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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#241

Post by danaris »

Const-me wrote: post #204
danaris wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Once consolidation shrinks the number of players down to a handful or less, that's when competition and innovation are stifled. Yeah, and ads is the main mechanism why. Ban ads of carbonated drinks, and pepsi/coca cola will become no different from any other manufacturer of that stuff. They do have economy of scale for their advantage, but I don’t think it will help them much. The price/weight ratio of their produc…

> Yeah, and ads is the main mechanism why.

...Nnno. Mergers and acquisitions are how you consolidate. It doesn't matter if you show 10 million more ads than your nearest competitor; you're not going to somehow end up owning them unless you buy them out somehow.

The laws and regulations surrounding M&A were loosened several decades ago, and that has, very clearly and directly, led to the level of consolidation we have today.

The effects of ads and the effects of this on ads are both byproducts.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#242

Post by silvestrov »

jtbayly wrote: post #119
silvestrov wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better wording is to say that "advertising is like bateria". Using cancer is way too one-sided as all cancers are bad. Some bacterias are bad, some are good. Most of the time we talk about bacteria it is the bad ones we think of, mostly because study of the good ones are so underpriotized and we don't understand them well. Humans could absolutely not survive without the good bacteria in the stomach. They pr…

Could humans survive without the “good advertising”?

It would be very difficult for many new companies to get the word out about their new product. Innovation would suffer.

If you can't advertise for the AirFryer, how do you get people to know about this new product and what it can do? Mouth-to-mouth is too slow and inefficient for most products. How often do you drop by a kitchen store just to check out if there is any new invention?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#243

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

m000 wrote: post #127
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…

Advertising industry has been considered malignant long before the advent of the internet. Originally published in 1976, "Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture" by Stuart Ewen is an interesting read.

Thomas Carlyle was pretty hard on it in the 19th century.

> Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which now perambulates London Streets; which my Friend Sauerteig regarded justly as one of our English notabilities; "the topmost point as yet," said he, "would it were your culminating and returning point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach!"—The Hatter in the Strand of London, instead of making better felt-hats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels; sends a man to drive it through the streets; hoping to be saved thereby. He has not attempted to make better hats, as he was appointed by the Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he could very probably have done; but his whole industry is turned to persuade us that he has made such! He too knows that the Quack has become God. Laugh not at him, O reader; or do not laugh only. He has ceased to be comic; he is fast becoming tragic.

(From Past and Present, 1843)

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#244

Post by dorgo »

Const-me wrote: post #144
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…

> not sure how best to address this sort of thing I use two browser addons, uBlock origin and SponsorBlock.

SponsorBlock needs an AI-version. Currently it relies on users.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#245

Post by dmvjs »

coldtea wrote: post #43
dmvjs wrote: post #6

surveillance is a cancer

commercial (private sector) surveillance is driven by advertising. state surveillance is driven by control. but even state surveillance often piggybacks on commercial surveillance

the internet is a surveillance machine

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#246

Post by robertlagrant »

cess11 wrote: post #226
robertlagrant wrote: post #168

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. 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 separate entity from those people. Usually it's legally regarded as a person, but fictional instead of physical. Hence the limitations in how you can make people answer for debts and actions that belong to the corporation.

Sorry, I'm struggling to link what you're saying to the topic.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#247

Post by robertlagrant »

cess11 wrote: post #229
robertlagrant wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think because you're separate people it's hard to know quite what to reply to, but I don't really understand the idea that a corporation should not be allowed to speak. I'm not speaking specifically about the US, so I don't have particular large biases for or against Supreme Court decisions. I'm more talking practically - what does it mean for a corporation to be silent? A corporation is already held to a higher st…

It does not need to be silent, only factual in the same sense it is in product information on the packaging and so on. Advertising as contrasted to information is deceitful, manipulative. It's what happens when two brands use the same factory but make people think one product is boring and for poor people and the other one is for sexy, richer people. The proliferation of this kind of mass communication comes from the…

No, advertising is not an alternative to information. Advertising can be purely factual.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#248

Post by chefandy »

Ukv wrote: post #165
chefandy wrote: post #145

This is a tad reductive. If there were no ads, how would people know that products existed? Would they just see the products on store shelves? What about services? Would labels be ads? Would how stores merchandise things be advertisements? Could businesses negotiate for specific product placement? How would you find out about stores? Would store signs be ads? How about really big ones? How about at the edge of their…

> This is a tad reductive. If there were no ads, how would people know that products existed? The post does say: > > Limited to honestly informing people about what's available on the market, it can serve a crucial function in enabling trade. In the real world however, it's moved way past that role. Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing. Over time, it became increasingly manipulative an…

> When trying to make an informed choice on a purchase, I'll typically look for enthusiast communities or unsponsored reviews. Marketing actually tends to actively get in the way.

Right but where do they get their info? If there were no advertisements, would they call up companies to see what they offered? How would they know a new company existed? Would there be an online enthusiast group for toilet brushes and tape and granite blocks for curbs? How would you know if there was a new store to buy those things? Would that store having a sign that included what they sold constitute advertising? Could your local fish shop put a sign in the window advertising the weekly special? Could they post a picture of it online? Obviously circulars would be advertisements— would catalogs constitute advertisements? What would inspire any innovation at all if there was no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed? How would stores know that manufacturers and distributors existed? Is packaging advertising? Is there a limit to where you can place packages? Show them on the Internet? Do you really think those enthusiast communities wouldn’t be chock full of industry voices? Do you think they aren’t already? Do you really think your process is totally objective?

There are a lot of shitty practices in marketing and advertising. Especially with data-driven marketing, I might be the harshest critic I’ve encountered. But advertising at its core is just telling people that products exist. That’s it. Capitalist societies don’t function without being able to communicate that products exist, but even communist countries have (and always had) advertising to tell people that things existed.

I abhor many practices in marketing and advertising, but at some level, companies must be able to tell people that they have a product to sell. I have never encountered anybody that suggested a reasonable replacement that would work for everything from computers to condoms to lettuce to bars to bakeries to cars to cleaning services to email hosts to edge network caching to hobbyist clubs to camp grounds.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#249

Post by colesantiago »

alt227 wrote: post #97
colesantiago wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair I didn't see your reply but to answer your original point. It would be great for HN to not only "hide" the jobs all the time but an account level "hide ads" or "hide YC ads" function in the account so that I don't have to see the woven job ads on the site that act like HN posts. This shouldn't be limited to forums, but should also be extended to other sites.

Well you have answered your own question there. Why cant all ads be opt in?

Maybe?

Should newspaper ads be opt-in even though you pay for them?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#250

Post by coldtea »

GuB-42 wrote: post #78
coldtea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while ignoring all the good advertising does. What good?

Informing potential customers of products that might be useful to them. Let's say you are the inventor of the chainsaw, you need to tell lumberjacks that chainsaws exist, that's advertising. Otherwise you won't sell any and your invention will be lost, while lumberjacks will continue struggling with inefficient tools.

>Informing potential customers of products that might be useful to them

1920 called, they want their argument back!

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