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Instagram Has Become SkyMall

clivethompson.medium.com

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Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#111

Post by paulcole »

gnicholas wrote: post #96
dhosek wrote: post #64

Before I completely dropped social media, I had a f—k the algorithm attitude towards the ads. I made a point of clicking through everything that was completely uninteresting to me. That road led to a non-stop flood of class-action lawyer ads.

I’ve heard that mesothelioma class action lawyer advertisements are among the most expensive on social media. Cynical hypothesis: once the platforms realized you’ll click on anything, they decided to show you their highest-compensated ads.

Personal injury (caused by negligent 3rd party) but not necessarily class action (and especially not workers comp cases) are consistently the highest cost clicks I bid on regularly.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#112

Post by bscphil »

CptFribble wrote: post #110
bscphil wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you block them?

Some time ago YT and other majors started serving ads from the same domains as content, so it's become much more difficult to reliably block them. https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/88vsz1/youtube_ad_d...

Yeah, it's hard to imagine the pihole approach working for most ads in the long term. Fortunately, the traditional browser addon approach still works great.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#113

Post by ryanianian »

Igelau wrote: post #74
perardi wrote: post #30

I would just like to take this opportunity to post these screenshots I took over the past 2 days: https://imgur.com/a/SLrJaUJ I am surprised by just how many ads for drugs I get. They know their audience. But still. Lots of ads for testosterone, growth hormone, and now ketamine.

The entirety of HN is now following chicagoresearchcentercrc and furiously liking every one of its posts.

What?

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#114

Post by hprotagonist »

gnicholas wrote: post #96
dhosek wrote: post #64

Before I completely dropped social media, I had a f—k the algorithm attitude towards the ads. I made a point of clicking through everything that was completely uninteresting to me. That road led to a non-stop flood of class-action lawyer ads.

I’ve heard that mesothelioma class action lawyer advertisements are among the most expensive on social media. Cynical hypothesis: once the platforms realized you’ll click on anything, they decided to show you their highest-compensated ads.

That's not cynical at all; that's exactly what i-the-human-looking-at-trends would do, and it's almost certainly what an automated system would go for as well.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#115

Post by cratermoon »

BobLaw wrote: post #84
cratermoon wrote: post #72

"hey, do you ever find it a huge hassle to pour cereal from a box?" Just like the Snuggie, many of these products were invented to help people with various disabilities. See e.g. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/20/17791354/products-pe...

Humm, not exactly "Some of the most useful products for people with disabilities weren’t developed with them in mind"

ped· ant | \ ˈpe-dᵊnt \ Definition of pedant 1a: one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#116

Post by IgorPartola »

voldacar wrote: post #109
dhosek wrote: post #64

Before I completely dropped social media, I had a f—k the algorithm attitude towards the ads. I made a point of clicking through everything that was completely uninteresting to me. That road led to a non-stop flood of class-action lawyer ads.

It's interesting how this exposes the dynamics of ad-space. Advertisements as points in a metric space A. Clicking ads as a contractive mapping C:A->A. Class-action lawsuit ads as a fixed point in A when iterating C. This must imply something interesting about human psychology or ad economics, or both. Why does the fixed point end up as class action suits and not something else? It's not what I would have expected.

I don’t think you can infer human nature here as much as psychology of advertisers. I think it was GrubHub that started advertising on porn sites at one point and published some interesting findings from that. The reason the started to advertise there was because it was cheap and because other food related businesses were not advertising there. What they noticed is that most ads on porn sites are for porn, so ads for food stood out. And it didn’t hurt that often times people get hungry after they are done with porn. So in my mind the class action lawyers are just a niche that happens to advertise there and is the lowest common denominator that matches a wide range of people when nothing more targeted does. It could be mattresses or shoes or something else, but right now it’s lawyers.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#117

Post by sha256kira »

vmlinuz wrote: post #47

Ok, so I'm going to hijack this slightly... I'm an elderly (mid-40s) non-USian techie, and I've never done Instagram. On Facebook I mostly follow people I've largely lost touch with in real life (particular these past couple of years), and on Twitter it's news sources and journalists, plus a selection of 'celebs' from various niche interests like tech, sci-fi, winter sports and comedy. Am I likely to be missing anyth…

Its become the defacto central hub of the art world, especially with the exacerbated decline of in-person small and large art galleries. For the overwhelming majority of emerging / non-established artists, if you aren't on instagram other artists will literally just forget you exist. I know somebodys just going to respond with something contrary here but Im open to it if anybody knows about some other healthier platform for artists to connect and share their work on...

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#118

Post by treeman79 »

paulcole wrote: post #111
gnicholas wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard that mesothelioma class action lawyer advertisements are among the most expensive on social media. Cynical hypothesis: once the platforms realized you’ll click on anything, they decided to show you their highest-compensated ads.

Personal injury (caused by negligent 3rd party) but not necessarily class action (and especially not workers comp cases) are consistently the highest cost clicks I bid on regularly.

Those ads mock me. Have a severe negligence case that nearly killed entire family. By time we recovered enough to deal with legal side the statue of limitations had passed.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#119

Post by sha256kira »

afavour wrote: post #89
vmlinuz wrote: post #47

Ok, so I'm going to hijack this slightly... I'm an elderly (mid-40s) non-USian techie, and I've never done Instagram. On Facebook I mostly follow people I've largely lost touch with in real life (particular these past couple of years), and on Twitter it's news sources and journalists, plus a selection of 'celebs' from various niche interests like tech, sci-fi, winter sports and comedy. Am I likely to be missing anyth…

Maybe. I’m a little younger than you and I both post and consume Instagram Stories. It’s mostly of my kids and my friends kids. I like that the posts only last for 24 hours and there a no likes, etc etc. By contrast my actual Instagram profile and FB profile are very quiet. Maybe you have friends that are the same (but if you don’t care to watch endless videos of other people’s kids maybe give it a miss!)

I agree, I like the ephemeral nature of stories in theory at least (Mark Zuckerberg cackles in the distance somewhere).

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#120

Post by throwaway3699 »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #63
elorant wrote: post #52

The thing I hate about Instagram is how lenient they are on nude pics. While Facebook has a strict policy, on Instagram a lot of celebrity content is borderline porn.

I see that as absolute win.

I'm not a puritan by any means, but literally millions of kids use this app. It's not a good idea to have these things mixed.
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