31–40 of 114 posts
> In the 1970’s, Herbert Simon pointed out that when information becomes abundant, attention becomes the scarce resource. Attention is scarce, but what makes it valuable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much do you value your time? A lot of people think like this and I'm not judging you or saying this applies to you. But I find it kind of odd when people I know who earn hundreds to thousands of dollars an hour won't pay even $0.10 for something that took them say 15 minutes to read. If their own time is worth $200 / hr, they thought it was valuable enough to use up $50 of their time. If they refuse to pay anythi…
I used to subscribe to the washington post before the most recent election. Im willing to pay for the content I see or read, but I can't possibly pay for ALL the content that crosses my vision. Like streaming services, I used to have just one, and now there are like 100. If I paid for every show I watched I'd be paying over $100/mo in streaming services. Now I pay for NPR'S premium subscription. If every writer on th…
I work for an adtech company and we recently discovered that we were serving ads to some users using ad blockers, but the impression tracker endpoint had bbeen blocked. We decided the best course of action is to just submit our bidders domain to whatever lists we can (easylist, ublock, whatever). My project manager wanted to try just changing our endpoints periodically to evade the list. I said to him "You fool! You…
Out of curiosity, how do you feel working on something that is zero-sum (does not produce positive value for society, only changes where the money goes)? Would you change jobs if a positive-sum job became available? And to risk being seen as preaching, have you read https://drewdevault.com/2025/04/20/2025-04-20-Tech-sector-re... ?
I remember reading this closer to 2015. I'm convinced that these sorts of mental gymnastics and philosophizing are an info-hazard for otherwise smart and thoughtful people. Not a particularly dangerous one, but time that you won't get back. Unless you are a psychopath, your human instincts will alert you to when you need to show respect or gratitude, or reciprocity is expected from you. You don't need to try to think…
I'm not blocking ads. I'm blocking unaccountable third party advertising networks that let random javascript code run in my session. If site operators want to put their ads inline then there really isn't anything I can do about it and I doubt I would even try.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel working on something that is zero-sum (does not produce positive value for society, only changes where the money goes)? Would you change jobs if a positive-sum job became available? And to risk being seen as preaching, have you read https://drewdevault.com/2025/04/20/2025-04-20-Tech-sector-re... ?
I work in retail media. There is a large difference in the kind of value we capture - rather than creating incentives for annoying or addictive behavior, we only show advertisements on ecommerce pages. If you are seeing our ads, you already have the intent to buy a kind of product, but the kinds of ads we show are trying to convince you to buy a specific brand of product. Perhaps you searched "laptops". You see a han…
I’m surprised your business model doesn’t completely dominate over the social media algorithmic nonsense. I’d expect people who searched for something to be actually interested in it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It very very sad that some people will even say "I like to see ads, it might have something I want...". They are not just dumb, they are dangerous. This ads companies have been online for too much time. It is time to bring them down. Fast. And with them all those parasites of ads associations and marketing. We do need to bring the level of ads to 0. Then start new.
To take this a step further, I have had people argue with me that tracking and profiling online is a good thing, because it provides more relevant ads for things they want to buy. There are people who actively want ads that can better target and manipulate them into giving up their money. I would like to say I've only run into one person like this, but no. I've lost count of how many of these people I've run into. I…
They think the system is thinking "ohh! I bet X will like this pair of shoes! And this is a great deal on them!" when in fact a more accurate model is "Who is willing to pay the most to put a message in front of someone with the following detailed list of characteristics?" and then people bid for the right to manipulate you, so even if 2 companies are trying to sell you the exact same thing that you do want, the one that thinks they can extract more from you will pay more and win the spot.
For me, it is a straight forward proposition. There is literally nothing online so far that has ever interested me enough to pay money or with my eyeballs. I either see it without ads or move on without even a moment of thought.
How much do you value your time? A lot of people think like this and I'm not judging you or saying this applies to you. But I find it kind of odd when people I know who earn hundreds to thousands of dollars an hour won't pay even $0.10 for something that took them say 15 minutes to read. If their own time is worth $200 / hr, they thought it was valuable enough to use up $50 of their time. If they refuse to pay anythi…
Sure, I could pay for Hackernews or Github or whatever else (these may be bad examples due to the lack of ads) but lets even say the blogpost linked above.
If I could easily send 0.20$ to someone instantly, without much thought, I would.
I was hoping cryptocurrency would solve this, although the complexity and immense fees with most networks really rule that out.
So, um, is this what internet ads are now? Because even if it weren't "ok" to block these ads, I'm sure as shit going to keep blocking them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in retail media. There is a large difference in the kind of value we capture - rather than creating incentives for annoying or addictive behavior, we only show advertisements on ecommerce pages. If you are seeing our ads, you already have the intent to buy a kind of product, but the kinds of ads we show are trying to convince you to buy a specific brand of product. Perhaps you searched "laptops". You see a han…
That seems less evil, at least in the sense that it doesn’t require staking people and collecting dossiers about their personal information. I’m surprised your business model doesn’t completely dominate over the social media algorithmic nonsense. I’d expect people who searched for something to be actually interested in it.
My company operates only on small ecommerce sites. Because we have a huge catalog of products, advertisers can come to us and launch a campaign, and we can automatically deliver across dozens of sites. We can connect small ecommerce sites to large advertisers so that they dont need first party relationships with those advertisers. The way I see it, we are helping smaller retailers be more competitive against Amazon by helping them squeeze more blood from the stone, as we like to say in advertising.
What keeps me up at night is who our customers are. Among our advertisers, we sell ads for alcohol. While those who see our ads generally already have high intent to buy alcohol in the first place, I know from family history that even the slightest temptation can put an alcoholic back at step 0. We dont run too many of those but im still struggling with it