[HN Gopher] We're building a dystopia just to make people click ...
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We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]
Author : ColinWright
Score : 247 points
Date : 2025-04-27 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ted.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ted.com)
| esafak wrote:
| (2017)
|
| Nobody is excited about ads in 2025.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| It's less exciting when you've been living in the dystopia for
| a few years.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That is wild -- that this video is 8 years old. I didn't
| realize until I read your comment.
| pjmlp wrote:
| So basically Demolition Man reality.
| speed_spread wrote:
| x Idiocracy where society's smartest people are affected to
| penis enlargement duties.
| facialwipe wrote:
| "Now all restaurants are Taco Bell."
| justanotheratom wrote:
| I feel like these issues can be countered by a reasoning AI that
| runs locally and I can configure to operate in my best interest.
|
| e.g, Filter out political posts on X. Fact check opinion videos
| on the fly.
|
| I hope future computing devices will have neutal engine at the
| center, and CPU as secondary. And I should be able to teach it to
| take actions on my behalf.
| everdrive wrote:
| Seems like a good use of energy. Waste tons of energy sending
| ads to everyone, and waste even more energy defeating them with
| an energy-expensive LLM.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Sadly, we can't just trust everybody else not to try and pull
| one over us. (Fortunately, uBlock Origin still works and is
| fairly lightweight, and hopefully we won't see native ads so
| indistinguishable from content that it can't detect those for
| a while.)
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't know man, I guess we could like try to build a sort
| of system where people get together and vote on what kinds
| of behaviors society should allow which we should
| discourage and then when a majority of people agree on that
| stuff we could like make people stop doing bad stuff by
| using force after some kind of process to make sure that
| its fair? And like we could vote periodically to make sure
| that our rules continue to be useful and relevant.
|
| You can't trust everyone, but that is basically the exact
| use case for government: to enforce basic standards of
| behavior so that we can all live more efficient, happy
| lives, rather than live in an arms race of personal methods
| to fuck eachother over and prevent ourselves from being
| fucked over.
|
| I don't think society could come up with a truly
| comprehensive way of eliminating the evil part of
| advertising but I think we could do a lot better than we
| are doing if people would just wake up and insist that the
| government actually do what it is supposed to do.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > I guess we could like try to build a sort of system
| where people get together and vote on what kinds of
| behaviors society should allow which we should discourage
| and then when a majority of people agree on that stuff we
| could like make people stop doing bad stuff by using
| force after some kind of process to make sure that its
| fair?
|
| you mean, like some kind of... democracy?
|
| idk, one of our internet vulture-capital magnates was on
| cnn the other day proclaiming "thats not gonna happen"...
| notpushkin wrote:
| > you mean, like some kind of... democracy?
|
| Yeah, I think that was the point.
|
| And yeah, I agree, except governments are slow and, most
| of the time, corrupt. I really, really wish it worked!
| (There are counterexamples, I'm sure.)
|
| So while I'm waiting for a GDPR 2.0 that would outlaw the
| bullshit data collection altogether (and not just put it
| behind a cookie banner), I'm still going to install an
| adblocker on every of my friend's computers - because it
| works _today_.
| amelius wrote:
| But it will be ok. Ads already stimulate over-consumption and
| thereby destroy the climate/planet. With an AI acting against
| that perhaps it will stop.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| I mean adblockers are pretty good, does that stop ads? No
| they just find ways to circumvent and it's a cat and mouse
| game.
| amelius wrote:
| If most humans can tell it's an ad, then so can an AI.
| Probably ...
|
| In fact most counties have laws saying that
| advertisements should be clearly identifiable as such.
| Not to an AI, but still.
| api wrote:
| You just described pretty much all life.
|
| Forests are full of animals that hunt animals, and animals
| that spend tons of energy evading animals hunting them.
|
| Life is a complex patterning phenomenon that dissipates
| energy, and as far as we understand it has no goal. Why
| should we expect complex human living systems to behave
| fundamentally differently? _Individual human beings_ have
| goals, but huge collective systems like economies have either
| no consciousness or a kind of vegetable consciousness similar
| to a slime mold moving toward nutrients.
| justanotheratom wrote:
| energy is abundant.
| dayvigo wrote:
| It absolutely is a good idea. User-controlled smart automated
| filtering of outside content is clearly the future. Not sure
| why you're being downvoted.
| eesmith wrote:
| Pohl and Kornbluth in 1952 wrote "The Space Merchants" - "a novel
| of the future when advertising agencies take over."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you will like
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government
|
| also, the premise of the entire lore of shadow run, is
| corporations building armies and seeing they can get away with
| it and then just doubling down.
|
| but back to reality... everyone would buy stock of the ad-
| dystopia and since now their retirement is tired to it they
| will just normalize and promote it. just like today.
| eesmith wrote:
| I did read it, but the books I read when I was a teen still
| learning the world sit deeper in me than something I read in
| my 30s.
|
| I don't think the last-name-is-the-company adapts well to the
| so-called "gig economy" where employment is structured as
| supposedly independent contractors, who in turn can be
| working for multiple organizations at the same time.
|
| "Corporations building armies", etc. describes the Dutch East
| India Company pretty well, yes? As I get now into my 50s,
| that goal seems more and more an intrinsic part of limited-
| liability joint-stock companies.
| swayvil wrote:
| It's a funny little causal chain.
|
| Everybody just wants a peaceful, prosperous life.
|
| We serve a corporation, because the corporation promises that.
|
| The corporation just wants advertising. That is, clicks.
|
| So the universal desire for peace and prosperity is bringing
| about the clicky dystopia.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Hey, make an artificial intelligent entity significantly more
| capable than any individual human, then be surprised you have a
| goal misalignment with your superagent.
|
| We gave AI legal personhood in the 1800s and we were doomed
| from there
| antfarm wrote:
| My way to circumvent most of this: I am using Safari with
| _AdBlock Pro_ and _AdBlock_ and see zero ads when browsing the
| web.
|
| I spend more time on YouTube than I care to admit, so I got a
| Premium subscription, bought an extension called _UnTrap for
| YouTube_ to hide most recommendations and turned off all YouTube
| history etc.
|
| I regularly visit BlueSky, Hacker News and YouTube, but not X,
| TikTok, Instagram or Facebook.
|
| The hardest thing is to not use Amazon, but I am working on it.
| asmor wrote:
| You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will
| continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google
| killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2.
|
| https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section
| antfarm wrote:
| Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the superior way? Pi-
| Hole?
| stefanfisk wrote:
| uBlock Origin as linked.
| antfarm wrote:
| I see. Your mentioning of Google distracted me, how are
| they involved?
| colecut wrote:
| @antfarm: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/google_v
| 2_eol_v3_roll...
| antfarm wrote:
| Thanks, but this does not apply to me, not using Chrome
| is part of my ad blocking strategy.
| zargon wrote:
| Safari is limited in the same way as Chrome manifest v3,
| allowing basically only a URL blacklist. They're crippled
| compared to uBlock Origin's various other blocking
| capabilities.
| tmendez wrote:
| Also plugging Firefox mobile here if you do any web
| browsing from mobile. You can add uBlock Origin on
| Firefox mobile, which you can't do on Chrome mobile.
| Jalad wrote:
| But only on Android as far as I know
| Nursie wrote:
| Firefox on iOS is a safari wrapper. They do what they
| can, but they can't support extensions the same way the
| Android browser does.
|
| It's a real shame Apple continues to block it from being
| full-fat.
| asmor wrote:
| Orion can. My guess is that it's just not a priority.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I have found a really amazing way to block ads on websites.
| It's by not visiting them in the first place. Imagine how
| well this could work. It's sort of like abstinence and
| chastity rather than contraception. "Oh you know I love
| you, let me just have a little for free, and not worry so
| much about consequences, baby!"
|
| Also I found this amazing hack for YouTube and YT Music. I
| am nearly hesitant to write it down here, lest everyone try
| it out. I figured out that if I pay them like $20/mo, all
| the ads disappear from both apps! Can you believe what
| suckers they are! I fear that this loophole may be closed
| soon, but for now I'm living high on the hog!
| antfarm wrote:
| Nothing wrong with paying for a commercial service. I
| rather pay with money than indirectly by losing time and
| being annoyed in the best case and manipulated in the
| worst case.
|
| With the sites that I choose to not visit (Facebook, X,
| TikTok, Instagram) this is not possible, as the attempted
| manipulation of users is an integral part of the business
| model.
|
| Also, your attempt of being funny is not working, neither
| is your metaphor.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Pi holes don't swallow everything, in stream ads like on
| Youtube and Twitch and served by the domain all make it
| through the Pi hole approach. It also doesn't allow you to
| turn it off for a particular page or site either, if you
| want to allow ads on Phronix you can't do it without
| enabling that advertiser everywhere since it lacks the
| context of the DNS calls.
|
| The advantage is it works with every browser on every
| device, its network wide and it blocks a tonne of other
| calls that aren't made by the browser such as telemetry.
| skygazer wrote:
| I'm like the parent, on Safari - apparently also using an
| "inferior" way to block ads that, somehow, inexplicably,
| works 100% of the time and has never let an ad slip through.
| Is it supposed to be inferior because it's brittle and
| requires constant work on the side of the developer? Is it
| blocking too much and I'm just not aware of it? Is there some
| new ad tech that it's not prepared for, and can't adapt to,
| and will fail in the near future?
| grugagag wrote:
| Me too but expect this to stop working though.
| Nursie wrote:
| It's inferior AFAICT because the API is more limited, and
| it looks an awful lot like the world's biggest ad company
| (Google) has arranged that specifically to be less
| effective for ad and tracker blocking.
|
| It's a good reason to use Firefox.
| mzajc wrote:
| It's also inferior because the filter lists for requests
| must be hardcoded and can only be changed through
| extension updates, which Google (or whoever owns the
| browser's extension store) can delay or block at their
| discretion.
|
| This also means users can't install their own filters,
| which was widely used when YouTube began aggressively
| bypassing adblockers.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Ublock origin is more than an adblocker. You can target
| entire site elements you don't like loading. Screw it,
| delete the entire youtube recommendations sidebar and live
| in bliss. Is it possible to learn this power? Not from a
| Jedi.
| knome wrote:
| Only for chrome.
|
| I finally went back to firefox, recently. I needed to update
| some of the flag defaults to turn on tab changing with mouse
| scroll and similar, but they are unlikely to break things
| like ublock any time soon.
|
| I was a frequent profiles user under chrome, and still don't
| like firefoxes UI there, but just made a bookmark to the
| profile launching screen.
|
| It's good enough.
| kilburn wrote:
| You may have reasons to require separate profiles. However,
| keep in mind that firefox multi-account containers [1]
| address many of the use cases for separate profiles in
| chrome with an IMHO better UX.
|
| [1] https://support.mozilla.org/ca/kb/how-use-firefox-
| containers
| end1snight wrote:
| You all still use the web? I've been transpiling video game
| frame data into shader, geometry, lighting, color gradient
| data, and an agent system that mix-n-matches styles.
|
| I got into software modding game engines, though. Never cared
| much for web apps, SaaS. Never much saw the use in paid
| software since it's just geometry. We made a lot of dumb busy
| work out of SWE with web apps.
|
| DRY? Yes, let's not repeat ourselves still bothering with
| lame day jobs that obfuscate it's just physical statistics in
| a machine of known constraints.
|
| Am really excited about the rest of the world flipping the US
| off, nVidia full-steam ahead on autonomously organizing
| distributed systems. Propping up SWEs props up a dangerous
| delusion.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Another tip for youtube is to use https://sponsor.ajay.app/ --
| helps skip the ads that are increasingly embedded in the video
| itself.
| smusamashah wrote:
| The same author made another app that replaces click bait
| video titles with a cloud sourced video title. It also
| replaces cluck bait thumbnails.
| Jalad wrote:
| https://dearrow.ajay.app/ (super awesome project)
| bigyabai wrote:
| > bought an extension called UnTrap for YouTube
|
| I will never understand this. My ex bought tons of extensions
| to do stuff with Safari that other browsers do for free. He
| paid for a PiP extention for some websites, password managers,
| Tomagachi pets... dozens of trinket apps that would be
| depreciated in 2 or 3 major updates. I'm continually wowed by
| Mac users that insist on paying for a native solution to a
| problem that doesn't exist in any other ecosystem.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| In a capitalist society, paying for software is good,
| actually.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| That's just propaganda. Our society is more like kings and
| serfs that capitalist these days.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| This is absurdly false. The serfs can become kings as
| evidenced by newly minted millionaires every year.
| However, the reverse is also true as there are plenty of
| fortunes lost as well.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yes, yes, we're all temporarily-displaced millionaires.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| You surely won't become one by griping about the
| unfairness of other people's success to a bunch of
| strangers.
|
| 500k new millionaires in 2023 in the US. Why can't you be
| one of them in a coming year?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's about forty times my annual salary, ignoring
| expenses. Living like a miser for my entire working life,
| I could become a millionaire - though not a
| multimillionaire.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Being a millionaire is table stakes for a minimal
| retirement, not being fabulously wealthy. Not something
| particularly impressive
| edoceo wrote:
| In USA, it's something like 15% of the population is
| millionaires, IIRC. Being the special 3 out of 20 - I'd
| say is impressive.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's what the word "capitalism" was coined to mean - if
| you ascribe to the theory that Louis Blanc coined it.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I don't know if it is that simple. Paying by people who
| develop software will tend to keep the software in good
| shape, but there's no guarantee.
|
| Also, the developer doesn't necesarily need to own the code
| to improve it, or build you a copy.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I mean that paying for software keeps the people who
| write the software from starving to death, or _having_ to
| fall back on corrupt behaviour (e.g. accepting bribes
| from the advertising industry) to survive. It is, of
| course, not a guarantee of continued work quality, but it
| helps avert the material conditions that inevitably
| destroy it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Isn't that like being wowed by people who pay to have their
| car oil changed, instead of doing it themselves?
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Yes, plus I wonder how "responsibly" do people who replace
| their car oil, dispose the old oil. One of the reasons I
| don't do it myself, is.. 'what the hell do I do with the
| old oil?' I know someone that parks/aims right over a grill
| that is there for the rain water, and all the bad/old oil
| goes straight there. I ain't no angel, but that person is
| an absolute cunt.
|
| So.. I really hope that the garages that throughout my car-
| ownership years do this, don't just flush them down the
| toilet, but do something proper about them.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| For what it's worth, where I live in New Jersey,
| automotive shops have to accept used oil - precisely to
| avoid this sort of issue. (And I trust that someone,
| somewhere is making sure that all of their oil actually
| goes somewhere safe, instead of - as you point out -
| being dumped into the ocean.)
|
| I still don't change my own oil, because I'm at the point
| in my life where I can afford to throw $100 at that
| particular problem, rather than spending a dirty and
| greasy hour+ under my car.
| folkrav wrote:
| I do some maintenance myself but not oil changes - mostly
| from a time/cost perspective, I don't really wish to go
| down that road and deal with spills in my driveway, etc.
| However the oil collection part isn't particularly hard
| around here. I don't know if there's something similar in
| the US (or wherever you are located) but in Canada we
| have UOMA (Used Oil Management Association), a nonprofit
| which partners with garages to coordinate the recycling
| of used oil and related byproducts. They have a handy map
| which shows me 5+ garages in a 10min radius from my place
| which participates, including the shop I already go to -
| and I'm in a medium sized agricultural town, surrounded
| by corn fields, an hour from the nearest metropolitan
| area.
|
| I was curious about what they did with oil when I drove
| my first car, so I asked my garage. They showed me the
| tank behind the shop, someone came to empty it once a
| week or so. I always assumed that was the usual practice,
| but I legitimately have no idea haha.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| In my town, UK, you go to the local landfill and there is
| a tank to pour it in.
|
| I just leave it in the shed in the bottle until I have
| enough other stuff to get rid of and do it all at once.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Bad analogy imo given doing it yourself isn't that much
| cheaper and clicking "install extension" isn't exactly a
| complex maintenance operation
| antfarm wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with paying for software. I say this
| as a professional software developer ;)
| tough wrote:
| iOS/MacOS users are more predisposed to shell some bucks
| because of their walled garden upbringing.
|
| Devs would usually prioritize iOS releases (early on, when no
| React Native nor Expo was as common place) only due to this
| fact that iOS users where much more likely to spend money
| than Android ones.
|
| This might have equalized since the early days but i bet some
| of it still stands
| philistine wrote:
| Try to make a robust ecosystem of discerning customers
| willing to pay money for good software look bad.
|
| iOS/Android hasn't equalized. Depending on the segment,
| something like 80% of revenue is iOS.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I'm hopeful browsers with LLM support are the future of ad
| blocking for users. This enables robust and sophisticated
| control by users of their experience.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Perplexity strongly disagrees
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-
| br...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Don't use their browser? Browsers existed before
| Perplexity, they will exist long after they're gone. I'm
| advocating for deep LLM support in any browser engine, with
| the assumption of on device inference (but also supporting
| off device endpoints, as use case dictates).
| philistine wrote:
| I can't let you do that Dave.
| breatheoften wrote:
| Is there anyway to fully disable youtube shorts/reels/whatever
| that mess is called ...? I quite like youtube long form content
| but have found myself occasionally in short form rabbit holes
| (which are both very addicting and extremely unsatisfying and
| which motivated me to delete instagram to escape when i
| realized how much a time and emotion suck they are)
| tough wrote:
| Idk if they work but several extensions on the chrome web
| store claim to hide/block shorts like
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-
| shorts/mnakeci...
| cap11235 wrote:
| https://github.com/Onsotumenh/YouTube-Cosmetic-Filters-
| for-u...
| hikewkwek wrote:
| Turning off youtube watch history stops the shorts tab from
| working. And you can use a userscript to swap the "shorts"
| word to "watch" in the url to convert all shorts to normal
| videos.
|
| For example: // ==UserScript== // @name
| Redirect YouTube Shorts to Regular Videos (Mobile-Friendly)
| // @namespace https://example.com/ // @version
| 1.4 // @description Redirects YouTube Shorts URLs to
| regular video URLs on mobile // @author YourName
| // @match *://*.youtube.com/* // @run-at
| document-end // @grant none //
| ==/UserScript== //Written by GPT-4o Mini
| (function () { 'use strict'; //
| Function to redirect Shorts to regular video URLs
| function redirect() { if
| (location.pathname.startsWith("/shorts")) {
| const videoId = location.pathname.split("/")[2];
| const newUrl = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" + videoId;
| window.location.replace(newUrl); } }
| // Observe changes to the DOM and check for navigation
| const observer = new MutationObserver(() => {
| redirect(); }); // Start observing
| the body for changes
| observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree:
| true }); // Initial check in case a Shorts
| URL is loaded directly redirect(); })();
| financypants wrote:
| Untrap is amazing. On top of that, things like removing all
| apps from my home screen and turning of almost all
| notifications has improved my focus and my life a lot.
| leoh wrote:
| You are not circumventing the most troubling aspect of all
| this, which is that the content itself is perverted by its
| monetization model.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. This is visible on news sites. The title and lede are
| rewritten as clickbait. The actual story may not be so bad.
| On some sites, the title on the home page may not match the
| article. Yesterday there was "(something happened) in Red
| State" on Fox News on the home page, but the actual article
| begins "(something happened) in Florida".
| ornornor wrote:
| For some reason Albania gets no ads on YT. Route your YT
| packets over to Albania and done.
|
| NextDNS works very well on iOS for everything else.
| chneu wrote:
| Checkout:
|
| Enhancer For YouTube.
|
| Sponsorblock.
|
| Dearrow.
|
| I can't use YouTube without them anymore. It's so horrible.
| jackjeff wrote:
| I did not realize that worked so well. I gave up on Safari a
| while ago. Will give it another shot with AdBlock Pro then. Is
| it with the free tier?
|
| I just use ublock Origin with Firefox on Mac/Pc and Orion on
| iOS.
|
| The annoyance list takes care of the cookie banners.
| musicale wrote:
| > I am using Safari with AdBlock Pro and AdBlock and see zero
| ads when browsing the web.
|
| Safari's vestigial "never auto-play" setting has never worked,
| and still doesn't.
| lukev wrote:
| Half the comments here are just pointing out that ad blockers
| exist, which is missing the point.
|
| The damage of an advertising-based internet economy is not
| limited to just "seeing ads." The entire content and structure of
| the internet is warped around this economy. Search engines, SEO,
| content discovery mechanisms, types and variety of content... all
| could have been different and better.
| antfarm wrote:
| But how are you going to change that?
| lukev wrote:
| You're right: it's probably fine then. My bad.
| antfarm wrote:
| The comments you criticised describe a solution or at least
| a workaround, but you are just stating a problem, thus my
| honest question. No need to get snarky.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Couple choices:
|
| 1. Switch to cryptocurrency, let small-time criminals control
| the web.
|
| 2. Switch to micropayments, let criminal corporations control
| the web.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Step 1: remove Section 230 protection for algorithmically-
| elevated content.
|
| If you're going to have attention-mining addiction-creating
| software funnel people into rabbit holes, then those rabbit
| holes need to be verified, safe-to-consume stuff. Watching 5
| hours of 5 minute crafts is at worst, going to make someone
| spend too much money at Hobby Lobby. Certainly not good, but
| a workable issue. Watching 5 hours of white supremacist
| propaganda is how you get our current sociopolitical climate.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| How is that a "step 1" when thats describing something else
| entirely?
|
| How much would you pay to own an account on social media?
| If your answer is $0 then you're not addressing anything,
| you just want someone else to subsidize your entertainment
| and you want to call the shots on top.
|
| I don't work for free, and I know damn well neither do you.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > How is that a "step 1" when thats describing something
| else entirely?
|
| You asked "how do we change that" and I'm assuming the
| "that" referred to the subject of the PC: "The damage of
| an advertising-based internet economy" which in turn
| exists in the context of the linked video in the OP,
| which enunciates the consequences of machine learning
| being applied to creating hyper-addictive and extremist
| social media websites, in 2017 by the way, and the
| speakers broad hypothesis seems, in my eyes, broadly
| confirmed.
|
| And the principle issue there is thus: an algorithm that
| consistently directs you to more concentrated and extreme
| versions of whatever you're consuming (vegetarian ->
| vegan, for example) can be utterly benign or perhaps
| annoying in that context, but gets notably darker when
| it's moving people from Donald Trump's rallies to The
| Jewish Question.
|
| I have no issue at all with the former example, I have a
| LOT of issues with the latter.
|
| > How much would you pay to own an account on social
| media? If your answer is $0 then you're not addressing
| anything, you just want someone else to subsidize your
| entertainment and you want to call the shots on top.
|
| In that equation, I'm the product. I have every right to
| call the shots because the social media company only
| makes money by my participation in it, which is why I
| left Facebook and have only atrophied, ancient presences
| on most websites. I'm fine being shown ads for weird tech
| junk I might find cool. I'm not fine having the
| intricacies of my personal beliefs sanded off by weirdos
| trying to sell white supremacy like it's Pepsi.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Would you support blocking BLM and black supremacist
| propaganda too? Essentially you are just proposing
| traditional government censorship. The good thing about
| Soviet TV is that it had only wholesome content - not that
| western capitalist stuff.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| BLM content does not promote hate the way white
| nationalist content does and I'm immediately suspicious
| of your motives with you trying to make that equivalence.
| BLM is about justice and equality under the law. White
| supremacy is decidedly not, like, _it 's in the name._
| That's the _supremacy_ part.
|
| As for black supremacist content, yeah nix that shit too.
| It's corrosive for the exact same reasons. Was this
| supposed to be a hard question?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| They aren't proposing blocking content. If a business-
| controlled algorithm recommends something, the company
| should be responsible for what it pushes because
| amplification falls outside what Section 230 protects.
| Hosting is protected. Deliberate, profit-driven curation
| is not.
| grumbel wrote:
| Give every Internet user a domain name and routable IP for
| free with their Internet account.
|
| That won't magically fix all the problems in an instant, but
| the core of everything wrong with the Internet starts with
| the Internet being separated into consumers and providers,
| instead of being a true peer2peer network.
|
| Even in the olden days of the Internet when ISPs would give
| you free webspace with your Internet account, you still
| didn't get your own domain name, meaning all your Web
| presence would bust when you switched providers.
|
| Alternatively, get Freenet, IPFS/IPNS or any of the other
| distributed alternatives working, but after 25 years of
| people trying, I kind of given up hope of it ever happening.
| sssilver wrote:
| So much this.
|
| I don't think we fully fathom how much everything on the
| Internet has degraded. And we and our children have degraded
| with it. Like frogs boiling alive in a pot, we never noticed it
| because of how gradually they increased the temperature.
| nelblu wrote:
| Interesting you say "seeing ads", because lately when I am
| volunteering with legally blind population as their "tech-
| mate", I can't explain them why technology isn't doing what
| they want it to do. It's a million times worse when we put
| ourselves into their shoes.... My strategy has changed from
| helping them learn technology, to helping them avoid how to use
| technology. One of the person I help, who is legally blind but
| can see font size 50+, asked me to teach him how to search for
| lyrics of songs so that he can play his guitar. I tried to
| teach him, but it was pointless because of how the websites
| were full of ads. I did install an ad blocker which helped a
| bit but in the end, I gave up and now I just print out lyrics
| for him.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Suggestion in case it helps: step 1: install
| & use Firefox step 2: install and use adblockers
| (multiple)(I got ublock origin, adblock plus, noscript,
| privacy badger, privacy possum)(nothing gets through!!)
| step 3: install "Open in Reader View" addon (not affiliated
| in any way). With this, when I DDG-search for something,
| especially lyrics or something for which I am interested in
| only the text, I right-click and "open in reader view" so it
| does exactly that. step 4: set the Reader View (F9) in
| FF, to the font size, color, etc.
|
| and the your 'friend' will Google for: Metallica enter
| sandman lyrics, and just right-click and pick the "Open in
| reader view", and presto! new tab with just the lyrics
|
| EDIT: tip: tell your 'friend' to search for Band Song_title
| AZLyrics (not affiliated) so the first hit will be from
| "AZLyrics.com" which will have a standard format (I always
| search for ".... azlyrics" instead of just "..lyrics")
| prinny_ wrote:
| "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make
| people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher
| bee_rider wrote:
| N.B., he is right on the Gen-X/Millenial border. So, we can
| now look retrospectively at a good chunk of his generation's
| career. The tech industry we've built does, in fact, suck.
|
| Although, Millenials seem to be pretty annoyed by all this,
| and aren't really anywhere near retirement yet. So maybe we
| can figure out some way to apply the brakes.
| delusional wrote:
| That's such a copout quote. The people working on ads aren't
| the best minds, if they were they wouldn't be working on ads.
| We somehow bought into the lie that "maximize profit" has
| anything to do with intelligence. And that a bank account is
| a equivalent to an intelligence score.
|
| No, the problem we find ourselves in is that we let ad
| companies buy the entire economy and infect it with
| anticompetitive behavior. The people working on Android
| aren't working on ads. Their work is being exploited by an ad
| company and twisted to serve ads.
|
| I personally find my doctor infinitely more intelligent than
| any Google tech bro. I find the group of people making Little
| Kitty Big City infinitely more intelligent than some Facebook
| wanker.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| If you updated this to today it would be that we're building a
| dystopia just to enable a too long; didn't read and too hard;
| won't work society.
| poetworrier wrote:
| I accepted cookies, watched an ad, dismissed a popup for a
| newsletter to watch a video about ads.
|
| That really nails it.
| dijit wrote:
| The funny thing is that we fought so hard against pop-ups
| throughout the 90's and 2000's only to re-implement pop-ups in
| javascript as soon as we could.
| Nursie wrote:
| At least, generally, they no longer open hundreds of windows
| above or below the current window, which may or may not have
| browser control bars, may 'warn' on exit etc etc
|
| If a page wants to cover itself in noise and dialogues, sure
| it's annoying but it's not quite on the same level as back
| then.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Yeah sometimes you'd have to just powercycle the computer
| if they started cascading too fast and bogging down the
| system. People would make websites specifically to troll
| and do this.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Remember how wild pop-ups on the early web could be:
| https://youtu.be/LSgk7ctw1HY
| ryandrake wrote:
| Computing history is rife with examples of APIs that
| would never have existed, had the API designer stepped
| back for a few seconds and asked himself "Why am I
| letting developers do this?" Someone deliberately added
| the ability to move the browser window around and pop up
| other browser windows, yet somehow never imagined this
| use case???
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Social dynamics in the digital world are completely
| different from anything known to man before the internet.
| Imagine someone from 2090 coming over and saying "aren't
| you afraid that your friend will literally take a knife
| and stab you in the back during your birthday party".
| Technically he's not wrong, but come on, it doesn't
| happen really. And then you learn that in 2080's
| something similar was a major societal problem.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Computing history is rife with examples of API designers
| who get attacked for building walled gardens and denying
| user power when they ask such questions. There was a
| time, for example, when "data portability" was widely
| understood to mean that Facebook should let Google
| programmatically extract your data and forward it to
| fourth parties (https://techcrunch.com/2008/05/15/he-
| said-she-said-in-google...).
|
| Today we know that there's no genuine question of user
| control here, because virtually every user has a mental
| model that a "webpage" is something different and much
| more scope-limited than a "program". I don't expect that
| steampowered.com should be able to launch the game I just
| bought, even though that capability is easily available
| from a similar-looking interface by the same developers I
| have installed on my computer. In 1995 it wasn't so
| obvious that people in 2025 would think this way.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Thinking of all the possible ways some assholes could
| abuse a new functionality is an acquired skill, and one I
| believe eventually makes you stop coming up with _any_
| ideas.
|
| After all, entrepreneurs can and will abuse _anything and
| everything_ in this world.
| autoexec wrote:
| It doesn't keep you from coming up with ideas, it just
| keeps you coming up with ideas to mitigate the harms. The
| obvious one that's usually neglected is giving users the
| power to disable/limit/control behaviors that are likely
| to be abused.
|
| We wouldn't need to bother with installing addons to
| limit javascript and block ads if those were just part of
| the browser to start with. Every new feature added should
| have options that put users in control of if, when, and
| how it gets used. Right now, even the browsers that give
| users the most control usually don't go farther than an
| enable/disable flag in about:config
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is exactly right. The end user should be in the
| driver's seat, not the web developer. Often when I use
| computers today, I feel like a passenger, going wherever
| the developer is choosing to take me. So much browser
| development and innovation lately serves to empower the
| developer and enable them to do things to your computer,
| but with very little empowerment reserved for the user.
| krupan wrote:
| Why do I keep seeing, "it's not as bad as that" as a
| defense? It's still bad!
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| The one saying it's not as bad are probably the same ones
| whose salary depends on their users' engagement with
| those same pop ups.
| cma wrote:
| Google began as a search engine with a popup blocker
| extension for a competitor's browser. Now they're a display
| ad company with a browser that includes a built in popup
| blocker extension blocker.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Google began as a company that cared about users. Now
| they're a company that cares about advertisers.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I have always wondered what the web would be like if we added
| the scripting language later and only solidified CSS and HTML
| for the first 15 years or so.
|
| I wonder if things would actually be better overall. I'm not
| going to argue that having a scripting language for the web
| was a mistake, it definitely isn't on the whole, but I think
| having it come at a more mature point for the web might have
| helped stave off a lot of really bad decisions
| cyanydeez wrote:
| socialism. that's what we're talking about. No one every
| said, "Should we try to make the internet a publish good?"
| doublerabbit wrote:
| TCL was to be javascript but didn't happen. Google offered
| to sell Google to Yahoo and AltaVista $1m for Google, but
| didn't happen.
|
| I wish to think all these things exist in a alternative
| universe and we've just not constructed the time-portal
| yet.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I think what would have happened if the web didn't have
| scripting languages was that you would be forced to
| download java applets... which now can also run on
| javascript/wasm coming full circle.
|
| Also, java's dominance I guess was the reason that
| javascript is named after inspiration of java.
|
| What you are asking for are static pages which already
| exists and most people do use static pages due to it being
| very easy to deploy on github pages etc. , though I wonder
| we would've way more abundance of static pages as compared
| to non static pages, like there are some pages which
| could've been static but they aren't.
|
| Though I still think the difference would've existed & it
| could've been net positive IDK, I just like to go create
| websites as apps which can be booted on any pc,device
| without worrying about anything, installing and running it
| would likely require a setup and it would've been a bigger
| hassle as well.
|
| And well noone's stopping you from doing it right now.
| There's gopher and gemini if you are interested.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > Also, java's dominance I guess was the reason that
| javascript is named after inspiration of java.
|
| Very loosely, was named that was as an marketing ploy as
| Java was the new language at the time.
|
| JavaScript is actually ECMAScript or a v.close direlect
| of. Originally it was called Mocha, and then relabeled to
| LiveScript and during the NetScape / Sun Microsystems
| thing, changed itself to JavaScript and Oracle carried it
| on from there.
|
| It has some quite interesting history.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History
| philistine wrote:
| A static page has nothing to do at all with the
| discussion.
|
| There's nothing preventing me from adding globs of
| nightmare JavaScript to my static website to try and
| chase engagement.
|
| What's stopping the people making static pages is not
| technical, it's cultural.
| sershe wrote:
| I dunno, I think it was a net negative by a large margin.
| 1) html only Gmail shows that pretty advanced, well made
| apps are possible without scripting; 2) There are very few
| web apps that without JavaScript wouldn't just be
| implemented as native without loss of convenience; 3) OTOH
| for simple apps and sites JavaScript adds inconvenience
| (non standard links breaking browser features etc),
| security risks, compatibility issues, massive bloat and
| tracking.
|
| Nothing like 3 paragraphs of text that requires downloading
| 2 megabytes of crap, runs code from 20 sketchy looking
| domains, takes 15 seconds to load, cannot be linked to, and
| demands you upgrade your browser. As a consolation you can
| have slightly slower maps in browser instead of downloading
| an app, once.
|
| I think web scripting is probably THE worst technology ever
| invented in the IT field. "If I ruled the world", a full
| ban would be better than its current state; or some AMA on
| steroids (+Jones act) making JavaScript developers
| extremely rare and well paid, so that it was limited to the
| best (as determined by the market) uses with better
| quality.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| You can't think about alternate web evolution without
| considering (1) the early browser wars (specifically
| Netscape vs IE) & (2) the need to decouple data transfer
| and re-rendering that led to AJAX (for network and
| compute performance reasons).
|
| Folks forget that before js was front-end frameworks and
| libaries, it was enabling (as in, making impossible
| possible) async data requests and page updates without
| requiring a full round-trip and repaint.
|
| It's difficult to conceptualize a present where that need
| was instead fully served by HTML+CSS, sans executable
| code sandbox.
|
| What, ~2000 IE instead pushes for some direct linking of
| HTML with a async update-able data model behind the
| scenes? How are the two linked together? And how do
| developers control that?
| int_19h wrote:
| You're correct that the main thing enabled by JS is
| partial updates, but the fact that it relies on JS is IMO
| itself in large part due to path dependent evolution
| (i.e. JS was there and could be used for that, so that's
| what we standardized on).
|
| Imagine instead if HTML evolved more in the direction of
| enabling this exact scenario out of the box. So that e.g.
| you could declaratively mark a button or a link as
| triggering a request that updates only part of the page.
| DOM diffs implemented directly by the browser etc.
| timewizard wrote:
| The modern web has successfully liberated applications from
| mostly vendor locked OS environments into mostly agnostic
| browser environments. I think this has been a good thing.
|
| Otherwise, with just CSS and HTML, you'd have a web
| strictly dedicated to publishing. A read only experience
| curated by those who are willing to invest the time and
| tooling into being a publisher.
|
| Even then with the advent of RSS and other data exchange
| formats it's arguable we didn't even need that part of the
| web. It would be far better for publishing to deliver
| headlines and summaries via RSS and then allow me to
| purchase full content and issues digitally.
|
| I think the bigger complication in the creation of the web
| was the complete lack of payment systems and user trust in
| entering their payment information into these platforms. So
| only the large well moneyed entities like advertisers were
| willing to absorb that risk and built out the platform.
| Instead of us conveniently and safely paying creators for
| content we now have aggressive advertisers who litter the
| web so publishers can shake pennies out of the CPM tree.
| altairprime wrote:
| We would have ended up with Flash and then Chrome, just as
| we did. Client-side programming is essential to creating
| certain experiences, and with all great powers comes the
| extractive shit, etc. This is typically where economists
| will claim the free market is producing an efficient
| outcome; regulation would be the only preventative, and
| that's anathema to tech libertarians.
| NBJack wrote:
| Flash would still be around I suspect.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| We could look at the print world for reference.
|
| Everything is perfectly static and linear, and instead of
| popups we get full-page ads, double-full-page ads
| sometimes, and ad inserts in the rest of the pages, with
| stealth marketing for the content left.
|
| The fundamental issue is not technology IMHO. Scripting can
| make it worse, but it wouldn't have been great in the first
| place.
| trod1234 wrote:
| Well, there are really only three things that form the
| aggregate of the world we see today.
|
| There are accidents of history, money, and ideology.
|
| These things fit squarely in the money category. The
| advertising industry was subsumed by adtech during that time,
| which was driven by government grant and fiat debt-based
| financing. Advertising fraud has never been harder to account
| for, and the justified use of analytics for that purpose has
| driven surveillance capitalism with governments being the
| customer.
|
| Money printing is the role of the state, so technically if
| you remove all indirections its state apparatus which makes
| sense that an individual wouldn't be able to fight against
| it.
| delusional wrote:
| At least these popups are restricted to the page. It's one
| thing for a website to decide to block my use of it for some
| asinine reason. It's quite another for it to block my use of
| everything else on my computer.
| musicale wrote:
| > we fought so hard against pop-ups throughout the 90's and
| 2000's only to re-implement pop-ups in javascript as soon as
| we could
|
| A group of people who thought that web users should not be
| abused may have won the first pop-up battle, but the
| businesses that made money from intrusive advertisements
| clearly won the war.
|
| In hindsight maybe it wasn't a such a great idea for web
| users to switch en masse to a browser made by an advertising
| company.
|
| The endgame is a probably a war between web sites that are
| endless mazes of advertising and user agents that try to
| navigate the maze and extract the non-advertising content.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| I don't know if hindsight is quite right. There were people
| raising alarms about this when Chrome initially came out
| and repeatedly as it grew in popularity. Especially when
| sites started requiring Chrome. It's just they were
| dismissed as conspiracy theorists or brushed aside because
| right now Chrome is faster and the present is all that
| matters. This was 100% pushed by tech enthusiasts and web
| developers... the average person would've otherwise stuck
| with their OS default browser.
|
| I'm not trying to correct you. It's just a sequence of
| events I've seen play out repeatedly and I'm not sure if
| there's a solution. Most recently I've seen it with Bambu
| Lab locking down their 3D printers. Prior to that Autodesk
| yanking the Fusion 360 enthusiast licenses.
|
| Maybe there isn't a solution. There's a lot of UX work that
| isn't fun to do and so it's hard to get volunteers to do
| it. It's hard to do product management in a distributed
| group of volunteers in general. So, companies that can
| afford to bankroll projects often gain traction with
| performance or usability gains and suck away attention and
| funding from open source options. Then when they amass
| enough of the user base they flip the switch and now folks
| are stuck. The cost of changing is often prohibitively high
| and the OSS option is generally far behind at that point.
|
| I think people are bad at thinking longer term. Or maybe
| they just prefer immediate gratification. In any event,
| absent a shift in human behavior I expect we'll see this
| sort of situation to continue to play out. It'd just be
| nice if folks were less antagonistic about it when those
| concerned raise that alarm.
| musicale wrote:
| "OK Gemini, please take this 10-minute video on youtube and
| give me a version without any advertising or promotional
| content."
|
| "I'm sorry Dave, but I am unable to accept requests that
| oppose Google's business interests."
|
| "Well, send it to ChatGPT then!"
|
| "Sure thing. Here is your... 5 second video:"
|
| (Video) "Hey what's up? Be sure to like and subscribe."
| (end of video)
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I use the following code (as a toolbar bookmarklette) for a
| quick button _which disables all pop-overs /cookie requests_:
| javascript:/*https://bookmarkl.ink/ashtonmeuser/849a972686e15
| 05093c6d4fc5c6e0b1a*/(()%3D%3E%7Bvar%20e%2Co%3Ddocument.query
| SelectorAll(%22body%20*%22)%3Bfor(e%3D0%3Be%3Co.length%3Be%2B
| %2B)getComputedStyle(o%5Be%5D).position%3D%3D%3D%22fixed%22%2
| 6%26o%5Be%5D.parentNode.removeChild(o%5Be%5D)%3B%7D)()%3B%0A
|
| Doesn't always work (sometimes it kills the website
| functionality), and I have no clue what it's actually doing
| (I'm not a coder)... but _usually_ it gets rid of hover-
| overs.
| grg0 wrote:
| You know it's gonna be good.
| gusfoo wrote:
| For balance, I clicked the link and (after a moment of my
| browser imposing my will) the video started playing. Opera +
| Ghostery is quite a pleasant experience, at least when compared
| to mobile browsing (at the other end of the spectrum).
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| I'm reminded of the videos about procrastination on youtube
| where people seem to never, ever, ever tire of comenting to say
| things like:
|
| "I'm watching a video about procrastination... and I've got a
| test tomrrow! Lolol!"
|
| Obviously your comment is the refined HN equivalent, but still.
| karmakaze wrote:
| It's also been a long while since clicking "Manage cookie
| preferences" shows "Opt-out..." pre-checked and "Confirm
| choices" button, unlike the "Reject all" button also being
| shown these days. Then unchecking "Opt out..." dynamically
| shows a "Allow all" button.
| sssilver wrote:
| Am I right that the only truly systemic solution to the problem
| of ads is government regulation, with communism as its final
| degree?
| leereeves wrote:
| I would say communism is the final degree of "government as
| provider" not of "government as regulator". The final degree of
| regulation could be any variety of authoritarianism.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Much better to have capitalism replace political tyranny with
| economic tyranny. Where survival depends on serving someone
| else's profit with the requirement their margin grows every
| year.
|
| When markets control basic needs, capitalism becomes its own
| form of authoritarianism that forces everyone to self comply.
| But it's freedom because they voluntarily choose to not
| starve to death/be homeless.
| leereeves wrote:
| It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.
| sdoering wrote:
| Why would communism be the end of the spectrum?
|
| I actually don't understand the thinking process behind that
| inevitability.
|
| Mind to elaborate?
| sssilver wrote:
| Because when you're the sole owner and provider of goods,
| advertisement loses all meaning.
|
| I grew up in the Soviet Union. There was one type of milk on
| the shelf, it was called "Milk", and I don't remember the
| label saying anything else.
|
| Compare with "HORIZON ORGANIC DHA Omega-3 Supports the Brain
| Health organic Whole Milk" dressed in bright red and
| contrasting yellow, with typography that begs "please look at
| me, I'm the better option".
| rambambram wrote:
| > There was one type of milk on the shelf, it was called
| "Milk"
|
| I love this. And for me - as a 40 year old western european
| - it's so unthinkable, so unreal. I usually don't look at
| the milk packaging at home, but I remember reading on the
| packaging all kinds of stupid sh!te like names of the
| farmers where the cow grazes (which might be true, but I
| guess it's b0ll0cks) with some feel-good illustrations, all
| kinds of childish texts on the packaging as well. It's just
| 'milk', I don't need a fake story around how good your milk
| selling company is.
|
| Maybe your soviet milk was unhealthy or not tasteful, I
| don't know. Maybe it's just the same kind of milk we have
| here. My milk is pretty good, but jeezz... that marketing
| on the packaging over here.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Something I believe but have no evidence for, and reality is
| continuing to, bafflingly, defy my expectations:
|
| Ads are basically zero-sum in the sense that they mostly take
| customers that need something, and shift them to the brand that
| is advertised, instead of the one they would have heard of
| naturally (now, there is some element of ads actually
| increasing demand, but as people are quite cash-strapped or in
| debt nowadays, I guess it can only function up to some limit).
| Companies that advertise are engaging in an ever-increasing
| (more sophisticated, technical, and _more expensive_ )
| competition to capture some allocation of this demand. Because
| we're burning an increasing amount of money in a zero-sum
| competition, _eventually_ the ecosystem must collapse under its
| own weight.
|
| We can sort of see this, I think, in people becoming
| increasingly grumpy about how expensive everything is. But the
| system is very circuitous, so we misallocate blame all over the
| place.
|
| Trying to regulate ads--I dunno, it seems hard to regulate
| without stepping on free-speech toes (US perspective, ymmv in
| other countries). I would rather regulate the collection of
| data, which doesn't seem to be particularly protected in any
| sense other than that private entities can mostly just do
| whatever by default (it seems functionally similar to the sort
| of stuff that the 4'th amendment was intended to protect us
| against, except it is done by Facebook and Google so they get
| away with it) (but to be explicit, I think it is probably legal
| at the moment for companies to run vast surveillance networks,
| we need new laws).
| eesmith wrote:
| You sound like a 20th-century cigarette company representative
| using the fear of communism to keep the US government from
| restricting cigarette ads.
|
| Edit: Now, I don't know if an ad exec actually said it, but I
| can find examples like:
|
| > (2015) "Smoking ban is slippery slope toward communism" -
| https://eu.statesmanjournal.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/0...
|
| > (1948) "Rep Flannagan told the House of Representatives that
| tobacco will also help in stopping communism." -
| https://www.brasscheck.com/seldes/tobac6.html
|
| > (2007) "Smoking bans are an act of Communist aggression. "
| https://www.mesabitribune.com/news/smoking-bans-are-acts-of-...
|
| More to the original point, Bern banned some outdoor
| advertising last year (!). https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-
| info/swiss-news/bern-approves-... says "SVP councillor
| Alexander Feuz was the most strident [opponent], calling the
| change a "step towards Stone Age communism.""
|
| Looks like Sao Paolo has a widespread advertising ban since
| 2006(!!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
|
| Bern and Sao Paolo don't seem all that communist.
| tehjoker wrote:
| DPRK has been described as ad block for your life, but even
| under communism to have a consumer economy a limited number of
| regulated ads can be useful so ppl know products exist, but not
| this brand combat to the death oversaturation.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Or let all browsers track users, sell the info, shows ads over
| web sites, and so on. While blocking on page ads.
|
| The market for ads shown on web pages and user info tracked by
| pages will crash, so companies will have to find more direct
| ways to make money again.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Marx actually had stuff to say here.
|
| He expected the end state of capitalism to be business owners
| just constantly fighting the markets to stay still. On the one
| hand, they'd be constantly trying to figure out how to make
| sure they were paying bottom prices for goods and services on
| which they relied, and on the other they'd constantly be
| fighting to try and sell in a saturated market. Eventually,
| collapse would ensue.
|
| This was one of the foundations for his thinking.
|
| He couldn't have predicted information technology, or ad tech,
| but the premise seems to hold up.
|
| Of course, where he ended up was workers owning the means of
| production and every business basically being a "lifestyle
| business", with no need - or ability - to scale. This, as you
| know, became corrupted into government ownership, central
| planning of the economy, and all the other nightmares of a non-
| free market.
|
| The ideal state - and I think this is where Marx would have
| wanted it - is that you might not have had a gazillion milk
| brands all screaming for attention (and the consumer ultimately
| paying for that, as it being priced into the amount they pay),
| but there being a free market of worked-owned businesses.
| balamatom wrote:
| Back in the sticks we usta callit, um, a paperclip optimizer.
| blacklight wrote:
| The irony of watching this 2017 TED video in 2025, and find out
| that my NoScript extension reports half a dozen of JS trackers
| and ads providers on this page - including Google,
| doubleclick.net, sail-personalize and sail-track.
|
| Oh, and if you navigate to this page without NoScript, AdBlocker
| or a PiHole DNS you'll probably be presented with a cookie
| consent banner, a bunch of ads on the page and before watching
| the video, and your data being shared with at least half a dozen
| partners (a number that can increase dramatically if you visit
| the page of any news outlet instead of ted.com).
|
| So yeah, I guess that the message of this video aged like fine
| wine.
| joe_vanachi wrote:
| lol if you think this is about clicking on ads
| fracus wrote:
| "We're"? Unabated capitalism.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I suppose it means the "general we", as in society at large or
| at least a dominant section of, as opposed the "specific we".
| jorgesborges wrote:
| Is it possible to launch an offensive against advertising by
| spoofing humans that consume ads so numbers increase so
| dramatically they're meaningless?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| No. If you know how to make prices move a certain direction, go
| become a billionaire.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think so. Ads were still common and widespread back in
| the analog days when there was no such thing as a click through
| rate to measure.
| dest wrote:
| Check AdNauseam!
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| I have been groaning about income inequality a lot but it is
| amazing how much of this can be explained by it. People do not
| have the disposable income to spend on services so you make
| people pay with attention. Give them the carrot for free so they
| don't notice. On top of that, the product is free so there is no
| expectation of support for the end user. You're getting it for
| free so what are you complaining about?
| dilyevsky wrote:
| What would be the point of showing an ad to someone without
| disposable income?
| tough wrote:
| They might not have enough disposable income to pay for
| software but enough to pay for whatever is on the ad.
|
| More generally, if the service is free, you're the product,
| and you're being sold to someone else
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Both yours and your sibling comments seem to be operating
| under the assumption that all advertisers are some kind of
| idiots
| tough wrote:
| No, I operate under the assumption that advertisers can
| scam gullible users.
|
| From casinos, to shady inexistent job offers, to malware,
| there's a whole world of -ads- targeting the final users
| as a victim
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| There are ads running on Youtube right now that deepfake
| some celebrity to sell crypto.
| tough wrote:
| > There are ads running on Youtube right now that
| deepfake some celebrity to sell crypto.
|
| replying to myself bc i can't to @ujkhsjkdhf234
|
| on x.com (formerly twitter) if you don't paid for premium
| you get ads for drainers and scams on crypto etc too
|
| it's overall a mess tbh, I never trusted nor liked
| marketing or advertising, it's just lies in disguise.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Advertisers have a perverse incentive to spend as much ad
| money as possible. I think this is one of the few
| scenarios where you can attribute something to malice.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Does the client know they lack disposable income? This is
| just as much an exercise about fleecing a client out of their
| adspend by giving shoddy metrics on your end.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Some examples, with varying levels of predation:
|
| An ad for Pampers shown to a family with a toddler; an ad for
| Tidy Cats shown to a cat owner; an ad for Reese's shown to
| someone who exhibits poor impulse control; an ad for
| McDonald's shown to someone who works two jobs and doesn't
| have time to cook food for themselves; an ad for a gambling
| app shown to someone using a gambling app.
| lrvick wrote:
| Propaganda
| amelius wrote:
| It would change the way they spend their nondisposable money.
| catigula wrote:
| People definitely have disposable income. They can, and are
| willing, to go into even non-trivial amounts of debt if you're
| good enough.
|
| The goal is extracting your portion of it via social
| engineering and other mechanisms available to you.
| netsharc wrote:
| In the ancient times there was an ISP selling Internet access
| where the catch is, you dial up via their program, and this
| program would have an always-on-top window showing ads...
|
| Then again, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube started "You pay for
| it with your attention (and your data)" and only later have
| they implemented payment for being ad-free, although with
| Zuck's properties, the EU forced it.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Nothing to do with income equality, organizations will show
| whatever ads they can get away with. I paid Microsoft thousands
| of dollars for my Microsoft laptop. The hardware and form
| factor are admittedly pretty fantastic. But in spite of this,
| Microsoft is still determined to try (and fail) to show me ads.
| grumbel wrote:
| Money alone wouldn't fix this, as a Web where every page has a
| paywall wouldn't be much better either. Which in turn would
| concentrate most of the Web in a few services just as it is
| today and enshittyfication would bring the ads back sooner or
| later, even if you pay for the service.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| > bring the ads back sooner or later, even if you pay for the
| service.
|
| This has already happened for subscription TV services. Your
| previously ad-free subscription now has ads, but you can get
| rid of them again by upgrading! It's fucking gross. It's also
| of course just going to work, and become the new normal.
| accrual wrote:
| Perhaps interesting anecdata - I have a close friend who has a
| great career, plenty of assets and income, etc., but doesn't
| pay to remove ads in their streaming services. Thus, together
| we watch unskippable ads on a brilliant 70" OLED TV while
| resting on plush leather sofa in their beautiful loft, haha.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I am actively moving as many of my workflows as possible to the
| terminal. I've always loved automation, but now it has become a
| quest.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| The terminal helps automation?
|
| How?
| aib wrote:
| Most input is text, most output is text, commands are text.
| Vast majority of programming languages can process and
| produce text out-of-the-box. There are countless utilities
| for processing text. You can store, load, split and join text
| easily. Send and receive it through most channels.
|
| When everything is text, text files become libraries. Text
| editors become macro processors.
| codyvoda wrote:
| yep if you can think in the terminal (scripts, files,
| pipes) you can automate anything
|
| + the minimalism in the age of ad-les enshittification is
| refreshing
| xyst wrote:
| Blame corporate greed for this never ending cycle of
| (human/psychological/and physical) exploitation in the name of
| pRoFiT.
|
| A companion presentation to the OP is "Beware, fellow plutocrats,
| the pitchforks are coming" by Nick Haneaur in 2014 ---
| https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocr...
|
| He has also been running a podcast called "Pitchfork Economics"
| which I have found to be very enlightening on the state of this
| world. From an economics point of view, it explains the
| enshittification of many services we once enjoyed, the
| destruction of the middle class.
|
| The past 40+ years of policy based on "reagonomics"/"trickle down
| economics", neoclassical/neoliberal economicsc and psuedoscience
| from the Chicago School of Economics (ie, Milton Friedman)
| represents the worst era of America.
| Sophira wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that Reddit is very, very aggressive
| about how it implements its telemetry.
|
| Not only is the endpoint that it uses for collecting events
| randomized each time you load a page, but it also happens that
| every event collector URL is a valid API endpoint that is used
| for other things. You can't block any of them with regular ad
| blocking tools unless you're okay with blocking the corresponding
| API endpoint. And given that the website itself uses the API,
| this can be difficult.
|
| It's evil and I hate it.
| ornornor wrote:
| > It's evil and I hate it.
|
| That sums post-IPO Reddit up rather well
| liendolucas wrote:
| The presenter confeses that uses Facebook. Disappointed.
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe it's for the family pictures?
| lrvick wrote:
| Ban/block all ads always. Modern digital advertising cannot co-
| exist with privacy and without being abused for propaganda.
| buyucu wrote:
| The internet has ads?
|
| thanks to uBlock origin and pihole I don't see any of them.
| avipars wrote:
| Same video on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI
|
| The one on TED.com appears to have been removed.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| (2017)
|
| No Javascript:
|
| https://py.tedcdn.com/consus/projects/00/29/70/008/products/...
| Dwedit wrote:
| And if you resist, you are considered a scraper bot and are
| blocked from the site.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I think the problem is, I feel like most ads are so empty,hollow
| & fraudful on the internet...
|
| I am okay with ads, if they aren't all the above.
|
| But I don't know what the Algorithm overlord serves me as an Ad,
| so I use Ublock Origin.
|
| I actually think ads should probably be changed from paid
| promotion to actually use that money on such a good level of ad
| that even if you release it as a standalone video for example,
| people would want to watch it.
|
| And I think people are doing it, I still listen to this Splendor
| Song Chalta rahe because of how great the music of this ad is.
|
| But Most ads are of frauds trying to sell you a get rich quick
| scheme etc. (atleast I feel like every ad wants to sell me a
| course?), and I don't want to be the fraud's shitty course's next
| victim, I hate such course sellers so much that I kind of want to
| punch them through the video just thinking how the whole economy
| of ads is generally revolving around these frauds..., and how
| they make money is by scamming innocent individuals.
|
| All of this while building a privacy nightmare, a dystopia.
|
| No thanks. I am going to keep ads off of any of my services to a
| higher level of degree though I do imagine that most people don't
| donate shit & I don't even think that in businesses, the real
| money are in normal clients because they require free tier and
| way too much hassle for like 10$?, but rather business clients
| (B2B).
|
| Though I also feel this moral obligation to open source whatever
| I build.. but then businesses can simply self host it, maybe I
| should probably only release it as fair source?
|
| IDK, the whole system boils down to money, I can be only so good
| a person as the constraint of money requires me to. If money is
| low, morality has a higher probability of being ignored... , IDK,
| there is too much competition, sometimes unworthy,sometimes not,
| but still too much competition on a lot of ideas and they have
| not much differences so they try to do ads...
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| One of the things that drives me absolutely bonkers is websites
| popping up an ad or some modal to enter my email or subscribe to
| something... While I am in the middle of scrolling or entering
| text / interacting with a form. It's so jarring and frustrating
| and usually results in me moving on.
|
| UX largely sucks and takes a backseat to the ad experience now.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| If everyone had a Solana wallet, and ads were natively
| integrated, you'd receive $0.10 for every one you watch.
|
| Consumers right now only get monetized. They see zero return from
| their attention being taken away from them.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Zeynep Tufekci: We 're building a dystopia just to make people
| click on ads_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026203 -
| Oct 2021 (2 comments)
|
| _We 're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
| (2017) [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684860 -
| March 2018 (170 comments)
|
| _We 're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
| [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891014 - Dec
| 2017 (50 comments)
|
| _We 're Building a Dystopia Just to Make People Click on Ads_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15572578 - Oct 2017 (12
| comments)
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