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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

jacek.zlydach.pl

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#281

Post by probably_wrong »

blodovnik wrote: post #63
smt88 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What valuable things wouldn't exist without advertising?

Computers. And if you want to be pedantic, you'll say but they would exist for military etc!!!!! But if you're not being pedantic you'll agree that most stuff relating to computing exists in its current form in lockstep with yhe ability of companies to sell and therefore advertise their products. Not just computers but everything related to them too.

I'd like to offer a counterpoint.

The home PC revolution was started in big part by accident when IBM made a computer that was both cheap and easy to clone. They became the leader against other, much better recognized computer brands, clones appeared left and right, and here we are.

They became the leader because their product was a better market fit, and not because of advertising. If anything, PCs actually canibalized the products that IBM was actively trying to market (mainframes come to mind).

And then there's Unix and GNU/Linux, the OS of choice for servers.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#282

Post by annadane »

At the risk of much hate and downvotes, this is I feel the prototypical example of one of the issues with HN. Disagreeing is fine, but this is a pretty long, detailed article yet half the comments here are "the author is wrong, there's nothing wrong with advertising"

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#283

Post by rootusrootus »

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…

> I know several people who drink 8-12 cans of diet coke every single day.

Interesting. That's not even sugar water. We're going to need some pretty elaborate regulations at this rate.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#284

Post by casualm »

How much free reign does anyone have when it comes to advertisement? I feel that the biggest issue is not only the volume / spam of advertisement, but how much misinformation it projects.

If the quantity of advertisement can be curbed in such a way that corporates are more conscious of how much space they have on television with advertisements (time limiting law), as well as what message they can convey, this starts discouraging and treating in-your-face advertisement less of a prioritiezed form of pitching a product.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#285

Post by abdullahkhalids »

dooglius wrote: post #189
kyruzic wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each of those companies has a FOSS competitor that does not rely on advertising money yet still exists.

There's a FOSS competitor to Google?

In principle, yes

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaGer

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#286

Post by _petronius »

ziddoap wrote: post #42
_petronius wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has provided incalculable value to the world I'm not convinced by this statement, and I'd be genuinely interested to hear your reasoning behind it. Is it specific products? Specific technologies? Although Google has built some interesting stuff, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that they've done that was either a) something that couldn't have been invented without them, or b) only unique due…

The problem with arguing your viewpoint is that no one can prove something wouldn't have been invented without Google. So, no matter what is listed, you can just say "someone else might have invented that". And regarding your second point, what would the practical difference be to the consumer if the innovation happened because of their ability to scale out, or "true innovation"? You don't need to like Google to admi…

You may be assuming you know my viewpoint without me having presented it in full, but anyway I wasn't looking to argue in bad faith, I guess I just see a strong difference between "successful company that has made money and cool products" and "added incalculable value to the world." That's a very strong statement!

The parent comment was looking to weigh the problems of the ad-supported economy and the ills brought about by that described in the article against the value Google has brought to the world, and I just don't see how the two stack up, so I wanted to understand their weighting of the latter.

Everyone seems keen to write haigiographies of companies that in all honesty I mostly find ... okay I guess? Could do better but they make cool stuff? I don't "hate" Google, but I do think that a company the size of Google doesn't need such zealous defenders, it needs a critical society that pushes it to do better with the crazy resources it has, and one of those things is to examine the ways in which it's basic revenue model is harmful.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#287

Post by Xixi »

arkades wrote: post #192
Xixi wrote: post #176

I really have a dual view on advertising: as a person I hate being on the receiving end of ads (especially when the ads follow me through my browsing....), on the other hand as an entrepreneur I'm quite happy to have means of advertising my tea subscription service [1]. "Build it and they will come" doesn't quite work. People have to hear about your product somehow. I don't do much advertising at all for Tomotcha as…

And here I go rewarding your self promotion, but when else do I get to ask directly? I just skimmed your site. It looks like it’s all greens. Is that correct?

We send very different kind of teas, but they are all Japanese teas. So for instance we only sent black tea once [1] so far because wakocha is pretty rare, though it is gaining in popularity among tea producers. I recently found a very good one produced in Tanegashima, we may send it soon. Otherwise most teas will fall in either the roasted family (hojicha), or in the non-roasted family (sencha, gyokuro, etc.), with sometimes teas that are really infusions, not actual teas (like Zaracha).

But taking just non-roasted green teas, there is a lot of variations. Depending on the way green tea is prepared, it will taste very different. Difference can come from the steaming (asamushi -> futsumushi -> fukamushi, from light and quick to deep and long), from the shading, or lack of shading (sencha -> kabusecha -> gyokuro from no shading to a lot of shading). Then there are teas prepared with different part of the tea plant: my favorite tea is actually called karigane, and is made of twigs instead of tea-leaves.

The teas are definitely all quite different, there are many to try.

[1] https://tomotcha.com/en/blog/2018-012-wakocha-toyama/

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#288

Post by hinkley »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #277
hinkley wrote: post #33

Long, long ago, someone suggested their extremely simple fix for advertising: stop letting companies declare it as a business expense. The Law of Unintended Consequences always gets you in weird ways, and I'm not a lobbyist or a public policy person, nor do I know anyone highly placed in those fields. But one of the ways companies slowly fail is by choosing to sell harder instead of making their product better. If we…

there's a better way. Just have consumers stop buying products that are advertised. it's so easy. i can only imagine that consumers love the advertisements, otehrwise, why would they buy the product?

No such thing has been proven. Brand recognition is higher even for brands whose ads piss you off. Over time you forget why you were so mad.

I had a coworker who insisted you could just chose not to participate. My argument to him was the same I’ll make to you: the other side is using psychological warfare. It’s privatization of propaganda tactics. That requires something a bit more vigorous in response than taking your ball and going home.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#289

Post by dooglius »

FussyZeus wrote: post #215
dooglius wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there an externality? It's not like smoking where it affects other people.

Why does it have to? Coke as a company is responsible for some horrifying effects on the world. Health effects, economic depression in the developing world, ongoing environmental harm. And for what? Sugar water. Not space travel, not energy, not transportation, not safer aircraft or cars, not saving lives, no. For fucking. Sugar. Water. And they're far from the only company burning energy, effort, time and knowledge…

The parent comment said that externalities should be priced in, I am saying it's not an externality and is already "priced in" if it hurts only the drinker. That's orthogonal to Coke being good or bad.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#290

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

I'm not involved in those, I merely use them for obvious reasons almost everyone uses them - network effect. Facebook is the XXI century rolodex (also, I was very young when I got on it, and it looked differently then); LinkedIn account I maintain for the off chance it could be useful in finding a job. Also, that doesn't mean I like how these services work.

I fortunately avoided being ever involved in anything directly related to adtech, and I plan on staying that way.

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