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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#551

Post by yoz-y »

flukus wrote: post #531
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great many potential escape room customers are not looking specifically for escape rooms, they're looking for something fun to do in the area. So, again, no ability to advertise would be a gigantic advantage to established incumbents in the "something fun to do with friends" category of businesses.

What city doesn't have brochures of fun things to do, community newspapers where new things like this can be announced or meetup groups for people that like activities like this? There are a lot of ways potential customers can actively find you without manipulating random people who weren't looking.

Those brochures are literally ads.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#552

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

cameronbrown wrote: post #393
homonculus1 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever marginal risk increase I suffer from my moderate consumption is well worth the guaranteed enjoyment I gain. A lot of HN users wish to "optimize" these facets of other people's lives through government regulation, but it's no less odious than going up to people in person and knocking their drink to the ground. It's not your choice.

Exactly. I'm more than happy for more labels saying how bad sugary drinks are - like a less extreme version of smoking warnings - but taking a choice away for someone because you think you know better is authoritarian, even if we're only talking about a drink.

It's far more authoritarian to promote industries that spend outrageous sums on manipulating people into harming their own health, with incredibly expensive social and personal consequences.

It's absolutely and completely false to frame this as a government vs individual issue. It's actually corporate propaganda vs the individual.

No one who supports individual freedom has any business encouraging corporate propaganda, because it's the psychological equivalent of sugar - absolutely toxic to genuine free choice.

Big Tobacco has already discovered this strategy doesn't work in the long term. Big Pharma is catching up slowly. (Ask the Sacklers.)

Big Sugar is still lagging behind, but it's only a matter of time.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#553

Post by TeMPOraL »

davidivadavid wrote: post #529
gatherhunterer wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What loaded language? Loaded language appeals to a stereotype, this is just a provocative analogy. The use of an attention-grabbing title does not mean that one should be excused for creating a straw man instead of debating the actual content.

If you're going to bit nit-picky about words: "In rhetoric, loaded language (also known as loaded terms or emotive language) is wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes." Provocative analogies can use loaded language, for example when they appeal to emotions. Riddling your text with things like how advertising "infects", "destroys", "corrupts", is "industrial scale abus…

Thanks for the critique. I'll consider how to discharge some of the unnecessarily loaded parts - it wasn't my intention to push emotional buttons here, though it's hard to avoid doing that by accident given that I have strongly negative emotions to the topic I've covered.

However:

> Riddling your text with things like how advertising "infects", "destroys", "corrupts", is "industrial scale abuse" and so on, is loaded language that's not conducive to debate.

I used those terms not because of their emotional implications, but because I believe they are accurate in terms of actual mechanics. When some aspect of our daily lives, which used to work perfectly well without ads, start to accumulate them until the point they no longer can exist without them, I feel the terms "infection" and "corruption" are apt.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#554

Post by majewsky »

yoz-y wrote: post #549
skummetmaelk wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the current ad model of the popular search engine(s) was made extinct by law. I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to a paid model. Who wouldn't pay to have any information in the world reachable in the 30 seconds it takes to craft a query and scan the first page of results? It is a huge competitive advantage.

Nobody ever paid for something like that. If there is anything on the internet people assume it should be free. Taking example of the HN crowd, every time there is a pay walled article people ask for web links, praise outline links and generally complain.

This is because there are free alternatives. When 99% of the articles on the frontpage are freely accessible, it feels "wrong" to find an article that requires you to cough up money first, especially when it does not hold up to the insane quality level implied by that price difference.

If there were no free search engines, I can see people paying a few bucks a month for Google. Even more so if Google would then again make their results as useful to users as they once were.

A practical example: I'm incredibly price-sensitive wrt productivity applications because there are many great such applications available as open source. I'm much less price-sensitive when it comes to video games (e.g. I spent 300€ on Breath of the Wild since it required buying a Switch) because the selection of open source video games is very limited.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#555

Post by majewsky »

yoz-y wrote: post #550
flukus wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and reminding you that this product exists. That is manipulation. If they weren't actively thinking about visiting one or actively looking for things to do and your advertising convinced them to do it then you've manipulated them into doing something the otherwise wouldn't have.

I think the other user here had a great example with his sister’s escape room. If you want to visit one how would you find it if it’s not on your way to work?

The traditional solution to this is the Yellow Pages. The business owner would pay a small fee to be listed. In the internet age, Yellow-Pages-like directories of business do not need a publishing house generating them. You can basically build one yourself from OpenStreetMap data, and if it gains traction in the community, you could turn it into a side business by taking a small fee from businesses, say 10$/yr, to offer them "OpenStreetMap update as a service" for their business's POI.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#556

Post by yoz-y »

Fnoord wrote: post #483
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to pay for such an ad-free internet in some way, other than being an ad target. This is a critical point of you expect the variety and quality of this ad-free internet to approach what we have now.

The first spam on Usenet was by a company called DEC. DEC was known for its great products (VAX, OpenVMS, Alpha) but for shitty management and marketing. I've witnessed the Internet before Web 2.0. Yes I received Viagra spam on my mailbox as well. Amount bought thanks to all of that spam: zero. The marketeer does not care about any second in my life I wasted thanks to their spam. Neither do the assholes who hosted th…

I’d like to see the outrage if google and Facebook were added to the internet bill of everyone around.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#557

Post by Fnoord »

yoz-y wrote: post #556
Fnoord wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first spam on Usenet was by a company called DEC. DEC was known for its great products (VAX, OpenVMS, Alpha) but for shitty management and marketing. I've witnessed the Internet before Web 2.0. Yes I received Viagra spam on my mailbox as well. Amount bought thanks to all of that spam: zero. The marketeer does not care about any second in my life I wasted thanks to their spam. Neither do the assholes who hosted th…

I’d like to see the outrage if google and Facebook were added to the internet bill of everyone around.

That's only because the current business model is very closed source (proprietary) a danger RMS warned about decades ago. The original GPLv3 was meant to address that, and websites such as Wikipedia and I suppose OpenAI don't work that way.

If we were used to no advertising and paying for services, we'd be outraged by if there was advertising. Ironically, that way is more efficient. The ideal model for data is a Patreon/Kickstarter/Indiegogo-esque project where people are able to offer bounties. This way you could pick a journalist (who's self-employed) and pay them to write an article to research a subject. Such research could then save other people time and money. I mean, if only 100 people in the world pay 10 EUR each then you already got firepower to do some research already.

Advertising and 'free' (where you're the product) is a race to the bottom, and ultimately a product for the poor.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#558

Post by Fnoord »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #546
cameronbrown wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that makes it a bad business model? Maybe it is. But I'd argue having something is better than not having it.

Here's an alternative. All escape rooms need a steady stream of new visitors, so they have a good incentive to cross-promote. Hang a "if you've liked this room, you might enjoy" board by the exit, filled with flyers for other escape rooms in the area, and ask those other escape rooms to put your flyers on their "escape-room-ring" boards.

Funny, such webrings used to exist in Web 1.0 as well. You could even argue this is the point of a franchise. Need a McDonald's (not my cup of tea but a known international subject)? You know what they got, you know the price. There's some culture-specific deviations, too.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#559

Post by e_proxus »

yoz-y wrote: post #549
skummetmaelk wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the current ad model of the popular search engine(s) was made extinct by law. I would be extremely surprised if search simply disappeared rather than move to a paid model. Who wouldn't pay to have any information in the world reachable in the 30 seconds it takes to craft a query and scan the first page of results? It is a huge competitive advantage.

Nobody ever paid for something like that. If there is anything on the internet people assume it should be free. Taking example of the HN crowd, every time there is a pay walled article people ask for web links, praise outline links and generally complain.

I would gladly pay, say $2-8 a month, for a search engine that actually delivered good results. Nowadays it's just SEO garbage and blog spam.

Try searching for product reviews for example. It's almost impossible to find good, honest review sites via a search engine (they definitely exist though). Most are shopping sites or fake reviews that just list scraped product information.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#560

Post by e_proxus »

davidivadavid wrote: post #251
picometer wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think the author addresses this via the "cancer" metaphor: > It's a malignant mutation of an idea that efficient markets need a way to connect goods and services with people wanting to buy them. > Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. It also became more effective. In the process, it grew to consume a significant amount of resources of every company on the planet. I interpre…

That analogy applies to literally anything that can grow. Great. Startups are a cancer. Technology is a cancer.

That's like calling a growing baby a cancer. It's a reductio ad absurdum.
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