251–260 of 394 posts
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While I think I agree with the premise of this article, these examples seriously undermine the argument. WhatApp because of greed? Spotify because of gluttony? Spell check because of sloth? This seems like an awfully long stretch.
Every single technology you can argue is about sloth
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I'll be honest, I like ads that are relevant to the things I am interested in. I am no FB fan boy, but their ads are pretty good... I actually click on them. What's wrong with that?
You're feeding the adtech privacy-invading world which has tons of negatives for society. As an analogy: "I shop at Walmart and find products I actually appreciate. What's wrong with that?" The answer isn't simple, and shaming individual consumers isn't a solution anyway. Among the biggest problems with ads are that when they are the primary economic model for these services, they will tweak everything to favor paid…
Can you expand on this? I also can't really parse what your second paragraph is trying to say. How do businesses that rely on ads undermine organic product discovery, and what conflict of interests could they have?
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Does Coca-Cola suck? They spend billions a year on advertising. Demand for different products is generated very differently depending on the product. Some things travel by word of mouth, some things don't.
Billions a year is their entire advertising budget, and a lot of it is print & TV advertising which is orders of magnitude more expensive than web. Not saying I agree with that either (I wish all advertising would just die in a fire), but it’s not as bad as the above. The comment I was criticising claimed they were spending millions a month on FB & Insta only , which seems astronomical and raises some concerns about…
How? Spending on fb/insta is no different than print & tv. Air BnB ads are probably 5x as effective on FB than on a billboard, how does that say anything about their product?
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To me, what's depressing is the amount of energy people spend proving their experiences were so amazing versus actually experiencing them.
You want to know what’s depressing? A follower with a terminal illness wrote a heartfelt letter to a popular Instagram influencer that they followed and whose photos they enjoyed. When they passed away, the letter was sent on their behalf to the influencer. When the influencer received the letter, they quickly skimmed through it, said “Cool” and tossed it in the trash with some other junk mail.
What should they have done? Reached out to the family of the anonymous follower? What does the "popular Instagram influencer" owe to someone who enjoys his/her photos?
I'm a 30something curmudgeon, but I have become addicted to their "explore" page or whatever it is. Their algorithms have masterfully created an infinite scroll of addictive content that generally applies to my tastes. I caught myself a few months ago scrolling through that page for almost 30 minutes before realizing what I had been doing. I now have to be very intentional about not going down that constantly-refresh…
Could you further explain a bit the appeal? I have never used Instagram and I imagine it as scrolling through dozens of pictures of cool stuff people do... Is that it? Do you have "feeds" with pictures that correspond to a specific interest of yours? (Is Instagram actually the best place to find interesting pictures on a range of topics?) Do you post a lot yourself or is it virtually all "consumption"? Would you say…
> Do you have "feeds" with pictures that correspond to a specific interest of yours? (Is Instagram actually the best place to find interesting pictures on a range of topics?)
Yes, the explore page has tabs for topics.
> Do you post a lot yourself or is it virtually all "consumption"?
Both. Consumption of all my different interests from small and major content producers. Then I post my photos to my ~150 friends.
> Would you say the identity of the posters plays a significant role (friends, celebrities... ?) or is it really more about the content?
Content for me, but I do seek out some specific accounts because I know what to expect.
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Billions a year is their entire advertising budget, and a lot of it is print & TV advertising which is orders of magnitude more expensive than web. Not saying I agree with that either (I wish all advertising would just die in a fire), but it’s not as bad as the above. The comment I was criticising claimed they were spending millions a month on FB & Insta only , which seems astronomical and raises some concerns about…
> raises some concerns about whether the product provides any value at all. How? Spending on fb/insta is no different than print & tv. Air BnB ads are probably 5x as effective on FB than on a billboard, how does that say anything about their product?
Web ads, on the other hand...
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I think TheRealPomex' point was that the companies pay money for those ads because facebook has the user data to ensure the ads are appropriately targeted.
I have never found facebook ads 'worth it'. Even with professional marketers, total joke and waste of money. People do not click on ads, and those that 'do', might be fake facebook bots or actually facebook messing with numbers. My new 'ad' is that I make content that people will search for on google. Then they can check out the rest of my website.
Your "ad" is just content marketing. This difference is you pay with your time (or others time) to create it, rather than paying for it to be put in front of other's eyes.
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> raises some concerns about whether the product provides any value at all. How? Spending on fb/insta is no different than print & tv. Air BnB ads are probably 5x as effective on FB than on a billboard, how does that say anything about their product?
Print & TV ads don’t stalk me everywhere I go nor steal my personal information so I don’t mind. They are also vetted by the publisher to weed out bad actors so there’s a low risk of scamming. Web ads, on the other hand...
I am quite privacy conscious. I have deleted my FB account. On principle, I dislike targeted ads, user tracking, etc. BUT, I hate to admit this, the ads I get in Instagram are the most relevant I have ever gotten. I actually look forward to them, to discover new products. They are perfectly tailored to me. Dammit.
What I was even more impressed by is that after I bought one, I never saw another Gravity Blanket ad again.