Advertising Is a Cancer on Society • Hacker News Board

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#81

Post by kelnos » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

blodovnik wrote: post #8

This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works. I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't exist without advertising. It's a childish and immature opinion really. Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loa…

There must be a way to do advertising that respects the consumer, and doesn't use some form of sketchy manipulation to achieve the desired goal. And yet the vast majority of advertising is (to me) offensive.

> Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise.

That's a rather childish and immature rejoinder. The world of employment simply doesn't work that way, and people's job mobility is not infinite and frictionless.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#82

Post by joshgel » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

rifung wrote: post #56

wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

> For example, everybody on the planet is now familiar with soft drinks. If anybody has never tasted Coke, it's not by accident. But Coke's ad budget is enormous. If all soft drink companies stopped advertising tomorrow, society would not be worse off. And we'd have billions of dollars [1] to spend on something useful. Not that I disagree, but where do you draw the line? Sure, if Coke stopped advertising we'd have bi…

As a doctor, I'm all for banning soft drinks, recognizing that it probably will never happen.

But, the health externalities associated with drinking such beverages should get priced in and be used to offset eventual health complications. This is not easy because no one likes taxes, but you get what you pay for.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#83

Post by dzader » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

aqme28 wrote: post #14

starpilot wrote: post #2

We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.

I'm not convinced that there's no other possible business model for a search engine.

excited to see the new search engine you build then!

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#84

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

How do you define "Something useful" though? The advertisement money eventually makes it to Google, broadcasters, sites, TV-channels, sports events and people running those organization in term gets more money to spend on [Potentially useful stuff]. It's not like the money magically vanishes to never be seen again, and business to business transaction like this make the money flow faster instead of slower.

Economy is basically production vs consumption, money is just the grease to keep the cycle flowing, to follow the money isn't getting to the base cause of our problems.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#85

Post by readams » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #65

starpilot wrote: post #2

We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.

The web existed before Google, Facebook, etc. and, as you might recall, it worked just fine.

Though it was really hard to find anything.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#86

Post by amiune » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

If every company stopped advertising then google and facebook and twitter will disappear. Are all these companies pure waste? How do you fund a replacement for them? Should these services be provided by governments?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#87

Post by cm2012 » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #66

cm2012 wrote: post #25

Advertising (Which appears to be defined in your broad doc as anything that gets your attention without asking for it first) is the worst way to get people to pay attention to things, except for all the other ways. The alternative to "advertising" is the rate of people discovering new things dropping to 1% of what it is now. 1% of products have natural virality and will be found on their own. The other 99% of product…

> 1% of products have [...] 99% of products and services [...] plumber productivity would go up 50% [...] Did know that 97% of statistics are made up on the spot? The problem with your fictions here is that they're based in a world with a lot of advertising. In your fantasy, people just sit around dying of thirst because there's nobody to advertise water at them. But in reality, people would still find ways to get wh…

My job is talking to start-ups and established companies that want to grow. It's not a fiction to say that most companies don't grow if they don't promote themselves.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#88

Post by smitty1e » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

"What can be done about it? I honestly have no good ideas"

One possibility would be setting up some sort of cloud/container solution that isn't really trying to TOR is up, but does manage to obscure and filter traffic enough to harden us mortal targets.

Up from there, perhaps there is some tarted up proxy as a business model that supports doing social media and searching in a low-fingerprint way.

These ideas must have been explored already, so tell me who has some good products, HN.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#89

Post by lbrito » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

blodovnik wrote: post #8

This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works. I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't exist without advertising. It's a childish and immature opinion really. Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loa…

>I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't exist without advertising.

That isn't relevant regarding the truthfulness of the author's claim.

Whether or not ads are vital for any industry, product or technology (an extremely complex question by the way, not to be easily dismissed with a dogmatic "X would not exist without advertising") has no logical relation whatsoever to any opinion one might have about ads.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#90

Post by kyruzic » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

socalnate1 wrote: post #6

"Businesses are made of people, and people have ethics. If you're running one, consider the way you advertise. Are you aiming at making mutually beneficial transactions, or are you just trying to milk you users out of their hard-earned cash? Not all advertising is inherently harmful to individuals or society. " So, some kinds of cancers are OK. It's hard to take this sort of article too seriously when it undermines i…

Some kinds are ads arent inherently harmful. Advertising is still cancer though.

Some kinds of mold aren't harmful. That doesn't mean mold isn't a bad thing.