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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

jacek.zlydach.pl

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#221

Post by scarface74 »

joshgel wrote: post #82
rifung wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wow. Banning something unhealthy. That didn’t work out so well for alcohol or drugs. The last thing I want is more government power.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#222

Post by justaguyhere »

dheera wrote: post #143
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…

I'd really love to have an AR real-life ad blocker. Replace all billboards with works of art. Separately I think advertising will have to find new forms of expression that are less repulsive. I won't want to block ads if they are actually fun and interesting.

I am not sure this is a technology problem, this is more of a societal problem. This city had the will to experiment with removing ads, and it had good results

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

How many cities have the will to even attempt something like this? Maybe a handful.

I understand the irony of that page having multiple ads :P

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#223

Post by paultopia »

This is the first I've learned about things like the "Evercookie," and now I'm wondering if there's a U.S. Attorney out there who would be interested in a CFAA prosecution.

I utterly fail to see how it could be the case that website scraping arguably violates the CFAA (though I have my doubts there), but this kind of malware deliberately designed to violate the expressed intent of people to remove data from their own machines, for the purpose of accessing identity information, doesn't.

Interestingly, if you try to download the zip file of the evercookie repo from github, Chrome detects it as malware and blocks it. That makes me rather more confident in the security model of Chrome.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#224

Post by buttheyare »

zentiggr wrote: post #93
Aperocky wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's not like the money magically vanishes to never be seen again No, it remains in corporate budgets, which, without all the marketing spend, can be shifted to better wages, charity work, capital investments, better wages, safety and health initiatives, better wages...

But it doesn't really work like that, does it? After all, it's up to an individual to create something meaningful. The money will always be there in one form or the other. Without google or facebook relaying on advertisements as their business model, coca cola would go for other channels. They'd pick billboards instead of instagram ads, or local newspapers ads instead of native ads. Now I may be a bit biased, however can you really argue that local newspapers and billboard owners will make better use of that capital? And it's not facebook/google restricted either; big companies like that have a very wide range of things they do and ways in which they promote the brand. And come to think of it, facebook, google, and all the other advertising giants we here seem to hate are in a much better position to use that money in a meaningful way. Definitely better then a random wannabe instagram influencer.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#225

Post by brokenkebab »

solipsism wrote: post #111
joshgel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

May we be allowed cake and ice cream or would you ban those as well? Maybe you can get a special license if it's a birthday?

May we be allowed cake and ice cream or would you ban those as well? Maybe you can get a special license if it's a birthday?

Absolutely reasonable question. How about coffee? Soda-prohibiters usually ignore it, because, I guess, they like it themselves, or expect a huge backlash. However, it's a very common way of excessive sugar consumption world-wide.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#226

Post by Lendal »

blodovnik wrote: post #142
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 note the author is very much involved in companies projects and social media platforms that all depend on advertising. http://jacek.zlydach.pl/index.html I'd respect his position more if he was not on LinkedIn or Facebook and did not work on commercial projects.

This argument that you can't criticize anything if you benefit from it is absurd. If he didn't use any technology that comes from companies that advertise, he would never be able to communicate his message in the first place. In fact he wouldn't even be able to leave his home or feed himself, unless he just farmed off the land and made his own clothing. Ridiculous.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#227

Post by rowanG077 »

amiune wrote: post #86
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?

Facebook and twitter are pure waste. Google is 90% waste. Google should just be a search engine and live on donations like Wikipedia.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#228

Post by justforyou »

gambiting wrote: post #141
solipsism wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May we be allowed cake and ice cream or would you ban those as well? Maybe you can get a special license if it's a birthday?

You need to judge a social impact of something before you ban it. The reason why soft drinks are under fire is because there is a lot of people who drink them literally every day. I know several people who drink 8-12 cans of diet coke every single day. On the other hand people usually don't eat cake or ice-cream everyday. I mean, I have no doubt that you could find someone who does, but it's not a widespread behaviou…

If we're basing this on anecdotal evidence, I've worked with entire departments who ate cake or ice-cream every day.

That doesn't mean cake and cookies should be banned, nor should soda. It's nanny state nonsense, and one of the more steeply graded slippery slopes...

If you're really concerned for people's wellbeing, ensuring access to healthcare goes a lot further than denying people snacks..

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#229

Post by scarface74 »

derg wrote: post #58
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…

I constantly think about how the world would look if even a fraction of the people doing creative for ads were free to be creative elsewhere.

And if all of the people doing creative elsewhere didn’t advertise, how would they get the word out about their work?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#230

Post by robbrown451 »

yellowapple wrote: post #200
robbrown451 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the "please donate" notices on Wikipedia not ads?

Sure, but last I checked Wikipedia doesn't advertise itself outside of its own domains, nor does it actively spy on you with those ads wherever you go throughout the World Wide Web.

Right, so some ads are different than others.

Still, I'm trying to imagine what the web would be like if every site that currently does the "bad kind of advertising" put up guilt boxes instead. For one thing, Wikipedia would probably disappear, because all the other sites are competing for people's limited altruism.

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