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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#311

Post by 0xEFF »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #254
wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

> but most advertising is a classic arms race. Small brained primate thought du jour; advertising shouldn't be an allowed business expense.

I'm no fan of ads, but that would only result in making ads ~30 to 50% more expensive for pass-through small businesses and ~14% more expensive for most [1] large US companies.

[1]: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/tax-rate-paid/

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#312

Post by gatherhunterer »

t34543 wrote: post #22

If you stop watching ads for awhile and go back to it you’ll see how mind numbing it all really is. I aggressively block ads - no exceptions.

Many of the blog posts found on Hacker News are ads in disguise. They are targeting people who block ads.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#313

Post by aeternus »

logfromblammo wrote: post #242
Aperocky wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "Something useful" though? The advertisement money eventually makes it to Google, broadcasters, sites, TV-channels, sports events and people running those organization in term gets more money to spend on [Potentially useful stuff]. It's not like the money magically vanishes to never be seen again, and business to business transaction like this make the money flow faster instead of slower. Economy is…

If Coke does not buy the large ad campaign, the available advertising resources can be used by the next-highest bidder, and that bidder might potentially be selling something with a higher social utility function value. Since the ad infrastructure does not get as much money from that transaction, less is then reinvested into ad infrastructure. If McDonald's stopped advertising on billboards, billboard advertising wou…

And how do you measure social utility? Price is currently the best measure of 'social utility' that we have.

People choose to spend their hard-earned dollars on the products that provide the most utility. Companies spend their hard-earned dollars on the vehicles that allow them to sell the most product.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#314

Post by necovek »

dwild wrote: post #265
wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now. Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and reminding you that this product exists. Ads are the only way to reach her market. You could argue that search is a good one too (which is true), but sadly people have trouble paying to watch videos onl…

I would disagree with the proposition that "most ads [aren't] about manipulation" (especially if we are talking about "most exposure time" rather than majority of ads being created regardless of the number of times they've been viewed).

Of course, I don't have data to prove my statement, but I doubt you have any to prove yours either.

And without ads and that "great tutorial", maybe you'd be something of greater value to society rather than the "developer you are today". (Just saying that what-ifs are even less of a support for any thesis)

Note that the original article does not complain about informative ads, but about manipulative ones.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#315

Post by jerf »

scarface74 wrote: post #248
c3534l wrote: post #193

I wanted to mention that advertising kills the ecosystem for free and cheap stuff. People say things like "TV wouldn't exist without advertising," but TV would probably be better without it since networks would have to convince you to pay them, rather than just stop you from flipping through the channels. Certainly the news would be better because TV news tries to tease the viewer to watch past the commercial break w…

So how do over the air networks convince people to pay for them? Do you want them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box? So instead of having information that anyone can access for free, people who can’t afford a monthly subscription should lnt watch tv?

"Do you want them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box?"

You sound like you think this is some sort of impossibility, but that's exactly how cable provided multiple packages back in the analog days....

The reason OTA networks aren't allowed to do that is that the spectrum is considered a public resource and the government made that a term of their lease. There's nothing impossible about that idea.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#316

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Fnoord wrote: post #295
dwild wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now. Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and reminding you that this product exists. Ads are the only way to reach her market. You could argue that search is a good one too (which is true), but sadly people have trouble paying to watch videos onl…

> I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now. In the old days, if her product -in this case escape room- would be good, she'd get enough customers by word of mouth alone.

Why is that necessarily so? Maybe some products inherently can't be sustained by word of mouth, and in a world without widespread commercial advertising they wouldn't exist at all.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#317

Post by magduf »

brokenkebab wrote: post #225
solipsism wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May we be allowed cake and ice cream or would you ban those as well? Maybe you can get a special license if it's a birthday?

May we be allowed cake and ice cream or would you ban those as well? Maybe you can get a special license if it's a birthday? Absolutely reasonable question. How about coffee? Soda-prohibiters usually ignore it, because, I guess, they like it themselves, or expect a huge backlash. However, it's a very common way of excessive sugar consumption world-wide.

You don't have to drink coffee with sugar, and in fact, many people do drink it "black".

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#320

Post by lotsofpulp »

sgeisler wrote: post #310
lotsofpulp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet excess sugar (and carbohydrate) consumption is the second largest externality via taxpayer spending on people’s healthcare due to obesity and diabetes. The biggest externality is destabilization of the environment from pollution.

That's only a problem if healthcare is taxpayer-funded. Otherwise it's your and your insurer's problem to price this in somehow, maybe even offering cheaper plans for people living healthy (e.g. meeting weight goals).

I don’t foresee any country with a high standard of living start to turn people away at the emergency room who are experiencing heart attacks.
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