Advertising = Jobs
Legalizing armed robbery = Jobs
Advertising is devastating to my well-being
111–120 of 148 posts
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
They WILL advertise. Just not via ridiculously-easy-to-block 3rd party javascript streaming ads. If the ads are displayed by the same method as the content, then they are obviously unblockable. Sites will instead become a direct seller of the commodity of time units of ad space. The buyers will be advertisers. How can commodities be efficiently allocated between many buyers and sellers? It's called a market. If you'v…
Those same economics books also will show the inevitability of middle men. The internet started with exactly the model you describe and evolved to it's current state. Expecting it to devolve back down is not a strategy I would back.
Correct by posting these comments I have been promoting the idea of middle men such as ourselves to create ad markets for direct participation by buyers and sellers (individuals and firms). I meant that the flavor, i.e. whether modelled after matchmaking services, auction sites, or the stock market doesn't matter there are plenty of options for ideas that could work.
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use hyperbole to emphasize a point. I don't cry myself to sleep when I see an ad, no. Sometimes I become mildly annoyed. Life is generally OK. Likewise, ad-blocking isn't really "devastating" the internet, is it?
Speaking for myself, it's very difficult to take you seriously when you use hyperbole to this extreme. Let's be completely honest here: you wrote it this way because you knew it would get more of a reaction and people wouldn't just ignore it, like they would have if you had written "It mildly annoys me." In other words, you changed your messaging to fit the market and get the results you wanted from people through em…
No, I wrote it this way because I do feel strongly about it. I used the word "devastated" as a play on the title of the other article. I'm not "devastated", but I do feel strongly enough about this issue to alter my lifestyle, for example (e.g. avoiding TV and radio, which I very much wish I was able to enjoy).
I expect some people will agree and some disagree with what I wrote. I enjoy the discussion, but I don't get anything else out of it. I didn't have any notion that I'd convince anyone of anything. It was not an attempt to manipulate anyone. Not a conscious attempt anyways. Certainly not an attempt to manipulate people into giving me money, so I think the analogy doesn't hold.
However I may be wrong about this, it may be that my language is overboard in the way you say. Thanks for some food for thought.
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Again, if you'd read Ars' post, you would know that they are paid on impressions, not conversion rate." I read that, but as I said, if they have a higher conversion rate, they should be able to negotiate a higher fee for the ads anyway. On the other aspects, I guess we just disagree (why is it worse to screw advertisers than ad pushing people)?
revenue from impressions is a speculative hogwash remnant of the print medium and needs to go The idea one makes money from ads simply by having it displayed is copying a highly speculative advertising model of print (where the effect can hardly be measured) to the web (where you can measure it be by actual clicks) put simply its vaporware of the worst kind, and a business that hedges its revenue on this model is hed…
I was surprised that Ars is payed by impressions, I thought it is all pay per click these days.
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I would feel differently about circumventing their block than about blocking ads. If they want to block me, I would accept it. Maybe there would always be people who "steal", but are they really so many that it would hurt?
You know how easy it is to install and use Adblock for Firefox? That's how easy it would be for most people to use the anti-anti-Adblock extension that someone would write within a week.
Sure, but what I wanted to express is that blocking ads does not feel like stealing to me. Circumventing their site block would feel like stealing.
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#116Wish I had time to build an AdFundedSiteBlocker - extension for Firefox that doesn't allow you to read the content on a site if it has ads on it.
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, let's take a simple example here. Google published loads of Chrome adverts to raise awareness of their new browser. The result of those adverts is that a lot of people switched to Chrome, making it a valid browser choice and, hopefully, hastening IE's demise. A number of people who read about Chrome in adverts would only have heard of it a year later if it wasn't for the ads. I think those ads were perfectly well…
> Ars has no right to demand your attention on their ads, so fuck'em. Ars isn't demanding that you pay attention to the ads, they're asking you to simply render them, so that their ad provider counts the impression and pays them the tenth of a cent that covers the bandwidth you just used to load the page. That doesn't seem like much to ask.
First, if that's the case, then Ars is being dishonest with their advertisers, who are paying for attention, not rendering processes. So, once again, fuck'em.
Second, if they're paying a tenth of a cent to render a page, they need a better host!
Third, I would imagine that the cost they might be trying to cover is the cost of writing the article, not the negligible cost of serving it.
In any case, fuck'em. It's a wild world out there. If you don't wanna deal with it, don't. There'll be plenty of other publications willing to step in to fill the gap.
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#118It's painful to see so many intelligent people unable or unwilling to analyze the effects their actions cause. If you block ads on sites you enjoy without communicating with the producers of that site, you are lowering the probability that sites you enjoy will continue to be produced. There are several ways to mitigate this effect if you don't like ads: 1) Pay for a subscription. 2) If no subscription is offered, ask…
Taking actions that in sum lower the probability of things you like being produced in the future is incredibly stupid.
I don't think it's particularly stupid because the actions of an individual choosing to block ads will have a negligible impact on a site, whereas viewing the site without annoying advertisements will provide a more favorable experience for that user.
Hence, from the position of the individual ad blocking is a rational choice.
(I'm aware that in aggregate this leads to sites folding, but I'm talking purely from an individual perspective. Tragedy of the commons and all that.)
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#119As naive as this may make me sound, I think this attitude is hurting society. The idea that everyone is and should be trying to screw everyone else out of as much pleasure and profit as legal is, in my opinion, detrimental to society. When we stop doing things that don't negatively affect us much and help others, we've lost the benefits of altruism that helped our species evolve beyond the rest.
I'm not sure it's a particularly new development. People have been acting in their own self-interest for time immemorial.
(And indeed economic models which work on the basis of enlightened self interest have been the most successful and delivered the most good to their adherents).
Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with the sentiment, that's a whole heck of a love of evolution to work against. Nature (think of life on the Serengeti) is all about screwing over one creature for the benefit of another.
Human survival and wealth depend on voluntary production and trade. That is already baked into the evolutionary cake. If human behavior ever became "all about screwing over" other people, initiating force, and taking property without consent, then the human race would die out. Of course, a small portion of humans can and do live that way, but that is an aberration. If it ever becomes the norm, misery, illness, povert…
> If human behavior ever became "all about screwing over" other people, initiating force, and taking property without consent,
Humans have been doing these things for as long as there have been humans...
> then the human race would die out.
...and this hasn't happened. Ergo, your argument is wrong.