Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

jacek.zlydach.pl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 657 posts

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#571

Post by neop1x »

cletus wrote: post #214

I really detest the general "hate" of advertising. Don't get me wrong: I'm a zealous ad blocker, largely because advertising can (and does) go over the line of being intrusive. Also I think the dirty secret of ad tech is ad personalization has pretty limited value. But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need or want. There might be a bakery 2 miles away you'll really enjoy. How will…

How would you know? I could see it in a map or recommendation sites. Even user-contributed projects like OpenStreetMap could do. This is how I discovered couple of places. There doesn't have to be advertising to discover something. On the other hand, advertising may work better for less smart people who don't even know how to use internet properly and live within Facebook for example. :( Unless something pops over their screen they won't notice it.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#572

Post by neop1x »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #266

Advertising never works on me unless it's for a product I already wanted in the first place in which case i would've gotten it anyways. But other than that, I'm completely immune. I've calculated, less than 0.25% of my earnings go towards a product that was advertised to me. I have no idea what brand my clothes/shoes are, if any. None of the food I buy has any branding whatsoever. ever seen a branded cucumber? nope,…

the thing is that maybe you are smarter than average. Maybe most people buy impulsiely, who knows..

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#573

Post by wpietri »

dwild wrote: post #265
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 would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now. Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and reminding you that this product exists. Ads are the only way to reach her market. You could argue that search is a good one too (which is true), but sadly people have trouble paying to watch videos onl…

> if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now

[citation needed]

You're making a couple of mistakes here. One is imagining that in a world without ads, her experience would be the same as her not advertising. The other is that something that is bad for a given business is something that's bad for society. Both of these are at best unproven.

> Most ads isn't about manipulation

For every ad you see today, ask yourself how much useful new information you have gained from it. I've done that a few times and it's pretty close to zero. Note that the biggest spenders on ads are brands you've already heard of, suggesting that your theory needs some revision.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#574

Post by wpietri »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #107
wpietri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's talking about taking away soda. People would still buy soda if there weren't ads for it.

But would they buy Coke?

If they didn't, they'd be buying something they were even happier with. So from both a consumer perspective and a societal perspective, it's a net gain. It's only from Coke's perspective it might be a problem. But I think it's wrong to privilege their success over everybody else just because they have enough money to manipulate people.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#575

Post by officeplant »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #361
officeplant wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Firefox Mobile is not going to allow extensions anymore within the near future. Although finding the article that brought it up is proving difficult.

Are you thinking about their recent "new Firefox" beta that didn't include extensions? AFAIR this was because they deemed it non-essential for the MVP - but the public response quickly corrected that mistake.

Oh sweet I'm glad they backtracked on that.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#576

Post by wpietri »

arendtio wrote: post #538
dwild wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now. Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and reminding you that this product exists. Ads are the only way to reach her market. You could argue that search is a good one too (which is true), but sadly people have trouble paying to watch videos onl…

Yes, you are right, there are (at least) two effects of advertising: 1. Education (let people know a company/product exists) 2. Manipulation (by various means) From a moral point of view, the first effect is not bad. It actually helps people to make better decisions and extend their knowledge about available products and services. However, the second effect is the harmful one. Since companies are trying to make money…

Agreed. A couple of exercises I recommend to everybody:

1) Take a day and for each ad you see note how much novel, useful information you receive from it.

2) For any ad that had significant novel, useful information, redesign it in a format that is optimized to be informative, with any manipulation subtracted. (E.g., imagine it written in the style of the best encyclopedia articles.)

Doing this makes it pretty clear that pure information is a very, very small portion of what's going on with advertising.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#577

Post by wpietri »

yoz-y wrote: post #549
skummetmaelk wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the current ad model of the popular search engine(s) was made extinct by law. I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to a paid model. Who wouldn't pay to have any information in the world reachable in the 30 seconds it takes to craft a query and scan the first page of results? It is a huge competitive advantage.

Nobody ever paid for something like that. If there is anything on the internet people assume it should be free. Taking example of the HN crowd, every time there is a pay walled article people ask for web links, praise outline links and generally complain.

> Nobody ever paid for something like that.

Sure, because the web was ad-funded from the early days. People have an irrationally strong preference for "free". Even though in this case "free" really means "paid for by people manipulating how you spend your money".

But I think it's implausible that if ads didn't happen the web would just be an empty wasteland. Up until the web existed, people paid for all sorts of information and informational services. And plenty of people still do. I spend maybe $1k/year on journalism.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#578

Post by wpietri »

dragonsngoblins wrote: post #536
Zeklandia wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only tell our selves we can afford. The truth is we are constantly putting off work that needs to be done as if some future generation will fix all these problems. There are tens of millions of Americans living in homelessness, shanty towns, and trailer parks. We need to build housing (apartments, homes) for them. No individual person can do that. We have to organize ourselves to tackle these kinds of problems coo…

Even with absolutely 0 advertising I probably wouldn't be working to build apartments for the homeless. Sure maybe I'm not seeing some movie, or buying some piece of chocolate I heard discovered through advertising but in that case I'm going to be spending my time watching/reading/playing/indulging in various other hobbies and vices and any money I would otherwise have spent I'd be saving. Absolutely no benefit to fu…

You believe these things about yourself, but it's not like you have much evidence, so maybe consider the alternatives.

One function of advertising is demand generation. It makes people believe they need things they don't. The broad message of most ads is "spend more money to be successful/popular/happy". Is it really impossible to think that if people stopped getting told that all day long they'd focus less on spending/consumption and more on other things?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#579

Post by cameronbrown »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #552
cameronbrown wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I'm more than happy for more labels saying how bad sugary drinks are - like a less extreme version of smoking warnings - but taking a choice away for someone because you think you know better is authoritarian, even if we're only talking about a drink.

It's far more authoritarian to promote industries that spend outrageous sums on manipulating people into harming their own health, with incredibly expensive social and personal consequences. It's absolutely and completely false to frame this as a government vs individual issue. It's actually corporate propaganda vs the individual. No one who supports individual freedom has any business encouraging corporate propagand…

I'm not really disagreeing with you. Like I said if we had more warning labels and less corporate branding I'd be perfectly fine with that. I'm yet to be convinced that Coca-Cola is as bad as cigarettes and needs to be totally banned/heavily taxed though.

You know the one of the things the worse off in society enjoy doing? - drinking a soda. They need to know the health risks, yes, but taking that away/adding a sin tax makes their quality of life measurably worse even if their health would be slightly better off in the long run. You're either taking away some of the little enjoyment they have or more of their money and I don't think that's fair.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#580

Post by necovek »

davidivadavid wrote: post #395
necovek wrote: post #301

I prefer to simply say "marketing today is immoral": it is using scientifically proven methods to manipulate us into doing something we would otherwise not be inclined to do. I don't mind informative advertising: "hey, we are making this thing which can help with this" is ok. But that's a rare breed of ads nowadays. One of the eye-openers for me was when I noticed in my early student (and shaving :)) days how all Niv…

Curious to know what's so problematic about the Nivea claim that it's for sensitive skin?

As I mentioned, all of their products were being marketed as being for "sensitive skin". Eg. a skin that turns red and/or itches after you shave with a very sharp razor: I would generally expect that almost everyone's skin behaves like this. So by saying "sensitive", they were attempting to manipulate me into thinking how my (and everybody else's) skin is sensitive so I need their "special" products.
Post reply on HN