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Why I Work on Ads

jefftk.com

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Re: Why I Work on Ads

#491

Post by yosito »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #205
jokethrowaway wrote: post #198

I don't think ads are bad per se, people don't like them because they don't like paying. No-one is forcing you to see ads and often you have the option to buy your way out of ads. More in general if people preferred to pay we see a paid alternative emerge, thanks to the nature of the market. The reality is that the majority of people are not privacy conscious and don't care as much as people in tech do. Overall, I'd…

>No-one is forcing you to see ads Uh? Where do you live? Where do you browse? I'm a paid subscriber to newspapers and they keep tracking me and emailing/notifying/displaying ads. They even share my data to their "partners". I can't get out of my apartment without seeing ad everywhere (subway, buildings, billboards...). You cannot escape advertising unless you completely isolate yourself from society.

I'm not OP, but I've stopped using Google products as much as possible, and browse the internet with Firefox and uMatrix. There are very few physical world ads where I live, due to local restrictions. The only ads I see these days are sponsored posts when I open Instagram, and I'm doing that less and less because in my experience 80% of the content on Instagram is either a sponsored post or cheap low-quality recommended posts, and only 20% are the friends that I follow.

My point is, it's not impossible to avoid ads these days.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#492

Post by BiteCode_dev »

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…

So you don't use an ad blocker?

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#493

Post by version_five »

notsobig wrote: post #459
mycologos wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment seems much more venomous than it needs to be?

I mean look, my goal is to communicate to the engineers involved in this business that they are responsible for the product they work on, and the monster they've created. People working for G and fb have options. If they choose to continue to work for these companies for great personal gain, at the cost of exploiting and tracking their own users (basically half of the world population?), they are not our friends and…

If you read about the heyday of RJ Reynolds tobacco and all the money they had and all the good they did for Winston-Salem, I think there is a big parallel. If someone wrote a "Why I work in big tobacco" post, talking about their charitable work, I don't think they'd make any friends. But I think order of magnitude wise, the impact on quality of life, mental health, public discourse, etc etc of internet advertising (and specifically the attention economy it gives rise to) will be shown to be (a) just as addictive and (b) as harmful as tobacco was.

So I agree with you, there is no moral high ground for the people involved. They should be looked on no differently than anyone else exploiting addiction for profit.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#494

Post by cm2012 »

elliekelly wrote: post #449
cm2012 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, do you have an example of someone being hurt by tracking and data collection done by Facebook and Google?

There are so many examples readily available that I have a hard time believing any HN user claiming to be unaware of them is anything other than willfully ignorant. It’s probably discussed here every single day if not multiple times each day. A simple search here for “facebook data” will get you started: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=facebook+data

See my other comments on responses to specific claims. 99% of HN comments on the matter talk about irrelevant or unrelated risks.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#495

Post by cm2012 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #466
cm2012 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not like FB has ever let advertisers "exclude black people" before. The critics said it may be possible that protected categories get less ads for housing, employment, etc due to algorithmic bias. That is a subtle danger, and honestly hard to technically implement at scale, but I think FB has always given a good faith effort in this area.

If by "not ever let advertisers exclude black people" you mean "after March 2019 has not knowing let advertisers exclude black people" than FB and the NYT would agree with you: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/facebook-discr...

No, you have never been able to target by race. NY times is referring to algorithmic targeting that incidentally correlated to race, which FB cleaned up in 2019.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#497

Post by theschwa »

falcolas wrote: post #136

Unpopular opinion: Ads by themselves are unethical. Whether targeted, contextual, or just randomly applied. Ads are 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 (see: toothpaste consumption rates).…

Would you say that Ads are still unethical if they're not paid for?

As just an anecdote, I'm always shocked by the amount of advertising at Burning Man. There's always people trying to get you to come to their event or join in their activity. Signs and street barkers are everywhere. There's no money and no bartering allowed, but advertising is everywhere, since ultimately attention is what is in limited supply.

If they aren't unethical in this scenario, it seems like what you're saying is that it's the underlying socio-economic system that's unethical, which would explain why all of the alternatives to ads also appear to be unethical.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#498

Post by omginternets »

whitepaint wrote: post #345
omginternets wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question. Are they a net good? Do they make us prosperous? Do they create jobs, etc? Because there's a strong case to be made that they: - exploit the credulous, mentally-deficient and emotionally unstable - carry significant externalities in the form of personal data collection & malware - contribute to psychological distress (anxiety, degraded sense of self-worth, poor body image, etc) - cause fi…

Yeah, there are people who overshop, I'm sorry, but so what? What's the alternative? Ban ads? Let the government decide what should be sold / not sold? I believe it should be left to the individual what they consume and buy with their own earned money. No one has the right to say that they can't buy tobacco, or take a predatory loan. "personal data collection & malware" - you agree to those conditions. In return you…

The point, which you (deliberately?) miss, is that you have simply declared ads to be worthwhile, and are now working backwards to argue your conclusion. You are begging the question.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#499

Post by cm2012 »

fsflover wrote: post #476
cm2012 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has nothing to do with ads, Google would turn that over even if sub supported.

> do you have an example of someone being hurt by tracking and data collection

Fair enough, I should have chose wording better. In any case I would posit that the police using search engine history in evidence for cases is not a bad thing.

Re: Why I Work on Ads

#500

Post by fastball »

falcolas wrote: post #136

Unpopular opinion: Ads by themselves are unethical. Whether targeted, contextual, or just randomly applied. Ads are 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 (see: toothpaste consumption rates).…

I'm generally sympathetic to this stance, but the major drawback that has surfaced (when I've had this conversation in the past) is that discovery is a real thing that still needs to happen and ads can in fact help with that.

First in the obvious way: there are products that I have found useful that I would not have known existed if not for ads. The idea that you should only ever purchase something because you were specifically looking for it seems a bit silly, because that's not how it has played out in my life. Have I purchased stuff I didn't need, influenced by ads? Of course. But I've also purchased things which objectively made my life better, which I would not have even known existed without ads.

We are lucky to live at a point in time where most of the world's information is at our fingertips (via the internet) and we can quickly, easily, and freely find information about anything we could want. But this is ignoring the fact that a lot of this is in turn funded by ads.

e.g. when I'm trying to find something, I google it, which is free because their business model is ads. There are a lot of people who are reviewing products with high levels of trust on sites like YouTube (tech reviewers like MKBHD), but they are able to produce those videos (which I watch for free) because they too are funded by ads.

Sure, we could pay subscriptions for all those things, but as pointed out in the OP, that is a regressive funding model – it becomes harder for a poor person to find the best products if all the best product reviews are locked behind paywalls.

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