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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#471

Post by joshuamorton »

ashtonbaker wrote: post #434
joshuamorton wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should clarify in the context of this discussion, we're defining ads as >psychological warfare against a populace using their very nature against them. All in an effort to get them to change their behavior in a way that's going to be detrimental to them. Either they stop looking for alternatives, or they make purchases they don't need to In this context, a doctor making a recommendation to use a particular…

Even with the narrow definition, you missed: > in a way that's going to be detrimental to them. A dentist recommending that I use more toothpaste may change my behavior, but not in a detrimental way. If the dentist is paid to make the same recommendation, it's more difficult to say whether they made the recommendation purely out of my best interest, so the definition begins to apply again.

This gets back to what I said about comparative advantage. The monetary transfer is only bad if you assume the company can only gain if you lose and the situation is zero sum. If you using toothpaste is good for you, and good for the company, what's the issue?

To use a more current example: would Pfizer marketing in a way that intentionally appeals to anti-vax people be mind control to their detriment?

Taking a step back, there are at least (but really I think only) two reasons for an advertisement: to raise awareness or to convince. The first clearly isn't unethical. Saying "we exist" isn't really mind control, and results in a more informed consumer. I admit that most ads that appear to do that don't just do that, but an advertisement that simply points out that Colgate is a Toothpaste brand that you can buy Is ethical. Its exactly the same as putting your logo on your box (which is a form of advertisement!) and having your box at eye level on the shelf (which is also a form of advertisement!!).

The second type convinces people that one act may be better than another (our brand > their brand, or brushing > not). These can be ethical or not, but GP stated that, essentially, advertising is always going to be detrimental to the consumer, which implies that everyone is already acting in a globally optimal way. That seems immediately suspicious, does it not?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#472

Post by tailrecursion »

The problem I see is that the advertising business enables free services such as Google and Youtube, Facebook, Twitter to dominate. It's even more difficult for a potential competitor to gain users when competing against a free service. Another is the spying and tracking, which are apparently vital for these big companies to grow.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#473

Post by mateo411 »

shkkmo wrote: post #462
mateo411 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that's not correct. As a counter example I've seen ads for alcohol and bars in my Facebook feed.

Those two are not mutually exclusive. You an ban images of alcohol while allowing adds for alcohol and bars (as long as they don't have images of alcohol.) I suspect there may different rules for different jurisdictions/markets which might explain differences in your experiences.

The ads I saw included images of alcohol.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#474

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

jefftk wrote: post #148
omginternets wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Starting at "But the biggest issue I see people raising is the privacy impact of targeted ads..." Yes, that's literally all you have to say on the subject. The very next paragraph is about how this helps keep ads relevant...

> that's literally all you have to say on the subject Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads ("Most products are a much better fit for some people than others..."), then how it works today ("Historically, ads like this have been built on top of third-party cookies..."), then how it can work without cross-site tracking ("build browser APIs that will allow this kind of well-targeted adverti…

> Not at all! First I talk about the economic benefit of targeted ads

I wish that my ads would be more relevant to what I like especially when it comes to music. What does youtube do? I search for a specific video because somebody told me it's there. I find it and sit through the whole length of 50+ mins and after I'm done navigate back to the YT frontpage. What do I see? A recommendation of the video I just watched. And it'll stay there for the next 6 weeks.

The other extreme for me is watching something from the other camp simply because I want to learn what they're being exposed to. In my bubble this means conservative stuff like videos of people debating Ayn Rand or a Jordan Peterson. And I swear I'll have to fight for the next 6 months to get similar shit off my timeline. In fact it's easier to throw myself into the rabbit hole of watching Foucault, Zizek, Philosophy genre and fighting my way into content that is dominated by the likes of Tucker Carlson (and what used to be Alex Jones, Brietbart and others) than it is to shed the conservative label that YT has filed me under. And with conservative I mean seriously questionable stuff like Q-anon, climate change denying, cray-cray type of things.

Because of this I now have different accounts for when I want to see the other side of the coin/polarization.

Not sure if I should be blaming YT/Google with this since society is so polarized that the algorithm just reflects that reality. But it's not like the algo hasn't played a major role in creating this dystopian reality in the first place.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#475

Post by aflag »

jefftk wrote: post #460
aflag wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read the original turtledove readme, maybe there's something better, maybe it went over my head. But there is this request: > GET https://first-ad-network.com/.well-known/fetch-ads?interest_... So, at the very least, the ad network will be able to see your IP and know that you like athletic shoes and visited www.wereallylikeshoes.com. If you visit some other domain first-ad-network.com owns with the same IP whit…

> at the very least, the ad network will be able to see your IP and know that you like athletic shoes and visited www.wereallylikeshoes.com. If you visit some other domain first-ad-network.com owns with the same IP it within a small window of time, it can be pretty confident it's the same person and even store some client side data at that point. It feels like they can construct a reasonably good profile about their…

I agree that it mitigates the problem, but it does not seem to solve the root cause of it. Aren't ads and ad targeting the main reason why companies want to store and sell that data? Other uses of user data is considered a lot shadier and respectful companies will not engage in them. If we start considering ad targeting to be a shady business practice, we may actually end the incentives for big conglomerates to want to store user data in the first place and thus end up with a system where user profiles are the exception rather than the norm.

In a less techinical point of view, ads are probably a net negative for society. People are buying things they don't need, spending time they could be doing other things and just having a worse experience they could have were not for content farms and other practices incentivised by ads. I do see the value of ads bringing services to people who wouldn't have money to pay for them otherwise, it's income distributions of sorts, but I think we can do better.

Anyway, interesting read about ip blindness. As long as the CDNs and proxies are not controlled by the same company that owns the ad networks, then it could work out. Though it's hard to find the correct incentives for the right people to own the right parts of the network. Another alternative would be something like onion, which is more distributed (although quite wasteful of resources).

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#477

Post by lupire »

skinkestek wrote: post #295
jefftk wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree those are bad, but those don't seem to be unique to user targeting? You would have the same thing with contextual ads (since what page someone is on is still pretty correlated with generic demographics like "is a kid" or "is a radicalized individual")

Since you work at Google, and on ads: The insanely annoying thing that I have seen for a long time is that despite the fact that you have more information on me than anyone else the ads have been either useless or even insulting for years. I remember bothering to click through the microscopic x in tve corner and select not relevant or something on Thai mail order brides. What did I get next? Filipino mail orders brid…

That sounds a lot like a trojan installed in your browser, or perhaps someone who shares your computer has peculiar habits.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#478

Post by fastball »

beervirus wrote: post #407
jefftk wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fail to address the actual ethical issue Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure which one is yours?

Spying on users. Running code they didn’t ask for on their computers to spy on them.

Did you not read the second half of the article?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#479

Post by cute_boi »

coding123 wrote: post #299
Justsignedup wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally am of the opinion that "targeted advertising" _is_ the problem. Random generic advertising is fine. It isn't as profitable but it doesn't exploit a person's mental weaknesses. Targeted advertising is straight up exploitation. Kids being bombarded with ads for plastic surgery nonestop on TikTok, radicalized individuals being targeted with fear-based ads. This is super toxic. And while advertising is a tal…

Targeted advertising is great, so long as it targets "the viewer of pages like this" not "this person recently went to all these other web sites". I think that's what ads should be - exactly like TV.

TV based advertising is also bad tbh. There used to be ads related to fairness cream which is effectively virtue signaling you should use this cream to look white and beautiful. And there are ads related to soft drinks claiming you will be strong etc.

Ads sucks and it is alive due to economic incentive from ads. And we know where there is economic incentive its hard to stop (eg. bitcoin mining economic incentive)

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#480

Post by lupire »

Justsignedup wrote: post #362
jefftk wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree those are bad, but those don't seem to be unique to user targeting? You would have the same thing with contextual ads (since what page someone is on is still pretty correlated with generic demographics like "is a kid" or "is a radicalized individual")

That gets tricky. But at the least it would help me not see radicalized ads when I am generally searching. And that doesn't mean ads based on my search either. Yes it doesn't drive as much engagement, but that's the point. Over-optimizing for engagement is a bad thing. We have seen repeated evidence of this. There should be general overarching categories: News site, food site, movie site, game site. But not "news sit…

> news site for radical right-wingers who believe in tucker carlson and think gun control is communism"

This is "mainstream Republican" and it's about 1.5bits of information after "is UA resident".

Tucker is one of the most popular people in the USA.

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