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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#111

Post by ape4 »

kristjankalm wrote: post #98
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…

advertising is the primary driver for clickbait and emotion-driven content. it enables The Daily Mail, it results in youtube's algorithm hell, it's why facebook exists. 'clicks = money' is bad for mental health. as long as wikipedia et al are free, give me subscription-based web all day.

Good point, but I think headline writers that don't need clicks for advertising money would still write headlines that make people click - the popularity of a writer or article is one measure of success.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#112

Post by thunderbong »

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 agree with you although I feel you might be seeing things to simplistically?

Showing ads is the first level and from that perspective I suppose it's fine.

At the next level is harvesting data from those ads and sharing that data with third parties. I feel that's where things get very, very messy.

Because if ads can be targeted based on a person's profile, so can other manipulations. Especially if that data is available with an authoritarian government.

Since most companies showing ads don't play fairly, users in turn choose to block ads completely.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#113

Post by pessimizer »

ipaddr wrote: post #39
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…

The outcry would be huge if everything went to a pay model.

Most of that outcry would be from terrible media outlets who would have to shut down. 95% of the things I click on I wish I hadn't. They would still get an impression (if I weren't adblocked to the teeth.) They're trash that keeps me from the information that I want, and matchmaking stalkery ad markets are the reason for them.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#114

Post by xtracto »

ipaddr wrote: post #39
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…

The outcry would be huge if everything went to a pay model.

I already hate it with Music and Video content: With music, I pay Youtube Music, but they don't have all the artists I like. I would have to pay for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube Music to get close to it. This means paying $30 USD per month

With video... I pay $70 USD for my cable company (HBO+Star+misc-crap) plus $13 USD for Netflix, plus $12 for disney plus (wife likes a couple shows there), plus $13 Amazon Prime, plus $10 for the local Netflix-like crap in my country (for some local shows).

That means $118 USD for video only, which is 14% of the average income in my country ($843 USD). Imagine if I had to pay $10 dollars a month for each of the internet services we use?

$10 Gmail $10 google $10 Reddit $10 HackerNews $10 Youtube $10 Linkedin $10 Facebook $10 twitter $10 Whatsapp $10 LiChess $10 Slack $10 Samsung Health $10 Google Maps $10 Podcast Republic $10 CBS News (The only US channel I like for news) $10 Home Workout $10 Discord

And that's at the top of my head, it will be $180 USD, or 21% of the average income of someone in my country.

If that happened, the internet will become "a place for the rich" and pretty much only the north emisphere will use it. Yeah, ads suck... but their are a necessary evil to "monetize" users that are just not monetizable any other way.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#115

Post by nairoz »

wzdd wrote: post #79

> Paywalls. You pay with your money. > Ads. You pay with your attention. Pretty disingenuous. Ads: You pay with your attention, and, ultimately, either your money or the money of someone who trusts you. This is only not the case to the extent that advertising doesn't actually work, in which case the ethical problems have not stopped for this person.

Indeed, in the full picture there must be someone paying and making this advertising profitable.

If ads were not working, I don't know where this money would go.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#116

Post by bluefirebrand »

mbg721 wrote: post #110
bluefirebrand wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lawyer's defense is that, in any decent justice system, people have a right to a legal council and are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Even if they have been declared guilty of a crime in the past they might be innocent of this one and still have a right to council.

I think that amounts to the same thing; the lawyer thinks "This $#@& is guilty as sin, but the court has to prove it." Few professions have a regular test of that kind.

A lawyer can have their whole career ruined if they are found throwing cases. The justice system itself finds it unethical if they don't prosecute or defend to the best of their ability.

Suggesting that software somehow has that same kind of standard where engineers are required to build anything and everything they are asked to the best of their ability or they can lose their accreditation (as if we even have that in software) is absolutely absurd.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#117

Post by kristjankalm »

ape4 wrote: post #111
kristjankalm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

advertising is the primary driver for clickbait and emotion-driven content. it enables The Daily Mail, it results in youtube's algorithm hell, it's why facebook exists. 'clicks = money' is bad for mental health. as long as wikipedia et al are free, give me subscription-based web all day.

Good point, but I think headline writers that don't need clicks for advertising money would still write headlines that make people click - the popularity of a writer or article is one measure of success.

yes but amplification matters -- there's been at least one study which measured the clickbaity-ness of headliness of paid vs ad-based news sites and the difference was sth like an order of magnitude. i'll see if i can find the link.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#118

Post by solipsism »

omginternets wrote: post #72
solipsism wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The prima facie part means "at first glance". I deliberately chose that turn of phrase to suggest that it might prove not to be unethical, on closer inspection. The problem, of course, is that this closer inspection didn't happen.

Yeah you're right. Sorry!

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#119

Post by drcongo »

As the person who originally asked "why" I feel like I ought to respond, though much of it is covered by other comments. I used to work in more trad advertising, so my question wasn't so much an objection to working in advertising itself, but specifically Google's version of advertising, which I see as gross overreach into people's personal lives.

In other comments people have mentioned YouTube subscriptions as being an alternative, it really isn't - OK, you don't see any adverts, but they're still harvesting and selling you. That a privately owned corporation is allowed to read your messages and sell what they find to the highest bidder is vile and honestly makes me wonder how we got here.

I quit advertising after only a couple of years because it blackened my soul. If I was helping to harvest people's personal lives for private profit I can only imagine it would have been worse.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#120

Post by alkonaut »

jasode wrote: post #12
ForHackernews wrote: post #5

This article is really attacking a straw man. I don't know many people who think advertising per se is morally objectionable (annoying, yes). What many people find reprehensible is all the invasive spyware and tracking that comes with modern ad tech (largely pioneered by Google).

>I don't know many people who think advertising per se is morally objectionable Lots of people do. E.g. the first user feedback comment in that article: "Advertising is bad because it’s fundamentally about influencing people to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. [...]" And every HN thread about advertising also has a variation of that sentiment.

I think that's a relatively small group compared to the group that thinks advertising is fine, while tracking isn't.

Arguing that advertising is somehow inappropriate manipulation isn't consistent with a market economy. Like it or not, efficient markets require marketing. Now, you could be against the market economy of course, but I don't see a lot of the people claiming ads are manipulation also claiming that the market economy is bad (which imo would be more intellectually honest).

I'd say disregard the "all ads are bad" crowd. It's a completely uninteresting discussion. The interesting discussion is the line to be drawn between advertising (which is good, or at least acceptable) and the shady side of adtech with trading in personal information.

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