened your
| soul? A couple of years is a pretty common amount of time to
| remain in a job these days.
|
| If I sound judgy there, note that you are condemning a lot of
| people. Not me, actually, but I still take issue because the
| basis of your condemnation doesn't even make sense to me...
|
| I think ads are a decent way to pay for a service and I prefer
| targeted ads to generic ads, especially since they are more
| effective (and if the idea is to pay for the service you are
| using, that is relevant).
|
| So the issue is the data, and so the fact that Google has never
| sold or lost their user's data - you seem to imply otherwise -
| is extremely relevant, and is why I'm OK with them storing my
| data. In this industry that is very rare, and yet you consider
| Google the worst - I'm having a hard time squaring that.
| notJim wrote:
| I'm not sure why traditional advertising should get a pass
| here. Traditional advertising finds whatever fears and
| insecurities you have and exploits them to sell you stuff. If
| you're worried you're not manly enough, better buy an $80k
| truck with at least a V-6. If you're worried you're not a good
| enough parent, better give your kids some sugary crap.
| Exploiting people's psychology like this is also an overreach.
| DogOnTheWeb wrote:
| Do you have a position on a better alternative business model,
| or do you feel that a service like YouTube shouldn't exist?
|
| It seems to me that YouTube and many of the ad-supported
| services out there provide broad benefits to people, and I am
| swayed by OPs point that a regressively priced business model
| which restricts these benefits to the global rich is a greater
| disservice.
| andrepd wrote:
| > Do you have a position on a better alternative business
| model
|
| Sure! Thanks for asking. One idea I like is this: you pay a
| small, fixed subscription on top of your internet bill. This
| amount is then given proportionally to the services you
| visit.
|
| This is nice for several reasons: even a small amount (~3-5$)
| gives a similar or higher revenue for content creators than
| ads do (a very rough back-of-the-envelope estimate based on
| youtube CPM). Plus, there's no problem with the friction of
| paying for things: you pay the same, regardless of watching 1
| or 1000 videos (the netflix model, the cable tv model, heck
| any subscription model). Plus of course: no ads :)
| Datsundere wrote:
| Ads should not exist period. Youtube worked without ads
| before and it can work without ads. I don't need to be
| paying a premium to use a service.
|
| Why are ads the way to generate revenue? Like I don't care
| about buying a coffee grinder. Ads not only help contribute
| to needless purchases but also directly affect the
| environment cause of that.
| nl wrote:
| YouTube never worked before ads.
|
| Prior to Google's purchase they were running at a massive
| loss, burning investment money. That's not working by any
| normal definition.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Youtube only existed without ads for around a year. It's
| not clear that a youtube post, say 2008, could exist
| without ads or a subscription fee.
|
| [0]: You can see what those looked like here
| https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/youtube-website.
| Youtube added its first advertisements in mid 2007.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I think the catch is the amount would be 10-20x what you're
| estimating. FB makes something like $10/user/month by
| itself.
| nyczomg wrote:
| I disagree completely with the author's point that the ad
| model is not regressive. The author points out correctly that
| charging everyone some $ is regressive, because for some
| people that amount of money is a lot, and for others that is
| a little. Totally makes sense.
|
| Then, we go on to ads. Ads charge everyone a similar amount
| of bandwidth, attention, etc. But you know what? Some people
| who have more resources or knowhow will understand how to
| block ads. And they probably won't be paying by the MB on a
| crappy cell phone plan such that they spend their money on
| bandwidth to load the ads, while the content they want to
| read languishes below the fold of the ads and they struggle
| to navigate to it on their crappy device struggling to render
| ads.
|
| The costs are more abstract than when paying in actual
| dollars, but surely we can recognize that the cost of ad
| supported web pages is also not felt evenly by everyone. As a
| privileged software engineer, I can guarantee you that the
| impact of "paying" for things with ads is felt far less by me
| than many others. That is regressive in my opinion.
| bnralt wrote:
| > The costs are more abstract than when paying in actual
| dollars
|
| Keep in mind people are still paying in actual dollars.
| Companies spend money on advertisement because they want
| something in return, and that comes from the people being
| targeted from the ads. I wouldn't be surprised if the poor
| end up paying much more than the rich in the end. It might
| even be more regressive than a subscription model.
|
| Also worth noting that their are other negative
| externalities as well. Health for example - the poor tend
| to have a much worse diet that leads to bad health
| conditions, and there's likely a large connection between
| this and the advertisements for unhealthy products.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| This article is really attacking a straw man. I don't know many
| people who think advertising _per se_ is morally objectionable
| (annoying, yes).
|
| What many people find reprehensible is all the invasive spyware
| and tracking that comes with modern ad tech (largely pioneered by
| Google).
| fsociety wrote:
| Lots of people do. When I joined Facebook, I received several
| death threats from someone in my circle and routinely get
| called morally bankrupt on the internet. I've also had
| encounters with individuals where they shun me after learning I
| worked there. Surprisingly it doesn't bother me, they are
| overgeneralizing and don't know me.. but certainly they find it
| morally objectionable.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I don't know many people who think advertising per se is
| morally objectionable_
|
| Lots of people do. E.g. the first user feedback comment in that
| article: _" Advertising is bad because it's fundamentally about
| influencing people to do things they wouldn't do otherwise.
| [...]"_
|
| And every HN thread about advertising also has a variation of
| that sentiment.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I think that's a relatively small group compared to the group
| that thinks advertising is fine, while tracking isn't.
|
| Arguing that advertising is somehow inappropriate
| manipulation isn't consistent with a market economy. Like it
| or not, efficient markets require marketing. Now, you could
| be against the market economy of course, but I don't see a
| lot of the people claiming ads are manipulation also claiming
| that the market economy is bad (which imo would be more
| intellectually honest).
|
| I'd say disregard the "all ads are bad" crowd. It's a
| completely uninteresting discussion. The interesting
| discussion is the line to be drawn between advertising (which
| is good, or at least acceptable) and the shady side of adtech
| with trading in personal information.
| qsort wrote:
| One can believe things to be bad or to have negative
| externalities without calling for a wholesale ban. I find
| all ads reprehensible but I completely agree that banning
| ads would be impractical and probably effectively
| impossible. I don't see a contradiction.
|
| > efficient markets require marketing
|
| The problem with ads is that they fundamentally violate
| consent. I can't avoid seeing an ad, even if I'm not
| interested. Ads are not the equivalent of a salesman who's
| pitching his script to me, they are like an unsolicited
| robocall.
| ksec wrote:
| >This article is really attacking a straw man.
|
| I wish that was the case, but it is not.
|
| >And every HN thread about advertising also has a variation
| of that sentiment.
|
| And it is not just on HN, but across the Internet. Reddit,
| Forum, Twitter.
|
| Their voice are crystal clear, All ads are bad. And any
| objection will.... well you know the internet.
|
| It is the same with tracking. Somehow all tracking are bad on
| the internet.
|
| Another recent example on the Internet. All VCs are bad. (
| Although that didn't gain much traction )
|
| Edit: See, Instant downvoting. And if you disagree, go on to
| read all the comments on HN on the subject and count for
| yourself how many comments were there to support resonable
| "ads", and how many were flat out dismissal.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| You're dismissing the reasoned arguments against the
| fundamental value proposition of advertisements without
| argument against the reasons themselves, which is
| essentially flamebait.
| the_af wrote:
| I agree, this is a common (and justified) sentiment.
|
| I had a high school teacher give us a book about print
| advertising (this was way before the internet was a common
| thing) and how it deceives. How they sell cars with sexy
| women, how instead of selling a _product_ they sell an
| unrelated _image of success_ (which is not really tied to the
| product). It was a nice book, with lots of photos and
| examples, and all about how advertisement is designed to
| deceive and encourage a "need" that wasn't there before.
| supersrdjan wrote:
| Actually advertising works best when it exploits the needs
| and desires you already feel. The farther away it gets from
| those, the more expensive it gets. That said, ever since
| the sixties it does sell things based on people's need to
| project their status and image, as a way of defining
| oneself to the outside world. People buy things for what
| the thing does, plus what owning and using the thing says
| about your personality. And people seem to be prone to
| accept these symbolic identifications less critically then
| they do performance claims about what the product does. Bob
| Dylan said it best: Advertising signs that
| con you\ Into thinking you're the one\ That can
| do what's never been done\ That can win what's never
| been won\ Meantime life outside goes on All
| around you
|
| But umm, I don't think it's always a bad thing. Or rather,
| it's not bad by default.
| the_af wrote:
| I agree. The point is that many people, including Bob
| Dylan, my high school teacher and many others seem to
| think advertisement purposefully misleads (or exploits)
| in order to sell. I tend to (partially) side with this
| opinion myself, but that's not the main point of my
| comment.
|
| I'm supporting jasode's comment that _lots_ of people do
| consider advertising morally objectionable. I believe
| this assertion is not controversial regardless of what
| one personally thinks about ads.
| fogihujy wrote:
| * Tracking without consent
|
| * Wasting large amounts of resources
|
| * Potential security risks (js ads with malware is a thing)
|
| * Potentially gathers a lot of data that could be abused by
| others
|
| Contextual ads aren't _that_ bad, assuming they're simple
| enough to not run actual code on the client devices, and the
| clients can spare the bandwidth/resources in their end. Until
| that's universally true ads are a nuisance at best and actively
| hostile at worst.
| [deleted]
| jedimastert wrote:
| > I don't know many people who think advertising per se is
| morally objectionable (annoying, yes).
|
| Tbh, that kinda seems like a minority opinion (that I share,
| but still) around these parts
| wzdd wrote:
| > Paywalls. You pay with your money.
|
| > Ads. You pay with your attention.
|
| Pretty disingenuous. Ads: You pay with your attention, and,
| ultimately, either your money or the money of someone who trusts
| you. This is only not the case to the extent that advertising
| doesn't actually work, in which case the ethical problems have
| not stopped for this person.
| nairoz wrote:
| Indeed, in the full picture there must be someone paying and
| making this advertising profitable.
|
| If ads were not working, I don't know where this money would
| go.
| cm2012 wrote:
| They work by connecting people to products they're interested
| in.
| marketchair wrote:
| Its a trope at this point, but a major point missed by the author
| is opportunity cost. Haven't we reached a point where optimizing
| that many basis points of incremental sales isn't worth what new
| solutions we could build with all these engineers' time?
| fossuser wrote:
| Ads are a corrupting influence on the web - the issue with
| framing this as more open access compared to for-pay services is
| that it sidesteps how the model corrupts the content of the
| services itself. There are the data collection and privacy issues
| as well, but it's the corruption of the content that's a really
| serious destructive force. In the end you can't even pay for the
| original non-ad supported content anymore because the content
| itself is an ad created entirely for the purpose of driving
| engagement. (There are some exceptions to this e.g. Substack).
|
| It also corrupts what products get built because the incentives
| between the users of the software and the funders of the software
| are not aligned (even though ad devs pretend they are by
| pretending users like relevant ads). To test if users truly find
| 'relevant ads' as value-add: make two products, one with ads and
| one without and charge for the one _with_ ads - see how many
| people buy it.
|
| Why doesn't Hulu charge more many for their streaming service
| _with_ ads instead of their service without? The behavior of
| these companies suggests they know on some level this value-add
| nonsense is a rationalization. Even if you say it 's only value-
| add when compared to un-targeted ads - let users choose to have
| un-targeted ads without giving up their data privacy. I'd bet
| money on what choice they'd make.
|
| The truth is targeted ads work and make enormous amounts of money
| for the ad companies - that's why they do them. The twisted
| narratives of why this is actually good for people or society are
| just another example that there is no limit to humanity's ability
| to rationalize anything when it's in their interest to do so.
|
| --
|
| ""In the beginning not everyone tended to their free data farms.
| Many did not know what to do with them, some only planted one or
| two tweets and then abandoned them entirely. This disappointed
| the earls of our kingdom. If they don't encourage growth, their
| share of the data harvest is smaller, there's no one to hear
| their pronouncements, and all of the land they spent time
| cultivating is wasted. They realized that not only do they need
| to make the land easy to cultivate, but they need to make the
| serfs want to cultivate it. They experimented for a while and
| learned that new types of controversial, viciously competitive
| crops are great for encouraging data farming - they call this
| type of encouragement 'engagement'.""
|
| https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...
| gfodor wrote:
| > I see ads as a force for good
|
| > I feel OK about working on it because I give half my salary to
| charity
|
| Cognitive dissonance that occurs _between sentences_ is
| particularly hilarious.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I notice immediately two main points are wrong:
|
| > Minimal friction.
|
| Fair enough when the site had one ad. Pretty much no site had one
| ad now. They have lots of them, which is significantly slowing
| down loading the page. And if you add all tracking and
| surveillance code, it can inflate a simple site into megabytes of
| data. There are common sites that load literally hundreds of
| outside URLs for ad and surveillance mechanics.
|
| Which brings us to point 2:
|
| > Non-regressive. Paywalls, like other fixed costs, are
| regressive
|
| Ad costs are regressive too - if you have weak computer and low
| bw connection, if your connection is unstable or expensive, if
| your only internet device is a mobile phone with less than
| excellent bandwidth - which is commonly the case in low income
| communities - then the last thing you want is to be hit with
| megabytes of ad data which have zero relationship to what you
| want to get. Of course, for people sitting on optical gigabit
| networks with latest-greatest hardware their employer paid for is
| not much of a problem...
|
| If it was just a paid service, you could work out a deal - maybe
| it could be cheaper for your country, or have some kind of
| library or per-provider setup that could make it easier for you
| to get to it - but you don't have this option, it's megabytes of
| ad everywhere.
| andrepd wrote:
| Also regarding regressivity: poorer and/or less informed people
| are more at-risk for predatory advertising: think scratch
| lotteries, payday loans, etc. Also of course the "YOU HAVE
| [241] VIRUSES DETECTED, DOWNLOAD SUPER CLEANER SX"
| version_five wrote:
| > Ad costs are regressive too
|
| Not to mention how they disproportionately affect "non tech
| savvy" groups. I almost never see ads, especially not the
| really obnoxious ones, and I imagine it's the same for most
| people here. Meanwhile elderly people are being inundated with
| ads that look like forms and buttons and warnings, and getting
| tricked into doing who knows what. Even if that's not
| financially regressive, it still has an outsized impact that is
| worse for groups that are already having a harder time of it.
| adamqureshi wrote:
| I have a 1 man shop start up ( marketplace) and i charge an
| upfront fee to list. The very fist thing an interested party asks
| me is, what isn't free to list? The big boys platform in this
| space make it free to list and they make money from ads. A small
| time guy like me in a niche market has to charge an upfront fee
| to pay to put food on the table for my family and i don't run ads
| on my site and i don't use cookies. Most people are so USED to
| free that it's a shock to them i charge a fee to list on my site.
| Advertising has SHAPED their behavior. Thats my 2 cents. I have
| been in business since 2016. Never ran third party ads on my
| site.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Paywalls. You pay with your money. > Ads. You pay with your
| attention
|
| If you work on ads that only take my _attention_ then you work on
| good ads, and I completely support that. If, however, you feel
| that your ads must try to pinpoint my identity by harvesting
| personal information in the name of "targeting" or "fraud
| prevention", then that's no longer me paying with my attention,
| it's me paying with my privacy and integrity.
| version_five wrote:
| I didnt see anything about what I consider to be the major
| drawback of an ad- driven internet: the content you get skews
| heavily toward attention grabbing crap instead of anything with
| deeper value. There are exceptions, but advertising incentives
| clicks and views, and perverts what could be a great information
| sharing medium, making it all about outrage, escalation, yelling
| the loudest or framing things in the most provocative way
| possible.
| samfisher83 wrote:
| According to the sec disclosures the 3 highest paying tech
| companies are Google, Splunk, and Facebook. They all happen to be
| among the 10 best paying public companies in America. 2 of the 3
| are almost completely funded by ad money.
| yosito wrote:
| I'm surprised that I've never heard of Splunk. I tried to
| understand the company's core business model, but I couldn't
| get past all the buzz words on their website.
| decasteve wrote:
| If I'm trying to read, watch, or listen to something of a
| thoughtful nature, something that requires my utmost attention to
| grasp or process, and reflect upon it, ads are destructive. They
| destroy the experience and slow or limit the learning process. If
| everything we do is interrupted, it's an attack on our thoughts
| and disrespectful of our time.
|
| Our Internet experiences are becoming Ray Bradbury's worst
| nightmare, interspersed with its "Denham's Dentifrice" ads and
| Facebook Mildreds everywhere.
| luxpir wrote:
| I wonder if something like the radio/royalty model wouldn't work
| as a replacement for ads. You pay ISP, they are the "radio
| station" playing what you want to hear, they pay micropayments to
| all the sites you visited proportionally.
|
| I can immediately see significant issues (user data, managing
| payments, admin, biggest sites get bigger etc.) but if there's a
| market demand for a new model, it wouldn't even have to be
| regulated initially. It could be a feature offered by an
| innovative ISP. A sort of patron model for general browsing.
|
| My 2 cents fwiw.
| jefftk wrote:
| It is common for people to only have one option for a fast ISP.
| I would be scared about a world in which monopoly ISPs had that
| kind of power.
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| The late great Bill Hicks perfectly summarized my feelings
| towards advertisers/marketers.
|
| There is nothing wrong with ads per-say, it is the real time
| bidding and targeted ads that I have problems with.
|
| And of course malvertising such as the one which compromised my
| sisters laptop with a fileless rootkit a few years back.
|
| Ads and analytics are not allowed on my home network.
| nwsm wrote:
| Can you quote Bill directly or a give a link to what you're
| talking about?
| dang wrote:
| Pretty sure Bill thought there was something wrong with ads per
| se. No?
| andrepd wrote:
| This whole post assumes the only options which can conceivably
| exist for monetising content are: (1) ads, or (2) paying for
| single pageviews (and (3) doing it for free). Obviously this is a
| fallacy: there are numerous alternative ways to do things.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Maybe you could list ones you think could work...? I've heard
| several proposed, none of them make a lot of sense to me.
| Patreon? Government grants? Or what?
| Kranar wrote:
| The article states the two options:
|
| Paywalls vs. ads.
|
| Now it's not that those are the only two conceivable options,
| it's that those are the only two options that are reasonably
| successful at scale.
|
| I'm sure you could think up a donation system, or do something
| similar to what the Brave browser does, but those do not scale.
| Of course if you have some alternative approaches that work and
| produce viable business models, it would be great to hear them.
| andrepd wrote:
| What do you mean by "scale" in this context? I fail to see
| how, having not tried alternative approaches, you conclude
| that they do not "scale".
| Kranar wrote:
| Can you please answer the question about the specific
| alternative approaches you are proposing?
| ryan93 wrote:
| So google should give up 180 Billion in revenue because
| some idea you cant name might work?
| tpoacher wrote:
| Of course ads are not inherently evil in a black-and-white
| manner. Like knifes. Or guns. Still need to be regulated though,
| as left unchecked can cause great harm. And currently we see more
| harm than good from this model.
|
| I think the author is simply vieweing this as a binary issue due
| to cognitive dissonance / moral disengagement.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| _I give half of what I earn to the most effective charities I can
| find_
|
| That's not at all justification for practices that harm society,
| especially when that harm takes fewer resources to achieve than
| charity donations can make up for. It's like saying "I'm willing
| to work for a company with massive pollution because I donate
| some of my salary to Greenpeace."
|
| Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but the fact that the
| author put this justification first is an implicit admission that
| they feel what they do is wrong in some way and try to offset it
| with donations.
|
| _The thing is, I think advertising is positive_
|
| It is difficult to think otherwise about something attached to
| your paycheck
|
| _I think advertising is positive... if I 'm causing harm through
| my work I would like to know about it._
|
| One really great example of harm is propaganda delivered via
| political attack ads that polarize the population by provoking
| anger, fear, and hatred.
|
| _Ads. You pay with your attention._
|
| You aren't given a choice in most cases to choose attention or
| $$. You also pay with more than attention: your privacy, personal
| data, and tracking of online actions. Many off-line actions can
| also be tracked by purchasing data from other sources and
| matching to the data collected online.
|
| _Non-regressive_
|
| This would be a better point if many media outlets didn't still
| use paywalls and ads together
| hermesfeet wrote:
| Thanks for laying out your logic.
|
| I work in the ads business at FB. I do so because I personally
| like ads and my biggest gripe is that ads are not relevant and
| personalized enough. I want better ads.
|
| Ultimately ads support a robust ecosystem of free software and
| content that keeps many creators going. Consumers can also choose
| to buy their software and content, or donate, but most don't.
| Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads are
| almost free (a small attention cost).
|
| I think people comparing ads to guns, plagues, and locusts need
| to check their own values. Ads support free stuff for the poor
| and middle classes. Rich coastal elites can tell themselves they
| will pay for everything, and that's great (most don't). Most
| consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news
| subscriptions. Ad models fill out the spectrum of options.
|
| Is the current ads ecosystem perfect? Clearly not. There's a lot
| we need to do to educate users, get consent, and increase control
| and transparency. On the flip side, this needs to be simple and
| easy: consent needs to be an understandable and low friction
| process to avoid consent fatigue. They are also plenty of privacy
| enhancing technologies like differential privacy and local
| caching to deal with data sharing issues.
|
| If you hate ads, lean into that. Don't work for adtech, block all
| your ads, pay for everything. I support you and respect that! I
| just think it's mean and shortsighted to think that everyone else
| is like you and to aggressively attack adtech engineers,
| platforms, businesses, and the billions of consumers who aren't
| as rich as you and will happily watch ads to get free stuff. The
| internet is great because a lot of high quality stuff like
| software, news, videos, etc is free for anyone, anywhere. Ads
| make that possible and I'm proud of it.
| sophacles wrote:
| > I think people comparing ads to guns, plagues, and locusts
| need to check their own values. Ads support free stuff for the
| poor and middle classes.
|
| Until i can ACTUALLY opt out by paying money, you need to get
| off your high horse. My data is clearly more valuable to you
| than my dollars - otherwise I'd have a choice.
|
| > If you hate ads, lean into that. Don't work for adtech, block
| all your ads, pay for everything. I support you and respect
| that!
|
| I do, pls continue to support me by:
|
| 1. making it possible to not have my data constantly collected
| and sold by facebook in exchange for dollars.
|
| 2. Stop tracking me after my account has been deleted.
|
| 3. Stop acting like you are part of something good while I
| don't have a "no surveilance" option. Until then, YOU are the
| problem.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > Ads support free stuff for the poor and middle classes. Rich
| coastal elites can tell themselves they will pay for
| everything, and that's great (most don't).
|
| Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy their
| way out of ads?
| filoleg wrote:
| >Why doesn't FB offer a "premium" tier for people to buy
| their way out of ads?
|
| Warning: here goes my armchair theory.
|
| Because as soon as you put a price tag on it, people will
| instantly see that they can actually get that "premium" tier
| for free by using an adblocker, which will lead to more
| people using adblockers.
|
| If something is just free, most people don't really care for
| it. But if it is something that is free while it is normally
| not free, people will flock to it. Just think about random
| just that people wouldn't care to buy normally, but end up
| buying it because it is on a "90% off sale" (even if the
| "sale" price is the same as it would've been without a
| "sale").
|
| Which sort of makes sense with FB, because you get a clear
| price tag attached and you feel bad for spending those money,
| when you can get the exact same experience "for free".
| elzbardico wrote:
| A think this is a brilliant hypothesis. It makes a lot of
| sense
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Except you can't really do this with FB - they serve the
| ads from the same place they serve the content. AFAIK, ad
| blocking in FB/IG/WA doesn't work except on Desktop?
| npunt wrote:
| Ads pit platform owners against their users because their
| incentives drive platforms to employ addictive designs that
| prey on psychological weakness to maximize user time on site.
| This is the fundamental misalignment that drives a lot of
| downstream effects.
|
| On the other hand, a fixed fee would cap the incentive to push
| the upper bounds of user time on site, thereby respecting users
| time and inherent interest in whatever platforms offer, absent
| addictive designs that try to alter that inherent interest.
|
| Features that nag you to invite people into groups, add non-
| friends via PYMK, push low quality notifications to reengage,
| show you outrage-inducing content, push you to constantly
| engage or share private details of your life, check out related
| groups and drive you deeper down rabbit holes, etc wouldn't
| have the same oxygen if the fixed fee model was used. And a
| service to chat with and find out what your friends were up to
| wouldn't be costly at scale; likely pennies per month [1].
|
| I appreciate your thoughtful comment and the logic you've laid
| out but disagree. I believe we've settled on a lucrative, low
| friction, easy to implement incentive model with ads but it is
| far far from the ideal model with way too many negative
| externalities.
|
| Note this only goes for ad models with unlimited appetite for
| user time. I wouldn't have a problem with ad models that have
| an upper bounds, eg 5 ad impressions a day max.
|
| [1] see: WhatsApp $1/yr model prior to FB acquisition
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I started hearing the idea that people wanted more personalized
| ads when I joined an ad tech company, and I have only heard it
| since from people working in the space. It doesn't seem to be
| an idea that normal people voice.
|
| I have heard the opposite, which is people getting creeped out
| due to things like getting ads for infant products before
| they've told their family they're pregnant (presumably
| inference from browsing).
| klelatti wrote:
| > Despite their whining, most people want free stuff, and ads
| are almost free (a small attention cost).
|
| > Most consumers cannot afford to pay for software or news
| subscriptions.
|
| > Don't work for adtech, block all your ads, pay for
| everything.
|
| All this is false.
|
| Growth hacking has created products that are addictive and
| which people don't really need. These are then justified by
| saying that consumers can't afford to pay for them (fact is
| that they wouldn't do because deep down they know they're not
| worth much). And in the meantime society suffers the
| consequences whilst FB etc profits hugely.
| analog31 wrote:
| Is it really conceivable that the Web would have been stillborn
| without ads, or with limits to the externalities of ads? Does
| "software will eat the world" only mean "software will eat the
| world if it can sell ads?"
|
| I'm pretty sure ads don't support the cell phone industry, or
| at least didn't support its exponential growth phase, yet the
| middle class and poor have cell phones.
| [deleted]
| thrwaeasddsaf wrote:
| For me the first big disagreement begins with asking for what's
| the alternative. I don't think there needs to be an alternative.
| I think ads are largely responsible for the sorry state of the
| seo spammed web where finding what you want can be a complete
| nightmare. (It costs almost nothing to run a website, and if you
| spam enough ~zero cost sites loaded with ads and affiliate links,
| you can probably make a buck. This prospect just encourages spam
| and low effort sites.)
|
| I don't care one bit if ad supported sites just vanish, no need
| for an alternative. Yes please, clean up the web. What's left is
| the stuff that is worth enough for people to pay for.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Ironically, nowadays it is becoming difficult even to find a
| specific product that you wanted to buy.
| discmonkey wrote:
| Just to add a little data from personal experience... About 4
| years back I ran a small study in grad school where I was
| trying to find some alternative to ads. For a survey I
| basically asked "how much would you be willing to pay to view
| websites without ads".
|
| I bucketed the responses to something along the lines of
| greater than $1, $.75, $.5, $.25, $.01 or nothing.
|
| What I was (secretly) hoping was that people would be willing
| to pay something like a cent for a page view, since I was
| building a prototype for a more user friendly anti-adblocker,
| seeing that many websites started to deploy their own back
| then, and hating that there was no middle ground.
|
| However, what I found was that people were unwilling to pay
| anything for a page view. I think the author actually mentions
| this as a failed alternative model.
|
| Point being it really seems like people have decided/agreed
| that they prefer the ad model to anything else. Even if it
| means that the cost of serving ads is actually higher (in terms
| of bandwidth) than what it would cost to just pay a cent or two
| cents or whatever for pageviews.
| thrwaeasddsaf wrote:
| > Point being it really seems like people have decided/agreed
| that they prefer the ad model to anything else.
|
| I'm not sure how you mean this but what you say comes
| dangerously close to implying that people want ads. That may
| be true if you force them into a false dichotomy (pay or have
| ads).
|
| I think it's more just that people don't want to pay. If it's
| on the web, they read it for free, period. If it's not on the
| web, then it isn't and they don't read it. If you look at it
| from this perspective, ads aren't even part of the
| discussion. I think people prefer the "someone pays for it"
| model to anything else.
|
| The dichotomy is only real if you construct a hypothetical
| scenario about some ad-or-paywall site that absolutely must
| exist and that people absolutely want to read and for which
| no alternative can emerge if that site stops existing.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I think you're missing that content creators (whether they
| be small or large) need to be able to subsist off of their
| work.
|
| This is especially true if we want high quality content. So
| the dichotomy is only false if you assume people are
| willing to accept "stop consuming content" which, by and
| large, they aren't.
| klelatti wrote:
| How many content creators are fully supported by ads? All
| the material I read says that is probably the worst way
| of trying to earn a living as a content creator.
|
| Seems to me that creators are getting a dreadful deal
| from the current set up and that FB etc are the ones
| gaining massively.
| bnralt wrote:
| The best content I get these days are from people who
| create content for free (hobbyists with personal sites,
| discussions on web forums, ad free podcasts, etc.).
| Getting rid of ads would make this content a lot easier
| to find, as it would get rid of all the SEO spam that
| clutters up the internet at the moment.
| version_five wrote:
| Most of the time I browse on my phone. If I'm on e.g. HN
| and I click a link, and I get a 3/4 page cookie
| notification, or if Intercom pops up a bubble over half the
| phone, I usually just close the page and don't bother. I
| think this backs up what you are saying, so much content
| isnt pay or watch ads, its "I'll glance at it but really I
| dont care enough about it even to dismiss a popup". This is
| very different from physical or service purchases. As I
| said in another comment, its "browsing".
| the8bit wrote:
| If you remove pay models, a vast majority of the internet
| will just disappear. (I think you) in a previous comment
| mention that it is 'cheap' to run a site, which is
| generally true on a per user basis for primarily text
| sites. But cheap != free.
|
| I see it often, but it is honestly the most laughably
| selfish opinion to believe that one should be entitled to
| the internet as it exists today, but also not pay directly
| or indirectly to be able to use those services.
| version_five wrote:
| I don't think you could expect people to start paying by page
| for the "content" on the web as it is now after 25 years of
| evolution under an ad funded model.
|
| People pay for an internet connection, and e.g. will pay more
| to get a faster connection or higher quota. There is value,
| its just not in the casual attention model that the ad driven
| internet has developed. Even the term "browser" implies how
| we interact with most content, and to me doesn't evoke "I'll
| pay by the page"
|
| A partial parallel is radio. Would you pay for local FM radio
| without ads? Unlikely, but some might pay for satellite radio
| because of the bundled content and national accessibility.
| And even more would pay for spotify. These are not just the
| old radio with ads swapped for direct cash, they provide
| something better. Paid internet will have to be the same.
| yubiox wrote:
| You don't address the issues that most ads are scams and it is
| possible to accidentally click ads. I recently asked google for
| directions to a new (to me) dentist while on vacation in Hawaii.
| As I started driving to the other side of the island I realized
| maps not taking me to the right town. Turns out apparently
| another dentist somehow made a scam ad so if you search for
| directions to the correct dentist it takes you to the scammer
| dentist instead. This is just one example of many. Screw ads and
| those who enable them.
| Bellamy wrote:
| 1. Good points. There is no better alternative available.
|
| 2. There are worst jobs to have like working for the auto
| industry.
|
| 3. He's definitely a better person than I am with better values.
| Who gives 50% earned to charity?
| efa wrote:
| >>Who gives 50% earned to charity?
|
| Perhaps some. But I'm sure they don't brag to the world about
| it.
| jefftk wrote:
| More people should: https://www.jefftk.com/p/make-your-
| giving-public
|
| (Written years before I started on ads at Google)
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Can you advocate for doing an ethical thing like that and not
| have it be considered bragging? I've often wondered about how
| to encourage others to give more, volunteer more.
|
| If I don't do those things (or don't claim to), people will
| say, "Why should I do that? You don't do that! Hypocrite."
|
| If I do those things, people will say, "You are just
| bragging/virtue signaling."
| pb7 wrote:
| Both are defense mechanisms to prevent any responsibility
| to do something themselves.
| djoldman wrote:
| I find it interesting how ethics seems to play a large part in
| the discussion about ads and big tech in general on HN.
|
| _Putting aside the privacy and PII concerns_ , it seems like
| there is a large contingent of HN'ers who are uncomfortable with
| the idea that websites/apps are addictive or manipulative or
| otherwise take advantage of flaws in human nature. For instance:
| we like shiny things with lots of colors/movement, we generally
| leave things on default, we engage with hate/dissent more readily
| than other things, etc.
|
| Many HN'ers seem to be uncomfortable with this even if the people
| using these websites/apps are adults.
|
| This seems to fly directly in the face of another seemingly wide-
| held opinion: that the rights of an individual to make their own
| choices should not be abridged, regardless of what those choices
| are, who they are, what they believe in, etc. as long as they are
| adults.
|
| I wonder how these two beliefs coexist although perhaps I've
| misread the room.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Individuals absolutely have rights to do what they want, but
| only as far as those things don't have a negative impact on
| others. Pretty much the central kernel of libertarian
| philosophy, which, as we all know, HN loves.
|
| But dark patterns undermine that kind of personal choice. Think
| of Facebook hiding the "delete my account" page so that you
| _literally cannot navigate to it through the UI_ -- you need to
| have a link to that page. Doesn 't that erode my autonomy to
| decide when I want to delete my account?
|
| Similarly, software like Windows 10, my LinkedIn profile,
| Firefox settings, macOS/iOS options, and plenty of others that
| decide to conveniently forget my _explicitly chosen_ opt-out
| settings when an update comes in. Hiding behind the veil of
| "it's hard to test every possible option during an update!" to
| justify pushing folks back to the happy path where those
| companies get to collect more data.
|
| So I ask you: do dark patterns actually let you make "your own
| choices"? If I give you a multiple choice test, and you have
| the option to submit an "other" option on any question, but you
| have to mail in your text for the "other" option, jump through
| hoops, and I might forget to actually count your option... do
| you really have the choice?
| djoldman wrote:
| Good points.
|
| > But dark patterns undermine that kind of personal choice.
| Think of Facebook hiding the "delete my account" page so that
| you literally cannot navigate to it through the UI -- you
| need to have a link to that page. Doesn't that erode my
| autonomy to decide when I want to delete my account?
|
| >Similarly, software like Windows 10, my LinkedIn profile,
| Firefox settings, macOS/iOS options, and plenty of others
| that decide to conveniently forget my explicitly chosen opt-
| out settings when an update comes in. Hiding behind the veil
| of "it's hard to test every possible option during an
| update!" to justify pushing folks back to the happy path
| where those companies get to collect more data.
|
| One response may be: you are not required to use any of the
| above services, so the choice is perhaps better described as
| between using (or leaving/disabling) a service with attendant
| friction, or not at all. If you don't like the service, don't
| use it.
|
| I completely understand not being happy with a service. There
| are more than a few that I don't like, so I don't use them.
|
| Now, if a company is going to such extreme measures that the
| activity can well be described as fraud, that's a different
| matter. That should be stopped and I think most would agree.
|
| > If I give you a multiple choice test, and you have the
| option to submit an "other" option on any question, but you
| have to mail in your text for the "other" option, jump
| through hoops, and I might forget to actually count your
| option... do you really have the choice?
|
| I think this may be a false comparison. I'm not required to
| take your test, so if I don't want to, I'll just throw it
| out. If I think the potential benefits outweigh the friction
| imposed by mailing it, then I may do it.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I think I (mostly) agree with you on this, with one caveat:
| network effects. If my friends and family and local
| businesses and community groups all use Facebook to
| organize events, plan socialization, announce things... I'm
| sort of trapped into using Facebook, because there's no
| alternate way to get that information! Now, I've done the
| cost/benefit analysis myself and actually ditched Facebook
| a couple of years ago. But that gives me even more insight
| into just how many things I _can 't_ do because I don't use
| Facebook.
|
| Perhaps a better comparison would be a multiple choice test
| that's a requirement to do something you really want to do
| -- scuba diving, or renting a bike to ride around a
| national park, something like that. Sure, it's not
| essential. But it sounds fun, and you could question the
| necessity of the test in the first place. But the test
| needs you to submit your name, birthdate, address, and
| answer a bunch of personal questions about your interests
| before you can do the fun thing. At some point, you feel
| like you're being taken advantage of.
| djoldman wrote:
| I totally agree with you on the potential abuse of
| network effects.
|
| However, if the problem is a network effect like you
| describe, I would say that the it is grounded in
| monopoly/oligopoly exploitation. I think it is separate
| from the discussion of advertising and manipulative
| content.
| makecheck wrote:
| Ads are bad because of their implementation, not as a concept.
|
| The "alternatives" are not paywalls vs. ads, the alternative is
| to be a less awful ad provider.
|
| Unintrusive text is fine. Static images without flashy animations
| are fine. Even watching something like a funny TV commercial is
| great because it seems worth the time.
|
| Yet somewhere along the line, somebody decided it was "fine" to
| shove overlays in my face, stubbornly keep things in place during
| scrolling, auto-playing sound, etc. And all that crap is before
| even factoring in the gigabytes of bandwidth _stolen_ from me to
| download and run JavaScript that ultimately serves to be a creepy
| stalker around the Internet.
|
| So feel free to work on ads without shame as long as the ads you
| work on aren't shameless.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| Working in adtech and trying to convince yourself (and others)
| you are doing the world a favor is a real equilibrium exercise.
|
| The false dichotomy between ads/paywall is not really useful,
| when the reality is that you often get a paywall _and_ ads after
| you agree to pay. The advertisement industry is a cancerous
| blight of our societies, its sole purpose is to sell us stuff we
| do not need to increase a company's profit. The fact that this is
| done on the web by plundering our personal data with no regard
| for our privacy is just the cherry on top. Ads business is
| unhinged capitalism and a social and ecological disaster, and
| advocating in its favor today is short-sighted at best.
|
| It's fine to work a job you like in an unethical industry, but it
| is not necessary to try to sell it to other people.
| fooblat wrote:
| Ads are fine.
|
| Trying every way possible to track and record every second of my
| life online and in the physical world is evil.
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| > The question is, what is the alternative? I see two main
| funding models: / Paywalls. You pay with your money. / Ads. You
| pay with your attention.
|
| There's also the alternative-which-must-not-be-named, which is
| non-regressive and frictionless: socialism. You pay with money,
| through taxes.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| "ads are good" is a red herring. i don't object to ads, but i
| find google's chokehold on the ad market abhorrent, becuase it
| becomes excusionary, both for publishers and advertisers. Google
| is thus able to impose e.g. moral codes on what is allowed to be
| advertised and what content is allowed to be monetized. The
| solution is indeed micropayments and they exist, like brave.
|
| Another drawback of the ad-supported model is that it has created
| a very pervasive culture of unaccountability. Google has terrible
| user support because they truly don't care about users - they 'll
| keep making money regardless of what their users think and
| there's no way for users to vote with their feet (practically --
| after all google gatekeeps all their address bars).
| PedroBatista wrote:
| This could be the same as "Why I work on Healthcare".
|
| There's a wide range from honest honorable work to complete
| scumbag devil.
| creata wrote:
| > but what about all those sites that don't have a strong
| commercial tie-in?
|
| Surely it's okay for sites that "don't have a commercial tie-in"
| to stick with untargeted ads? I just think that building a giant
| stalking network is an extreme (and ideally illegal) solution to
| the "problem" that a couple of sites won't make as much money off
| their popularity as they'd like.
|
| And is it _that_ uncharitable to characterize what Facebook and
| Google are building as a giant stalking network?
| the8bit wrote:
| Each ad serve is not worth that much to start with, facebooks
| CPMs are about $7-8, so they are getting $0.007 per serve with
| extensive targeting. The falloff is something around 10x+ for
| completely non targeted ads which for most sites push them
| below the level of economic feasibility.
|
| This is also why if you stumble into some parts of the web,
| they vomit out a billion ads per page to try and compensate.
|
| Really the problem is that there is a tremendous gap between
| the costs to serve content and users willingness to pay (either
| directly or via any indirect method). It is a tremendously deep
| hole we've built with freemium models that will probably
| require some level of societal agreement to dig back out of.
| vim1234 wrote:
| I think what HN community is missing is that tech jobs can allow
| you to pay for all these services if possible, but most of the
| world especially the developing world, is not capable of paying
| for the content. If everything was behind paywalls, internet
| would be for the rich guys who can afford paying for these
| services. To make it free and equal for all, ads are the
| necessarily evil, according to me.
| notsobig wrote:
| Not only do you spend your day job helping to clutter our web
| experience, suck up our personal data, and track us across the
| web, but you want to spend your free time whoring out your blog
| to us to try to justify the career choice you feel guilty about?
|
| Just stop. We get one chance on earth, do something of value.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post denunciatory rhetoric to HN. It's the most
| tedious thing on the internet, and we're trying for something
| at least a little bit better here.
|
| Lord knows there are loads of problems to worry about, but
| damaging the community you're participating in is
| counterproductive.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mycologos wrote:
| This comment seems much more venomous than it needs to be?
| notsobig wrote:
| I mean look, my goal is to communicate to the engineers
| involved in this business that they are responsible for the
| product they work on, and the monster they've created. People
| working for G and fb have options. If they choose to continue
| to work for these companies for great personal gain, at the
| cost of exploiting and tracking their own users (basically
| half of the world population?), they are not our friends and
| I think should not be treated as such. I don't want to play
| nice and read your blog and validate you, I want you to stop
| making the world a worse place.
|
| Why do we grant them such a generous separation of
| work/personal life? They spend their day screwing us over, in
| the evening we all sing kumbaya? There's been no
| accountability.
|
| Yes, my message is not going to bathe them in the positivity
| sunshine they've likely grown accustomed to in their work
| environment echo chamber. I am okay with that. Others might
| be more successful getting through to them with their slider
| closer to the carrot. I truly respect that ability, I just
| keep thinking appeasement is a failed strategy.
|
| ...I shouldn't have gone with "whoring" I suppose, sorry
| about that. I like the idea of serving your argument from
| your own site, decentralization and individuality and all
| that. But for some it's just another way to pad their resume
| to facilitate becoming more of the problem.
| version_five wrote:
| If you read about the heyday of RJ Reynolds tobacco and all
| the money they had and all the good they did for Winston-
| Salem, I think there is a big parallel. If someone wrote a
| "Why I work in big tobacco" post, talking about their
| charitable work, I don't think they'd make any friends. But
| I think order of magnitude wise, the impact on quality of
| life, mental health, public discourse, etc etc of internet
| advertising (and specifically the attention economy it
| gives rise to) will be shown to be (a) just as addictive
| and (b) as harmful as tobacco was.
|
| So I agree with you, there is no moral high ground for the
| people involved. They should be looked on no differently
| than anyone else exploiting addiction for profit.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Aren't effective ads good for society? Don't they make us
| prosperous? Jobs are created, people get cheaper goods, many
| small businesses emerge?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| How did you come to the conclusion that people get cheaper
| goods? Cost of ads has to be included in the product pricing.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Effective ads lead to better margins and easier to conduct
| mass production.
| omginternets wrote:
| You're begging the question. _Are_ they a net good? _Do_ they
| make us prosperous? _Do_ they create jobs, etc?
|
| Because there's a strong case to be made that they:
|
| - exploit the credulous, mentally-deficient and emotionally
| unstable
|
| - carry significant externalities in the form of personal data
| collection & malware
|
| - contribute to psychological distress (anxiety, degraded sense
| of self-worth, poor body image, etc)
|
| - cause financial distress by encouraging unnecessary spending
|
| - act as a vector for selling harmful products (tobacco,
| predatory loans, etc.)
|
| etc.
|
| If you want to take the consequentialist approach, you have to
| contend with these questions as well. You'll also have to admit
| that the net balance is unclear at best.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Yeah, there are people who overshop, I'm sorry, but so what?
| What's the alternative? Ban ads? Let the government decide
| what should be sold / not sold? I believe it should be left
| to the individual what they consume and buy with their own
| earned money. No one has the right to say that they can't buy
| tobacco, or take a predatory loan.
|
| "personal data collection & malware" - you agree to those
| conditions. In return you get amazing free products. Don't
| want that? There are many alternatives (Linux, Chromium /
| Firefox, duckduckgo, telegram and other alternative open-
| source products).
| omginternets wrote:
| The point, which you (deliberately?) miss, is that you have
| simply declared ads to be worthwhile, and are now working
| backwards to argue your conclusion. You are begging the
| question.
| whitepaint wrote:
| I gave the reasons why I think ads are good.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Jobs are not necessarily good for society, nor are cheaper
| goods. We could have dirt cheap asbestos and cigarettes, that's
| not good for society. We can have billions of jobs making and
| filling dirt holes, that's also not good for society.
|
| That aside, the effectiveness of ads are orthogonal to the
| quality or "good"-ness of jobs and products. They just seem, to
| me, like more of an amoral thing that can be used to sell
| something else, good or bad.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Free markets don't work like that. We would only be having
| billions of jobs filling dirt holes if it produced more value
| to the society than it extracted it from.
| sfink wrote:
| No, we would have those jobs if they produced more value to
| whoever is asking for those holes to be dug.
|
| And that's the reality we presently live in. It's not
| holes, it's watching ads and reading things that aren't
| worth our time and buying things that don't provide us
| value. Click on a link, dig a hole. Read the mindless
| alarm-inducing article, fill the hole in.
| whitepaint wrote:
| > No, we would have those jobs if they produced more
| value to whoever is asking for those holes to be dug.
|
| Can you provide example of businesses where employees
| produce value just for the owners of the business but not
| the society in general?
|
| > And that's the reality we presently live in. It's not
| holes, it's watching ads and reading things that aren't
| worth our time and buying things that don't provide us
| value. Click on a link, dig a hole. Read the mindless
| alarm-inducing article, fill the hole in.
|
| What are you proposing? That some entity tells what to
| read, what to buy, what to do? Why not just leave it to
| individuals to figure it out?
| isoskeles wrote:
| I'm mainly responding to the part of your comment noting
| jobs created and cheaper goods as an intrinsically net
| positive ("good") for society. I agree that the free market
| does not tend to create completely useless jobs, but such
| jobs can and do exist in a society. Most economies are not
| simply free markets, many are partly directed or interfered
| with (depending on your perspective) by governments. This
| can result in some pointless jobs
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make-work_job) or mis-
| allocation of resources toward less productive work (e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra).
|
| Or, let's say the jobs created are for producing more
| cigarettes and asbestos. Do you think that producing more
| cigarettes and asbestos, which requires more jobs, is
| "good" for society?
| secondcoming wrote:
| I work in adtech. The actual ads themselves aside, the backend
| part of it ticks all the tech boxes:
|
| - high QPS feeds
|
| - massive volumes of data
|
| - interesting problems to solve everyday
|
| It's an industry that doesn't stand still.
| brettermeier wrote:
| Sell your soul XD
| titzer wrote:
| The article completely misses it. I used to work at Google, too,
| in Ads (the organization), but not _on_ Ads. Most of the people I
| know were pretty focused on building their little corner of tech
| to accomplish a particular technical feat (implement a datastore,
| find bad ads, etc). None of the people I met were evil money-
| grubber types.
|
| But there was a certain reality-distortion field that only
| becomes apparent when stepping out of it.
|
| Ads exist in order to _sell your attention_ to the highest
| bidder. Ads exist to support an _exponentially growing_ tech
| giant 's goals of infinite growth. Ads exist to keep a snowball
| snowballing. There is _no ads business_ on Earth today that is
| focused on "just keeping the lights on". So the amount of ads
| that are out there just keeps increasing. Ads are creeping into
| every corner of life.
|
| Just take Google search. If you look at the amount of
| computational resources that it takes Google to run search for
| today's internet, it takes X dollars. But Google's revenues are
| literally _5_ X, if not _10_ or _20_. Google is sucking down a
| huge ton of money that is going to growth and funding zillions of
| other things...that will also eventually get ads, like Maps,
| reviews, YouTube, etc. Second, this "X dollars to run search" we
| are talking about is probably somewhere between 10 and 100 times
| what was required just a few short years ago. So we are talking
| about throwing 100 or 200 times--maybe even 1000, just look at
| the racks of Google made from legos from 1999!--the amount of
| computational power at a problem than it really needs, and that's
| to support the advertising market that Google has created in
| order to support search.
|
| If Google websearch were a non-profit, I think it would require
| less than a billion dollars to run every year. For perspective,
| the United States Federal Government spent over $85 billion on
| the SNAP (food stamps) program last year.
|
| So, instead of spending pocket change on a public utility that
| gives everyone access to "organized, universally accessible" (to
| borrow Google's mission statement) information, we have this
| behemoth focused on generating hundreds of billions of dollars in
| revenue that just accidentally happens to have a massive
| influence over _everything we see_.
|
| You work on ads, Jeff? You've clearly done a lot of thinking as
| to why that's great. Me? I bowed out of the entity trying to
| attach a tacky flyer for Ovaltine to every book, magazine, news
| article, and video clip I see. I bowed out of an entity whose
| main existence is apparently to mediate every interaction I have
| with a computer--or another person--and insert advertising into.
|
| I'm actually really sick of ads!
| k__ wrote:
| _" I give half of what I earn to the most effective charities I
| can find, and the more I earn the more I can give."_
|
| It makes me sick to read this garbage.
|
| This charity bullshit is what too many rich people hide behind to
| rationalize the crap they do to humanity.
|
| Bezos and Gates destroyed so much good on their way up, they will
| never be able to buy themselves out with charity.
|
| Same goes for the author of that article. It's nice that they
| want to help people in need, but doing so by shitting on the rest
| of humanity certainly isn't the best way to do this.
| TimPC wrote:
| I find this genuinely hard to believe about Gates. There is a
| lot not to like about Microsoft but I find it hard to believe
| the net good of who wins in technology is going to be larger
| than projects like curing Polio, effective sanitation in places
| that don't have it, all kinds of energy technology to fight
| global warming and so much more. I'm not saying Bill Gates is a
| good person or that his actions since redeem bad business
| practices at Microsoft, but in terms of net good done in the
| world it's hard for me to believe we haven't come out ahead.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I get really annoyed when folks like Gates, Bezos, Bloomberg,
| etc. trumpet all of the money they've donated to charity
| efforts (that conveniently often end up putting their name all
| over the place for extra mindshare/reputation). Of course it's
| amazing that these folks donate billions of dollars! But they
| also hoard tens of billions of dollars in investment accounts,
| stock, multiple homes... so is it really much of a sacrifice?
| There's actually an interesting Bible passage on this very
| subject: "20:45 While all the people were
| listening, Jesus said to his disciples, 'Beware of the
| teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes
| and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most
| important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at
| banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make
| lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.'
| 21:1 As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts
| into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in
| two very small copper coins. 'I tell you the truth,' he
| said, 'this poor widow has put in more than all the others.
| All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she
| out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.'" (Luke
| 20:45-21:4, NIV)
| publiccharity wrote:
| Who Would Win?
|
| The common ethic of humility forged over millennia
|
| OR
|
| One Cambridge ads boi
| savanaly wrote:
| Being a good person isn't about summing the good and bad parts
| of your life. Good deeds can't erase bad ones, but they also
| aren't invalidated by them. Be thankful for whatever good
| someone does and also demand apology, restitution, and the
| promise to do better for the bad that they do.
| dang wrote:
| You can't attack someone else like that on this site. Perhaps
| you don't feel that you owe $person better, but you do owe this
| community, which you're part of, better.
|
| Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| and make your substantive points thoughtfully in the future--
| without flamebait or name-calling.
|
| The underlying point about charity is a fine one, by the way--
| but personally attacking the author is not fine.
| k__ wrote:
| I never attacked them personally.
|
| I told my opinion about their work and writing.
| dang wrote:
| For internet purposes, telling someone that they're
| "shitting on humanity" counts as a personal attack in my
| book. But if you don't perceive it that way, that's fine;
| it will suffice to avoid flamebait and name-calling in the
| future.
| [deleted]
| sweetheart wrote:
| Do you actually think this is garbage and bullshit, or do you
| think that maybe you're feeling a little insecure that someone
| is donating a _lot_ of money to good causes, and you're
| comparing yourself to them?
|
| Genuinely not saying you are, but it's a very common
| subconscious reaction, and definitely worth investigating. When
| we see someone who appears to be taking the moral high road
| (however you define it), we feel the need to tear them down.
| Because that way we don't need to feel bad about _not_ doing
| the thing.
| savanaly wrote:
| Yeah I find myself asking why is this person indescribably
| angry about someone working in ads and then donating hundreds
| of thousands to charity when there are tens (hundreds? across
| the world?) of thousands of folks out there working in ads
| donating zilch. It's an emotional response not a logical one
| to get mad at the OP like that.
| tailrecursion wrote:
| The problem I see is that the advertising business enables free
| services such as Google and Youtube, Facebook, Twitter to
| dominate. It's even more difficult for a potential competitor to
| gain users when competing against a free service. Another is the
| spying and tracking, which are apparently vital for these big
| companies to grow.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Yeah I'd imagine it's pretty hard to compete for high quality
| free services which are used by billions of people. Is this
| supposed to be a bad thing?
| celticninja wrote:
| I don't even need to read the article, it's money right, it's
| always money.
|
| Sure he probably goes into paragraphs about other reasons or what
| he does with the money, but it boils down to money. The author
| chose to sell his/her time to an advertising company. Thats OK,
| we all need to work. But I dont need a blog post from them to
| justify their choice, they arent making me think more of them.
| They might make themselves feel better but it boils down to they
| chose to do something not great for more money, than choosing
| something more worthwhile for less money.
|
| The sad bit is the amount they would earn not in advertising
| probably would not be much below what they currently earn. But
| they still made that choice and they have to live with it.
| move-on-by wrote:
| Ads are fine. I don't like them, but they are fine. Targeted ads
| are fine too. I don't like them either, but they are fine.
|
| The privacy invading tactics used to drive those targeted ads are
| not fine. They are abusive, manipulative, and covert. I am not in
| Europe, so perhaps I'm bias, but I also don't see regulation of
| the data collection industry via the GDPR as improving the
| situation much. It seems to have just moved the goal posts for
| being more manipulative to gain permission. From my totally
| outsider point-of-view it seems the only way to effectively limit
| this privacy-invading data collection is to regulate how the data
| can be used vs. the collection itself. Heavily regulating the ad
| targeting itself vs. the data collection would mean even if you
| did collect the data, it loses its value to the advertisers. This
| also allows more legitimate data collection such as error
| reporting to continue as-is without the burden of extra
| regulation.
|
| Anyways, that is my point of view on it. I would be interested to
| hear other's opinions on it, perhaps from those in industry.
| jurschreuder wrote:
| The alternative is to pay 20ct a year not $10 a month
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Why I Work on Ads:
|
| money.
| lupire wrote:
| People wo believe that "tool makers aren't responsible for how
| the tool is misused" (for example, with cryptocurrency), do you
| feel the same way about adtech?
| wink wrote:
| As much as I hate to defend adtech, I think it's unfair to
| generalize a whole industry.
|
| A company I worked for was more in the business of improving
| targeting. Of course people will argue if targeting
| demographics is bad per se, or better or worse than other
| parts, but I personally don't care if I get generic ads or ones
| tailored to me. So for one of our main product, we were
| reselling and integrating some data for a bigger player, as in,
| we were 1 of many data points determining if the ad would be
| interesting for the person who would see the ad or if they'd
| give them another one.
|
| Yes, it kind of gets into this angle of privacy and user
| tracking... but I'm ok with the scope we did it in and I
| thought hard about if I can accept this without a guilty
| conscience - but for example I'd never knowingly work on trying
| to bombard the user with even more ads, or popups, or whatever
| - but just saying "ads shouldn't exist" is maybe aspirational
| but sadly I don't see it as a valid version of reality in the
| foreseeable future.
| pydry wrote:
| Legally it makes a big difference whether a tool is designed
| with the specific purpose of being abused or whether it is
| incidental.
|
| I think morally that's correct as well.
|
| Cryptocurrency is a weird one you bring up coz I don't think
| anybody is proposing hunting down and jailing Satoshi even if
| they think Bitcoin ought to be banned.
| qsort wrote:
| I find all ads reprehensible regardless of tracking and yes, I
| believe adtech engineers aren't responsible for that.
| Specifically, author of OP doesn't have to justify himself. He
| enjoys his job and I'm happy for him.
|
| Blaming technicians for the negative externalities of their
| industries is a dark path. Are we going to blame lawyers who
| defend rapists? General Motors assembly-line workers? Engineers
| who work for oil companies?
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _Are we going to blame lawyers who defend rapists?_
|
| Only if such lawyers are unethical in how they go about doing
| this.
|
| Lawyers who defend accused rapists are a necessity for a
| well-functioning justice system. The alternative is a process
| where the accused isn't permitted a legal defence, if they're
| taken to trial for serious crimes like rape.
|
| Software engineers who spend their days forcing increasingly
| invasive advertising technology upon us all are not
| necessary. For the most part, we'd all be better off if they
| all downed tools.
| qsort wrote:
| Are you going out of your way to give the most uncharitable
| possible interpretation of what I said? I struggle to see
| how any reasonable reader could infer that I believe what
| you wrote.
|
| The structure of the argument is: because A is equivalent
| to B and I'm not comfortable with B, then I'm not
| comfortable with A either. Resolving the let binding in the
| variables A and B is left as an exercise to the reader.
|
| EDIT: parent has been edited since this comment was
| written. Please disregard the belligerent tone, reply to
| parent no longer applies.
| creata wrote:
| > Blaming technicians for the negative externalities of their
| industries is a dark path.
|
| Disagree.
|
| > Are we going to blame lawyers who defend rapists?
|
| No, because I want there to be someone who defends that
| rapist's rights. In contrast, it's easy for me to blame a
| software engineer who's developing bad technology X, because
| I want the job of developing X to not exist.
|
| > General Motors assembly-line workers? Engineers who work
| for oil companies?
|
| Yes, but only if they have better options for earning a
| living: I can't blame anyone for not wanting to starve.
| Assembly-line workers often don't have better options, but
| software engineers usually do.
|
| This path looks pretty well-lit to me.
| lwhi wrote:
| Lawyers are essential for people accused of rape. Some will
| be accused incorrectly.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Engineers building unethical things is wildly different than
| lawyers defending rapists, because a lawyer defending a
| rapist is behaving ethically according to their career path.
|
| Software engineers agreeing to build awful shit is more like
| mechanical engineers building weapons. They should know what
| they are doing is going to cause harm and if they choose to
| do it anyways I have no issue calling them unethical.
| mbg721 wrote:
| The lawyer's defense is "by playing devil's advocate, I
| make the protection of the law more robust for everyone". A
| closer equivalent would be a system where every
| organization had white-hat hackers.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| The lawyer's defense is that, in any decent justice
| system, people have a right to a legal council and are
| presumed innocent until proven guilty.
|
| Even if they have been declared guilty of a crime in the
| past they might be innocent of this one and still have a
| right to council.
| tzs wrote:
| I heard a lawyer in an interview talking about defending
| a rapist/murdered in a small town. While eating lunch at
| the town diner a few people approached to ask how he
| could defend someone so vile.
|
| He told them about how it is important that defendants
| are presumed innocent, and that everyone gets a strong
| defense, in order to make sure that those who are
| wrongfully accused do not get wrongfully convicted.
|
| They talked about it for something like an hour, and the
| people were only sort of convinced. And his lunch got
| cold.
|
| Later, he found himself in another small town, defending
| another rapist/murdered, eating lunch in a diner and
| being asked by the people there the same question.
|
| This time he said "his family paid me $100000 to defend
| him". The crowd accepted that right away as a perfectly
| fine reason to defend some totally vile criminal, and
| went back to their lunches.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I think that amounts to the same thing; the lawyer thinks
| "This $#@& is guilty as sin, but the court has to prove
| it." Few professions have a regular test of that kind.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| A lawyer can have their whole career ruined if they are
| found throwing cases. The justice system itself finds it
| unethical if they _don 't_ prosecute or defend to the
| best of their ability.
|
| Suggesting that software somehow has that same kind of
| standard where engineers are required to build anything
| and everything they are asked to the best of their
| ability or they can lose their accreditation (as if we
| even have that in software) is absolutely absurd.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Software isn't fundamentally adversarial in the same way
| that criminal law is, but that's a fair point.
| qsort wrote:
| An engineer building effective adtech is similarly behaving
| ethically according to their own career path.
|
| Lawyers effectively defending awful clients, for example,
| managing to get them off the hook on a technicality, are
| likewise generating massive negative externalities for
| society at large.
|
| It's either both or neither, and I'm not comfortable going
| down that path.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > An engineer building effective adtech is similarly
| behaving ethically according to their own career path
|
| The phrase "Effective adtech" is really downplaying the
| amount of unethical shit involved in building it.
|
| It could be effective without turning the internet into a
| race to the bottom. It could be effective without third
| party tracking, it could be effective without vacuuming
| every bit of data possible from every source imaginable.
| It could be effective without turning every device we own
| into an ad platform.
|
| > It's either both or neither, and I'm not comfortable
| going down that path.
|
| No, its not both or neither. That's absurdly reductive to
| suggest. It is possible for lawyers to behave unethically
| in their duties, but just defending the guilty (or
| prosecuting the innocent) is not unethical on it's own.
|
| Similarly, it's possible for engineers to behave
| unethically in their duties. Just building software isn't
| unethical.
|
| Building platforms that are deliberately and
| systematically eroding our privacy in every corner of our
| lives in order to make money absolutely is unethical.
| Turning society into a corporate-controlled panopticon is
| absolutely unethical. Absolutely scumbags
| qsort wrote:
| The core of my argument is that an engineer building the
| product is performing their duty. You don't have to sell
| me on the fact that ads are bad. I hate all ads.
|
| I'm a developer myself and I've never faced the dilemma,
| but I don't feel like blaming others for not wanting to
| become judges of good and evil. Like in the case of a
| lawyer, doing your job and doing it well is in and of
| itself ethical.
|
| I really can't draw a line in the sand where adtech is
| unacceptable but $something_else is, just because I have
| such an hatred for advertisement.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > The core of my argument is that an engineer building
| the product is performing their duty
|
| This is the kind of rhetoric that is used to justify
| doing war crimes. It is absolutely not a defense of
| unethical behavior.
| version_five wrote:
| > Lawyers effectively defending awful clients, for
| example, managing to get them off the hook on a
| technicality, are likewise generating massive negative
| externalities for society at large.
|
| This is a harmful misunderstanding of how the legal
| system works. Subjecting laws and procedures to scrutiny,
| and exposing "loopholes" is exactly the role of a
| vigorous defence. The fact that the consequences for the
| state (and society) of miswriting or misapplying the law
| can be so severe is exactly what keeps the system honest.
| qsort wrote:
| I completely agree with that. My argument rests on the
| fact that I agree that lawyers should do that,
| consequences be damned.
|
| Sorry for the low signal answer, but you're the second to
| raise this objection and I wanted to clarify I don't
| actually think that.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| Very interesting point of view. My main takeaway from this is
| "Better ads than paywalls" which entails that the only
| alternative to ads is a paywall which I don't agree with. I think
| that there is a middleground with freemium, free trial model.
|
| Also there was a comment somewhere I can't find right now "There
| are 2 ways to make money in the internet - bundling and
| unbundling" with this I think there is value of a paywall that
| bundles, see Apple News. In the end I don't like the way AdTech
| works right now, I am not sure about what's next. I don't think
| explicit regulation is the way, especially since Internet is
| international and law is as a rule local. But either we will sell
| our data to monopolies or we will die in bills for selfhosting
| everything and even though involuntarily our internet histories
| will be sold.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| So I often hear that argument about other ways to make money.
| Other than a paywall what is the other way ?
| jedimastert wrote:
| > free trial model
|
| tbh kinda seems like a paywall with extra steps for buy in
| yetihehe wrote:
| There is third way - crypto mining on user computers. I would
| prefer to mine some crypto for someone instead of seeing ads.
| Biggest problem: mobile users would be much less "valuable".
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Is GPGPU feasible on WebGL? Cpu mining isn't really
| profitable even if you have a big network of "users".
| lupire wrote:
| That "paying with money" but with extra steps.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I'm all for content-only based ads that take a reasonable
| amount/location of screen space, minimal/no distracting motions,
| very low computational expenditure.
|
| How about making ad containers on a page that enforces these?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I don't think ads are bad per se, people don't like them because
| they don't like paying.
|
| No-one is forcing you to see ads and often you have the option to
| buy your way out of ads. More in general if people preferred to
| pay we see a paid alternative emerge, thanks to the nature of the
| market. The reality is that the majority of people are not
| privacy conscious and don't care as much as people in tech do.
|
| Overall, I'd be prouder to work on Google Ads, which provides
| services on a voluntary basis, than to work for the IRS or HMRC
| which impose their government's decisions on people under threat
| of fines and eventually incarceration.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >No-one is forcing you to see ads
|
| Uh? Where do you live? Where do you browse?
|
| I'm a paid subscriber to newspapers and they keep tracking me
| and emailing/notifying/displaying ads. They even share my data
| to their "partners". I can't get out of my apartment without
| seeing ad everywhere (subway, buildings, billboards...). You
| cannot escape advertising unless you completely isolate
| yourself from society.
| yosito wrote:
| I'm not OP, but I've stopped using Google products as much as
| possible, and browse the internet with Firefox and uMatrix.
| There are very few physical world ads where I live, due to
| local restrictions. The only ads I see these days are
| sponsored posts when I open Instagram, and I'm doing that
| less and less because in my experience 80% of the content on
| Instagram is either a sponsored post or cheap low-quality
| recommended posts, and only 20% are the friends that I
| follow.
|
| My point is, it's not impossible to avoid ads these days.
| gdsdfe wrote:
| Sorry but this is a bunch of BS, why work on ads? Because you get
| a big fat check at the end of the month, and that perfectly fine.
| inopinatus wrote:
| The google content marketing division are really going hard
| trying to foist this flock-of-sheep stuff.
| jarrell_mark wrote:
| I've been using scroll.com. It removes ads on many sites for $5
| per month (Vox, The Atlantic, USA Today, Kotaku, ...). Apparently
| sites make more from scroll subscribers on average than they do
| from folks seeing ads. Twitter just announced they bought scroll.
|
| As for this article, I think it is good to find a way to have
| targeted ads while preserving privacy.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I do not believe Ads are inherently evil. However there are some
| problems with the _current_ ad industry.
|
| The extreme tracking based on the mental state and identity of
| ads make them more than annoying. It is annoying to watch stupid
| ads on TV. But it is way worse when the ads are targeting my
| mental weaknesses directed directly at me. Example being how the
| Cambridge Analytica was able to make ad campaigns targeting
| _individuals_.
|
| Generalized, non-targeted ads are fine. Though I do have problems
| with ads assaulting me wherever I go. I am fine with visiting a
| website that is ad supported and getting ads on the side, but I
| am not fine with walking home and seeing ads everywhere I glance
| at. And worse when ads are formatted so much like the actual
| content to trick you into thinking you're consuming content and
| not ads. Or even worse, sponsored pushes when you don't even know
| this is an advertisement.
|
| Point is: Things cost money. Yes. But I don't think the current
| ad industry is anything other than toxic as hell.
| jasode wrote:
| The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because
| cynics just see it as a version of, _" It is difficult to get a
| man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not
| understanding it."_
|
| I will offer a contrarian opinion as a _user_ whose salary does
| not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google
| search and watching Youtube videos _works better for me as a
| consumer_.
|
| The alternative of paying $9.99/month for Youtube... or
| micropayments for each search query or a "Google Search Engine
| yearly subscription" ... or Patreon donations for video content
| ... are all _more user hostile_ for my use cases. I don 't like
| ads but they are the most friction-free way to consume a wide
| variety of content.
|
| I've been using Google Search for over 20 years _for free_ which
| is pretty amazing. Would I rather replay history and pay ~$120
| every year (~$2400 ?) to search for web articles? No.
|
| That said, there are also many corrosive aspects of advertising.
| Advertising should be open and transparent. If the business of
| ads are truthful, I will sometimes _pay to see ads_. E.g. I pay
| $10 ticket for a home & garden convention show so the
| manufacturers in booths can _advertise their wares to me_. The
| opposite and immoral idea of hidden ad tracking is Facebook
| trying to convince Apple not to show confirmation dialogs about
| ad IDFA tracking.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| If search wouldn't be free out ad-supported. Paying for it
| would be the biggest productivity boost for a developer.
|
| But people don't like to pay for software. So we alternatives.
| omginternets wrote:
| >The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because
| cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a
| man to understand something when his salary depends upon his
| not understanding it."
|
| I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for
| myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits
| of ads, and conveniently ignores the _actual_ ethical problems
| ( _e.g._ large-scale collection of personal information).
|
| In other words, I see no fresh insight and perspective in
| jefftk's writing, and worse still, it bears remarkable
| semblance to a bad-faith argument. I'm sure he is a decent
| person (really!), but this particular essay is neither
| interesting, nor particularly respectable IMHO. As a result, a
| downvote feels appropriate.
| qPM9l3XJrF wrote:
| "conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g.
| large-scale collection of personal information)."
|
| Did you read the section starting from "This model has some
| major drawbacks from a privacy perspective"?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| In the span of just a few comments in the thread below, I've
| seen people claim that the ethical problem is:
|
| 1. All ads in general.
|
| 2. Targeted advertisement, regardless of the privacy
| implications.
|
| 3. Data collection for targeted advertisement.
|
| 4. Data collection for anything.
|
| 5. Whether or not users consent to all of the above.
|
| So I don't really think it is fair for anybody to insist that
| there is a single agreed upon actual ethical problem in web
| advertising.
| ma2rten wrote:
| I don't know if it was mentioned here but another issue
| that many people have with Google specifically is it's
| perceived monopoly position and market power.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Why it has to be a single ethical problem? The industry is
| quite capable of having multiple ethical problems in
| parallel.
| summerlight wrote:
| Because it's much easier to have constructive outputs
| when you focus on a single problem with a clear
| definition. But people usually conflate multiple topics
| into single and take advantages from this intentional
| ambiguity, irrespective of whether you're a proponent or
| a critic.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Because everybody is complaining to everybody else that
| they aren't discussing the _real_ ethical problem. This
| is being pointed at OP as well as commenters. It makes
| conversations difficult to have because as soon as people
| start talking about one thing, somebody jumps in and says
| "but you aren't talking about the _real_ problem ".
| ma2rten wrote:
| I have also noticed this in other HN discussions.
| Everyone seems to assume everyone else agrees with their
| view on the topic and there is never any open discussion
| about it. Usually people just talk past each other and
| it's never pointed out.
| [deleted]
| xondono wrote:
| Yes there is, because none of what you mentioned is "the
| problem", the problem is that all these practices are
| deliberately put into practice without users consent, or by
| trying to trick users into inadvertently give consent.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I'll add that one to the list.
| jefftk wrote:
| > conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g.
| large-scale collection of personal information)*
|
| Ignores? That's what the entire second half of the post is
| about ;)
|
| Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is
| the privacy impact of targeted ads..."
| omginternets wrote:
| >Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is
| the privacy impact of targeted ads..."
|
| Yes, that's literally all you have to say on the subject.
|
| The very next paragraph is about how this helps keep ads
| relevant...
| jefftk wrote:
| _> that 's literally all you have to say on the subject_
|
| Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of
| targeted ads ("Most products are a much better fit for
| some people than others..."), then how it works today
| ("Historically, ads like this have been built on top of
| third-party cookies..."), then how it can work without
| cross-site tracking ("build browser APIs that will allow
| this kind of well-targeted advertising without sending
| your browsing history to advertisers, and then get rid of
| third-party cookies...")
| stan_rogers wrote:
| Sorry, that's still attempting to justify the
| unjustifiable. The only ethical way of targeting is
| content relevance, which allows inference of the audience
| interest without using any audience data other than what
| they're currently looking at.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> The only ethical way of targeting is content
| relevance_
|
| Why?
| shkkmo wrote:
| Targeting based on content fundemenally allows everyone
| access to ad content. It makes content providers more
| responsible for the Ads they carry. It allows me to avoid
| sites that show me bad Ads (such as mail order brides).
|
| Targeting Ads based on anything else is invasive,
| discriminatory, and enables even higher levels of
| manipulation. If I get targeted by content independent
| targeted ads, it can be almsot impossible to avoid those
| Ads as they will follow you everywhere you go.
| fastball wrote:
| Speak for yourself.
|
| Instagram gives me fantastically targeted ads, and I
| _appreciate_ that.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I'm glad you aren't vulnerable to any of the above issues
| I raise. That doesn't mean there aren't vulnerable and
| powerless people who are being hurt by this system and
| your support o it.
| fastball wrote:
| Removing personal responsibility from people is in itself
| a source of many social ills.
|
| For example think about how much better society could've
| been over the past decades if, instead of saying "people
| can't reasonably make decisions about [insert drug here]
| so we're going to illegalize all of them" we'd said "wow,
| adults can make decisions for themselves".
| shkkmo wrote:
| Personal responsibility is not an excuse for disregarding
| the suffering of others.
|
| The war on drugs was a fundementally bad approach to
| fixing the problem. If it had worked and drug use had
| dropped near zero over a decade or two, you wouldn't see
| the current level of support for ending it. There are
| other cases where removing personal choice is not
| controversial (such as seat belt laws, incarceration,
|
| In fact, the failure of the war on drugs is an argument
| against relying purely on personal responsibility to
| solve the problem. Simply punishing people and expecting
| them to learn enough about the consequences of drug use
| to make the responsibile decision to stay away failed.
|
| It turns out that sometimes to get people to a place
| where they can take full personal responsibility, it
| requires giving them some help.
|
| We should strive to avoid removing personal
| responsibility and choice. The better job we do of
| providing the tools and support needed to make good
| decisions (i.e. ones the deciser will look back on
| without regret), the more respsibility we can easily
| allow.
|
| For examole: If we do a good job of protecting amd
| treating gambling addicts, that facilitates opening up
| gambling to more people in more locations.
| qPM9l3XJrF wrote:
| "Targeting based on content fundemenally allows everyone
| access to ad content."
|
| Can you be more precise about what you mean and why the
| current system doesn't have it? You're saying that
| everyone should see ads, even ads they won't like?
| Forgive me if this isn't a hill I'm interested in dying
| on.
|
| "It makes content providers more responsible for the Ads
| they carry. It allows me to avoid sites that show me bad
| Ads (such as mail order brides)."
|
| Not in a meaningful way. If the ads are generated
| automatically based on the content, the site might not
| have much to do with it. Example: Suppose there's a
| wedding planning site, and a content-based targeting
| system notices the word "bride" on the site a lot and
| serves mail order bride ads. Yes, you could avoid the
| wedding planning site because of this, but is there any
| reason to punish them? It's not their fault.
|
| "If I get targeted by content independent targeted ads,
| it can be almsot impossible to avoid those Ads as they
| will follow you everywhere you go."
|
| Isn't there a menu that lets you select "I don't want to
| see this ad"?
| shkkmo wrote:
| You can't simulatously argue that Ads offer value to
| customers and that limiting access to those Ads to a
| certain subset of customers doesn't harm them. You have
| to pick one. There are specific areas (housing
| discrimination) where the harm is obvious enough that we
| have been able to gather sufficient support to make this
| illegal.
|
| > Yes, you could avoid the wedding planning site because
| of this, but is there any reason to punish them? It's not
| their fault.
|
| It is absolutely their fault. Content providers should
| face full responsibility for the Ads they allow to appear
| on their website.
|
| One of the ways that the current Ad targeting system is
| awful is that it allows advertisers to pretend to foist
| this responsibility onto Ad companies that are much more
| insulated from consumer blow back.
|
| > Isn't there a menu that lets you select "I don't want
| to see this ad"?
|
| Those menus often don't stop other Ads of that type from
| being shown and there is no legal obligation to do so.
| All they really do is give the advertiser more
| information about you.
|
| If the only recourse you have to abusive behavior is to
| politely ask them to stop, someone is going to keep
| abusing you to make money.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of
| targeted ads
|
| I wish that my ads would be more relevant to what I like
| especially when it comes to music. What does youtube do?
| I search for a specific video because somebody told me
| it's there. I find it and sit through the whole length of
| 50+ mins and after I'm done navigate back to the YT
| frontpage. What do I see? A recommendation of the video I
| just watched. And it'll stay there for the next 6 weeks.
|
| The other extreme for me is watching something from the
| other camp simply because I want to learn what they're
| being exposed to. In my bubble this means conservative
| stuff like videos of people debating Ayn Rand or a Jordan
| Peterson. And I swear I'll have to fight for the next 6
| months to get similar shit off my timeline. In fact it's
| easier to throw myself into the rabbit hole of watching
| Foucault, Zizek, Philosophy genre and fighting my way
| into content that is dominated by the likes of Tucker
| Carlson (and what used to be Alex Jones, Brietbart and
| others) than it is to shed the conservative label that YT
| has filed me under. And with conservative I mean
| seriously questionable stuff like Q-anon, climate change
| denying, cray-cray type of things.
|
| Because of this I now have different accounts for when I
| want to see the other side of the coin/polarization.
|
| Not sure if I should be blaming YT/Google with this since
| society is so polarized that the algorithm just reflects
| that reality. But it's not like the algo hasn't played a
| major role in creating this dystopian reality in the
| first place.
| mrblampo wrote:
| It sounds like you would be happier to see the next
| sentence get into greater detail about how targets ads
| impact privacy today. But the article does in fact do so
| (look at the paragraph that starts "This model has some
| major drawbacks..."), and the next paragraph you refer to
| ("Most products are a much better fit...") builds to that
| point by explaining why targeted ads exist at all.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I've never seen any evidence of anyone hurt by the large
| scale collection of personal data by Google and FB.
| username90 wrote:
| If you are a woman have fun seeing ads for makeup and
| fashion all the time. There is a reason female users are
| hot commodity for any ad driven company, companies are
| willing to pay way more to advertise to women.
|
| Targeted ads supports the status quo instead of exposing
| everyone to stuff they might want.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Targeted ads are _much better_ at exposing people to new
| products they could want to try than non targeted ads,
| which appeal to the lowest common denominator. You 're
| actually asking for better targeted ads for your gf
| Bancakes wrote:
| Targeted ads and analytics are not opt-in by default. This
| leads to shadow profiles and my data being handled by
| corporations I don't trust. I don't need facebook and all
| its stalkers to know where I live, for instance.
|
| Not to mention targeted ads just don't work for me. They
| always show crap I'd never use, within my domain of
| knowledge, and never show interesting things outside my
| domain. Overall I'm more than glad to block ads because I
| gain nothing from them. They are a liability. Anonymization
| I don't believe in, what's the difference between my SSN
| and a MD5 of my SSN?
| burkaman wrote:
| This is because you've never looked for the evidence. It is
| trivial to find with a 10 second search.
|
| https://www.intomore.com/you/facebook-ads-outed-me/
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2018/12/12/dear-
| tec...
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/9/21204425/targeted-
| ads...
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-
| advertisers..., https://www.propublica.org/article/hud-
| sues-facebook-housing...,
| https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-
| disc...
|
| https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/04/29/credit-
| card...
|
| https://themarkup.org/news/2021/04/13/how-facebooks-ad-
| syste...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_An
| a...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-
| scamme...
|
| etc. etc. etc.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| I checked about of half of these out and I can't take any
| of the complaints seriously. The strongest argument
| against tracking remains the moral one.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The first link is not a credible worry. Ad targeting is
| not even close to 100% accurate, no ad can out you. You
| can just brush it off.
|
| Links 2 and 3 are concerning. The FB and Google do have a
| way to stop that though - you can click an ad and say it
| doesn't interest you or you don't like it, that signal is
| insanely strong and the platforms will turn off the
| spigot.
|
| The rest is not actual harm to people, its people
| concerned about the idea of targeting being harmful.
| Cambridge Analytica was a laughable scandal btw,
| absolutely no one was actually impacted by it.
| burkaman wrote:
| Are you saying the Fair Housing Act is pointless?
| Violating it does not harm anyone and there's no reason
| to enforce it?
| cm2012 wrote:
| FB does enforce the fair housing act and other laws. The
| platform is actually quite strict nowadays and catches
| lots of innocent ads in their filters for protected
| categories. Ad platforms should follow the law, that's
| working as planned.
|
| As a side note, it's funny how people say that ads are
| terrible, but also its terrible if certain groups of
| people don't get to see ads.
| burkaman wrote:
| Same as saying that the draft is terrible, but having a
| gender-specific draft is even worse. We'd rather have no
| ads, but until that's possible, the least we can do is
| stop them from worsening social inequities.
| stevenicr wrote:
| small data points from here compared to the big lot..
|
| friend unsure about her marriage.. getting ads to sell her
| wedding ring via fbook.. they divorced 2 months later.
| Guess what the first thing she did was?
|
| A friend's father.. gambling addiction and an android phone
| - sleeps on the streets and eats via dumpsters, still keeps
| that addictive android device running.
|
| Google sending data on people to fusion centers.. maybe
| none of those people were ever hurt by that - or the
| sharing of info from location data dumps, or the vids from
| nest cams.. I would assume there is a probability that at
| least one person was hurt when actions via gun toting state
| came knocking on at least one door, maybe more - and that
| stuff 100% coming from collection of data.
|
| Just because journalists aren't interviewing these people
| to see if they were hurt, does not mean it's not happening.
|
| I have no way to opt people out of alcohol ads.. I've seen
| them so I know others have.. does a sale on the new pink-
| liqour at 10am lead someone to drink out of juice boxes
| before noon at a kid's soccer practice? I can't say for
| sure.. it's just a coincidence they are drinking the new
| advertised thing - maybe it was an ad on the liqour store
| window that did it - there won't be hard evidence there.
|
| I can think of more, but I know these are small data points
| from here. I'm glad you have not witnessed such things.
| twox2 wrote:
| IMO these are weak examples.
|
| - Are you suggesting that your friend got divorced so
| that she could sell her ring, because an ad told her she
| could sell her ring? I doubt that was the straw that
| broke the camels back.
|
| - The android phone has utility beyond it's
| addictiveness. Yes homeless people need a phone.
|
| - Re fusion centers: ads targeting data is a relatively
| shitty surveillance too, the three letter agencies have
| much better ways of collecting this data.
|
| - Targeted alcohol advertising I'll agree is an issue,
| but if you're an alcoholic, you can't really escape the
| ubiquity of alcohol everywhere.
|
| I think the adverse privacy impact of targeted
| advertising is pretty overblown, but it so happens that
| ad targeting is so effective it has the illusion of being
| surveillant. The actual data being collected is
| anonymized and not personal.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Agreed on all of this, + Facebook and Google both ban
| images of alcohol on their ad networks. Even someone
| holding a glass of wine.
| mateo411 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's not correct. As a counter example
| I've seen ads for alcohol and bars in my Facebook feed.
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| You can opt out of alcohol ads on Facebook at least. Its
| somewhere in your ad preferences
| shkkmo wrote:
| Those two are not mutually exclusive. You an ban images
| of alcohol while allowing adds for alcohol and bars (as
| long as they don't have images of alcohol.)
|
| I suspect there may different rules for different
| jurisdictions/markets which might explain differences in
| your experiences.
| mateo411 wrote:
| The ads I saw included images of alcohol.
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| Facebook at least lets you opt out of alcohol
| advertisements, its buried somewhere in your ad
| preferences settings.
| jjj1232 wrote:
| My Instagram ads seem to be laser-focused on my
| insecurities. I don't buy the shit they're selling by they
| definitely make me feel bad about myself, so mission half
| accomplished!
| ksec wrote:
| >In other words, I see no fresh insight and perspective in
| jefftk's writing,
|
| May be I am living in my bubble, but most of the site I
| visit, mostly mainstream media news in tech, along with most
| of the social media post, has a flat out dismissal of Ads in
| general.
|
| So while ads works to pay for X isn't a "fresh" insight, it
| was never really pointed out ( enough ) in most of the
| discussions. If the discussion in general was even slightly
| balanced in pros and cons, then pointing out ads do serve
| some usefulness wouldn't even be what OP labeled as
| "contrarian opinion".
|
| >and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g.
| large-scale collection of personal information).
|
| In the context of Ads. Not all ads are large-scale collection
| of personal information. Which is what FloC was ( AFAIK )
| trying to solve. As Apple did with their differential
| privacy. I often wondered if Google didn't decide to invent a
| new term called FloC and instead follow Apple and call it
| differential privacy would the backlash still be the same.
| But I think at the end of the day it is just a matter of
| trust. Whether you Trust Google or Apple. ( Or Facebook )
| safog wrote:
| > May be I am living in my bubble, but most of the site I
| visit, mostly mainstream media news in tech, along with
| most of the social media post, has a flat out dismissal of
| Ads in general.
|
| I'd apply the same logic here: "It is difficult to get a
| man to understand something when his salary depends upon
| his not understanding it."
|
| Ad supported models on news paper websites have nearly
| killed publications like NYTimes. A lot of smaller news
| papers have died. Only after the paywall model really took
| off have they been able to survive and thrive.
|
| So there's nothing you can say to the media that will
| convince them that there's value in ads.
|
| To them, ads and big tech in general are evil entities and
| must be criticized at every possible turn.
| mateo411 wrote:
| NY Times also has inventory for digital advertising. If
| you read it on the app in your phone, you will see ads.
| If you view it in a browser, with ad blocker turned off,
| you will see ads. Their revenue also comes from a
| subscription model, but they also sells ads.
| lupire wrote:
| And the subscription is mostly next they lost ads!
| Traditionally subscription fees pay for the printing and
| ads pay for the content.
| omginternets wrote:
| >a flat out dismissal of Ads in general.
|
| Yes, I agree. That is indeed another unoriginal, stale
| perspective.
|
| The question for me isn't so much whether hear from one
| side more than the other, but whether there is some new
| idea. For me, intellectual content matters much more than
| equal representation in (social) media.
|
| By this measure, the OP's post is equally trite.
|
| >In the context of Ads. Not all ads are large-scale
| collection of personal information.
|
| We're talking about Google ads here. Let's stop pretending
| otherwise.
|
| >Which is what FloC was ( AFAIK ) trying to solve.
|
| Leaving my skepticism aside for a moment, this may have
| been an opportunity for OP to provide some insight into how
| the adtech market is evolving, and make the case that it is
| headed in an ethical direction. He did not. There is no
| insight here, either.
|
| So again, I think a downvote is a pretty reasonable and
| measured response. The OP's post was unconvincing and
| cliched. No big deal. I've written plenty of stuff like
| that, myself.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> this may have been an opportunity for OP to provide
| some insight into how the adtech market is evolving, and
| make the case that it is headed in an ethical direction.
| He did not_
|
| There's a section of post with "build browser APIs that
| will allow this kind of well-targeted advertising without
| sending your browsing history to advertisers, and then
| get rid of third-party cookies"; I'm curious what you
| think of it?
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I personally am of the opinion that "targeted
| advertising" _is_ the problem.
|
| Random generic advertising is fine. It isn't as
| profitable but it doesn't exploit a person's mental
| weaknesses. Targeted advertising is straight up
| exploitation.
|
| Kids being bombarded with ads for plastic surgery
| nonestop on TikTok, radicalized individuals being
| targeted with fear-based ads. This is super toxic. And
| while advertising is a tale as old as human commerce,
| such insane targeted advertising is not.
| coding123 wrote:
| Targeted advertising is great, so long as it targets "the
| viewer of pages like this" not "this person recently went
| to all these other web sites".
|
| I think that's what ads should be - exactly like TV.
| cute_boi wrote:
| TV based advertising is also bad tbh. There used to be
| ads related to fairness cream which is effectively virtue
| signaling you should use this cream to look white and
| beautiful. And there are ads related to soft drinks
| claiming you will be strong etc.
|
| Ads sucks and it is alive due to economic incentive from
| ads. And we know where there is economic incentive its
| hard to stop (eg. bitcoin mining economic incentive)
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Those parade of horribles raise an awkward question -
| couldn't the lack of targetting of advertising make it
| even worse in several senses? We had the "punch the
| monkey/click here for viruses" in the past instead to
| monetize general targets when it was more niche. People
| forget /why/ Google won web advertising like they did.
|
| The "badness" of the ads results from the selecting
| function and what becomes sustainable and favored.
| Infamously with spam and phone calls it can include
| outright crime.
| jefftk wrote:
| I agree those are bad, but those don't seem to be unique
| to user targeting? You would have the same thing with
| contextual ads (since what page someone is on is still
| pretty correlated with generic demographics like "is a
| kid" or "is a radicalized individual")
| skinkestek wrote:
| Since you work at Google, and on ads:
|
| The insanely annoying thing that I have seen for a long
| time is that despite the fact that you have more
| information on me than anyone else the ads have been
| either useless or even insulting for years.
|
| I remember bothering to click through the microscopic x
| in tve corner and select not relevant or something on
| Thai mail order brides. What did I get next? Filipino
| mail orders brides. Out of curiosity I marked a number of
| them as not relevant and I think I also saw:
|
| - Polish
|
| - Ukrainian
|
| - Chinese
|
| - and possibly a couple of more nationalities
|
| - later I got ads for older women near me
|
| - and then gay cruises
|
| This went on for years.
|
| Last year I finally started seing ads for electronics etc
| but now I feel no remorse for blocking ads anymore.
|
| I'm just fed up.
|
| Meanwhile Facebook, for all their faults and despite me
| blocking them for far longer than Google actually has had
| interesting ads.
|
| Edit: I've nothing against Filipino or Thais or gay
| people or anyone, but I have something against scantily
| clad women etc showing up on my monitor both at work and
| at home and I think it says something about Google that
| they think _this_ was the most relevant ads they could
| show me _for years_.
| lupire wrote:
| That sounds a lot like a trojan installed in your
| browser, or perhaps someone who shares your computer has
| peculiar habits.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Across a number of machines, tablets and phones.
|
| Work and personal.
|
| Much more likely explanation IMO (someone please correct
| me if I am wrong):
|
| Google get paid by the view these days and optimize for
| the most expensive views.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| That gets tricky. But at the least it would help me not
| see radicalized ads when I am generally searching. And
| that doesn't mean ads based on my search either.
|
| Yes it doesn't drive as much engagement, but that's the
| point. Over-optimizing for engagement is a bad thing. We
| have seen repeated evidence of this.
|
| There should be general overarching categories: News
| site, food site, movie site, game site. But not "news
| site for radical right-wingers who believe in tucker
| carlson and think gun control is communism" which doesn't
| really require user tracking, but I think still falls on
| the bad side of things.
|
| "Is a kid" is interesting. There's literally laws to
| prevent children from receiving too much advertising on
| TV _for good reasons_ their brains aren't developed
| enough to counter it. But on the internet? ANYTHING GOES!
| lupire wrote:
| > news site for radical right-wingers who believe in
| tucker carlson and think gun control is communism"
|
| This is "mainstream Republican" and it's about 1.5bits of
| information after "is UA resident".
|
| Tucker is one of the most popular people in the USA.
| Aunche wrote:
| >Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only
| on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual
| ethical problems (e.g. large-scale collection of personal
| information).
|
| Most people have no issue with the collection of personal
| information in itself. They only start caring when others
| start to make money off of it. If Google completely got rid
| of ads as a revenue source and still made the exact same
| services for free, they would still collect nearly as much
| sensitive data (e.g. location tracking for better routing).
| However, a lot fewer people would care. Privacy activists
| would still exist, but I doubt that regular people bother to
| listen to them.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I disagree, if Google stopped selling Ads and still offered
| free services, it would be blantantly obvious that they
| were selling our personal information.
|
| Now, if Google spun off a non-profit foundation to offer
| those services for free without Ads, more people might
| accept trusting them with all that personal info.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| There's probably truth to that but I think it stems from
| what seems to be a quite commonly held opinion that ads are
| hostile to humans. They clutter our browsing and viewing
| experiences, not to mention our physical world. They use
| malicious tactics to steal our attention from what we would
| otherwise choose for ourselves. And the industry spends
| vast physical and intellectual resources which could almost
| certainly be spent in a more beneficial / less societally
| harmful way.
|
| So it's hardly a surprise to me that people see it as ok
| for Google to use their information to provide them a
| service like routing, but disapprove of their using that
| data to enable an industry they see as harmful. I don't
| think the problem is exclusively that Google makes money
| but rather that they make money as the kingpin of an
| industry most people feel negatively impacts their lives.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I think you are deep in a bubble if you believe that
| thinking ads are harmful is a common viewpoint in general
| instead of in niche. You won't see newspapers calling ads
| in general that way for one, they have to add targetted
| to not look like obvious flaming hypocrites.
|
| The opposing view would call "harmful" downright
| hysterical in the same way teens would nigh universally
| roll eyes at Tipper Gore's claims of music as harmful or
| Jack Chick's anything.
|
| As for claims that the effort and money at Google could
| be spent in less harmful ways? No it couldn't, not the
| money they received - except as operating as a take the
| money and run scam which hardly qualifies as less harm as
| an instant zeroing of account values. The "harm" is why
| they got the money in the first place. You have to give
| the people paying money what they want to keep receiving
| money to get what you need to fulfill the demands.
| celticninja wrote:
| I think that advertising in general, pre-internet, was
| perhaps a pain. It was unsightly to have stuff plastered all
| over buses, trains, any available space someone was trying to
| show something in your face, to get their brands name in your
| eyeline.
|
| Now they are still doing that, but they have compounded the
| awfulness, because now they track where you are visiting and
| push more of those ads in your eyeline. Switched device,
| tough, the ads do too. The advertiser now also knows who
| looked at the ad, where they came from to see the ad, where
| the left to after they saw the ad. And then what they did for
| the next 2 weeks, so now they can make sure their ad is in
| front of your eyes whenever they want because they tracked
| your browsing habits.
|
| Advertising was bad before, now it is insidious tracking and
| monitoring of users, under the pretense of advertising. /rant
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I'm only 29, but the impression I have received from my
| youth, from parental and grandparental anecdotes, and from
| photographic records is that offline advertising in at
| least Melbourne, Australia is worse than it was, with a key
| tipping period being somewhere around 15 years ago. As the
| most significant example, public transport vehicles and
| locations had no-to-minimal advertising 20 years ago; now
| they have extensive advertising surfaces, inside and out,
| and the big posters at most of the train stations cycle
| between multiple ads and blah blah blah. Awful stuff.
|
| My guess is that offline advertising has become cheaper and
| so they do more of it.
|
| I live out in the country now. There are no outdoor ads
| here. I like it.
|
| (The local weekly paper is called The Advertiser: an apt
| name, for it's about 3/4 ads. But I don't look at it. My
| life is basically completely ad-free except when I go down
| to Melbourne.)
| SirSourdough wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if the pervasiveness of online
| advertising creeping in at the fringes of our attention
| normalized an increase in the amount of ads that do this
| in the physical world.
| greggman3 wrote:
| It's funny but i actually like the ads on the trains in
| Japan and when I was visiting other countries who's
| transit systems had no ads I thought it was boring.
|
| Some of the ads are hilarious. Some are for the services
| that are not common in the USA. Nintendo has some where
| they add in a trivia Q&A, the format being,
| Question->Ad->Answer and I usually find them interesting
| and I'm often happy to learn about whatever new Nintendo
| game they are showing off. Often there are ads for
| theater plays, concerts, museum events that I only find
| out about because I saw them on the train.
|
| I also like some of the campaigns where they decorate an
| entire station or the entire train, the entire car.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Evolution has bestowed on us the great gift of Cognitive
| Dissonance. When I look at what I do on a day-to-day basis,
| there are probably a hundred things that don't align with my
| own internal belief system. The only way I don't go mad is to
| find plausible justifications for what I do.
|
| I work in a different industry with its own issues and
| impacts on the society and the environment. I try not to
| think about it and even look at the positive things to gloss
| over the bad impact.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I think it's harsh to call it a bad faith argument. Say you
| were having a conversation with jefftk, and he makes the
| points in the article. Wouldn't you just say they're the
| start of a conversation, with room to move? Also, do you
| normally downvote articles that don't have a fresh
| perspective? There's not that many things new under the sun.
|
| Anyway one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet about ads is
| that it encourages the unrestrained growth of ad space
| itself. There are just a billion articles on the internet
| written for the sole purpose of grabbing your attention and
| selling it. A lot of these sites have no real value, one of
| each ("How do I do X") on the internet would be more than
| enough. A lot of them ought to just be headlines that I can
| skip ("Man Utd interested in a teenager" would in the old
| days just say the guy's name).
|
| The real argument against the article is that the calculus of
| paywall vs ads is not quite as straightforward as proposed.
| Either mode of operation has reflexive influence on what the
| internet looks like, and that's maybe where to dig deeper for
| an argument. How do the different options encourage different
| interests to behave?
| underyx wrote:
| > ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g. large-scale
| collection of personal information)
|
| I find it ironic to see this brought up as the first example
| of problems, when this is exactly what Google's FLoC intends
| to solve. The same FLoC that has so vocally been rejected by
| HN recently.
| driverdan wrote:
| Many of us believe that targeted ads without prior opt-in
| are unethical regardless of how they're implemented.
| Creating new ways to track users without opt-in is just as
| unethical.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Unfortunately, Doubleclick/Google doesn't get the benefit
| of the doubt when declaring their intention to respect
| privacy. They burned that bridge. Many, many times.
| kerng wrote:
| The criticism of FLoC is that it makes profiling a lot
| easier because a website can access the ID with javascript.
|
| And there are also a lot of design questions remaining that
| Google hasn't answered or is not sure about.
|
| Eg. How will ad bidding work with FLoC?
|
| Finally, and most importantly as it relates to this post -
| Google pays an enormous amount of money to employees to
| spend their time and intelligence on building better
| profiling tools. Building profiling tools is something
| ethically questionable because of the damage that can be
| done.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> How will ad bidding work with FLoC?_
|
| I don't work on FLoC, but why wouldn't bidding handle it
| just like any other signal? For example, here's where it
| is in the OpenRTB docs:
| https://developers.google.com/authorized-
| buyers/rtb/openrtb-... An advertiser could take it into
| account in considering whether they want to bid and how
| much.
| otde wrote:
| People on HN usually aren't fans of FLoC precisely because
| it _doesn't_ solve that problem, in addition to creating
| new ones (see
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-
| terrible-...).
|
| I don't see irony there!
| dmitriid wrote:
| The classic: "make something extremely bad, then roll back
| some of that, and just make it worse, and people will
| praise it".
|
| Same here:
|
| - Google and Facebook have turned ads into 24/7
| surveillance of everything people do
|
| - Now Google roll backs some of it by saying, "with FLoC we
| can only surveil groups of people 24/7"
|
| - we are expected to praise them for finding a "solution"
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Here is a genuine question, if one I cannot help but deliver
| in an acid tone:
|
| what does it mean to be a "decent" person, if one is
| willfully, or disingenuously, ignorant of participation in an
| unethical system?
|
| Decent is a stand-in for ethical; this is a contradiction at
| a logical level,
|
| but to answer my own question,
|
| in contemporary American culture, not least in the readership
| of HN,
|
| there is disturbing dance between "moving fast and breaking
| things" (like the law, or social contracts, or presumption of
| civility) when that is convenient,
|
| and a contradictory but also embraced enthusiasm for giving
| people benefit of doubt and analogously, as in this case,
| presumption that intention excuses offense.
|
| I.e. that having "earnest intentions" born in some degree of
| perhaps bad-faith ignorance, excuses amoral consequence.
|
| That is the sort of wishful/fuzzy/poor thinking that has led
| our industry into its current state of moral bankruptcy and
| crises.
|
| By no definition is Jeff a decent person. (Really!)
| mhb wrote:
| He is a decent person by at least a consequentialist
| definition - that the harm of ads (if any) due to him is
| offset by the amount of salary he is able to devote to
| doing good in the world.
| svnt wrote:
| What? I want to put together a yo dawg meme for this but
| I'm too lazy. This is just another corporate cog
| rationalization.
|
| Unless your company is rocketing toward bankruptcy, your
| salary is by definition a (much) smaller number than the
| impact your work has on the world. You cannot offset your
| day job even by what seems to you a large fraction of
| your personal income.
| mhb wrote:
| It's a Peter Singer rationalization and is essentially
| another version of the shallow pond parable. Instead of
| destroying a nice pair of shoes, Jeff is, arguably,
| making the world worse by working on ads. But he's making
| it more better by using his salary to help people.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I would argue it's the reverse that's true. He's making
| it significantly worse than his relatively speaking small
| contributions make better.
|
| If I design advanced weapons, but donate my salary to
| charity. The good I do is temporary, but the advanced
| weapon technology can kill, and repress indefinitely.
| mhb wrote:
| It seems like it would depend on the details. In your
| example, I might agree that there is net harm to the
| world. But in other cases, and maybe Jeff's, the harm
| done by working on ads may be more than offset by the
| lives saved.
|
| Since Jeff is a thoughtful guy and this is important to
| him, I'm inclined to think that he is producing net good.
| If you can convince him otherwise, he'd probably change
| what he's doing.
| fxleach wrote:
| It seems like you didn't bother to read the entire article
| because the author does go into the ethical and privacy
| related concerns about ads. It is always interesting to read
| about people's opinions on topics such as this, and the fact
| that you dismissed it outright with such ignorance as to call
| it a bad-faith argument tells me you are not open to hearing
| opinions that differ from your own. As a result, a downvote
| of your comment feels appropriate (if I had the points to do
| so). But hey, at least you're probably a decent person
| (really!).
| burkaman wrote:
| There is no mention of ethics, and the privacy discussion
| ends with "I don't think my work in advertising is
| something harmful to offset." The author seems to think
| there are some good ideas to increase privacy that he is
| working on, but the existing problems are not serious
| enough to be considered "harmful".
| tantalor wrote:
| It is here:
|
| > This model has some major drawbacks from a privacy
| perspective. Typically, the vendor doesn't just get that
| you are interested in cars, they get the full URL of the
| page you are on. This lets them build up a pretty
| thorough picture of all the pages you have visited around
| the web. Then they can link their database with other
| vendors databases, and get even more coverage.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, I read that part. The article still ends with the
| claim that this drawback is not actually harmful.
| jefftk wrote:
| In between that claim and the end of the article I
| describe how I'm working on
| https://github.com/WICG/turtledove etc to build well-
| targeted advertising without sending your browsing
| history to advertisers
| burkaman wrote:
| I understand, and I'm glad you're thinking about it, but
| you could not have been more clear: "I don't think my
| work in advertising is something harmful to offset." Did
| you misspeak? Do you think it is harmful but turtledove
| might reduce the harm?
| jefftk wrote:
| My work on advertising _is_ on Turtledove
| burkaman wrote:
| Oh, that was not clear from the essay, and honestly might
| change my opinion a little. Is your position "targeted
| ads cause harmful privacy violations, but my work is
| exclusively devoted to reducing the privacy impact, so I
| don't believe my work is harmful"? If so I would
| encourage you to edit the essay, because that's not at
| all how it comes across right now, at least to readers
| who aren't familiar with your work. I had assumed
| turtledove was one of many projects you're involved with.
| shkkmo wrote:
| IMHO, that work is still actively harmful since it seeks
| to provide political cover for a fundementally harmful
| activity.
| fastball wrote:
| If privacy is not being violated, how is the activity
| fundamentally harmful?
| shkkmo wrote:
| See repeated explanations all over this thread.
| fragile_frogs wrote:
| > I don't like ads but they are the most friction-free way to
| consume a wide variety of content.
|
| That might be true in the beginning but long term ad's add a
| lot of friction and frustration e.g. having to wait X amount of
| seconds before getting access to the content.
|
| I have been a YouTube Premium user since day one and I can't
| imagine not using it.
|
| What I would love to see more is having a choice of having a
| free ad supported version and the option to upgrade and pay to
| remove those ads.
| ksec wrote:
| There are plenty of good ads. And Ads is also news in a sense,
| it is there to solve discovery problem. Just like your $10
| ticket to see all the latest wares, which are all Ads.
|
| We know what bad ads are, not in terms of ads quality but the
| amount of tracking and personal information gathered and sold
| _across_ different companies.
| djdjdjdjdj wrote:
| After realizing how often I use youtube i got premium and I'm
| not looking back.
|
| I grew up with "free internet services" but I can't complain on
| one side about ads and consuming stuff and in the other side
| not just paying for those services directly and it's a monthly
| thing. Easy to cancel much better than all those 1 year
| contracts for stuff like paytv.
| Sholmesy wrote:
| You wouldn't pay $2400 for 20 years of a user-centric search
| engine that is actively trying to find you the best results,
| rather than try to consume your attention for as long as
| possible so that it can show you more ad impressions?
|
| The other side of this is that someone has actively spent $2400
| worth of ad-buy to show you ads for the last 20 years.
|
| I don't think the other-side of the argument has been explored
| well enough; I'd love to see what is possible without these
| ulterior motives controlling what you see and hear.
| maxclark wrote:
| "The alternative of paying $9.99/month for Youtube..."
|
| I completely agree - until you have kids watching Youtube the
| Ads are much better in general.
|
| I am however extremely concerned with the amount of data being
| collected on my family to then aggregate and sell.
| zepto wrote:
| > I've been using Google Search for over 20 years for free
| which is pretty amazing. Would I rather replay history and pay
| ~$120 every year (~$2400 ?) to search for web articles? No
|
| I would absolutely pay that.
|
| Search is incredibly valuable and has deteriorated as has the
| web as a whole largely because of ads and this terrible
| business model.
|
| It's not even slightly 'free', your attention is being wasted
| on stuff that other people are paying for you to see.
|
| I value that at way more than $120 per year.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| > I've been using Google Search for over 20 years for free
| which is pretty amazing. Would I rather replay history and pay
| ~$120 every year (~$2400 ?) to search for web articles? No.
|
| And that is the point, where I would say: "No, you have not
| been using Google for free. You have paid with something. That
| something is your personal data and privacy of others."
|
| Why privacy of others? Well, because by using Google, you are
| actually supporting their business model, which is online
| stalking and selling info about you basically.
|
| If no one was using their search (and other services), then
| what would be the point for businesses to throw money at them
| for placing ads there? Every user counts in the end. Many
| people keep thinking, that they alone will not make any
| difference, but that is, where people go wrong in many
| scenarios. The typical: "But if only I do x then it wont be so
| bad." or "If only I stop doing x, it wont change the big
| picture." If everyone thinks that way, then nothing ever will
| change of course. It is a feedback loop, or vicious cycle, or
| whatever it is called. The right idea is to start doing, what
| one can do oneself. And that is to stop using services such as
| Google search.
|
| Personally, if I had the choice between paying money every year
| to have a non-stalker Internet search for the whole world,
| ensuring everyone's privacy when searching, I would rather
| choose that Internet. I would prefer it over an Internet, which
| we have today, where I need to arm up my browser to the teeth,
| to avoid being tracked everywhere, being unable to access a lot
| of content, because knowingly or unknowingly people put it
| behind stalker-walls and paywalls. I also think that your
| suggested numbers of 120 or even 2400$ are wildly exaggerated.
| It would probably be much more like an Internet tax, that
| everyone had to pay and that is lowered or increased based on
| your personal economical situation.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Short term yes, not paying for things feels better than paying
| for things. Long term, we end up in the situation when most
| people recognize current model leads to gross distortions,
| perverse initiatives, and many sites being next to unusable.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I think the fact people like HN's readership are living in a
| golden age is underappreciated. Think about it: we block ads
| while the people who don't subsidize our digital lifestyle.
| Sooner or later the providers are going to decide we're getting
| too much for free. Instead of an easily-blocked separate video,
| the YouTube ad will be part of the video stream and the server
| will refuse to send any part of the video until such time as
| the ad has had time to play. You might be able to blank the
| player for the ad but you'll get a fifteen second black screen
| instead of a fifteen second video.
|
| So I resolved to sit back and enjoy what time I have left for
| getting a great experience.
| supermatt wrote:
| I'm sorry, but the reason he is getting voted isn't "ads vs no-
| ads", it's the inability to acknowledge that ads are not the
| problem.
|
| Ads are fine. Stalking people to "optimise" those ads isn't.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| A Google subscription would likely need to cost over $20/m -
| considering how many people wouldn't pay even one dollar for
| paid search. Google had $186Bn in revenue last year and ~1.8Bn
| monthly active users. The revenue comes almost entirely from
| search - with 1.2Tn searches per year - that's $0.15 per search
| - hardly anyone would pay that - and to get the same amount of
| revenue and profit with less users - they'd have to charge many
| many multiples of that. It's just not feasible.
| ThaDood wrote:
| If Google had a paid, ad-free option for more then just
| YouTube and some drive space I would be happy to pay it. I
| don't know if I would shell out for paid Google searches but
| I would at-least like to see an alternative option.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I find the "ads are useful" argument frustratingly
| disingenuous. It's a transparent and deliberate attempt to move
| the discussion away from what people _actually_ take issue with
| in modern internet advertising - tracking and data collection -
| and instead tries to frame it as something far more benign.
|
| The ads. Aren't. The problem. The stalking is.
|
| Ads _can_ be useful. But no one is saying they aren 't! So why
| is it constantly the case that when internet users make the
| simple and reasonable request "Please, can you just not stalk
| us everywhere we go?" the response is "but we're helping you!"
|
| The parasitic advertising industry likes to pretend we're in a
| symbiotic relationship while conveniently ignoring the _actual_
| symbiotic solution ( _see e.g._ , DDG) because it won't make
| them nearly as much money.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Frame I have used on HN many times:
|
| Many people have a favorite TV ads. People watch the Super
| Bowl for the ads. People sing radio jingles to themselves.
| College kids put nice magazine ads on their dorm walls.
| People pay money for clothes with logos that are essentially
| just ads for themselves. People watch videos of influencers
| unboxing/using/reviewing products they are paid to
| unbox/use/review. Etc. People love all kinds of ads.
|
| No one likes banner ads. It is failed ad format and should be
| replaced. No one likes direct targeting. It should be made
| illegal. There are lots of other ad formats and methods that
| work great. Those two are the problem.
| the_snooze wrote:
| People like well-made thoughtful creative ads. Algorithmic
| targeting misses the point completely. It's the human
| element that _doesn 't_ scale that's valuable.
| wpietri wrote:
| I agree that's one problem. But even without stalking as a
| business model, the point of ads is mostly to manipulate
| people into buying things with little regard as to utility.
|
| Look, for example, at large advertisers like Coca Cola. Coke
| spends ~$1 billion/year in the US alone on ads. That's not
| because nobody has heard of them. The point is to shift money
| into Coke's pockets.
|
| Almost all advertising provides no net benefit to society;
| it's just an arms race between companies competing to
| manipulate people. If we banned it, we'd quickly find other
| ways to get people the minimal information content it
| contains. We'd definitely find ways to spend the $1tn or so
| that it consumes now. And that's not even counting the
| benefits from less waste and market distortion caused by
| advertising.
| jjj1232 wrote:
| The stalking is the problem, but the ads are too. Ads have
| been a problem well before tracking was a thing.
|
| Since at least the 1920s (I'm thinking of Edward Bernays but
| there are probably earlier examples) the goal of advertising
| is to manipulate consumers into making irrational decisions.
| The majority of ads make us feel inadequate to get us to buy
| something, like the only the thing that will make us whole is
| a new instant pot or whatever.
| noir_lord wrote:
| > The majority of ads make us feel inadequate to get us to
| buy something
|
| I know it's hard to disprove but I don't think adverts have
| that effect on me, partially it's because I don't _see_
| many adverts and partly because that kind of blatant
| manipulation is so hilariously blatant.
|
| I acknowledge that someone might be running a really
| effective advertising campaign on me but since I basically
| don't buy anything I don't actually need I can't imagine
| what that would be.
| ExtraE wrote:
| Do you have a new $gadget/$smartphone/$tablet/$whatever?
| What about your SO/father/niece? (You might not, but I
| bet a lot of people reading this and agreeing do buy a
| bunch of stuff they don't need without realizing it).
| noir_lord wrote:
| Nope, mobile is three years old, desktop is nearly three,
| ThinkPad is nearly four.
|
| Haven't bought anything techie for about 18mths and when
| I do mostly shop on specs, reviews from sources I trust.
|
| I viscerally loathe advertising, I don't like been
| manipulated in any context so I run a background process
| mentally watching for it :).
|
| I'm an advertisers nightmare, I'll not only ignore your
| advertising I'll go to significant technical lengths to
| block it for myself and everyone in my family.
| jjj1232 wrote:
| I'm going to conflate packaging with advertising here but
| I think it's the same idea and a little easier to
| visualize:
|
| Our cogniitive biases act as shortcuts to save energy
| when making decisions, and advertisers exploit those
| shortcuts. If you're on high alert while shopping,
| catching and recalibrating for your biases at every step
| of the way then yeah you can probably escape most
| marketing but for most people that doesn't come
| naturally.
|
| If you're not careful I bet you too slip up sometimes. I
| know I've caught myself at the grocery store reaching for
| one product over another just because it's in unbleached
| cardboard packaging (signaling to me that it's somehow
| more local or organic or whatever).
|
| These tricks become obvious when you consciously work
| through them (ex: obviously some megacorp can package
| their items in cardboard the same way mom and pop small
| businesses can) but most of the time we aren't processing
| consciously, and that's how marketing works.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Fair points, as I mentioned elsewhere I have a
| pathological loathing of been manipulated so I do pay
| attention to everything u buy - the missus however likes
| brands and does most of the food ordering.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Even if you think you are immune, you probably agree ads
| attempting to psychologically manipulate people into
| buying a product are unethical?
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Exactly. For the most part I'm also immune to the ads,
| but not because of the ads. It takes a huge mental effort
| to constantly stay aware of all the bullshit that these
| scum are trying to manipulate me into buying. And it's
| even more infuriating that all these 'people' who have no
| morals and ethics whatsoever try to convince everyone
| that we actually want to see ads!
|
| If people were interested in seeing ads, a business of
| selling pure ad catalogues would actually be a successful
| venture! As it stands now, you can't even give such
| material away for free without generating hate. Because
| people don't want to see ads! It doesn't matter if
| they're tracked or not. The ad is the problem!
| cm2012 wrote:
| Okay, do you have an example of someone being hurt by
| tracking and data collection done by Facebook and Google?
| elliekelly wrote:
| There are so many examples readily available that I have a
| hard time believing any HN user claiming to be unaware of
| them is anything other than willfully ignorant. It's
| probably discussed here every single day if not multiple
| times each day.
|
| A simple search here for "facebook data" will get you
| started: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=facebook+data
| cm2012 wrote:
| See my other comments on responses to specific claims.
| 99% of HN comments on the matter talk about irrelevant or
| unrelated risks.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Cambridge analytica, brexit (economically) hurt a lot of
| people. Similarly the regime changes in 3rd world countries
| that these guys engaged in probably physically hurt quite a
| few people.
|
| I mean there are so many examples it's difficult to believe
| this is a genuine question. It sort of like asking in 1984
| did anyone really get hurt by big brother watching?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Sure. FB knows your ethnicity. In violation of US federal
| law, this information is used to show you different
| apartment ads. This makes it harder for black people to
| live in integrated communities.
|
| Similar things happen with jobs and ethnicity, jobs and
| gender, with jobs and age discrimination, etc.
| cm2012 wrote:
| FB does enforce the fair housing act and other laws. The
| platform is actually quite strict nowadays and catches
| lots of innocent ads in their filters for protected
| categories. Ad platforms should follow the law, that's
| working as planned.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| FB may do so _now_ but that 's only because of lawsuits
| as recently as 2019. It wasn't something they volunteered
| to do.
|
| But you asked how targeted ads hurt people, and I showed
| a fairly recent example. Something that wouldn't exist
| without targeted advertising. How does that not prove my
| point?
| cm2012 wrote:
| Its not like FB has ever let advertisers "exclude black
| people" before. The critics said it may be possible that
| protected categories get less ads for housing,
| employment, etc due to algorithmic bias. That is a subtle
| danger, and honestly hard to technically implement at
| scale, but I think FB has always given a good faith
| effort in this area.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If by "not ever let advertisers exclude black people" you
| mean "after March 2019 has not knowing let advertisers
| exclude black people" than FB and the NYT would agree
| with you:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/facebook-
| discr...
| cm2012 wrote:
| No, you have never been able to target by race. NY times
| is referring to algorithmic targeting that incidentally
| correlated to race, which FB cleaned up in 2019.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24719416
| cm2012 wrote:
| That has nothing to do with ads, Google would turn that
| over even if sub supported.
| fsflover wrote:
| > do you have an example of someone being hurt by
| tracking and data collection
| cm2012 wrote:
| Fair enough, I should have chose wording better. In any
| case I would posit that the police using search engine
| history in evidence for cases is not a bad thing.
| intergalplan wrote:
| The collection is _per se_ harmful as long as warrants
| exist.
|
| Beyond that, it's an open secret (as in: it's been
| mentioned several times in available documents, but never
| deliberately disclosed or extensively discussed publicly,
| so far as I know) that since at least the mid or late 00s
| the US government has had contracts with multiple major
| tech companies that have a high level of access to citizen
| Internet traffic to basically search their databases of
| Internet activity at will. Which companies these are, I'm
| not sure--I suspect it's mostly telcos, personally--but
| it's another reason the _existence_ of these datasets is
| inherently dangerous, and that they should not be permitted
| to exist _at all_ , no matter who holds them.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The government doesn't go to fb when it wants someone's
| website history. It goes right to the ISPs.
| kreeben wrote:
| I'm not them but from the top of my mind, an example:
|
| 1. Facebook tracks users across the internet to enrich the
| profiles of their users
|
| 2. Data leaks.
|
| 3. Users are now in trouble.
|
| I can come up with many more if you ask and then give me a
| sec.
| cm2012 wrote:
| This doesn't actually happen though. When FB is hacked
| its the same banal hacks anyone else has, phone numbers,
| etc.
| fsflover wrote:
| > The ads. Aren't. The problem. The stalking is.
|
| But what about the manipulation?
| defaultname wrote:
| But ads are the problem. Ads are the robbery of your time and
| attention. On a screen they steal screen real estate, consume
| CPU cycles, consume bandwidth, etc. And all of the stalking
| and tracking is a direct consequence of ads themselves,
| further cementing ads as the problem.
|
| One of the other replies note that podcasts do ads right. I
| hugely disagree. Not only does it steal the listener's time
| and focus (presuming they don't just scrub past it, which I
| presume most people do unless they put little value on their
| own time, and think a host is being sincere when they pitch
| some snake-oil supplement, pillow or VPN), it puts a dirty
| veneer over the whole realm where everyone becomes half-bit
| hucksters.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Many of the primary use-cases for podcasts
| (exercising/driving/doing chores) don't put people in a
| position where they have the free hands to scrub past the
| ads.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> The ads. Aren 't. The problem. The stalking is._
|
| My primary work is on https://github.com/WICG/turtledove
| (discussed in the post), which allows well-targeted
| advertising without sending your browsing history to
| advertisers
| aflag wrote:
| Hm, with that system, isn't it possible for the advertiser
| to ultimately know which users saw the ads and ultimately
| what their interests are?
| jefftk wrote:
| Nope! The proposal includes:
|
| * Ads render inside "fenced frames" where they cannot
| learn what page they are on and the page cannot learn
| what ad is being shown
|
| * Reporting is available, but it is aggregate-only
| aflag wrote:
| I've read the original turtledove readme, maybe there's
| something better, maybe it went over my head. But there
| is this request:
|
| > GET https://first-ad-network.com/.well-known/fetch-
| ads?interest_...
|
| So, at the very least, the ad network will be able to see
| your IP and know that you like athletic shoes and visited
| www.wereallylikeshoes.com. If you visit some other domain
| first-ad-network.com owns with the same IP whithin a
| small window of time, it can be pretty confident it's the
| same person and even store some client side data at that
| point. It feels like they can construct a reasonably good
| profile about their users by using that technique. That's
| considering the browser doesn't leak out any other
| potentially identifying information.
|
| Then, the actual ad owner could have something in the URL
| that identifies which campaign you ultimately came from,
| as they probably know which interest groups they were
| targeting. So, when you click on the ad, they know one
| interest about you and, if you clicked in ads from other
| campaigns they run, they may reconstruct your profile
| well.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> at the very least, the ad network will be able to see
| your IP and know that you like athletic shoes and visited
| www.wereallylikeshoes.com. If you visit some other domain
| first-ad-network.com owns with the same IP it within a
| small window of time, it can be pretty confident it 's
| the same person and even store some client side data at
| that point. It feels like they can construct a reasonably
| good profile about their users by using that technique._
|
| Yes, there are a lot of user identifying bits in an IP
| address. Chrome has two proposals:
| https://github.com/bslassey/ip-blindness I'm not sure
| what other browsers are thinking?
|
| _> That 's considering the browser doesn't leak out any
| other potentially identifying information._
|
| Which they definitely do. All the browsers are working on
| figuring out how to thwart fingerprinting, and it's
| really hard. I am glad, at least, that we were able to
| get Google Ads to publicly commit to not fingerprinting.
|
| _> when you click on the ad, they know one interest
| about you and, if you clicked in ads from other campaigns
| they run, they may reconstruct your profile well_
|
| Yes, when people click on ads in Turtledove the
| advertiser does learn something. This is a huge
| improvement to the status quo where advertisers learn
| things just by bidding, or an intermediate stage where
| advertisers learn things when they win an auction --
| users don't click on ads very often, so the amount of
| information leaked this way is very low.
|
| Exactly how much information the advertiser is able to
| learn on a click is still very much up in the air, so if
| you have views on this you might consider participating
| on the repo?
| aflag wrote:
| I agree that it mitigates the problem, but it does not
| seem to solve the root cause of it. Aren't ads and ad
| targeting the main reason why companies want to store and
| sell that data? Other uses of user data is considered a
| lot shadier and respectful companies will not engage in
| them. If we start considering ad targeting to be a shady
| business practice, we may actually end the incentives for
| big conglomerates to want to store user data in the first
| place and thus end up with a system where user profiles
| are the exception rather than the norm.
|
| In a less techinical point of view, ads are probably a
| net negative for society. People are buying things they
| don't need, spending time they could be doing other
| things and just having a worse experience they could have
| were not for content farms and other practices
| incentivised by ads. I do see the value of ads bringing
| services to people who wouldn't have money to pay for
| them otherwise, it's income distributions of sorts, but I
| think we can do better.
|
| Anyway, interesting read about ip blindness. As long as
| the CDNs and proxies are not controlled by the same
| company that owns the ad networks, then it could work
| out. Though it's hard to find the correct incentives for
| the right people to own the right parts of the network.
| Another alternative would be something like onion, which
| is more distributed (although quite wasteful of
| resources).
| amelius wrote:
| We should research how much ads contribute to overconsumption
| and hence the demise of the planet. If the connection becomes
| clear, then there really is no excuse left for ads.
| ExtraE wrote:
| > it won't make them nearly as much money.
|
| Yes. That's the problem. Make less money from ads --> make
| less content/riskier to make content (same thing). The more
| money ads make, the fewer of them you have to see to fund the
| same amount of content (or, alternatively, you get
| more/higher quality content for a given (fixed) quantity of
| ads).
| jdbernard wrote:
| That's not how it plays out though. More
| effective/profitable ads does not lead to less ads being
| shown. In fact, it's the opposite. As ads have become more
| targeted, and theoretically more profitable according to
| this argument, we have _more_ of them.
|
| There is no set "amount of effectiveness," so to speak. If
| ads are more profitable, advertisers are still going to
| spend just as much or more on them, precisely because they
| have a higher ROI.
| ExtraE wrote:
| Right, ok.
|
| So you see more ads, the people publishing content make
| more money (more ads + better ads --> more valuable
| eyeballs --> more valuable content), and then the ROI for
| making content is higher, so people make + publish more
| of it. You get more, more valuable content.
|
| Now, you may argue that the privacy cost is higher than
| the reward of more/better content, but I think that it
| probably isn't. Especially because it's hard (not
| impossible) to match your browsing history with your IRL
| identity and no one really cares about _you,_ I think
| that the privacy cost is smaller than the reward. You
| might disagree.
| jdbernard wrote:
| > You get more, more valuable content
|
| There's a couple of non-sequitors here.
|
| 1. You don't necessarily get more _valuable_ content. A
| lot of times the higher ROI leads to gamification of the
| whole system and you get more content, but it 's all spam
| or varying levels of quality. This spam varies from
| complete trash to fairly polished, but none of it is
| actually valuable.
|
| 2. Even if we concede the point and assume that we get
| purely more valuable content, there is a limit to the
| amount of content anyone can consume in a day. And the
| advertising itself competes for your attention with even
| that valuable content. So the benefit from an increased
| amount of valuable content has a natural limit. The harm
| from the increase of ads is not so naturally bounded. So
| even if the balance of cost/benefit starts on the side
| you think, where the benefit of the content outweighs the
| cost of advertising, it will naturally, eventually trend
| towards the cost outweighing the benefit.
|
| You are correct that in my view, personally, the cost
| already far outweighs the benefit. We can argue whether
| that's true on the whole for most people, but there is no
| argument when it comes to me personally. It's not worth
| it. There is a lot of content I only consume because I'm
| blocking ads. If I was unable to block ads and had to pay
| that cost, I would certainly forgo the content.
| the8bit wrote:
| The problem here is really just general flaws in
| capitalism. The main thing I hate about ads is the broken
| corporate incentive -- companies want to earn as much as
| possible and the feedback loop of worse customer
| experience is weak.
|
| So annoyingly while it is true that ads are a currently
| necessary part of funding the internet, it is also true
| that a perverse incentive exists to just keep hammering
| the $ button once you find a model that works. It is a
| good argument for why we probably should want to pay
| directly for content. Or y'know, just topple capitalism
| on account of it generating toxic localized optimizations
| literally everywhere.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >The ads. Aren't. The problem. The stalking is.
|
| Exactly. If you want online ads done right, look no further
| than how podcasts do it. The medium doesn't allow for
| stalking. Podcast producers often stake their own reputation
| by voicing the ads themselves. That editorial freedom lets
| them be creative and respectful of their audiences. And
| advertisers can use podcast-specific coupon codes to
| attribute ad campaigns to sales. It's a win-win for everyone.
| fxleach wrote:
| The issue is that you cannot have good online advertising
| without a little bit of the stalking. Do you listen to
| podcasts? Their ads are shite. I don't want to hear another
| ad about "Coroner" on Netflix. The only reason they are
| making money is because podcasts are "hot" right now and
| everyone is throwing money at them. That money pile will
| slowly deplete in due time and they'll find a way to
| introduce ads that are more targeted towards the individual
| that's listening and guess what, we'll be right back here
| with the same supposed problem.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Well, Slate Star Codex and its sidebar of ads was a good
| counterexample. I would routinely click through to find
| out more, because its ads were a) aesthetically pleasing
| (they had a consistent style, for example) and b) highly
| relevant to my interests (because a very consistent type
| of person is interested in the ads on that particular
| site). To a lesser extent, I think the human-delivered
| ads given by the presenters of The Magnus Archives
| podcast were decent enough, though the algorithmic ones
| were predictably useless.
|
| It's possible to target ads to a specific audience by
| exploiting the selection effect that led to your audience
| existing. This doesn't favour general-audience
| communities, sure, but I'd honestly be happy with the
| answer "general-audience things just aren't how the
| future looks".
| hiq wrote:
| > The issue is that you cannot have good online
| advertising without a little bit of the stalking.
|
| The usual answer to this is to use the context rather
| than personal information and browsing history. You bring
| less value to the company advertising their product, but
| I'd argue that most people are fine with this approach.
|
| The problem is that current incentives lead to a race to
| the bottom: if some advertisers are less ethical, they
| can arguably bring more value to their clients, and the
| ethical advertiser cannot compete anymore.
| the_snooze wrote:
| I hate to be cynical, but I think the reason why online
| advertisers keep harping on about the "benefits" of
| personalized ads is that it justifies their existence.
| They can keep trying to sell whiz-bang audience profiling
| and attribution technology, even if it doesn't work all
| that well.
|
| Contextual advertising, on the other hand, is simple. It
| shifts the focus away from technology and toward people:
| recognizing your audience and crafting a message to them,
| instead of trying to have a computer do it for you. It's
| old-fashioned marketing.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> The issue is that you cannot have good online
| advertising without a little bit of the stalking._
|
| Perhaps today, but not if we design browser APIs that
| allow targeting without cross-site tracking:
| https://github.com/WICG/turtledove
| https://github.com/WICG/privacy-preserving-
| ads/blob/main/Par...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| What's strange is that podcasts and baked into video ads
| are far more effective on me. I'll block any alternative
| ad source I can, so if it's not baked into the content I
| don't see it.
|
| But I have no clue what would distinguish (to me) a non-
| shit ad? Is it saving me money on something I was already
| going to buy?
| mrblampo wrote:
| > The medium doesn't allow for stalking.
|
| Huh. Are you sure? I don't know anything about how podcast
| advertising works, but it sounds like you're assuming the
| full audio track, complete with ads, is the same everywhere
| and always.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| Spotify will use everything it knows about you to target
| podcast ads
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/8/21056336/spotify-
| streaming...
| the_snooze wrote:
| Spotify is a bit of an oddball in the podcast world in
| that they're an all-in-one closed platform with a player
| and a production arm. They can easily feed user behavior
| data back to their podcast producers and advertisers.
|
| Most podcasts and players operate on RSS feeds though.
| While they can very well target things via IP addresses
| and user-agent (no getting around that), podcasters and
| their advertisers don't have the capability to read/write
| persistent tracking data on the client, at least as far
| as I know. An advertiser would be hard-pressed to see
| that I personally listen to Stuff You Should Know and
| This American Life, even if the advertiser had contracts
| with both. The medium really hobbles how much tracking
| can be done.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Traditionally, podcasts worked like radio and everyone
| got the same ad. Recently, people have been trying to
| "innovate" by ruining podcasts like how the web was
| ruined and use dynamic ad insertion. AFAICT, it still
| hasn't totally caught on yet. Anecdotally, I used to hear
| it on one of my shows, but then they changed networks and
| it went away.
| echelon wrote:
| > The alternative of paying $9.99/month for Youtube...
|
| I do pay for YouTube Red, and it's worth it to not see ads.
|
| > micropayments for each search query or a "Google Search
| Engine yearly subscription"
|
| I would pay for this, too.
|
| > ... or Patreon donations for video content ...
|
| I do it for music. It feels really good to support creators
| directly.
|
| Ads are the worst, and I adblock everything.
|
| I'd happily pay for web content if there were
| microtransactions. Either that, or a content marketplace that
| disburses based on views or some other accounting.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _are all more user hostile for my use cases_
|
| Sure, _your_ use cases. Not other people 's though, and we
| don't get a choice.
| noir_lord wrote:
| There is a middle ground.
|
| You advertise to me, You don't track every single fucking thing
| I do online to do it.
|
| If we agree to that then I'll turn my adblocker/pi-hole off -
| otherwise enjoy the null-hole.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > don't track every single fucking thing I do online to do
| it.
|
| Yes. However...
|
| I have found 0.001% of what I wanted because of an ad. That's
| something like one item in a decade. I don't think that's
| worth the costs of tracking to privacy and bandwidth.
| Certainly not worth the obtrusiveness of contemporary ad
| space which is the result of the inevitable runaway arms race
| between the flitting attention of users and the desperate
| need of businesses to sale their wares.
|
| I don't see any resolution to the waste other than abandoning
| tracking for ads. Good enough demographics can be found by
| the content being consumed. Please, let's leave it at that.
| defaultname wrote:
| There are many, many cases where users choose pay options over
| `free'-but-ad-supported options. The pay options usually have a
| better/more honest financial model, and more aligned interests
| with their users.
|
| And there certainly is a universe where we would pay for
| search, in the same way that we pay for countless other things.
| Google's business model scorched Earth the realm, though, so
| there isn't a lot of potential for that now, but it's a
| universe I could easily imagine.
|
| "the advertising model for using Google search and watching
| Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer."
|
| Do you use an ad blocker? I certainly do, as does most of HN.
| Layers of ad blockers. It works for me because I get the
| content for free _and_ I don 't have the scourge of ads, so
| sure it's a fine model.
|
| When that podcast starts with six minutes of promos I just
| scrub right past them. I don't believe I've clicked on a single
| ad online in decades, at least not intentionally. I honestly
| don't even understand how that industry survives. My gut
| instinct is that it's a giant illusion and effectively a
| massive fraud.
|
| A major reason many of us have such a laissez-faire attitude
| towards the detritus of the ad world is that it's something
| that other people endure.
| js8 wrote:
| Things being paid from advertising, rather than from user's
| pocket, is also patronizing. When things are paid from user's
| pockets, it's the user who controls whether the expense is
| made, to whom and how much. If things are paid through ads,
| it is companies (and their management) that make the
| decisions, not their customers. I argue that paying from your
| own pocket is a more free system.
|
| However, I understand that if this had to change, the income
| would have to shift, too.
| shanecleveland wrote:
| I suspect most people's attitudes towards ads are more
| nuanced than either "I am fine with ads" vs. "I am not fine
| with ads." And, frankly, most web users probably just don't
| understand how ad tracking works, rather than being Laissez-
| faire.
|
| I understand it pretty well. I pay for a variety of services
| for the value they provide me and to ensure they remain
| viable. I use a lot of free, ad-supported tools without an
| ad-blocker.
|
| I make a small amount of money from ad-supported sites. I
| make more money from user-supported sites.
|
| I tend to be more concerned with the user experience. I don't
| mind ads that don't get in the way of my intent for using a
| tool or site. I have backed out of many sites that show me
| more ads than content, especially if presented in a way that
| make them more likely to be clicked accidentally than out of
| actual interest. They loose me as a user. That's a choice I
| get to make.
|
| I enjoy physical magazines (or digital versions of physical
| magazines). I pay for several subscriptions, but I know they
| are making much more money from advertising. I wouldn't pay
| more for a version without ads. I like many of the ads. They
| are well-targeted and visually appealing. But I am free to
| ignore them and I am free to stop subscribing if the
| advertising diminishes the value I get from it.
|
| Ad-supported sites are important to the ecosystem. Can they
| be done better? Yes! Can we make choices as consumers as to
| whether or not we patronize a site based on their advertising
| behavior? Yes! Ad blockers may play a role in that. Perhaps
| both will help push the industry in a more privacy-centric
| direction.
|
| Privacy is more commonly seen as a feature these days. I have
| a few services I promote as both free and privacy-focused; no
| ads, no or minimal analytics, etc. And with enough interest I
| would hope to eventually charge for them to make them
| sustainable without ads.
| dooglius wrote:
| > most friction-free
|
| Maybe it's personal taste, but signing into an account is much
| more pleasant for me than watching an ad. As for the monetary
| cost, it only takes one ad per year that works on you to lose
| as much money anyway.
|
| > Advertising should be open and transparent. If business of
| ads are truthful
|
| Ads are not truthful because they are highly incentivized to
| lie > I will sometimes pay to see ads. E.g. I pay $10 ticket
| for a home & garden convention show so the manufacturers in
| booths can advertise their wares to me.
|
| I have to honestly ask why? What do you feel you are measuring
| other than the advertising budget of the sellers? Granted, such
| a convention would also allow you to evaluate the wares to some
| extent, but doing that is to ignore the ads.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> it only takes one ad per year that works on you to lose as
| much money anyway_
|
| Only if you regret the purchase, no? For example, I
| subscribed to CBS (now Paramount+) because I saw ads for a
| show I was interested in watching (Picard).
|
| (I realize lots of advertising does not follow this model)
| aflag wrote:
| In my experience, I always come to regret anything I ever
| bought from ads. To the point that now I use an adblocker.
| For people who are unaffected by ads, it's just a minor
| annoyance. For people who actually affected by ads, I'd say
| it's a net negative, not a net positive for their lives.
| lwhi wrote:
| > I've been using Google Search for over 20 years for free
| which is pretty amazing. Would I rather replay history and pay
| ~$120 every year (~$2400 ?) to search for web articles? No.
|
| I feel the main point is, no you haven't got this for free.
|
| If you were to pay $2400 dollars, Google would also need to pay
| you for your attention during this time
| jareklupinski wrote:
| I would prefer the payment model if it means I get the things I
| expect from other premium models: hand-on user support that is
| motivated to keep me paying, features that actually enrich me
| instead of sap me further, and an internal culture of working
| for the customers instead of working for the shareholders.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| So you don't use an ad blocker?
| kristjankalm wrote:
| advertising is the primary driver for clickbait and emotion-
| driven content. it enables The Daily Mail, it results in
| youtube's algorithm hell, it's why facebook exists. 'clicks =
| money' is bad for mental health. as long as wikipedia et al are
| free, give me subscription-based web all day.
| ape4 wrote:
| Good point, but I think headline writers that don't need
| clicks for advertising money would still write headlines that
| make people click - the popularity of a writer or article is
| one measure of success.
| lwhi wrote:
| I don't think they'd face the same pressure.
| kristjankalm wrote:
| yes but amplification matters -- there's been at least one
| study which measured the clickbaity-ness of headliness of
| paid vs ad-based news sites and the difference was sth like
| an order of magnitude. i'll see if i can find the link.
| ballenf wrote:
| Making doughnuts and soft drinks available to everyone for free
| is superficially a huge win for people. They are valuable (as
| determined by marketplace) and lowering the cost makes them
| more available to everyone.
|
| But measuring the net societal impact of a cheap stopped at
| that point is basically worthless. There are many 2nd and 3rd
| order impacts that must be included. The obvious is health, but
| others include the marginal cost considerations of where the
| money will go that is "saved". Or what alternative food would
| be purchased (if it's deep fried Twinkies, maybe free doughnuts
| are a health win).
|
| Any work that makes the ad marketplace more efficient (easier
| for creation and deployment of effective ads or ad
| instrumentation) has huge effects on relative competitiveness
| of startups vs. conglomerates. Just as one example. And those
| effects directly affect consumers.
|
| I can avoid ad surveillance to some degree, but am powerless to
| help a business that can't survive in an ad-driven economy. I
| can't single-handedly keep my local hardware store in business
| against the threat from conglomerates capable of operating
| indefinitely on zero margins.
| oulipo wrote:
| The problem is that ads are not free. It's paid. And it's paid
| by you.
|
| When you say "I'm using Google for free because it's supported
| by ads", what it means is:
|
| - some companies are buying (expensive) ads on Google
|
| - they are therefore increasing their marketing budget
|
| - which mechanically increases the price of their services and
| products
|
| - which you ultimately have to pay
|
| so no, the "free ads" are not free for the consumers, you pay
| them as a "marketing tax" on each product and service that you
| pay for
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Your line of argument rests on the assumption that buying ads
| has no positive effect on sales.
| anoncake wrote:
| If it does, that's even worse. We're polluting more than we
| can afford to, making people want more stuff is the last
| thing we need.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| True, but by the same logic, how much each of us pays for ad
| funded services depends on how much each of us can spend.
| I.e. wealthy people pay more per Google search than poor
| people.
|
| And there's another issue. Even if all online services
| switched to a subscription model tomorrow, companies would
| not suddenly stop spending money on promoting their products.
| They would just do it differently and we would pay twice.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Would I rather replay history and pay ~$120 every year
| (~$2400 ?) to search for web articles? No.
|
| But that's an outrageous sum. I'm sure you also wouldn't
| sacrifice your first-born son on Google's altar either.
| Meanwhile, would you pay $5-10/year ($100-$200 total)? That
| would probably cut Google's revenue by two-thirds - one-third,
| but still they would have plenty. I believe FB averaged under
| $10/year/active user in all the years I looked at (which
| ignores the most recent years).
|
| Meanwhile, I guess I'll just leave my adblocker installed and
| take the subsidy.
| raspyberr wrote:
| But this model is the reason something like Trump and
| Russian/Chinese medelling happens. Why not reject the
| advertising model and the payment model until something better
| comes along? Businesses aren't people. They'll just work out
| how to make money eventually.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _Why not reject the advertising model and the payment model
| until something better comes along?_
|
| The Internet Archive is a great example of this. A non-profit
| that relies neither on advertising revenue nor subscription
| revenue from individual users, and instead thrives on income
| for providing archival services and grants from organisations
| that recognise the public good it is providing.
| raspyberr wrote:
| I'd like for donation to be the predominant way to support
| digital work in the future. But paying with a card online
| is pretty hasslesome and micropayments will cause so many
| issues anyway that it kind of feels like a pipe dream.
| Stuff like Signal and Internet Archive are excellent tools
| that may not make all the money in the world do achieve
| their goals well whilst, at least for the time being, being
| financially stable.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Donors aren't always benevolent, especially if there are
| a few 'whales'.
| justinboogaard wrote:
| You (me, all of us) are (indirectly) paying for Google ads in
| the same way that we are (indirectly) paying for merchant
| credit card processing fees. If you paid for search, some
| businesses might be able to lower the cost of their products
| because they don't have to pay for advertising.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Companies wouldn't stop paying for advertisement if we banned
| internet advertising, they'd have to spend more in other
| advertisement spaces and now those spaces aren't funding the
| search which we'd have to pay for.
| anoncake wrote:
| Where does the money you seemingly save come from? You pay for
| them whenever you buy something that was advertised. If Google
| Search was $10/month, the average Google user would save about
| that much spread across all the products they buy.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because
| cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a
| man to understand something when his salary depends upon his
| not understanding it."
|
| It reads a lot like that.
|
| Jeff posits that advertising is competing only with paywalls
| and brushes aside hobby work, people producing content for the
| pure benefit of it, as if that is not impacted.
|
| If I produce something creative with real value as part of a
| hobby, I know there is a high chance it will be copied/stolen
| by a slick advertiser who will then out-compete me.
|
| So, I'm net less motivated to participate in the whole system
| of creating content.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Are you saying there is something specifically about ads that
| make using these products friction-free or non-hostile? Or are
| you just saying that you like that the products are free?
| stevenicr wrote:
| If "The alternative of paying $9.99/year for Youtube" was
| really an option - I would buy it for at least 4 kids I know,
| and two adults that need it, to remove the horrible ads,
| especially on mobile.
|
| Get me started on the ads that come with play store apps and
| "free games".
|
| however at $12/month that would be $864 per year to help them.
| I would jump at $60 / year for 6 people.. heck that would save
| me on comcast overages several months of the year.
|
| We still pay for some searches by paying the ad costs of the
| places we spend money, but that's another thing to figure..
| $120 / year for search? I doubt my clicks amount to that for
| any advertiser. I'd pay 20 for ad free, zero tracking searches,
| but not 100.
| anchpop wrote:
| My family pays for youtube premium
| (https://www.youtube.com/premium/family), it's $18/month for
| 5 people. They also get access to "youtube music premium",
| which is basically a spotify clone (so unlimited music with
| no ads). It's quite a good deal imo
| dado3212 wrote:
| Yeah, this option exists and most people don't take it.
| Pretty clear argument against this model.
| zaat wrote:
| No it isn't, it means I pay to see those videos without
| ads, but I have to be logged in and they get to track me.
| PieUser wrote:
| Well I wouldn't. To each their own.
| km3r wrote:
| A quick search (haha) shows that google pulls in $182/year
| per user and 90% of that is from advertising. So yes google
| makes a lot more than people think from ads. I also suspect
| that is heavily lopsided, with certain demographic being more
| sought after by advertisers. If they were to offer a flat opt
| out rate, would need to account for those people switching
| away and losing a very lucrative market. I would even imagine
| kids are unfortunately a target for advertisers because they
| can be very impressionable, and become lifelong customers if
| convinced early on.
|
| In addition, a flat fee could lead to a slow on googles
| growth, as once a users pays, they can not find new ways to
| monetize that user.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love the option to pay a fee to opt out
| of certain ads. It really helps align the incentives of the
| user with the company, but unfortunately it would have to be
| expensive to average out the more lucrative ads.
| echlebek wrote:
| Your idea about paying a yearly subscription vs having
| advertising presents a false dichotomy. Since the internet is a
| public good, search functionality could be reasonably delivered
| for cents on the dollar by a public utility.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| As someone who has worked in ads in the past, this is exactly
| what it sounds like.
|
| In advertising, context matters. Ads when you're in discovery
| mode looking for things to consume? Great, ads are usually
| unobtrusive in that context. But there are only so many
| discovery scenarios but lots of ad money to be made.
|
| Advertising is a zero-sum game to dominate the human attention
| span. This has negative effects on our social lives and mental
| health. Is saving a few dollars a month worth the societal
| impact that constant advertising entails? In my opinion this
| constant barrage of ads is a big part of why we as a society
| can disagree about basic facts about the world: we've been
| conditioned to consume media that is promoted by virtue of its
| ability to draw eyeballs through being controversial /
| shocking, rather than the veracity or value of the information.
| Ads create a perverse incentive for publishers to operate at
| the edge of truth because those stories / media get more views.
| srg0 wrote:
| The problem with YouTube Premium is unnecessary and
| anticompetitive bundling.
|
| They ask EUR11.99/month for Premium (no ads) + YouTube Music.
| Or EUR9.99/month just for YouTube Music. Given that I already
| pay for another service, I don't want either of these plans.
|
| It's not possible to get only YouTube Premium (avoid ads), even
| if the marginal cost of ad-free YouTube experience is only
| EUR2/month, according to Google. I think EUR24/year is a very
| reasonable price to pay for YouTube, EUR144 is not.
| godelski wrote:
| I don't mind ads, I mind data mining.
|
| Ads on podcasts don't bug me as much as the ads Google/Facebook
| does. Nor do the ads that are sponsored inside videos (see
| LTT). I don't mind the ads that DDG does (which just uses key
| words in your search).
|
| I don't like this dichotomy of ads vs no ads, I'm not sure
| that's really the right framework. I turn off ads everywhere I
| go because I can't trust ads. But I don't bother skipping
| through ads on my podcasts or in videos. So it isn't the ad
| part that's the problem.
| overgard wrote:
| It's funny, in the past about 99.999999 percent of the time ads
| never interested me. I think I might have clicked one in a
| decade.
|
| Recently, just from my youtube subscriptions I think, my
| youtube ads have been surprisingly relevant, for things like
| cnc routers or various embedded tools or what not -- ads that
| are actually for things I might be interested in buying.
| (Granted there's still a ton of obnoxious get rich quick
| schemes that I have to skip).
|
| I have to admit, seeing ads that actually are of interest to me
| does change my mindset on advertising a little bit. I still
| find it super creepy being tracked, and I'd like the ability to
| know what they know about me, and erase it if I don't like it
| (is that even possible?), but it is kind of nice to get ads
| that don't suck if I have to sit through ads.
| tnzm wrote:
| Everyone ignores the elephant in the room.
|
| Just let the users set their own advertising profiles! Always
| relevant ads, no tracking needed.
| overgard wrote:
| I would like that. Or even a scheme where they can collect
| data, but it's stored on my local computer so I can edit it
| and delete it (granted I know there's a ton of issues with
| that, but there is w/ the current scheme also)
| stevenicr wrote:
| two thumbs up.
|
| with our own set profiles, we could opt out of gambling,
| loot boxes, and alcohol ads too. I've been suggesting this
| for some time now.
| intergalplan wrote:
| But you don't need to run a giant spying system to make
| that happen, so the companies whose moat is their giant
| spying system don't want to even _try_ that. They also
| happen to have all the users /eyeballs (they need them for
| their spying system, in addition to serving ads to them).
| So it's hard for anyone else to try it to see how well it
| works.
| fouric wrote:
| > all more user hostile for my use cases
|
| Why are these user-hostile? I see very little friction to any
| of them - $10/year YT subscription disappears into the
| background (that's, what, two moderately expensive coffee
| drinks? if you spend just a single day watching educational
| content, the obtained value will easily exceed $10), per-search
| microtransactions would be so cheap that you could just turn on
| the "always transparently pay for this" feature, and any
| YouTube video of reasonable size that is worth watching is
| definitely worth spending the few seconds of time to assess and
| then click the "donate to get access" button.
|
| What, you're saying that these things don't exist? Then that's
| a problem with _currently available implementations of
| microtransactions_ , _not_ the concept of microtransactions
| itself.
|
| It's easy, from a technical perspective, to design a low-
| friction microtransaction system.
|
| > Would I rather replay history and pay ~$120 every year
| (~$2400 ?) to search for web articles?
|
| That's a _price_ problem, not a _pricing model_ problem.
| Microtransactions /subscriptions are irrelevant - that price is
| so far above the _actual_ cost of your Google searches that the
| equivalent in terms of the current model (you pay with your
| data) is that Google demands your SSN in order for you to
| search - and the results in both cases will be the same: users
| will use a different product.
|
| Edit: Because this comment has gotten strawmanned in the same
| way repeatedly: I did _not_ say that the ad-funded model should
| go away, nor do I believe that - my comment was _purely_ a
| response to the idea that microtransactions are infeasible, and
| nobody carefully reading it would think otherwise.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> It 's easy, from a technical perspective, to design a low-
| friction microtransaction system._
|
| Oh? People have been trying since at least
| https://www.w3.org/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/246/ (1995)
| fouric wrote:
| You seem to be implying that solutions to problems succeed
| on their technical merit alone. This is trivially false. I
| used the phrasing "from a technical perspective" very
| intentionally, for a reason.
|
| And, in the specific case of microtransactions, it's well-
| known that consumers like cheap and free things - which
| causes them to flock to ad-funded services because said
| services make it as difficult as possible to see what data
| you're paying for those services with.
|
| The reason why microservices have failed is largely due to
| the negative externalities (e.g. massive personal
| information harvesting and sale) being concealed from
| users. If you showed users how much of their data was being
| harvested, and who it was being sold to (transitively), how
| many do you think would continue to use an ad-supported
| product if a reasonably-priced paid alternative was
| available?
|
| Edit: to provide a specific example of a somewhat-low-
| friction microtransaction system (that could easily be
| scaled to "extremely low friction" with non-architectural
| UI tweaks) that I've had experience with, I present to you
| Blendle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
|
| These are not hard technical problems.
| tzs wrote:
| A big issue with micropayments is taxes.
|
| If we are using micropayments to let users directly pay a
| site for views of that site's articles or for skipping
| ads on those articles, then the jurisdiction that the
| _user_ is in is likely to consider that a sale in their
| jurisdiction and want the site to collect VAT or sales
| tax. If people from 50 different countries purchase
| articles, you might end up having to deal with taxes in
| 50 different countries! (Even countries that have
| thresholds of the form "no tax unless total sales in the
| country are above $X" might require you to register there
| and fill out a form each quarter saying you didn't meet
| the threshold).
|
| The site doesn't have that problem if instead they sell
| ads and get their money from the advertisers or from the
| ad network. That money is taxed, but it is taxed as
| income in the location of the site, not as a sale where
| the users are. Having people visit your site from 50
| different countries doesn't increase the complexity of
| your tax situation.
|
| Assuming we can't get widespread adoption of more
| micropayment friendly rules for online purchased of
| content access and/or ad skipping, there is a way to use
| micropayments for that while avoiding the tax
| jurisdiction explosion.
|
| That is the imposition of a middleman service. It sounds
| like Blendle might be such a middleman.
|
| You buy articles from the middleman, making your
| micropayment to the middleman. The middleman license the
| content for resale from the publishers and pays a royalty
| based on volume.
|
| If you arrange this right when the user buys an article
| the middleman is the seller for VAT or sales tax purposes
| and so it is the middleman that has to deal with all the
| different jurisdictions. The publishers only have to deal
| with their own jurisdiction and perhaps the jurisdiction
| of the middleman.
|
| But then you have the issue of who will be the middleman?
| I don't think we want it to end up like streaming movies,
| where we've got Netflix and Disney+ and Peacock and Hulu
| and Prime and Google and HBO Max and a whole bunch of
| others and you need to use more than one of them to see
| all the content you want.
|
| We probably need at most 3 or 4 big middlemen that are
| easy enough for publishers to use that most sites that
| want to offer a pay per article option are signed up with
| all of those middlemen.
|
| My guess is that it might end up being the same companies
| that provide "sign on with" services that end up
| providing micropayment middlemen services and/or
| companies that already provide big online stores that
| sell internationally.
|
| That would be Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
| [deleted]
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > $10/year YT subscription disappears into the background
|
| I used to live off of $7,000 a year. $10/year is something
| I'd seriously think about.
|
| I'd be careful about generalizing a fixed cost subscription's
| impact. Typically, it will hit poorer communities harder than
| wealthy communities.
| fouric wrote:
| Those who need the $10/year can decide to instead give up
| their personal data using the ad-funded model, which I
| explicitly did not say should be abolished, because I don't
| believe that. I was making an argument against the idea
| that microtransactions are themselves somehow
| infeasible/bad - nothing more.
| cletus wrote:
| > I see very little friction to any of them - $10/year YT
| subscription disappears into the background
|
| So there are several problems with this:
|
| 1. You restated the above commenter's cost from $10/month to
| $10/year for some reason. For context, Google's annual
| revenue seems to be $180B. That makes $10/month far closer to
| the likely alternative;
|
| 2. That $10/year or $10/month "disappears into the
| background" _for you_. That 's a far more significant cost
| for the majority of Internet users who are in the developing
| world. Cost aside, there may be issues with even having the
| payment infrastructure to actually pay for that (eg due to
| sanctions or US foreign policy).
|
| I agree with the post's author: there are significant
| benefits to an ad-supported model and high on that list is
| low friction (paying for any service is a huge point of
| friction) and that those in the developing world get highly-
| equivalent services to the developed world.
|
| There are definitely problems with advertising. The over-
| collection of data is of course one. But it seems convenient
| and disingenuous to overlook the benefits as they're
| inconvenient to a shallow anti-advertising diatribe.
| jasode wrote:
| _> You restated the above commenter's cost from $10/month
| to $10/year for some reason._
|
| fyi... That was my fault because I later edited it without
| realizing others had quickly quoted it. I made a typo
| "$10/year" which was clearly a mistake because no
| mainstream service for videos/music/books charges 84 cents
| a month.
| fouric wrote:
| > 1. You restated the above commenter's cost from $10/month
| to $10/year for some reason.
|
| Parent's comment originally read $10/year.
|
| > For context, Google's annual revenue seems to be $180B.
| That makes $10/month far closer to the likely alternative
|
| I don't see how the first part of your statement at all
| supports the second. Google's revenue now, with _many_
| different services in _wildly_ varying stages of
| profitability, has very little connection to the
| hypothetical subscription price that would be applied to a
| service that is now ad-funded - you seem to be engaging in
| _wild_ speculation.
|
| > 2. That $10/year or $10/month "disappears into the
| background" for you.
|
| First, YouTube is a luxury service. Second, I specifically
| addressed the problem of "it's too expensive" later on in
| my comment, with "That's a price problem, not a pricing
| model problem." - which still holds. Third, market
| segmentation is a thing. Fourth, those in the developing
| world will pay with their personal information - which can
| be far _more_ devastating if e.g. they 're a dissident
| living in an oppressive regime. Fifth, _I never said the ad
| model should be removed_.
|
| You seem to be making the assumption that I am suggesting
| that the ad-funded model be _replaced_ with the
| subscription /microtransaction models - I do _not_ , and my
| comment was carefully worded to not make that claim. I
| specifically believe that models where payment is made in
| money should always be available, with ads as an option -
| _not_ that the former should be completely removed.
|
| > paying for any service is a huge point of friction
|
| False. I can relatively easily design a microtransaction
| service that has very little friction for payment.
| Meanwhile, there already exist many extremely low-friction
| payment services. If you have a credit card in the US with
| the new contactless payment technology, it's _extremely_
| easy to pay for things - you just swipe your card. If you
| have a Google Play account, it 's similarly easy to
| purchase a new app. If you have a subscription service with
| auto-renew, paying for another month/year is literally
| frictionless - there's absolutely no interaction necessary.
|
| > But it seems convenient and disingenuous to overlook the
| benefits as they're inconvenient to a shallow anti-
| advertising diatribe.
|
| See previous statement about your mistaken assumption that
| I said that advertising should be eliminated. Attacking a
| strawman does nobody any good.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Information is not passively processed by the brain!
|
| The cost of advertising is not your attention; it is your
| perception. Advertisements fundamentally alter your perception
| of the world in favor of whatever the advertiser is showing
| you. You are choosing to have your view of the world shaped in
| a way that may change your behavior. Note that this change
| occurs on an emotional level and cannot simply be discarded by
| your rational mind even if you don't believe / care about the
| ad at a conscious level.
| svnt wrote:
| This is a really underrated comment. People here tend to
| oversubscribe to their own capacity for rational behavior.
| Just because you can be hyper-rational it in one context
| doesn't mean you aren't human. It does mean that as people
| with better understanding you have a greater responsibility
| to protect others still capable of believing the internet has
| one old weird trick.
| thunderbong wrote:
| I agree with you although I feel you might be seeing things to
| simplistically?
|
| Showing ads is the first level and from that perspective I
| suppose it's fine.
|
| At the next level is harvesting data from those ads and sharing
| that data with third parties. I feel that's where things get
| very, very messy.
|
| Because if ads can be targeted based on a person's profile, so
| can other manipulations. Especially if that data is available
| with an authoritarian government.
|
| Since most companies showing ads don't play fairly, users in
| turn choose to block ads completely.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The outcry would be huge if everything went to a pay model.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| You're right - but I find that strange. Most of us are not
| angry about the pay model for groceries or haircuts. A
| smaller - but still large - fraction of us are okay paying
| for other zero-marginal-cost goods like software as well. I
| wonder why we are so attached to free content online. Maybe
| because of the historical television model that's been
| mentally transferred to the internet?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I think it's just because we've been conditioned to expect
| free content online.
|
| Free services like YouTube have provided me with an immense
| amount of value, but I would still be hesitant to pay for
| them unless I absolutely had to.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Its just the fact that people are used to free content, so
| the idea of paying for it is foreign.
|
| If groceries used to be free, but suddenly cost money,
| people would riot.
| yissp wrote:
| See also this Planet Money episode about formerly-free
| doughnuts. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/
| 156737801/the-...
| pydry wrote:
| That's absurd. People need groceries. If the National
| Enquirer went to a paid subscription model or disappeared
| entirely nobody would riot.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _That 's absurd. People need groceries._
|
| Thus: _if groceries used to be free, but suddenly cost
| money, people would riot._
|
| Arguably: why would people riot about not-free Youtube?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Was the web supported by ads before Google? I don't remember.
|
| Does the web _have_ to be supported by ads? If the web was a
| non-profit service, supported by public funds, managed by
| academic institutions for example, would we miss 90% of the
| content that 's basically sponsored by someone who wants to
| sell something?
|
| From my point of view it looks like the web is a giant
| advertising machine built on top of something that could be
| ... not a giant advertising machine. Still from my POV, it
| just happens that the big players on the web are suppoting
| ads because that's where their revenue comes from and if
| _they_ weren 't the big players, then we wouldn't have a web
| of ads.
|
| So basically we're not paying for ads that we wouldn't be
| paying for if google didn't run the web.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I like this point a lot, I do vaguely remember an internet
| before Google. The distinction was the internet felt built
| by people who had things to contribute, I think now the
| internet is a place to extract any and all value possible.
| We're too deep inside massive monolithic profit generation
| systems to see an alternative where the value isn't
| ultimately monetary. The lack of a true commons etc.
|
| * I think AOL making its own internet inside itself was an
| interesting data point on early-ish internet
| overgard wrote:
| I'm probably too nostalgic, but that's what the web used to
| be... and it was so much better. Most of the content we
| would lose I wouldn't miss at all. Clickbait and buzzfeed
| style sites. Already I'm paying for a lot of sites that
| actually do reporting, for instance, so I already feel like
| the content of real value is already for-pay or produced
| completely for free by enthusiasts and academics.
|
| I remember ~2001 or so a lot of the sites I visited were ad
| supported, but it mostly just made enough to cover hosting
| costs. At this point hosting costs are so cheap that I
| don't even think those style of sites would have trouble
| existing. Most of those sites existed because some people
| were interested in a hobby or a subject, and would publish
| news and have bulletin boards and articles and stuff. Sadly
| those kind of communities don't seem to exist anymore, now
| those kind of things end up being subreddits or facebook
| groups and I never feel like those are quite the same, they
| just don't have the same curation or community feel.
| raspyberr wrote:
| I foresee micropayments being extremely common place in the
| future. Something like a digital wallet browser extension.
| And instead of paying 5p to watch a video, you will instead
| pay 5p to skip 3 minute ads.
| lwhi wrote:
| I'd be happiest with a daily subscription model.
| intrasight wrote:
| The articles said that the industry has been talking about
| micropayments for 25 years and says it's hard. I think the
| real issue is that no large-ish tech organization has any
| incentive to invest in micropayments.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| People have been saying this for decades. I don't see a way
| for this to happen that is both more convenient to users
| and not open to all manner of automated attacks that would
| be difficult if not impossible to track down.
|
| Ad fraud is already a huge problem, as are things like
| ransomware. Micropayments would just give bad actors a
| direct line to your wallet.
| pseudozach wrote:
| You can allow certain domains to automatically withdraw
| from your bitcoin wallet and set limits to how much they
| can withdraw. This is not a technical problem but more of
| a marketing/adoption one. There are very smart people
| working on these: https://socket.money/
| lwhi wrote:
| It wouldn't happen at once.
|
| I wonder whether the gradual switch would need to be made
| possible through something similar to a micropayment
| subscription model, which is non publisher specific.
|
| I don't want to commit to subscriptions for 5+ publications,
| but I'd happily buy a days access occasionally. This feels
| much more akin to buying a newspaper in the old world.
|
| I think we'd end up seeing positive changes. Especially the
| end of content producers being held to ransom by advertisers
| and commercial pressures.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Most of that outcry would be from terrible media outlets who
| would have to shut down. 95% of the things I click on I wish
| I hadn't. They would still get an impression (if I weren't
| adblocked to the teeth.) They're trash that keeps me from the
| information that I want, and matchmaking stalkery ad markets
| are the reason for them.
| pydry wrote:
| The content people really value is already being paid for.
|
| I didn't hear any outrage at all when several newspapers
| transitioned to a pay model and threw up a paywall. The
| parties most upset were the newspapers themselves.
| xtracto wrote:
| I already hate it with Music and Video content: With music, I
| pay Youtube Music, but they don't have all the artists I
| like. I would have to pay for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube
| Music to get close to it. This means paying $30 USD per month
|
| With video... I pay $70 USD for my cable company
| (HBO+Star+misc-crap) plus $13 USD for Netflix, plus $12 for
| disney plus (wife likes a couple shows there), plus $13
| Amazon Prime, plus $10 for the local Netflix-like crap in my
| country (for some local shows).
|
| That means $118 USD _for video only_ , which is 14% of the
| average income in my country ($843 USD). Imagine if I had to
| pay $10 dollars a month for each of the internet services we
| use?
|
| $10 Gmail $10 google $10 Reddit $10 HackerNews $10 Youtube
| $10 Linkedin $10 Facebook $10 twitter $10 Whatsapp $10
| LiChess $10 Slack $10 Samsung Health $10 Google Maps $10
| Podcast Republic $10 CBS News (The only US channel I like for
| news) $10 Home Workout $10 Discord
|
| And that's at the top of my head, it will be $180 USD, or 21%
| of the average income of someone in my country.
|
| If that happened, the internet will become "a place for the
| rich" and pretty much only the north emisphere will use it.
| Yeah, ads suck... but their are a necessary evil to
| "monetize" users that are just not monetizable any other way.
| amoorthy wrote:
| Your point is a good one but let me offer some tweaks that
| make paying for stuff not look as bleak.
|
| 1. Bundling multiple subscriptions is a long-time practice
| and if more services were paid offerings we'd likely all
| buy some bundle that gave us most of what we wanted at a
| reasonable price.
|
| 2. Paying for services will reduce the number of services
| around... which may be a good thing when so many offerings
| are sub-par.
|
| 3. With more paid offerings, we will be more deliberate
| about how we spend our time, which is what advertising-
| based models make us forget we are really spending. And as
| you age you realize that the time you spent watching ad-
| supported drivel was more expensive than if you had just
| paid directly for the things you really needed and spent
| the rest of your time on things that matter - friends,
| family, experiences, learning etc.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> plus $12 for disney plus (wife likes a couple shows
| there)
|
| Sh, it's OK, everyone does it, you are not alone :P
| aphextron wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with ads. But the only adtech we need is
| <img src="ad.jpg" />. Anything else is indefensibly unethical and
| anti-user.
| jefftk wrote:
| How does the advertiser know they're not getting ripped off?
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| The online ad business generally mystifies me. While an awful lot
| of the internet, especially the surveillance advertising part,
| looks to be the greatest misallocation of engineering (and other)
| talent in the history of the world, ya gotta ask about the
| efficacy.
|
| The only reasonably accurate targeting I've ever run into is the
| occasional ad for something I just browsed on Amazon. I've never
| clicked on an internet ad. Youtube advertising might as well be
| targeted to an alien race. What in the hell keeps this whole
| business afloat at it's current level? Am I being programmed to
| buy that mechanic's vise because they threw up an after-the-
| browse ad?
|
| No doubt there's some sort of backend telemetry that proves the
| value of all this trouble, but I just don't see it. Maybe the
| emperor really is nekkid.
|
| edit: It may well be that the real marketing genius in the
| advertising industry is not it's value in increasing sales,
| whether it's old school print media/OTA/tradeshows or the
| newfangled spying-on-you internet variety, but in convincing it's
| customers of advertising's value. Anything beyond pushing you up
| a search engine's ranking strikes me as a sketchy proposition.
| antattack wrote:
| We should not call them Ads. Ads used to be passive, one-way
| means to turn ones attention to something.
|
| Now-days "Ads" are a watching you.
| scubbo wrote:
| I get your point, but this is inaccurate. Advertizing has
| always been targeted based on the demographic most likely to
| see them - deciding to air a TV ad during Saturday morning
| cartoons, during a football match, or during a soap opera has
| very meaningful differences. The only change now is that the
| granularity of information available for targeting has
| increased.
| antattack wrote:
| It used to be surveys few could voluntarily filled out that
| were interpolated onto similar demographics, or based on
| purchases.
|
| Now advertisers can track you directly where/when you go,
| without your permission. Your search and purchase history
| forever remembered, your location verified, your friends
| identified.
|
| With such level detail we will soon have _custom pricing_
| to maximize profits.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| There's a famous quote from John Wanamaker that goes something
| like:
|
| "Half of my advertising budget is wasted. The problem is, I
| don't know which half."
| csa wrote:
| You've made some really good points.
|
| Possible explanations that I have seen for inaccurate
| targeting:
|
| 1. Some folks have a ton of money in their budget to spend on
| marketing, and they frankly don't care about optimizing their
| targeting. In some cases, this is a shrewd decision, since the
| benefits of marginal optimization don't really justify the cost
| of optimization. That said, in most cases, it's just sloth or
| ignorance combined with the knowledge that they better spend
| their ad budget or else "bad things" will happen.
|
| 2. Lots of people call themselves digital marketers. Most of
| them who are employees suck, and I mean suck really bad. The
| reason is that if you are really good at digital marketing,
| it's pretty easy to roll your own small business that, at a
| minimum, makes enough money while still having a lot of
| latitude in terms of free time or financial upside. Most
| companies are not willing or are not able to pay highly
| competent digital marketers what they are worth. Regardless,
| these employee marketers who suck tend not to do well at
| optimizing targeting.
|
| 3. Most digital marketing agencies suck at targeting. This is
| largely a byproduct of #2 above. The owner of an agency or the
| lead marketer might be really good, but they often delegate to
| people who are not. Streamlining the work of the underlings
| turns out not to be that important for most of these agencies.
|
| That's my 2 cents. I would love to hear other opinions.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if Adwords is a net loss for the
| majority of Google's customers. The whole thing is full of dark
| patterns. Personally I got so fed up with the abusive nature of
| it that I abandoned it several years ago.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| I like to think of google ads the IRS of the internet. I pay
| my ad agency to minimize my google ads tax, not to grow
| business, same instructions I give to my tax accountant.
| Google will argue that everyone wins if you grow and pay more
| google tax, but many have tested this and proved it not to be
| true. Said another way, how good of a job your tax accountant
| is doing is orthogonal to growing your business.
| TwelveNights wrote:
| I've always thought that the value provided was in comparison
| to old-school advertising techniques, such as through physical
| media or broadcast-style presentation formats. Nowadays, even
| if some Youtube ads seem like a crapshoot, it's still much more
| focused than television.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| This, its not that the new digital approaches are photos in
| absolute terms but compared to old media they are
| substantially better
| marcinzm wrote:
| >I've never clicked on an internet ad.
|
| The most successful ads looks very similar to the organic
| content and tend to have very similar targeting mechanisms.
| Search ads that look like search results. Product ads on amazon
| that look like product search results. Facebook ads that look
| like Facebook posts. In my experience all those ads are quiet
| close to content I'd like and I've clicked on quiet a few
| without realizing it's an ad.
| hijodelsol wrote:
| While I personally agree with you when it comes to YT
| advertising which at times could not be more irrelevant, Google
| search ads and Facebook/Instagram ads seem to be the place
| where most money is spend. And in case of Google search the
| whole thing is basically a prisoners dilemma. You and your
| competitors are probably among the first results for the
| relevant keywords anyway and could save a lot on advertising if
| none of you advertised. But once a single competitor starts
| buying ads the whole sector has to move until the expense on
| Google ads is equal to the former profit margin. This in turn
| leads to monopolization as only the competitor with the highest
| profit margin at baseline will still be making a profit. It's
| hard to believe that Google pushing its apps and a single
| search/navigation bar on users is but an attempt to get
| businesses to pay for results they would already rank pretty
| well for, thereby diverting the profit of entire industries to
| Google and not offering any benefits to users.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| > You and your competitors are probably among the first
| results for the relevant keywords anyway and could save a lot
| on advertising if none of you advertised. But once a single
| competitor starts buying ads the whole sector has to move
| until the expense on Google ads is equal to the former profit
| margin. This in turn leads to monopolization as only the
| competitor with the highest profit margin at baseline will
| still be making a profit.
|
| Granted, incumbents are likely to score high on organic
| search results. If somebody new comes up with a better
| product, which can deliver more value at a lower price, the
| page rank algorithm isn't going to do much for them. But the
| newcomer's superior unit economics mean they can afford to
| bid higher for an ad, which allows them to get market share
| from the incumbent. In that sense, ads can make the market
| more liquid, and speed adoption of improved products and more
| efficient manufacturing or business processes.
|
| The ad publisher does end up capturing a big chunk of this
| value, and it's valid to ask if that's fair and if we as a
| society should allow it.
| pydry wrote:
| I have tracking blockers set up all over, so I rarely get ads
| targeted at me.
|
| Instead I get ads targeted at people who share my IP. I can
| often tell what my girlfriend has been browsing for from the
| ads I'm hit with, for instance, which is somewhat creepy.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I can often tell what my girlfriend has been browsing for
| from the ads I 'm hit with, for instance, which is somewhat
| creepy._
|
| I've had ads for medication that I'm prescribed, or could be
| prescribed, play on other people's devices when they use my
| network. It's likely targeted because I don't get ads for
| other types of prescriptions at all at home.
|
| I'm also pretty sure of some of the medical conditions my
| friends and family have based on the ads I consistently see
| in their homes.
| 8note wrote:
| I get the sense that it's mostly children and right wing PACs
| that keep the ad business afloat
| TchoBeer wrote:
| As a former child, I don't think I've ever bought or
| considered buying something because of an ad.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Perhaps it is not so much a question of whether online ads work
| nor how profitable the business is (or the costs to society of
| all the surveillance), but instead the question is why the
| author cannot or will not work on something else. Is the work
| he does truly valuable in a general sense. This question might
| help us gauge the veracity of his statements.
|
| If the web were 100% ad-free, it would still exist. It would
| still be growing. People would still spend countless hours
| working on computer programming. People would still be
| endlessly tinkering with the internet. This is reality, I saw
| it in the 80's and 90's. However, they would not be, as the
| author is today, asking for forgiveness, pledging to donate
| half their "earnings" to charity. Online ads may be an
| efficient way to make money but it also may be the _only_
| efficient way to make money from such "work" (experimentation,
| fun). The folks who are profiting from online ads will say
| anything to avoid that reality check.
|
| The emperor may indeed be naked, but the amount of money and
| infrastructure these companies have to bury the truth is
| enormous. They will not allow the world to ever again
| experience a web without pervasive advertising. The person who
| started the web already had a real job. He did not try to make
| money with online ads. That world was fun while it lasted.
| There were so many possibilities.
|
| Thanks to this author's "work", the possibilities now appear to
| be mostly dystopian. Compare this post "Why I work on Ads" to
| the original paper from Brin and Page that described the
| influence of advertising on web search as undesirable and a
| primary motivation for creating Google.
|
| http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/334.pdf
| fastball wrote:
| Generally yes but Instagram ads are somehow amazingly well-
| targeted towards me.
|
| Literally every ad I say to myself "wow, that is actually
| something I would consider buying" and in certain instances, I
| have. Outside of Instagram it is _exceedingly_ rare that I
| would purchase something based on an ad.
| filoleg wrote:
| From what I keep reading on HN, Facebook ad network ads
| (which includes Instagram) are by far the best and most
| precise in terms of targeting, it doesn't even get close.
|
| And from my anecdotal experiences, I have to agree with both
| you and what I see on HN in that regard. Not only they get
| the advertisers right up my alley, they even get the exact
| products I want to click on.
|
| For a specific example: I don't get easily baited by random
| no-name "hip" clothing startups (that are mostly just alibaba
| dropship sort of places), so instagram keeps giving me ads
| for Adidas products as well. And the thing is, not only does
| it get correctly that I am likely to be interested in Adidas
| products, the specific products from Adidas that get
| suggested to me in those ads are the exact kind of products
| from Adidas that I would be interested in. Which is very
| impressive and surprising, given how wide the range of Adidas
| products is, and how most of their general stuff isn't super
| appealing to me. It is hard to describe to the point where I
| am struggling myself to define what exactly I am looking for
| if I am navigating Adidas website. But somehow Instagram ads
| get it right on target most of the time.
|
| The only time when those ads let me down big time was when I
| saw an Adidas tracksuit advertised with the design I just
| liked a ton. Without looking at the details, I ordered it,
| only to realize a bit later that it was in "kids" section of
| their website, and I have no kids (and neither do I fall
| under the typical "people who might have kids" demographic by
| any metric; e.g., I don't search for any items even
| tangentially related to children, not a part of any FB groups
| that are heavily populated by parents or children, etc.). But
| damn, I would be lying if I said that Instagram didn't get
| the exact idea of what I wanted perfectly correct, sizing
| issues aside lol.
| imron wrote:
| > and I have no kids
|
| According to their algorithm, you do now.
| imron wrote:
| https://signal.org/blog/the-instagram-ads-you-will-never-
| see...
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, and think it's just that I don't see
| any typical big advertiser ads like FMCG companies, whereas
| the traditional media is full of them.
|
| On the other side there are Google Play ads with mouth open
| guys - I'm never going to play one of those vile games, ever.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/cv4ezs/mouth.
| ..
| code4you wrote:
| I totally agree about the YouTube advertising. YouTube
| literally has hundreds of hours of my video history to work
| with, yet the vast majority of the ads I see are completely
| unrelated to my interests. What's the point of all the tracking
| if they can't even show me relevant ads on YouTube of all
| places? Podcast ads tend to be much more relevant, and I can
| even recall purchases I've made due to them. AFAIK my podcast
| player isn't tracking me or using targeted ads.
| Riseed wrote:
| > AFAIK my podcast player isn't tracking me or using targeted
| ads.
|
| Some podcasts use "dynamic ad insertion", where the ads are
| inserted when you download the podcast rather than when the
| podcast file is created and uploaded. [0] Discovered my
| podcasts were tracking me when I traveled and then heard ads
| for an out-of-state regional chain after I returned home,
| clearly because I had downloaded the episodes while
| traveling. Overcast added privacy & tracking info, to show
| whether each podcast uses dynamic ad insertion or (possibly)
| tracks IP etc. [1].
|
| [0] https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/10/08/podcast-
| priv... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/03/podcast-privacy-
| alerts/
| lapnitnelav wrote:
| That's because the companies winning bidds on your 'views'
| are targeting you because of your apparent persona, i.e
| middle aged man/woman in tech -aka middle class ++ with
| disposable income, rather than what you are interested in.
|
| On top of that, plenty of marketers are absolutely clueless
| about how to go about their strategy, mostly because unlike
| previous generations (in online ads), they don't grok the
| underlying tech at all.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| They might was well simply tie it to the program content
| then. For instance, if I watch a Scott Kilmer video, it'll
| typically have an Autozone ad.
|
| If that's all there is to it, I expect there's a lot of
| needless work being done under the covers.
| blt wrote:
| If you turn off personalized ads, that's basically what
| you'll see.
|
| Although for me, it's a 50/50 split between topic-related
| and ads that appear to target a generic male audience,
| which is a very good guess for some topics.
| waltherg wrote:
| The value proof in the backend that convinces advertisers to
| throw more many at this? Mostly rule of thumb heuristics with a
| fair amount of overselling. So no, in most cases the telemetry
| just doesn't prove much.
|
| I've seen the thesis that all this advertising revenue - even
| if poorly spent - subvents large portions of exciting research
| in deep learning etc. at the likes of Google and Facebook. So
| all that talent wouldn't entirely be lost to advertising.
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| > No doubt there's some sort of backend telemetry that proves
| the value of all this trouble.
|
| And it seems like unless you go to a lot of trouble, you're
| essentially relying on the ad network's own metrics for
| efficacy... Which when you consider the sheer quantity of money
| at stake, seems like it will end in a massive fraud at least
| once. I could be wrong about the perverse incentive though, it
| seems almost too obvious so I would assume that people who know
| the ad industry better than me would have a response to it.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> unless you go to a lot of trouble, you 're essentially
| relying on the ad network's own metrics for efficacy_
|
| There's a whole ecosystem of "buyside verification vendors"
| that advertisers contract with to validate that they're
| getting what they paid for. Buyers don't just take the
| seller's word for it, or at least enough of them don't that
| shady sellers are kept in check.
| powerapple wrote:
| ads don't fund the open internet, rather it funds the huge
| valuation of the internet company. Why internet companies
| valuation is so much higher than the grocery store around the
| corner? it does not need to be.
|
| I don't hate ads, I don't mind it at all to be honest. I use
| Instagram just for ads :) Restaurants, hotels, we need
| coldtea wrote:
| Because of the salary?
| delroth wrote:
| If jefftk wanted to stop working on ads, he could transfer
| within weeks to any of hundreds of open positions on Google's
| internal recruitment platform, keeping the same compensation,
| benefits, etc. It's stupidly easy (doesn't even require your
| current manager's approval!) and the only "cost" is usually
| that it can set you back slightly in your career due to
| abandoning your current projects and having to ramp up on new
| stuff.
|
| So no, "because of the salary" doesn't explain any of it, and
| you should read the blog post before posting insulting comments
| like these.
| [deleted]
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| I'd work on advertisements for high six figures. That being
| said, I'd also be a terrible culture fit in an advertising
| shop. I can't stand ads and a hobby of mine is criticising the
| ads, and companies, forcing me through them for the duration
| thereof.
|
| >I must be fun at parties
|
| Parties with ads, or any paid "guests" are not fun...
| supersrdjan wrote:
| What are your most frequently recurring points of criticism
| and what type of ads you find elicit the least criticism?
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| That's a question I want to get paid six figures to answer.
| izacus wrote:
| What makes you think your criticism is worth paying six
| figures for? :)
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| The quality of the advertisements I see hocking the wares
| of blue chip and f500 companies. :D
| bor100003 wrote:
| Saying so with your real name and blog? Good luck.
| Retr0spectrum wrote:
| The problem is not Ads themselves, it's the fact that they inject
| perverse incentives into the entire tech ecosystem.
|
| To maximize your advertising revenue, you need to track your
| users as effectively as possible. This:
|
| a) Reduces user privacy. Even recent developments like FLoC,
| which appear to be pro-privacy on the surface, are really just
| yet another datapoint with which to violate the privacy of users.
|
| b) Reduces performance. It's easy to blame trendy bloated tech
| stacks for the state of the web, but the reality is that a big
| chunk of the slowness comes from ad-related tracking and delivery
| technologies (install privacy extensions on a low-end system and
| see the difference!). This reduced performance disproportionately
| affects those with lower system and network resources, further
| reinforcing global inequality.
|
| Although some will disagree, I do think that it's _possible_ to
| advertise ethically, but no large corporation operating in a
| capitalist society is going to be doing that voluntarily - unless
| strict regulation comes down from above (Spoiler Alert: It won
| 't).
|
| All that said, I don't blame the author for working in adtech,
| but perhaps only due to my rather bleak perspective that we're
| all just cogs in the capitalist machine whether we like it or
| not.
|
| Don't hate the player, hate the game.
|
| P.S: Cynically, I think the author's announcement of their
| charitable donations counts against them. It makes it seem like
| he's trying to "offset" the harm caused by his work, even if he
| won't openly admit that such harm exists. Charitable donations
| may make you a net-virtuous individual, but they do nothing to
| address the harm of adtech itself - which is orthogonal to the
| author's original claim that they believe that advertising is a
| good thing.
| rpdillon wrote:
| It's curious that neither the OP nor the comments address the
| incentives funding via advertising creates. While I strongly
| agree about issues surrounding the data collection and tracking
| systems used to target ads, I'm thinking about the publisher's
| side.
|
| For a subscription service (paywalled), users are making an up-
| front decision to pay for the content an outlet publishes because
| they believe in some sense that the writing is worth it. This is
| a pretty intellectual thing to do, since you have to actually
| enter payment details and select a plan. It's fundamentally a
| premeditated act.
|
| The advertising-based model is closer to the lizard-brain, I
| think. To a first approximation, it seems that ad-based funding
| created the whole world of "click bait": low quality articles
| with catchy headlines designed to increase ad views by tapping
| into peoples' curiosity. This model is the opposite of
| premeditated: it's almost subconscious and driven by moment-to-
| moment impulse. And I think web-based advertising incentivizes
| this greatly, to the point that the low-quality content designed
| to be engaged with impulsively is driving who gets elected.
|
| I don't have high conviction that my thinking here is correct,
| but the dots do seem to connect, and I don't see it discussed
| much. I raise it here because while I abhor the data gathering
| associated with ad targeting, if I'm honest with myself, I think
| the harm coming from click-bait content online is more tangible
| today than the harm from the data collection.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| My gripe with the author's rationalization (which is probably
| held by many of his peers as well, not to point specifically at
| him) is that the default of the web has become that you must
| accept ads being thrown in your face to do the most benign
| browsing activity.
|
| a user makes an http request to a domain. the current accepted
| response is to send back ads and trackers, pillage and extract as
| much value from that user as possible, immediately. as a user I
| feel I should be prompted:
|
| "this site is funded by ads. by continuing, you agree to the
| following..."
|
| its just a sort of zero permission adulteration of the web -
| guaranteed ad revenue from a click begets more crap clickbait
| content and so on. in fact, perhaps ads and tracking mechanisms
| should be treated by browsers the same as zero click JS malware.
| no content til the user agrees to have ads delivered to them.
|
| i get it, of course prompting a user would create friction and
| decrease revenue. its the user's machine, data. they are entitled
| to the optionality of rejecting an HTTP response if it contains
| unwanted/unwelcome crap.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Most people here seem to hate ads and/or find them unethical.
|
| So I was wondering if those people either not watch YouTube or
| pay for premium?
| publiccharity wrote:
| Oh man, my sides. This is so rich I'm going to be ill. So the guy
| who puts his donations majorly on blast is Yet Another Ads Guy.
| The thing about a guilty conscience is it's hard to miss. Don't
| worry bro, you're perfect, go make that bread. Sleazy.
| djdjdjdjdj wrote:
| I invented 'antiad'.
|
| I see an annoying ad in public space? I might get in contact with
| them to complain about that ad.
|
| I think it is just fair to tell someone my honest opinion as soon
| as they take the time and effort to target me.
|
| I'm totally lost on why we support generic unrelevant ads in
| public spaces. It makes our cities ugly.
| andrepd wrote:
| Absolutely. I cannot even walk through _my_ city without an
| assault being waged on my senses.
| stevenicr wrote:
| Someone who works on ads!? Thank goodness.
|
| recent experience:
|
| Friend needs to google ads for new location in another state. I
| say call google and get setup - your web site is good - and they
| will actually answer the phone when you call for this.
|
| Couple months later - zero calls for new clients.
|
| I take a peek into his campaign - it's set on some new fangled
| 'smart ads' - there is like almost no data on keyword clicks and
| such.
|
| I mention that it's odd for ads for a specific niche (rolfing) to
| burn through a few thousand dollas in ads and not being a single
| new customer. (he laughs 'there is no way it's been thousands of
| dollars' - I did not laugh and said yes you have spent thousands
| already I can see THAT in your stats - he had no idea)
|
| He reaches out for support via phone and help forms. Eventually I
| do the same.
|
| The pain one must go through filling out these long forms with
| lots of entries to get support - omg.
|
| No one can figure out where the money went, which search phrases,
| etc. I start to work on negative keywords lists and location
| radius.. it burns another 2 grand - with no stats.
|
| Support is delayed - even India is delaying things with covid at
| that point.. messaging is sparse - basic answer is we took your
| money, you agreed, sorry you got zero business.
|
| His bank account wiped out and he did not even know it was
| happening. I think he panicked with his bank and they cancelled
| his debit card about that time.
|
| I tried to create a new campaign for him that would be exact
| match and have good negative keywords at that point that would
| actually get clients and not waste clicks.. but his account was
| frozen.
|
| More support attempts.. weeks later - a message saying similar to
| - pay us another $1800 - smart ads don't do good stats - sorry
| about your luck.
|
| I had paused the smart ads campaign that google set up and
| created a better one - but at that point my friend was so soured
| on the google experience, and the ripoff that he did not want to
| pay the additional $1800 that could not be charged to his
| cancelled card.
|
| Short story long.. this campaign was not setup and run by an ad
| agency - google set it up. It was a complete waste of money and
| time and it has hurt the brand not just wit the two of us, but
| others we share details on this.
|
| I suggested they refund 1800 and let him start fresh with the new
| setup I created.. more long forms to fill out.. eventually no
| dice.
|
| There was a time when I helped businesses with google ads and it
| made several places successful for some time. What google has
| become with their lack of customer support and transparency is
| mind boggling to me.
|
| If the yellow pages helped customers make ads and charged 3 grand
| a month to run them and in turn zero new customers called - I
| would imagine there would be less ads in those sections next
| year.
|
| Anyhow your google ad folks essentially took advantage of a 70
| year old and wiped his bank account - and returned zero benefits.
|
| Might be time for some changes with how all that works - maybe
| just stop the retail side of doing ads for small folks and make
| them go through an agency so you can place the blame elsewhere -
| or/and maybe an agency would do a better job making sure there
| were proper stats and return on investment in order to keep
| paying clients in business.
|
| Right now the metrics and reports of taking money from small
| businesses while paying folks in India to sell and support it -
| it's really not working as well as it might look in those
| quarterly spreadsheets.
|
| imho - ymmv.
| aflag wrote:
| > Typically, the vendor doesn't just get that you are interested
| in cars, they get the full URL of the page you are on.
|
| I'd say that knowing you're interested in cars is also a
| violation of your privacy. Knowing that people that are in car
| festivals may be interested in cars is ok, but knowing that a
| person attended to a car festival is not ok.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Advertising is not inherently bad.
|
| The concentration of power in a few handful gigantic corporations
| is.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > And so: ads. Funding the open web.
|
| Nope. Ads are not funding the open web.
|
| The vast majority of ad revenue and spending goes into the
| pockets of Facebook (openly hostile to the idea of an open web)
| and Google (sneakily hostile to the open web, and busy working on
| replacing the web with all things Google).
|
| Actual open web partially supported by advertisement? I don't
| think it ever existed. And when it did, it sure as hell didn't
| require pervasive 24/7 surveillance of everyone.
| mrweasel wrote:
| That one annoyed me as well, but for a different reason. The
| open web doesn't require funding, the commercial web does.
|
| Advertising on the net doesn't bother me as much as it once
| did, but I also see less of it. I don't really visit news
| sites, mostly the ones already funded by my tax money or the
| subscription I pay for.
|
| The best blogs rarely have ads. 20 years ago any random blog
| would have ads, not so any more. Search engines, at least DDG
| have a reasonable ad policy, even though I have reported a
| large number of questionable ads. Google is a little useless,
| because actual result drown in ads for some searches.
|
| I think contextual ads should be preferred over those based on
| a users past behaviour online. It's really only news sites and
| social media that needs the ads based on tracking users.
| NilsIRL wrote:
| It's not because it's funded by advertising that it's cheaper for
| the user, in the end, the consumer pays for the advertising when
| they purchase something
| elwell wrote:
| Unless publicity created by advertising enables economies of
| scale lowering unit cost.
| topaz0 wrote:
| I came here to say this. I don't think that advertising is
| inherently unethical, but profit makes unethical behavior in
| advertising inevitable. The article talks about the scenario
| where I have a product that I think people will want but don't
| know about, so I'm giving them information about it.
| Win/win/win -- the site gets some money for the work they put
| into the content that they care about, I get (net positive)
| money from my customer, the customer gets a product that they
| wanted anyway, and access to the site they were interested in
| reading. But it's almost always more like I have some money and
| want more, and it's much more profitable to use shady means to
| manipulate people who don't really want my product that they
| do, so I will pay site owners to facilitate the manipulation,
| both by giving me user data and optimizing for their attention
| instead of the content that they care about (more
| manipulation), and the user/customer loses many times over,
| because they have a product that they didn't want, paid more
| for it than it was worth, had degraded browsing experience of
| the content they were interested in, and have sacrificed
| privacy in the process.
| dhimes wrote:
| Once again (I'm getting hoarse from shouting this): Ads are fine.
| Having ads where I am looking at something because I am
| interested in it is fine.
|
| Tracking me is not.
|
| Are we talking ad-tech, or tracking-tech?
| powerapple wrote:
| I don't think ads fund open internet, it does fund the huge
| valuation of internet companies though. Why internet company's
| valuation is so much higher than the shops on high-streets? it
| does not have to be.
|
| I don't hate ads, they are useful. I use Instagram for ads, I
| follow restaurants and hotels. They are just some information.
| But I don't want to be targeted.
| falcolas wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: Ads by themselves are unethical. Whether
| targeted, contextual, or just randomly applied.
|
| Ads are psychological warfare against a populace using their very
| nature against them. All in an effort to get them to change their
| behavior in a way that's going to be detrimental to them. Either
| they stop looking for alternatives, or they make purchases they
| don't need to (see: toothpaste consumption rates).
|
| Ads are unethical, and are only considered acceptable because
| they have been around for so long, and because they're "easy" to
| use and supposedly ignore. Anyone working in the ad industry is
| directly supporting this unethical behavior. This isn't an "NTP
| is also used in cyber warfare" style of engagement, this is
| writing missile guidance systems levels of engagement.
| closeparen wrote:
| Are people hardwired out of the womb to know that your services
| are available and that they want them?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Not having ads is also unethical. Imagine trying to spread a
| novel idea / product to a society or an oligopoly that wants to
| oppress you
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Imagine trying to spread a novel idea / product to a society
|
| If society actually wants it then they can learn about it
| from places that aggregate such ideas. Moreover if our lives
| weren't inundated with ads 24/7 then those aggregators would
| be in much more demand. Very very few advertisements are for
| novel ideas that are actually a net positive for society.
| falcolas wrote:
| If society, or "the oligopoly," wants to suppress you, the ad
| industry isn't going to help you. They wouldn't want to run
| afoul of these big movers and shakers for a couple of
| hundreds of dollars.
|
| Try running ads now for the KKK's new "hoods and cloaks"
| business if you'd like a practical example.
| theschwa wrote:
| Would you say that Ads are still unethical if they're not paid
| for?
|
| As just an anecdote, I'm always shocked by the amount of
| advertising at Burning Man. There's always people trying to get
| you to come to their event or join in their activity. Signs and
| street barkers are everywhere. There's no money and no
| bartering allowed, but advertising is everywhere, since
| ultimately attention is what is in limited supply.
|
| If they aren't unethical in this scenario, it seems like what
| you're saying is that it's the underlying socio-economic system
| that's unethical, which would explain why all of the
| alternatives to ads also appear to be unethical.
| falcolas wrote:
| What's unethical is taking advantage of an average person's
| psychological blind spots or weaknesses with the ultimate
| goal of making a profit.
| fastball wrote:
| I'm generally sympathetic to this stance, but the major
| drawback that has surfaced (when I've had this conversation in
| the past) is that discovery is a real thing that still needs to
| happen and ads can in fact help with that.
|
| First in the obvious way: there are products that I have found
| useful that I would not have known existed if not for ads. The
| idea that you should only ever purchase something because you
| were specifically looking for it seems a bit silly, because
| that's not how it has played out in my life. Have I purchased
| stuff I didn't need, influenced by ads? Of course. But I've
| also purchased things which _objectively made my life better_ ,
| which I would not have even known existed without ads.
|
| We are lucky to live at a point in time where most of the
| world's information is at our fingertips (via the internet) and
| we can quickly, easily, and freely find information about
| anything we could want. But this is ignoring the fact that a
| lot of this is in turn funded by ads.
|
| e.g. when I'm trying to find something, I google it, which is
| free because their business model is ads. There are a lot of
| people who are reviewing products with high levels of trust on
| sites like YouTube (tech reviewers like MKBHD), but they are
| able to produce those videos (which I watch for free) because
| they too are funded by ads.
|
| Sure, we could pay subscriptions for all those things, but as
| pointed out in the OP, that is a regressive funding model - it
| becomes harder for a poor person to find the best products if
| all the best product reviews are locked behind paywalls.
| falcolas wrote:
| Your argument boils down to "content creators need to make
| money, and the only expedient way for them to make money is
| to show ads".
|
| And you know what? Perhaps it is.
|
| Even if that's the case, I still think it's unethical, that a
| bit more brainpower should be put into a funding model that
| _isn 't_ ads. Even if it increases friction.
|
| The most expedient way to expand a country's border is still
| war, and I believe that's unethical as well.
| fastball wrote:
| Well you missed the first part of the argument, which is
| that ads can be intrinsically useful for discovery of
| things you didn't know you needed but would actually be
| useful in your life.
|
| With regards to the second part, which you addressed, it's
| one thing to say "this is bad we should replace it with X".
| It is an entirely different thing to say "this is bad I
| have no idea what we should replace it with". Because
| nothing is black and white, so it doesn't matter how bad
| ads are if the thing that replaces them is then _worse_.
| theptip wrote:
| In your ethical framework, are all attempts at persuading
| someone to change their behavior unethical? What
| advocacy/awareness increasing behaviors are ethically
| acceptable?
|
| What if an ad is for a product that someone wants, and is
| beneficial to them by helping them find a product they were not
| aware of?
| falcolas wrote:
| > are all attempts at persuading someone to change their
| behavior unethical
|
| Same answer as a sibling comment. It's unethical to take
| advantage of a person's psychological blind spots or
| weaknesses to turn a profit.
|
| > What if an ad is for a product that someone wants
|
| Do they want it prior to viewing the ad? If not, the ad is
| creating a psychological desire for something not previously
| needed or wanted.
|
| Or did they pull a trick like a sibling commenter called out
| - searching for "good USB drive" and providing an ad. The ad
| takes advantage of being shown in response to a keywords that
| implies a level of quality of the product that isn't
| substantiated. There's no technical reviews that demonstrate
| that it's good, or even suitable to the task at hand. The
| only thing that actually sets it apart is how much was paid
| to put it in front of the searcher's eyes.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| How do you draw the difference between an ad and not an ad?
|
| Is a doctor telling you to brush 2x a day an ad for toothpaste?
| What about their suggestion that you floss more? Those are
| aligned with your well being, but will increase your
| consumption.
|
| > change their behavior in a way that's going to be detrimental
| to them.
|
| This seems obviously wrong. The implication here is that
| anything advertised must be bad for the target. From an econ
| perspective this means that you reject the idea of comparative
| advantage.
| BCM43 wrote:
| > How do you draw the difference between an ad and not an ad?
|
| If it's paid promotion, it's an ad. If the doctor's doing
| this only because they think it's in my best interest, it's
| not. The FTC already has some pretty clear guidelines on this
| because ads are required to be clearly marked as such in many
| cases.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I guess I should clarify in the context of this discussion,
| we're defining ads as
|
| >psychological warfare against a populace using their very
| nature against them. All in an effort to get them to change
| their behavior in a way that's going to be detrimental to
| them. Either they stop looking for alternatives, or they
| make purchases they don't need to
|
| In this context, a doctor making a recommendation to use a
| particular brand (paid or unpaid) is an ad. Even a doctor
| generally recommending you change your behavior to consume
| more toothpaste is an ad.
|
| So in this framing, how do you determine the difference
| between an ad and not?
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| Even with the narrow definition, you missed:
|
| > in a way that's going to be detrimental to them.
|
| A dentist recommending that I use more toothpaste may
| change my behavior, but not in a detrimental way. If the
| dentist is paid to make the same recommendation, it's
| more difficult to say whether they made the
| recommendation purely out of my best interest, so the
| definition begins to apply again.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This gets back to what I said about comparative
| advantage. The monetary transfer is only bad if you
| assume the company can only gain if you lose and the
| situation is zero sum. If you using toothpaste is good
| for you, and good for the company, what's the issue?
|
| To use a more current example: would Pfizer marketing in
| a way that intentionally appeals to anti-vax people be
| mind control to their detriment?
|
| Taking a step back, there are at least (but really I
| think only) two reasons for an advertisement: to raise
| awareness or to convince. The first clearly isn't
| unethical. Saying "we exist" isn't really mind control,
| and results in a more informed consumer. I admit that
| most ads that appear to do that don't _just_ do that, but
| an advertisement that simply points out that Colgate is a
| Toothpaste brand that you can buy Is ethical. Its exactly
| the same as putting your logo on your box (which is a
| form of advertisement!) and having your box at eye level
| on the shelf (which is also a form of advertisement!!).
|
| The second type convinces people that one act may be
| better than another (our brand > their brand, or brushing
| > not). These can be ethical or not, but GP stated that,
| essentially, advertising is always going to be
| detrimental to the consumer, which implies that everyone
| is already acting in a globally optimal way. That seems
| immediately suspicious, does it not?
| czzr wrote:
| Biggest issue with this argument - advertising supported
| businesses are fine, contextual advertising is fine, targeted
| cross site advertising is a pointless red queen race that is
| undermining our society in multiple ways.
| jefftk wrote:
| Can you say more what you mean by "pointless red queen race"?
|
| Let's say someone wants to sell fishing equipment. The
| traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing sites.
| So now my fishing equipment purchases make there be more
| writing about fishing; yay!
|
| Then one of the fishing websites decides to put a tracking
| pixel on their site to drop "fishing website visitor" cookies
| (or, in a future without third-party cookies, a turtledove
| interest group). They make a deal with a third party provider
| and get paid a small amount per visitor. Then fishing retailers
| have a new choice: instead of buying ads on fishing sites they
| can instead buy ads on any site for users who have one of the
| "fishing website visitor" cookies. If there were a monopoly
| fishing site, then this would increase their earnings: while
| the ad space on their site isn't as valuable, they will set the
| pixel price high enough that they come out ahead. It's not a
| monopoly, though, so the price of the pixel gets driven down
| through competition, and money that would go to fishing sites
| instead goes to the publishers that people who spend money on
| fishing equipment visit.
|
| In this case I see how it's worse for fishing sites, but not
| how it's bad for consumers: their willingness to buy fishing
| equipment translates into support for all the sites they visit,
| and not just the fishing sites.
|
| But there are also many niches that don't have economic tie-
| ins, or have ones that are far weaker than "writing about
| fishing" and "buying fishing equipment". In a world with
| targeted advertising, these niches do better, because of
| overlap between audiences. A "let's have better housing policy"
| blog can show ads for fishing equipment, vacations, HVAC
| supplies, or whatever else visitors have shown interest in on
| other sites.
|
| Additionally, targeted advertising increases the total amount
| of funding available for online content, because people with
| niche interests are available to be advertised to in more
| places. Seeing ten fishing ads once a week when you visit a
| fishing site vs seeing twenty fishing ads spread over the
| course of the week, etc.
|
| So while niche publishers in lucrative niches would likely make
| more money if we only had context-based advertising, I don't
| think niche publishers overall, publishers overall, or
| consumers would be better off.
|
| (This is modified from a comment I originally posted on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21620763)
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _In this case I see how it 's worse for fishing sites, but
| not how it's bad for consumers_
|
| I have an example loosely inspired by real life.
|
| Let's say I visit a fishing forum using the shared computer
| of my very, very vegan family. That website has now dropped
| the "fishing website visitor" cookie, and suddenly all my
| computer shows are ads for lure and fishing rods. My father
| is now furious, asking everyone in the house who has been
| visiting "those" websites.
|
| I want the association between me and fishing gone. But who
| do I talk to? The website says they had nothing to do with
| this, the ad network won't even give me the time of day, and
| if the cookie is a supercookie then clearing history and
| cache may not be enough. And heavens help me if I get
| targeted mail, like Target used to do with pregnant women...
|
| That, I believe, is the problem with targeted advertising:
| that my privacy is taken away in the name of helping
| somebody's website, it's leaked everywhere, and I have no
| real way to say "I don't want this".
| omginternets wrote:
| Now take us through the individual and collective
| consequences of mass data collection.
|
| You seem to be deliberately focusing on the beneficial parts
| of advertising, at the exclusion of the harmful bits. If you
| want to maintain your credibility -- let alone give the
| impression of someone striving to live ethically -- you'll
| need to give that second part its due attention.
|
| Addendum:
|
| If I were offered a generous salary to work on Google ad
| technology, I might accept. I'm not 100% sure, but the
| temptation would very real. As such, I want to make it clear
| that my criticism does not stem from any feeling of moral
| superiority, but rather from deep-seated respect and sympathy
| for someone engaged in an ethical dilemma.
|
| I believe the comments would be much more charitable had your
| position been something along the lines of "I do it because
| it's good money, and I sometimes struggle with the dilemma.
| Here is the nature of the issue as I see it." As a general
| rule, people respect earnest introspection. Not so with
| playing ostrich.
| dnissley wrote:
| Let's talk about the individual and collective consequences
| of mass data collection. Are you saying you know something
| about those? Do tell!
|
| Maybe I'm just terribly dense, but I seriously can't think
| of any reasonable objection to what google does. The best I
| personally can come up with is that most people don't
| understand what google is doing and if they did know some
| of them might object.
|
| When I google "the individual and collective consequences
| of mass data collection" I get results that talk about the
| NSA and human rights -- this doesn't seem to have much to
| do with what google is doing though. When I add "google" to
| that search I get a rambling article on "How surveillance
| changes people's behavior".
|
| Please help me out here -- how am I or anyone else being
| harmed by google knowing what sites I visit?
|
| I don't think the author is being disingenuous. I do think
| there is a sizable subset of privacy advocates who have
| become so stringently ideological about this issue they
| would downvote even thoughtful replies and are so caught up
| in their bubble that they seemingly can't have a
| conversation with anyone outside of it.
| andrepd wrote:
| Are you being sarcastic? You cannot see consequences in
| the fact of a gigantic tech company having access to:
| searches, emails, attachments, photos, videos, location,
| messages, calls, apps installed and their usage, sleep
| schedules, driving styles, medical records, and about
| 1001 things I forgot to mention?
| TchoBeer wrote:
| As long as they're not doing anything illegal? No.
| omginternets wrote:
| >Let's talk about the individual and collective
| consequences of mass data collection. Are you saying you
| know something about those? Do tell!
|
| Yes, let's. I'm not an expert, so I don't have any
| insight. Do you?
|
| Still, this question seems like an essential part of
| essay about the ethics of working in the ad industry.
|
| Perhaps you meant to direct your sarcasm towards the
| author?
| alxlaz wrote:
| Why do all the examples from the advertising industry have
| such easy-peasy, neutral goods? Fishing equipment. Basket
| weaving books. Dog food.
|
| Targeted advertising hasn't been a blessing just for small
| businesses selling fishing equipment and organic combucha,
| but also -- actually, _especially_ , for companies that sell
| things like:
|
| * Potentially addictive subscriptions (for e.g. online
| casinos or other gambling games) -- thus specifically
| targeting people who are at risk for addiction, unless your
| targeting settings are crap.
|
| * Snake oil skincare products for teenagers, or potentially
| dangerous weight loss tablets -- thus compounding peer
| pressure against young people with poor self esteem.
|
| * Bullshit therapy "options" like German New Medicine,
| specifically targeting people who are terminally ill, or
| researching things like cancer treatment for a relative or a
| friend.
|
| Boy am I glad we're increasing the total amount of funding
| available for online content!
| dhimes wrote:
| * HIV meds * LGBT*A forums * politically
| charged sites * cancer/heart disease/diabetes pages
| tnzm wrote:
| And animal husbandry!
| cm2012 wrote:
| If those are troubling industries (which I agree) it should
| be illegal to advertise those products. That doesn't mean
| advertising as a methodology is bad.
| andrepd wrote:
| What value does advertising produce? I mean it, if
| advertising magically ceased to exist tomorrow, would
| anything be worse? Advertising is in itself a
| manipulative activity, an attempt to pass a worse product
| as a better one, or to create a demand where there was
| none, or to persuade someone to do something they
| otherwise wouldn't.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I think advertising has been crucial to increasing the
| economic size of the world. It's a valid argument if you
| think our world is crap, and we should never have
| switched to bigger civilizations. But the economic
| growth, driven significantly by increasing the available
| market for products, has led lots of people out of
| poverty, spurred innovation, and generally enabled a lot
| more humans to be born than would have.
|
| Advertising expands markets for goods.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You can make similar arguments for almost all jobs.
|
| You make cars? You focus on good things like driving to a
| vacation, but what about all the cars used in drive by
| shootings?
|
| You sell cloud services? You talk about the great websites,
| but what about all the people who host scam sites on the
| cloud?
|
| You write monitoring software? What about all the people
| who monitor ad services?
| zihotki wrote:
| I believe that the key of the message was that the
| advertisement companies gather a plenty of personal data
| and vulnerable groups are very easy to find and target.
| The same private data is also useful for "all the people
| who host scam sites on the cloud".
| andrepd wrote:
| Bullshit. Targeting depressed teenagers with self-esteem
| issues _is not_ the same thing as selling a car.
|
| You cannot be in good-faith with these kinds of
| arguments.
| nl wrote:
| I think targetting depressed teenagers with something
| that makes their depression worse is bad.
|
| But advertising mental health apps or government
| intervention programs doesn't seem intrinsically
| unethical within limits.
|
| It's almost like the actual unethical item should be
| regulated!
| alxlaz wrote:
| Yeah, so?
|
| The author of the post _specifically_ (you read the
| article, didn 't you?) said:
|
| > The thing is, I think advertising is positive, and I
| think my individual contribution is positive. I'm open to
| being convinced on this: if I'm causing harm through my
| work I would like to know about it.
|
| Then goes on to not mention a single example of harm
| being caused through their work, like virtually all
| articles that attempt to defend the advertising
| industry's practices. I thought I'd list a few.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > n this case I see how it's worse for fishing sites, but not
| how it's bad for consumers: their willingness to buy fishing
| equipment translates into support for all the sites they
| visit, and not just the fishing sites.
|
| It's bad for the consumer because their privacy is being
| violated and their metadata is being sold, in order for
| advertisers to track them everywhere they go online, so
| businesses can try and extract all of their spending money as
| efficiently as possible.
|
| It also is bad for the consumer because it's bad for the
| collective whole: instead of quality content online
| everything is being driven by outrage and clickbait in order
| to serve as many targeted ads as possible.
|
| Personally I don't even want to support that ecosystem or
| those sites.
|
| It's also bad for the fishing site because now their niche
| targeted ad slots that used to pay decently in order to
| target people with an interest in fishing are pushed into the
| same race to the bottom low return ads that are being
| automatically targeted. So they lose too.
|
| Only winners are huge publishers that don't have any niche
| audience to target because now they effectively target every
| niche. And Google of course. Basically the two groups who I
| want to win the least.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> their privacy is being violated and their metadata is
| being sold, in order for advertisers to track them
| everywhere they go online_
|
| This is exactly what I'm working on changing; have a look
| at the second half of the post?
|
| (Or read https://github.com/WICG/turtledove)
| ericmay wrote:
| > The traditional way of doing this is to buy ads on fishing
| sites.
|
| Before digital advertising or Google reading emails to find
| out you're going on a fishing trip, how did people buy
| fishing equipment?
|
| Whatever we did then, we can probably go back to and be much
| better off.
|
| Like why do I need "relevant ads" on a blog about urban
| planning? What problem does that solve for me?
| cortesoft wrote:
| They saw ads for fishing equipment in fishing magazines, or
| in the newspaper.
| gundmc wrote:
| Google doesn't read emails for ad targeting.
| ericmay wrote:
| Is this a new policy? As far as I know Google employs
| algorithms and bots of different sorts to read emails to
| identify topics and then use it for ad targeting.
|
| I.e if I send you an email talking about finding a
| vacation deal to go to Egypt, we will get ads to that
| effect (obviously it'll vary somewhat).
| gundmc wrote:
| Not really new, they changed that policy in 2017 based on
| some news headlines I see on the topic.
|
| Official documentation:
|
| https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en#:~:text
| =Th....
| ericmay wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I don't keep up _too_ much so
| sometimes miss things. I don 't use Gmail for example so
| occasionally it's "the last I heard".
|
| Appreciate it
| knorker wrote:
| > the basic problem that some people have much more disposable
| income than others
|
| That's the _basic_ problem? We tried communism. It doesn 't work.
|
| > And so: ads. Funding the open web.
|
| Or to put it another way: Ads waste human life and productivity.
|
| If you waste 10 seconds of Elon Musk's time, yes actually the
| world just lost more than if you waste 10 seconds of my time.
|
| And if you let me pay $1 instead of wasting my time, then I can
| spend that time being productive for more than $1, adding more to
| the collective value of the world.
|
| Wasting everyone's time equally is actually hurting everyone,
| because it means taking away the positive-sum value produced by
| exchange of values.
|
| I'm not saying inequality isn't a problem, but man, you say that
| ANY difference in equality of disposable income is a PROBLEM?
| That's just a race to the bottom of caring or doing anything at
| all for other people.
| fraktl wrote:
| I hate ads. I always hated them.
|
| It doesn't mean I hate people who work on ads / ad software. It
| doesn't mean I want to cancel them. You, and the others in that
| field, don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to donate
| to charity to feel better about what you're doing (it doesn't
| mean "stop donating NOW", it's just.. do what you feel is good,
| like you are doing now).
|
| There's a lot of bad going on in the world. Ads are shady-grey
| area. I know how to fight it and have my internet ad-free. You're
| ok, don't let negative comments get to you. Cheers!
| xyst wrote:
| Regardless of what this author thinks. Advertising is the bane of
| our existence. How many hours have we wasted watching
| advertisements (whether it's in the form of network television,
| billboards, radio ads, or intermittent ads in VOD sites like YT)?
|
| If your product is good, then you wouldn't need to advertise
| (take for example, Ferrari or Lamborghini). If companies focused
| on making their products better rather than spend hundreds of
| millions of dollars on advertising a half baked product, it would
| make the world so much better.
| genbit wrote:
| What if all products are good? How does one stand out?
| ajkjk wrote:
| Like others I don't buy this argument.
|
| They wrote that the two choices are
|
| > Paywalls. You pay with your money.
|
| > Ads. You pay with your attention.
|
| But that's not quite right. Ads have two options themselves:
|
| > Ads. You pay with your money, because the ads get you to buy
| stuff.
|
| > Ads. You pay with your attention, wasted on stuff you'll never
| buy.
|
| Two negatives. Either you buy stuff you otherwise wouldn't (and
| therefore don't need, and were manipulated into buying), or you
| don't buy stuff and just have to suffer the attack on your
| attention in a world where your attention is already strained to
| its limits. No good outcomes here.
|
| No argument for ads works if you believe, like I do, that buying
| things in general is bad -- bad for you, bad for the human race,
| and bad for the environment.
| gundmc wrote:
| > buying things in general is bad -- bad for you, bad for the
| human race, and bad for the environment
|
| Do you mean to qualify this in any way? This is quite the
| radical statement that I'm not sure how you can reconcile with
| human existence any time the last X thousand years.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Not really. I think we should operate such that consumption
| is slightly negative to begin with.
|
| imo, buying something you need is good, but then you don't
| need an ad to tell you to do it. Buying something you want is
| good. Buying something you neither need nor want is bad.
| Allowing something to manipulate you to want more stuff seems
| bad compared to it not happening.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Not so radical. See the minimalist movement and related
| themes.
|
| Specifically, there's the prevalence & overabundance of low-
| quality manufactured products made possible through economies
| of scale and mispriced environmental externalities.
|
| In fact I think it's a good thing for one to question once in
| a while if they really need to buy that new thing.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| That sure sounds like appeasing guilt with charity donations.
| jefftk wrote:
| I started on ads at Google in 2017, and have been donating
| since 2008: https://www.jefftk.com/donations
| gorpomon wrote:
| Jeff have you ever considered giving to specific people? It's
| quite ridiculous that college costs what you might give in a
| year, but $264,727 could concretely allow several people to
| attend college each year (state schools, community colleges,
| etc). Or how about removing bad debt, letting people rebuild
| their credit and start to save. I can think of myriad reasons
| why this is harder and less desirable (finding them, funding
| them, ensuring it has real impact, etc). But curious what
| your take on this would be.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Heinous idea to give to Americans going to college instead
| of starving people or something.
| savanaly wrote:
| If you strongly believe there are some unexplored avenues
| for impactful donations to individuals you should make the
| case to Givewell. It's what they're all about, and that
| seems to be what Jeff is mainly giving to (all those
| Against Malaria donations I assume were the top Givewell
| recommendation of their year). I think Jeff is doing the
| smart thing by outsourcing the analysis to Givewell who
| specialize in it.
| loeg wrote:
| If you click through to some of Jeff's other articles, you
| can see he's interested in effective altruism. Broadly, at
| the same total cost, paying for 5-6 globally wealthy people
| to attend college is going to have lower QALY impact than
| buying ~132,000 Long-Lasting Insecticidal bed nets
| ("LLINs") for people in regions with lots of malaria-
| carrying mosquitoes.
|
| For more on effective altruism broadly, some resources:
|
| https://www.givewell.org/giving101
|
| https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/#our-mission
| wzdd wrote:
| This statement does not address the parent's comment.
| jefftk wrote:
| "appeasing guilt with charity donations" implies something
| like "ads -> guilt -> donations". That the donations came
| years before the ads is pretty good evidence otherwise?
| pwinnski wrote:
| I make no judgement as to whether you are or are not
| attempting to offset guilt with donations, but no, I'm
| not sure the order of events matters that much.
|
| A person who donates generously may more easily justify
| dubious money-earning efforts by saying, "it's really not
| for me so much, it's for the kids!" In other words, it is
| _possible_ (again, not saying this is case for you) that
| one might take a job in advertising _because_ they feel
| their donations provide ethical cover.
| weasel_words wrote:
| ...and good old fashion virtue signaling
| https://www.jefftk.com/donations
|
| imo, honest hearts never need to publicize their altruism to
| the world.
| jefftk wrote:
| Completely disagree: https://www.jefftk.com/p/make-your-
| giving-public
|
| Publicizing altruism helps build a culture of altruism.
| savanaly wrote:
| Bravo. It's weird sort of moral pretzel to advertise your
| donations which simultaneously wins you some respect and a
| _whole lot_ of antipathy for being self-righteous.
| Unfortunately there 's no way I know of to self-advertise
| your donations without being self-righteous but it's the
| right thing to do. Ironically you find yourself wondering
| do you pay more with your pocketbook for the charity or
| more with your social capital for the charity advertisement
| (which makes the charity more impactful).
|
| By the way I don't donate anything to charity at the
| moment, although I plan to someday. So I'm speaking from a
| no-skin-in-the-game perspective.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| Speaking as someone from the developing world - ads have been
| excellent way for 1st-world eyeballs to subsidize access to
| information for the rest of the world - which is a net-positive
| from my selfish POV. Money from ads allows people who live on
| less than a dollar a day to have access to the same content as
| someone in a sea-side villa. Mostly.
|
| Paywalls, subscriptions and micropayment are regressive, unless
| they are indexed by cost of living.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I want to make an interesting meta-comment here:
|
| One of the common criticisms of ads is how they impact privacy.
| I'm not going to pick any particular comment there, because I
| agree with some and disagree with others and find some to be
| incoherent. But the core issue is that ads (and the associated
| tracking and data collection) are an unethical privacy intrusion.
|
| I think that some of the arguments (especially the ones I find
| incoherent) are because some people value privacy _for privacy 's
| sake_. That is, I usually try to look at my privacy from the
| perspective of threats I care about. Some people don't do that,
| they want privacy for the sake of privacy. Privacy as a goal, not
| as a means to an end of avoiding specific attacks. When I ask
| these kinds fo people what kinds of privacy "attacks" they're
| afraid of, I get things that sounds to me like conspiracy
| theories.
|
| This isn't wrong, it's just fundamentally different than how I
| approach things. I expect (given that Jeff publishes his salary
| every year and is super transparent about many things) he's
| similarly not worried about privacy as a goal, and instead cares
| about "circumstantial" privacy.
|
| I wonder if this difference in values is part of the disconnect.
|
| I think another part of the disconnect is that once you have
| insight into an organization, is much easier to see how it
| actually works. It's very easy to presume bad things as an
| outsider than an insider. But by the same token, it's somewhat
| rational for an outsider to not believe an insider who says "no
| just trust me, we aren't doing that". And so this too isn't an
| easy thing to fix without some sort of radical transparency on
| the part of the company (and even then).
| soheil wrote:
| I think to address "why do you work on ads" and only addressing
| the positive points misses half of the question. The other half
| is what harms do ads cause. He addressed bandwidth concerns which
| they're working on mitigating with ad vendors, but biggest
| problem with ads is the number of wasted attention cycles by
| people who do not find ads relevant or otherwise be interested at
| all in buying anything displayed in ads. If you calculate life
| lost on the internet due to this factor alone that number may
| justify banning almost all types of ads immediately.
|
| Additionally, opening with I give half of my money to charity so
| leave me alone, should be a red flag that what's to follow is not
| a strong argument for the point the author is trying to make.
| zackkrida wrote:
| Most people I know work on ads...to get paid. I feel like the
| author is really working hard to justify his work to himself and
| falling far short of the bar.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-06 23:00 UTC)