Is it safe to predict that the world will eventually move to drawing to canvas rather than DOM, preventing the ability to block ads altogether?
Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
241–250 of 367 posts
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like a fun challenge. It's just ads. If we're talking about some ad for a coffee maker, whatever. Now their whole selling data to unscrupulous folks, taking money from parents via their kids, selling fake news that makes people hate other people (now that gets into the ad space...) .... That's where I'd want to nope out.
Do you think creating something that goes counter to your users desire is not unscrupulous? The only difference between the first stage of the pipeline and the rest is a matter of degree.
Sure, but FB's real "users" are the advertisers. They love this. The people who think they are FB users are just resources, inputs to the money machine. As long as the resources aren't leaving the platform, who cares?
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#243I don't really object to ads per se. I'm used to ads in television and in newspapers, magazines. I even remember reading ads very carefully in a couple of computer mags when I was a teenager. Good ads can be entertaining and informative as well. Stupid or simple ads you just skip over. However, there are some traits I'd still like to see in ads: - they live in a dedicated box that doesn't make it harder to read the a…
You do realise that you've described Facebook ads (with a few minor exceptions)?
The commercial ad blocking companies still try and block FB ads because FB won't give them a cut of the revenue.
The non-commercial projects try and block FB ads because they are not interested in incentivising ad companies to behave. They just want to block all the things.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I choose to believe we could have a better world, where loading a local news site doesn’t look like a virus-ridden Windows 95 desktop, where just trying to talk with friends isn’t interrupted by.. (checks twitter) payday loan lobbyists. Where the smartest people of my generation are using every dark pattern in the world to take my attention away from what matters to me.
It's called a subscription and even with that local newspapers were filled with pages of color soaked ads. Dark patterns existed before your generation..
Kinda seems like you just wanted to assert the person you're responding to is ignorant, when in actuality news papers advertisements are very inherently less "dark" than ads on websites. News papers are static content - they are in no way interactive, which is normally where "dark" advertisements live. Click a thing, see an add. News papers cannot dynamically throw ads into your face, where websites can.
But yes, in previous generations bad things were bad, too.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say the ads are still deceptive even if they weren't created with that intention. It doesn't need to be sneaky, but if it's unsolicited then the consumer didn't opt for their attention to be steered toward it. edit: removed example as it distracts from the point.
> if it's unsolicited then the consumer didn't opt for their attention to be steered toward it. Isn't that everything in the world, always? Why do I have to walk past the cereal to get to the milk on a supermarket, why I am being so deceived? After all, I didn't consent to being bombarded by all those car emblems on the highway on my way to work, and I definitely didn't agree to see the orange bar at the top of this…
> Isn't that everything in the world, always?
If you're saying advertising is a thing in the world, that's correct.
We have the ability to adjust this particular aspect of our landscape but your questions illustrate it pretty well. Most people don't seem to get very upset about advertising, and therefore it continues to surround us. I don't think there's anything that any one of us can do at this point, we're collectively shaping this world into the one with all the cereal and car emblems and have been for a while.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
People love to complain about giving up money when they don't understand the value they'll get from something. Make it clear what you're selling and why it's worth $10 / month, and people will pay you. It's not as big of a problem as you think. We can still create a world of free products that enable what your forum has -- it just needs a simple business model like, Hey, do you enjoy writing here? Send me $5! Then su…
> Make it clear what you're selling and why it's worth $10 / month, and people will pay you. It's not as big of a problem as you think. If only all buyers were as rational as you. IMO the problem is bigger (by far) than just make a case and people pay.
I guess my point was that parent shouldn't assume defeat based on some HN comments and the fact that "everybody just does ads." My statement is a simplification of what it takes to sell a product, yes, but IMHO this still isn't a big enough obstacle to justify the idea that "ads are the only way."
What are some of the bigger problems you see?
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. I feel like ads have such a bad rap because of the state of the internet. Yet, what does everyone expect? Is it shocking that content providers want money for their product? And yes, I know, some sites and ads do terrible things. The actively hurt viewership. BUT, isn't that the same with everything ? Even my groceries are getting worse as companies seek ways to increase profits without pissing me off; the…
To me ads are fundamentally about misleading you, manipulating you, or in short: making you do something that you wouldn't do otherwise. This to me is morally wrong on a base level. Advertisement is an attempt to attack/manipulate your vulnerable mammal brain to make you do something against your interest (be it buying a product, voting on someone, etc). In other words, to do something that you wouldn't do rationally…
People don't act against their self-interest unless deceived. There are misleading ads that are immoral like "payday loans can get you out of debt", but the vast majority of ads (that I see) are informational, like "store X is having a sale". That's just giving me information to make a decision about ("$N is a reasonable amount for me to spend on this thing I didn't previously want").
I could make a similarly wrong blanket statement about news articles. "The news is fundamentally about misleading you into believing something against your interest". I could make a blanket statement about conversations between two people. "Listening to someone talk is letting them manipulate your brain into thinking something it wouldn't without this prodding". There are deceptive ads, news articles, and people, but you don't have a good moral argument against all ads, news articles, or people.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#248I'm really thankful I haven't yet had a job where all I'm developing is new ways to force people to see ads. Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads.
> Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads.
It's not so much different than patching an hole in your payment system to make sure it can't be bypassed. I sure don't want to have to pay for plenty product, yet it's perfectly valid for them to expect to get paid. Same goes for ads, it's the cost to use that product, whether you like it or not.
It's a sad state to be where people works so hard to not have to pay. I agree that's an awful usage of a developer time, but the same apply to a payment system.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. I feel like ads have such a bad rap because of the state of the internet. Yet, what does everyone expect? Is it shocking that content providers want money for their product? And yes, I know, some sites and ads do terrible things. The actively hurt viewership. BUT, isn't that the same with everything ? Even my groceries are getting worse as companies seek ways to increase profits without pissing me off; the…
To me ads are fundamentally about misleading you, manipulating you, or in short: making you do something that you wouldn't do otherwise. This to me is morally wrong on a base level. Advertisement is an attempt to attack/manipulate your vulnerable mammal brain to make you do something against your interest (be it buying a product, voting on someone, etc). In other words, to do something that you wouldn't do rationally…
"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."
Gordon Comstock - George Orwell's protagonist in Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The post is about judging people's character simply by where they work and in the most ungracious terms. Doing that actually is poor character.
Well you could choose to work at a company that doesn’t treat human beings like money machines? Or you could choose to not lie to yourself about said humans as money machines ideals with classic tropes like “there’s a lot of different teams” or “I haven’t seen that kind of thing at my local office”? Throwing out a couple options here that don’t require intense mental gymnastics
Distilling everything into such simplistic and disingenuous examples like "humans as money machines" is never productive, and a rather poor way to argue against thinking more intensively about a subject.
Facebook provides value for billions of people as evidenced by their usage. They don't pay so ads are a trade-off. There's nothing inherently wrong with that unless you have a problem with how business works. And yes, a company that is one of the 10 most valuable in the world has a wide range of roles and there are infinite reasons why someone would work for them.