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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#181

Post by Ukv »

ngriffiths wrote: post #166

There are two major things missing: 1) No one actually likes this stuff , and it still exists everywhere , so it must be worth it. I feel like the article is a broad list of the author's least favorite aspects of today's information/social/economic environment. But those are just the cost of consuming all our favorite content for ~free, right? It's like saying "I think this price is oppressive, and although I am will…

Advertising is "worth it" in the same sense as sites with JS crypto miners. 10¢ of resources are wasted to cover 0.1¢ of operation costs.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#182

Post by pindab0ter »

quectophoton wrote: post #131
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends upon where you draw the line between advertising and informing. The broad definition of "advertising" doesn't restrict it to commercial use, but I think the most common understanding of what it is would . Also, the author makes it clear that they're referring to this sense of the word: > [advertising is] a malignant mutation of an idea that efficient markets need a way to connect goods and services…

> The broad definition of "advertising" doesn't restrict it to commercial use, Example: The Merriam-Webster for example defines "advertisement" as, literally, as "1 : a public notice". Still, > but I think the most common understanding of what it is would. ... is probably the reason for their "especially" paragraph and examples, right below the definition.

I understand that defining advertising is hard, but "1 : a public notice" is so broad as to be almost meaningless as a definition.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#183

Post by DrScientist »

don_esteban wrote: post #150
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #63

Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant. Benign ads are like ads for toothpaste, Febreeze, or airlines. Malignant ads are, to give but two examples, for things like gambling and pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical business, in particular, was much more widely trusted and had far higher public favorability ratings in the old days when their advertising to the public wa…

No, even 'good' advertisement is mostly zero-sum game bad for the consumer. However, Overton window has shifted so much that people just accept them (at best as a free entertainment) without questioning. Example with airlines: airlines stealing each other's customers just raises the price for the tickets (by the amount paid for advertisement) without net benefit for the consumer. The only advertisement I can consider…

> The only advertisement I can consider a good one is a shop sign on the shop/restaurant and perhaps a sign on a nearby crossing to direct me there.

You could argue that the original Google search ads fall into this category ( before they were changed to look more like search results ) - ie they much more likely to be directly relevant, indeed helpful, to the search activity.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#184

Post by danaris »

robertlagrant wrote: post #168
cess11 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean the US Supreme Court, they could just stop being insane and change that ruling, because, as I pointed out, corporations aren't people. They are fictions. It's like claiming it is a free speech issue that people in the Wheel of Time books aren't allowed to name the evil threatening the world. Why not in the same way it's determined for product information on the packaging? No, it just requires the state to…

> If you mean the US Supreme Court, they could just stop being insane and change that ruling, because, as I pointed out, corporations aren't people. They are fictions. It's like claiming it is a free speech issue that people in the Wheel of Time books aren't allowed to name the evil threatening the world. This seems odd. A corporation in this sense is a group of people deciding what to do. Should a group of people no…

A corporation is a group of people with very specific legal ramifications.

If you're going to claim it's "the people making up the corporation" deciding what to do or say, then why can't I sue[0] the individuals who make up the corporation if I think that what they do or say is harmful to society?

And conversely, if the group of people thinks that what they're doing and saying is so valuable and normal, why are they forming a corporation to do it, rather than just working together as independent citizens to do it? Because a corporation has a specific legal meaning, and that meaning does not, in any way, fundamentally include "being a legal person", regardless of what Supreme Court justices with obvious glaring holes in their ethics have said.

[0] And expect not to get thrown out immediately because of limited liability. Yes, pedantically, I know you can sue for basically anything; that's clearly not the point here.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#185

Post by neom »

danaris wrote: post #178
Const-me wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> competition drives improvement Are you saying ads helping competition? How? > customer choice is central to a functioning market, leading to innovation. Ads suppress customer choice, along with innovations. Can you recall any recent innovative carbonated drink? Marketing budgets of pepsi/coca cola make competition and innovation impossible.

While I dislike advertising a lot ... > Ads suppress customer choice, along with innovations. Can you recall any recent innovative carbonated drink? Marketing budgets of pepsi/coca cola make competition and innovation impossible. ...I don't think this is actually reasonable to ascribe to advertising . This is a problem with hyperconsolidation . Competition is driven by having many players in the market who are all wi…

I still don't understand what the marketing budgets of coke or pepsi or any other business has to do with innovation or consumer choice outside of potentially spurring it? I read lots of stories of founder/entrepreneurs (like the one who wrote this blog post from my research) who can't build a business and then blame it on everything except their own failings to understand the fundamentals of business.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#186

Post by DrScientist »

EncomLab wrote: post #177
DrScientist wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So most content you consume isn't funded by advertising. So I'm confused as to why you think advertising has driven the development of the internet[1]. Take for example investments in bandwidth - that's largely to meet the needs of TV/video and later gaming [2] - both with direct revenue streams independent of advertising ( and any advertising revenue they traditionally got has been eroded, not enhanced by the intern…

"So most content you consume isn't funded by advertising." You are conflating the content and the delivery method. It's like saying "most of the stuff you buy can be delivered by a bicycle, so interstate highways are not important.

And who pays for the highway? The people paying their ISP bills - who did so because they wanted to watch the BBC/ Netflix etc , or shop at Amazon, read a newspaper online, bank online or play online games, or work from home - or the content you consume - all of which doesn't require advertising.

Sure Youtube and tik-tok consume huge bandwidth - but I'd argue if that was the only thing available on the internet then people wouldn't be paying their ISP bills.

The internet was growing massively before Google worked out how to make serious money with online ads.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#187

Post by JohnFen »

EncomLab wrote: post #85

Most of the arguments made are not about "advertising" per se, but the methods that SOME forms of advertising take and other methods (data mining, phishing, scams) that are either not advertising or are things that are already regulated/illegal but which enforcement actions against are low/non-existent. In the book "Fire in the Valley" about the development and early days of the internet there is a great deal of disc…

> Honestly it's hard to see how we get to this level of speed and content online without it having been funded by advertising.

Maybe, maybe not. But that juice has absolutely not been worth the squeeze.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#188

Post by ngriffiths »

danaris wrote: post #170
ngriffiths wrote: post #166

There are two major things missing: 1) No one actually likes this stuff , and it still exists everywhere , so it must be worth it. I feel like the article is a broad list of the author's least favorite aspects of today's information/social/economic environment. But those are just the cost of consuming all our favorite content for ~free, right? It's like saying "I think this price is oppressive, and although I am will…

> so it must be worth it. ...To someone . That doesn't mean it's worth it to society . No one actually likes muggings, and they still exist everywhere, but that doesn't mean that our society would be worse off without muggings. No one actually likes the flu, and it still exists everywhere, but that doesn't mean that our society would be worse off without the flu. The idea that "it's still around/common, therefore it…

I don't see it as subscribing to free-market ideology - more like "every bad thing has a certain prevalence, and that prevalence is a policy choice."

The flu exists because we don't aggressively isolate/contact trace people who get the flu, but it isn't that prevalent and results in few deaths because of how much we invest in vaccination, hygiene, and medical care.

The muggings continue because we don't spend the insane amounts on law enforcement and surveillance that would really be required to eradicate them.

Also, these examples are different in another way - few people get mugged or get the flu, but literally everyone consumes ads daily. I think a lot of people dislike ads but I'm not sure I agree that there is a strong desire to dramatically reduce or change them - people seem happy to complain but pretty hesitant to pay actual money to reduce them.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#189

Post by keiferski »

cess11 wrote: post #180
keiferski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution is to have the government control all communications coming from corporations? This is again, extremely draconian. Corporations aren't fictions, they are organizations of people and resources...just like the government. You also didn't answer my question: where is the line between art and advertising drawn? If I make a movie and use BMWs in it, and BMW gives me those cars for free to use, am I breaki…

No, that's something you dreamt up for no good reason. There are a lot of constraints on corporate communication, especially for publicly traded corporations. This does not mean "the government control[s] all communications coming from corporations". It's common all over the world to regulate content in advertising. In many places corporations manage to self-regulate, in some the state steps in instead. Ads aimed at…

The discussion is about eliminating ads entirely, as a concept, not restricting bad ones. Bad or deliberately misleading/lying ones already largely get punished. So I'm not sure what the issue is?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#190

Post by vdnkh »

acc_297 wrote: post #67

The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stable future. The number of ADs I see now not so subtly implying that I can expect to “lose big” or “rent forever” if I don’t subscribe to QuestTrade/WealthSimple/… It’s just frustrating to know that someone put time and thought into making me and a million other…

This is incredibly petty of me but why do people keep spelling "ads" as "ADs" lately? It's an abbreviation not an initialism
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