101–110 of 171 posts
I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.
I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.
Strong agree. Advertising should be outlawed entirely. Or rather, corporate propaganda should be outlawed. Psychologically manipulating people for profit is horrible, I cannot comprehend how it's become normalized. This is our brains on capitalism, I guess.
But narrowing a bit to the feedback loop between data collected by the ad machine and the next ad you see based on that and ongoing data collection-- if Las Vegas casino games are regulated then we can certainly regulate that dangerous practice.
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Well, I am sure millions of less fortunate people in this world are glad you have no say in deciding these things. Millions of people using Whatsapp to stay in contact with their friends and family for free, many who couldn't afford to pay for the service, but shut it down because snarf21 saw an ad he didn't like.
yeah but we had email before that. It wasn't "free" but it was cheap and worked across everything and no-one stole your personal data.
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Yes
Well, I am sure millions of less fortunate people in this world are glad you have no say in deciding these things. Millions of people using Whatsapp to stay in contact with their friends and family for free, many who couldn't afford to pay for the service, but shut it down because snarf21 saw an ad he didn't like.
I am beginning to believe that advertising (at all, on any medium) is an evil we need to do without. The "free stuff" that we get in return is never without consequences, as we're finding out. The "hey we built a thing you might want to buy" function can be done in different forms, better, I think. Probably by newspapers. I think we could start by taxing all advertising revenue by, say, 50%.
I’ve long thought something along similar lines: in a world with instant search, advertising becomes irrelevant if the search actually helps you to find products. It is in this way that google has actually failed. If you look for a product you get a whole load of dross back. It’s impossible to filter by spec, you can add keywords but this rarely gives you more sensible results these days. The products get lost in the…
These sorts of listing aggregators (like pc parts sites) have a perverse incentive to always allow those that pay to get top placement.
I'm genuinely interested in a business model for this stuff that can support fair placement.
Flat subscription fees on the vendor side needs to first solve the chicken and egg problem. Flat subscription fees on the customer side doesn't seem likely to work.
Communicating that your service is really really different because it does not have shady business practices is a hard sale at best. Look at how free to play games thrive versus more ethical business models.
I want to work on solutions to these insidious businesses that seem so commonplace today but I don't know a model that could work.
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Taking away that "free stuff" is not without consequence either. Now people without means can't read the news, watch tv, connect with friends and family online, play casual games, etc. Are ads more evil than taking away free access for those without the means to pay?
Yes
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I’d be interested in knowing what qualifies as advertising in this hypothetical. Web banners? Sponsored content? Trade shows? Sales rep stopping by and buying lunch and talking about a product? Clothing with logos? Hacker News? There are lots of ways to capture people’s attention to build awareness of your business that probably technically fall under advertising but would be quite difficult to regulate in any meanin…
"Being paid by someone to publish content that mentions their product", I guess, as a first draft? So, in your examples: Web banners: yes, Sponsored content: yes, Trade shows: no, Sales rep stopping by: no, clothing with logos: yes if the logo isn't the brand of the clothing itself, Hacker News: I have no idea how this site is funded. And I don't even vaguely pretend to know where we should draw the line. I just thin…
I like to think about these issues because I make a living selling advertising on my website. We try to have use good practices, have the ads be high quality, targeted toward the content as opposed to the user.
On the other hand, I live in a city which does not allow billboard advertising (Santa Barbara, California) and I do enjoy it in comparison to cities with many billboards.
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Taking away that "free stuff" is not without consequence either. Now people without means can't read the news, watch tv, connect with friends and family online, play casual games, etc. Are ads more evil than taking away free access for those without the means to pay?
I don't know. I've never lived in a world where this stuff wasn't paid for by advertising. I think "means to pay" is relative - Cambodian tuk-tuk drivers get cheaper, better internet access than Berliners. And they watch YouTube on it. If they didn't have access to YouTube for free there would be a huge market in producing Cambodian content for them to watch, priced appropriately for that market.
How about we fix the underlying problem: how to earn money without advertising? The issue right now is that subscribing to 100s of different services is both annoying and expensive. What if you could subscribe to a single service, which then would compensate the different services you use based on how much you use them? Sort of like how Spotify compensates artists based on number of listens. Quite easy to solve techn…