I'm all for that mechanism that would distribute a fixed amound say 5 USD amongst the websites I browsed in that month so they could run without ads.
The Internet Made Me Sad Today
51–60 of 186 posts
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#52This reminds me of an episode of South Park:
[http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154597/find-the-heart]
The kids try to find the "heart of Wallmart" so they can destroy it (being the evil mom-and-pop store demolisher that it is). When they finally locate the mythical Heart of Wallmart, it turns out it just a mirror. In other words, the problem is not Wallmart (or Google, or whatever), it is us.
On another note, games (in general) are not so bad (although the ones they were advertising probably were). Even the games many people might view as mindless (such as your average FPS) are actually deeply embedded with strategy. I actually learned a lot from games - not just strategy or spacial intelligence or hand eye coordination, but many of the same things I would have learned if I picked up a science fiction or fantasy book. Children today are glued to screens, and I think the only cure may be to embrace this and find a better way to use games as educational tools.
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#53> Scanning down underneath the diagram, I saw “Play Games on Google+” along with a lot of small text. I kept scanning, thinking that the column of text had something to do with playing games. Funny, I had the exact opposite reaction. I am so used to skipping over ads with my eyes that I literally didn't even notice there was an ad there; I read the article about dinosaurs, and when I read the above sentence, I had to…
I'm like you in that I skipped over it. However, physorg needs to take some of the heat here because they pick the background, fonts, and colors for the ad insert (not the bolding). So they consciously choose to make their ads look like copy and that is unethical.
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#54For many of us, our entire career eventually boils down to getting people to click on ads. Sit down and think about your product:
- Are you chasing the hockey stick, making a free product? You're getting paid to create an ad base that will focus on ads.
- Are you a content provider? A blog? You're getting paid for page hits to generate ad revenue.
- Perhaps you're a recommendation engine that makes money on Amazon referrals. Ditto.
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#55I applaud this fantastically succinct point: "Some foods taste good but kill you. Some drugs make you feel good but rot your brain. And some ads lead the curious away from knowledge." I do think, however, that it's incredibly difficult to construct an entirely machine-learning- and auction-based ad network without these sorts of problems popping up. Especially with presumably low dinosaur-related ad inventory to choo…
Perhaps the 'machine-learning-and-auction-based-ad network' just isn't a good thing. Is this really the end-state for human civilization?
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#56What's the alternative ? Having content locked behind a pay-wall so even less people can access it ? Running ads which are more relevant but don't generate enough revenue to make the site viable in the long term ? Not having the content at all ?
How do you feel about the fact that certain farmers will starve if they can’t grow coca or poppies as a cash crop?
Hmm.. good point. You know this is a problem too in general. So many useless jobs and useless industries, serving little value to society, yet they are needed because they provide a living for so many people.
This is a result of too many humans on Earth. So many people are just not needed on this Earth. So we have to come up with surrogate occupations
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#57You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…
This is probably the most well written piece of text I have seen here on HN.
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#58You're looking at remnant inventory. Inventory (advertiser speak for "a page view plus a slot available on that page which we could sell an ad against") are a lot like cuts of meat. Some are worth a lot of money. Some are not, and end up getting sold to be turned into fertilizer or paste to infect cows with all matter of diseases. Things that tend to make inventory worth more money: 1) Better matching algorithms. Thi…
Remnant inventory is also virtually synonymous with Google...
really, how?
...which a multinational advertising company which occasionally produces industrial biproducts of advertising...
what?
...which generate non-trivial amounts of value for almost every human alive.
wat? Do you really believe this?
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#59Nothing wrong with games.
Re: The Internet Made Me Sad Today
#60When I see misplaced advertising like this, I just remember that it's not Google's fault; they didn't consciously make the decision that dinosaurs are childish/recreational fantasies that should be associated with gaming. It's the fault of dinosaur's representation today across the entire internet. Google's bots picked up that correlation mechanically, so while it's unfortunate that they propagate stereotypes like th…
If Google perpetuates a lowest common denominator stereotype, it's their fault whether they use automation to achieve it or not.