Why I Work on Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#81

Post by notsobig » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #62

omginternets wrote: post #13

I'm always surprised that someone would go through the trouble of justifying their involvement in something prima facie unethical -- in writing, no less -- and fail to address the actual ethical issue. As other have noted in comments, the problem is not with advertising in general, but with the specific way in which Google advertises. I have a hard time believing the author is unaware of this, so I'm left wondering:…

This would be an appropriate place to disclose your glaring conflict of interest.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#82

Post by raspyberr » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

crumbshot wrote: post #71

raspyberr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this model is the reason something like Trump and Russian/Chinese medelling happens. Why not reject the advertising model and the payment model until something better comes along? Businesses aren't people. They'll just work out how to make money eventually.

> Why not reject the advertising model and the payment model until something better comes along? The Internet Archive is a great example of this. A non-profit that relies neither on advertising revenue nor subscription revenue from individual users, and instead thrives on income for providing archival services and grants from organisations that recognise the public good it is providing.

I'd like for donation to be the predominant way to support digital work in the future. But paying with a card online is pretty hasslesome and micropayments will cause so many issues anyway that it kind of feels like a pipe dream. Stuff like Signal and Internet Archive are excellent tools that may not make all the money in the world do achieve their goals well whilst, at least for the time being, being financially stable.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#83

Post by alkonaut » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

> Paywalls. You pay with your money. > Ads. You pay with your attention

If you work on ads that only take my attention then you work on good ads, and I completely support that. If, however, you feel that your ads must try to pinpoint my identity by harvesting personal information in the name of "targeting" or "fraud prevention", then that's no longer me paying with my attention, it's me paying with my privacy and integrity.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#84

Post by samfisher83 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

According to the sec disclosures the 3 highest paying tech companies are Google, Splunk, and Facebook. They all happen to be among the 10 best paying public companies in America. 2 of the 3 are almost completely funded by ad money.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#85

Post by luxpir » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

I wonder if something like the radio/royalty model wouldn't work as a replacement for ads. You pay ISP, they are the "radio station" playing what you want to hear, they pay micropayments to all the sites you visited proportionally.

I can immediately see significant issues (user data, managing payments, admin, biggest sites get bigger etc.) but if there's a market demand for a new model, it wouldn't even have to be regulated initially. It could be a feature offered by an innovative ISP. A sort of patron model for general browsing.

My 2 cents fwiw.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#86

Post by crumbshot » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #38

lupire wrote: post #25

People wo believe that "tool makers aren't responsible for how the tool is misused" (for example, with cryptocurrency), do you feel the same way about adtech?

I find all ads reprehensible regardless of tracking and yes, I believe adtech engineers aren't responsible for that. Specifically, author of OP doesn't have to justify himself. He enjoys his job and I'm happy for him. Blaming technicians for the negative externalities of their industries is a dark path. Are we going to blame lawyers who defend rapists? General Motors assembly-line workers? Engineers who work for oil…

> Are we going to blame lawyers who defend rapists?

Only if such lawyers are unethical in how they go about doing this.

Lawyers who defend accused rapists are a necessity for a well-functioning justice system. The alternative is a process where the accused isn't permitted a legal defence, if they're taken to trial for serious crimes like rape.

Software engineers who spend their days forcing increasingly invasive advertising technology upon us all are not necessary. For the most part, we'd all be better off if they all downed tools.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#87

Post by michael1999 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

underyx wrote: post #60

omginternets wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

> ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g. large-scale collection of personal information) I find it ironic to see this brought up as the first example of problems, when this is exactly what Google's FLoC intends to solve. The same FLoC that has so vocally been rejected by HN recently.

Unfortunately, Doubleclick/Google doesn't get the benefit of the doubt when declaring their intention to respect privacy. They burned that bridge. Many, many times.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#88

Post by elliekelly » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #29

The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I will offer a contrarian opinion as a user whose salary does not depend on advertising: the advertising model for using Google search and watching Youtube videos works better for me as a consumer . The alternati…

I find the "ads are useful" argument frustratingly disingenuous. It's a transparent and deliberate attempt to move the discussion away from what people actually take issue with in modern internet advertising - tracking and data collection - and instead tries to frame it as something far more benign.

The ads. Aren't. The problem. The stalking is.

Ads can be useful. But no one is saying they aren't! So why is it constantly the case that when internet users make the simple and reasonable request "Please, can you just not stalk us everywhere we go?" the response is "but we're helping you!"

The parasitic advertising industry likes to pretend we're in a symbiotic relationship while conveniently ignoring the actual symbiotic solution (see e.g., DDG) because it won't make them nearly as much money.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#89

Post by kerng » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

underyx wrote: post #60

omginternets wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The author jefftk is getting unfairly downvoted maybe because cynics just see it as a version of, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I don't think that's why people are downvoting. Speaking for myself, it's because his analysis focuses only on the benefits of ads, and conveniently ignores the actual ethical problems ( e.g. large-scale collect…

> ignores the actual ethical problems (e.g. large-scale collection of personal information) I find it ironic to see this brought up as the first example of problems, when this is exactly what Google's FLoC intends to solve. The same FLoC that has so vocally been rejected by HN recently.

The criticism of FLoC is that it makes profiling a lot easier because a website can access the ID with javascript.

And there are also a lot of design questions remaining that Google hasn't answered or is not sure about.

Eg. How will ad bidding work with FLoC?

Finally, and most importantly as it relates to this post - Google pays an enormous amount of money to employees to spend their time and intelligence on building better profiling tools. Building profiling tools is something ethically questionable because of the damage that can be done.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#90

Post by creata » Thu, May 06, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #38

lupire wrote: post #25

People wo believe that "tool makers aren't responsible for how the tool is misused" (for example, with cryptocurrency), do you feel the same way about adtech?

I find all ads reprehensible regardless of tracking and yes, I believe adtech engineers aren't responsible for that. Specifically, author of OP doesn't have to justify himself. He enjoys his job and I'm happy for him. Blaming technicians for the negative externalities of their industries is a dark path. Are we going to blame lawyers who defend rapists? General Motors assembly-line workers? Engineers who work for oil…

> Blaming technicians for the negative externalities of their industries is a dark path.

Disagree.

> Are we going to blame lawyers who defend rapists?

No, because I want there to be someone who defends that rapist's rights. In contrast, it's easy for me to blame a software engineer who's developing bad technology X, because I want the job of developing X to not exist.

> General Motors assembly-line workers? Engineers who work for oil companies?

Yes, but only if they have better options for earning a living: I can't blame anyone for not wanting to starve. Assembly-line workers often don't have better options, but software engineers usually do.

This path looks pretty well-lit to me.