We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#261

Post by jama211 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 9:25 AM UTC

AStonesThrow wrote: post #225

antfarm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with paying for a commercial service. I rather pay with money than indirectly by losing time and being annoyed in the best case and manipulated in the worst case. With the sites that I choose to not visit (Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram) this is not possible, as the attempted manipulation of users is an integral part of the business model. Also, your attempt of being funny is not working, neither is you…

> not working No, my friend, what is reprehensible to me is freeloaders who believe that they can just play cat-and-mouse wars by installing software and then scrape whatever web content they want, without giving the company their due expected revenue. This is cheating of the cheapest cheapskate order. It's dishonest, it's disingenuous to say "please send me your web content but only the stuff I like". Perhaps you fe…

“Won’t somebody pleeease think of the billionaires!!” - you.

As a side note, your disdainful tone is incredibly grating and will likely convince others to ignore your points out of principle, which should go against your goal if your goal is to actually change people’s minds.

But I suspect your goal is to feel smug and fake morally superior, as you’re not acting in good faith. So congratulations, I’d suggest some personal introspection is in order.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#262

Post by jama211 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 9:26 AM UTC

end1snight wrote: post #119

_cenw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2. https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

You all still use the web? I've been transpiling video game frame data into shader, geometry, lighting, color gradient data, and an agent system that mix-n-matches styles. I got into software modding game engines, though. Never cared much for web apps, SaaS. Never much saw the use in paid software since it's just geometry. We made a lot of dumb busy work out of SWE with web apps. DRY? Yes, let's not repeat ourselves…

This genuinely reads like a copypasta.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#263

Post by p3rls » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 9:59 AM UTC

No wonder the independent web is dead when even places like HN sound like this --everyone is referring to the same five websites, fb, twitter, etc. The few creators among us are stuck between google's bullshit and such retarded proudhonists that would like to see even more consumer-level content controlled by these monopolies.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#264

Post by pavel_lishin » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 10:56 AM UTC

tastyfreeze wrote: post #157

pavel_lishin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yes, we're all temporarily-displaced millionaires.

You surely won't become one by griping about the unfairness of other people's success to a bunch of strangers. 500k new millionaires in 2023 in the US. Why can't you be one of them in a coming year?

> 500k new millionaires in 2023 in the US. Why can't you be one of them in a coming year?

I know it's a rhetorical question, but the actual answer is "because I feel like it would require more work than it would be worth".

Of course, all the millionaires I personally know got there through 95% luck, so who knows! Maybe I'll personally be cursed to follow their path.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#265

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 11:50 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #203

ethbr1 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't think about alternate web evolution without considering (1) the early browser wars (specifically Netscape vs IE) & (2) the need to decouple data transfer and re-rendering that led to AJAX (for network and compute performance reasons). Folks forget that before js was front-end frameworks and libaries, it was enabling (as in, making impossible possible) async data requests and page updates without requiring a…

You're correct that the main thing enabled by JS is partial updates, but the fact that it relies on JS is IMO itself in large part due to path dependent evolution (i.e. JS was there and could be used for that, so that's what we standardized on). Imagine instead if HTML evolved more in the direction of enabling this exact scenario out of the box. So that e.g. you could declaratively mark a button or a link as triggeri…

When that data streams in though, how is a developer defining what it changes?

Or in this hypothetical is the remote server always directly sending HTML?

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#266

Post by FirmwareBurner » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 11:53 AM UTC

tomhow wrote: post #213

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't claim victimhood (“censorship”) when your comments are flagged. The guidelines apply equally to everyone, and the flags on your comments are from good community members who have a track record of flagging responsibly, to help keep the discussions healthy. HN’s purpose is to be a place for intellectual curiosity, not ideological battle or railing against things you find disagreeable.

If by "intelectual curiosity ' you mean groupthink and bias that flags opposing points of view members find uncomfortable, not the honest unbiased application of rules.

Flag-bombing is a real issues on HN in case you didn't know.

What's the point of a board that doesn't allow all viewpoints and just smells it's own farts?

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#267

Post by y42 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 12:50 PM UTC

Hardest thing for me to understand is: No one really like ads or the current situation with some exceptions. To understand that let's break down all stake holders here:

We have publishers who rely on the money stream to finance their online products. But they probably complain about how ads have overtaken their content. We have a couple of "wanna be publishers" that built a busines model around ads (who are the root cause of why ads fail in these times). They don't really complain about the current situation, but I'd say that's the minority here. We have advertisers who need ads to "advertise" (apparently). They also complain about "ad saturation".

We have a HUGE ecosystem, which promises to improve advertising, mostly it's just bullshit buzzword bingo to make a busines out of it. (good read on that is https://chiefmartec.com/2024/05/2024-marketing-technology-la...) They probably complain about what they built themselfs: a complex ecosystem that no one understands anymore.

And we have end users who most probably don't like ads. Most common users probably just ignore them, a couple of tech savvy users installed counter measures to avoid ads.

This is the status quo. And there are so many posts and opinions and rants about ads and online marketing. Still we suffer from them.

Why isn't it changing? I don't see even an aproach of someone who actually want's to change it. This is weird.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#268

Post by tomhow » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #266

tomhow wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't claim victimhood (“censorship”) when your comments are flagged. The guidelines apply equally to everyone, and the flags on your comments are from good community members who have a track record of flagging responsibly, to help keep the discussions healthy. HN’s purpose is to be a place for intellectual curiosity, not ideological battle or railing against things you find disagreeable.

If by "intelectual curiosity ' you mean groupthink and bias that flags opposing points of view members find uncomfortable, not the honest unbiased application of rules. Flag-bombing is a real issues on HN in case you didn't know. What's the point of a board that doesn't allow all viewpoints and just smells it's own farts?

We routinely turn off flags and unkill comments that have been wrongly flagged. Anyone can email us and ask us to review a flagged comment.

We work very hard to make HN a place where the spectrum of viewpoints can be expressed and debated. Just a few days ago via email support I made a special effort to persuade someone to stick with HN when they felt their views are too much in the minority. I would gladly do that daily to keep discussion on HN diverse and interesting.

We'd happily have you share your views if you can present them in a way that's interesting and kind to other community members. But a clear line is crossed when people approach discussions with a hostile, aggressive mentality, and that's what's been apparent in too many of your comments.

The guidelines, our stated goals, and expected behavioral standards on HN have been consistent for years. Everyone is expected to adhere to the guidelines, otherwise we have to ban them, to prevent the place from burning to the ground.

It's only by consistently doing this that we keep HN a place that people want to visit to discover and discuss interesting topics.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#269

Post by raxxorraxor » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

mzajc wrote: post #166

Nursie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s inferior AFAICT because the API is more limited, and it looks an awful lot like the world’s biggest ad company (Google) has arranged that specifically to be less effective for ad and tracker blocking. It’s a good reason to use Firefox.

It's also inferior because the filter lists for requests must be hardcoded and can only be changed through extension updates, which Google (or whoever owns the browser's extension store) can delay or block at their discretion. This also means users can't install their own filters, which was widely used when YouTube began aggressively bypassing adblockers.

And I also don't want to be too dependent on the browser vendor to sign a plugin.

There is a lot of talk about security but strategic security would mean to put flashing red warning signs on the manifest updates.

To neglect that is basically lying to users in my opinion.

Re: We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video]

#270

Post by AvAn12 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

latency-guy2 wrote: post #104

2099miles wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ Exactly Ads are 100% fine I just want the option to pay to avoid them. Like black mirror I think had an episode or some movie had it where you watch an ad instead of paying for a bus ticket and that’s totally fine, cuz right now there is no alternative to paying for a bus ticket.

Send a pitch to Meta's board or executive suite describing how much you and your cohort would like to pay in aggregate for an ad-free experience for social media, then the rest of the internet based business as you wish. There are absolutely alternatives, you won't use them because few others that you care about are on them. Similarly, free is the best price next to being paid.

Opened and closed a FB account in 2012 - that's my customer lifetime journey with Meta products. Like I was saying, I have no interest in ad-supported products. And I would say that the burden would be on meta to persuade me why I should use a product I don't want - rather than for me to be so naive as to try to convince a massive corporate monolith to change its business model just for me. Also haven't watched ad-supported TV since paying for streaming became available. Those of you who like ads, please enjoy them - and the rest of us will do something else - this is what makes a market!