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Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

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Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#91

Post by wlesieutre »

elorant wrote: post #51
moksly wrote: post #20

I’m not on Instagram, but I don’t think this issue is really confined to social media. I’ve become quite concerned about is how advertising is drowning out useful information everywhere else as well. We recently had a baby girl, our first, and this has lead to quite a lot of internet searching. I’ve been completely unable to find anything resembling an authentic answer on google. It’s all commercial content trying to…

I've contemplated with the idea of building a plug-in that would disable all affiliate links on a page. What's holding me from doing it is that I find it unethical because some people are making a living out of promoting stuff. From the other hand, native advertising has become a scourge for modern web. It's not enough that every site has a dozen of visible ads, now we have to fight through promoted content everywher…

I'd be happy to have them highlighted so I can tell where they're being used

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#92

Post by obenn »

mc32 wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation, we just had our first child, and the amount of ads and branding we were (and are) exposed to now is just staggering. We've been given a bunch of "helpful" boxes that contained some content-marketing bullshit booklets for parents + samples of commercial care products + a lot of ads for said products. Hell, even the health book for our child that we were given has several full-page ads of baby care prod…

Do you think mainstream search engines someday will provide a “commercial search” and “non-commercial search” buttons side-by-side? SEO/ad gamed and non SEO/ad-gamed? I dream of the day, but unless the government makes it a requirement I don’t see them doing it as it could undermine their business model to some extent (although I think people who want to buy will make use of the “commercial search”)

I wouldn't expect non-commercial search to be a free option.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#94

Post by HenryBemis »

0x5002 wrote: post #77
snaky wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happened to the actual people on the internet? People sharing their stories without getting paid to push a product? Good old webforums. They are alive and well.

Are they, though? I got back into a video game the other day that was released 15 years ago (also when I first played it). There were plenty of dedicated websites around the game, most of them with forums that contained guides, little details and secrets and whatnot (matter of fact, I ran one of them for a while). All of those are long gone, with all associated content - which I suppose is not surprising, given its a…

Do share what game that was, and if it was a DOS game, how did you make it run on Win7-8-10 :)

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#95

Post by ssf40 »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #56
moksly wrote: post #20

I’m not on Instagram, but I don’t think this issue is really confined to social media. I’ve become quite concerned about is how advertising is drowning out useful information everywhere else as well. We recently had a baby girl, our first, and this has lead to quite a lot of internet searching. I’ve been completely unable to find anything resembling an authentic answer on google. It’s all commercial content trying to…

Try https://millionshort.com Search without the top 1m (or 100k) sites. Far from perfect, but it tunes out an awful lot of the commerce that Google prioritise. You start finding the old school forums and info sites that are mostly invisible to Google.

Great suggestion! I'd not heard of the site before. Just searched for smoothie recipes and was shown lots of small blogs/food sites instead of the usual suspects with heavy advertising.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#96

Post by jasode »

mc32 wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation, we just had our first child, and the amount of ads and branding we were (and are) exposed to now is just staggering. We've been given a bunch of "helpful" boxes that contained some content-marketing bullshit booklets for parents + samples of commercial care products + a lot of ads for said products. Hell, even the health book for our child that we were given has several full-page ads of baby care prod…

Do you think mainstream search engines someday will provide a “commercial search” and “non-commercial search” buttons side-by-side? SEO/ad gamed and non SEO/ad-gamed? I dream of the day, but unless the government makes it a requirement I don’t see them doing it as it could undermine their business model to some extent (although I think people who want to buy will make use of the “commercial search”)

>Do you think mainstream search engines someday will provide a “commercial search” and “non-commercial search” buttons side-by-side? SEO/ad gamed and non SEO/ad-gamed?

If we put on our computer science hats on to attempt an algorithm to classify the "commercial" from "non-commercial", what would that look like?

Distinguishing ads that are disguised as innocent posts vs authentically innocent posts is a very hard problem. What would the AI machine learning rules be?

Let's take one example thread that's currently on the HN front page: "Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?"

(screenshot of HN: https://imgur.com/a/zK5IZ4E)

Was that post submitted for discussion to spur sales of the new Raspberry Pi 4? Or was it a genuine question free of any hidden commercial intent? How would a computer algorithm know? Likewise, how would we, as humans, be able to truly know? To me, the thread doesn't seem like it's advertising-motivated. But do you trust my judgement on this?

Let's take that post's indeterminate status one step further and look at the Google search results: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+do+you+do+with+a+"raspb...

(screenshot of Google: https://imgur.com/a/YGShV9r)

Notice that Google includes that very HN thread in its results. Should the hypothetical "non-commercial" search button include that HN thread or not?

Here's an example of the opposite effect where people misclassify something as commercial when it isn't: A HN user accuses me of selling something[1] even though I actually wasn't! I just happen to view hundreds of videos about entrepreneurship and I keep copious notes. It was easy to share my notes with HN readers. I have no commercial or even personal affiliation with any VC.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12507716 -- "There's so much selling in this post I get tired just by reading it."

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#97

Post by saddestcatever »

moksly wrote: post #20

I’m not on Instagram, but I don’t think this issue is really confined to social media. I’ve become quite concerned about is how advertising is drowning out useful information everywhere else as well. We recently had a baby girl, our first, and this has lead to quite a lot of internet searching. I’ve been completely unable to find anything resembling an authentic answer on google. It’s all commercial content trying to…

I didn't notice this problem until recently. Whenever I found myself looking for an opinion, I would search: "{phrase} site:reddit.com".

Far from perfect, but it's been a habit I've been taking more and more in order to avoid all the garbage SEO / Lead Gen / Promotional content out there that's diluting searches.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#98

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #31

Instagram/Facebook have some of the most sophisticated advertising technology in human history. They know my location history, they can determine the language I post in, and they surely have countless other data points they can use for advanced targeting. And yet, Instagram is adamant that I speak Serbian and that I am in Serbia. I don't speak Serbian, and I haven't been in Serbia since I stayed in Belgrade for the m…

Latest amusement from Instagram: my comment was removed as it violated their community guidelines (no threats of violence), and if I make more comments like this my account would be suspended.

In my comment I said I would rather see 100 lab mice euthanised than see a single child suffer from cancer.

Does Instagram just employ the world's stupidest people or what?

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#99

Post by saddestcatever »

0x5002 wrote: post #77
snaky wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happened to the actual people on the internet? People sharing their stories without getting paid to push a product? Good old webforums. They are alive and well.

Are they, though? I got back into a video game the other day that was released 15 years ago (also when I first played it). There were plenty of dedicated websites around the game, most of them with forums that contained guides, little details and secrets and whatnot (matter of fact, I ran one of them for a while). All of those are long gone, with all associated content - which I suppose is not surprising, given its a…

I feel like reddit.com has taken up a lot of this slack. Now with millions of "micro-communities" about sharing the specifics or appreciation posts for specific games and topics. Replacing the traditional PHBB forums we used to have for each community.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#100

Post by dustingetz »

saddestcatever wrote: post #97
moksly wrote: post #20

I’m not on Instagram, but I don’t think this issue is really confined to social media. I’ve become quite concerned about is how advertising is drowning out useful information everywhere else as well. We recently had a baby girl, our first, and this has lead to quite a lot of internet searching. I’ve been completely unable to find anything resembling an authentic answer on google. It’s all commercial content trying to…

I didn't notice this problem until recently. Whenever I found myself looking for an opinion, I would search: "{phrase} site:reddit.com". Far from perfect, but it's been a habit I've been taking more and more in order to avoid all the garbage SEO / Lead Gen / Promotional content out there that's diluting searches.

Reddit is not quite as compromised as amazon reviews but is fast approaching it.
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