6 ms·

What part of being a massive ad company whose raison d'etre is to collect as much personal information about you as possible (with limited or no consent) to ena

What part of being a massive ad company whose raison d'etre is to collect as much personal information about you as possible (with limited or no consent) to enable other people to try to convince you to buy stuff even remotely a net positive for the world?

pawelmurias 2y ago
I would prefer to see ads for things that I want rather then see ads for stuff I couldn't care less about. If I get convinced to buy useful things it's a win/win.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  If you and enough others find such fine-tuned recommendations helpful then they would continue to exist without intrusive advertising. There are entire magazines full of ads that people pay for.
- timeon 2y ago
  This seems like Stockholm syndrome.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  That could an opt in option, but the rest of us don’t want it. Google (or whatever ad company replaces it (Addled?) could give you the chance to opt in to ads and leave the rest of us alone. I’m fine with seeing ads about hunting when I’m on a gun sales website or local restaurants if I’m looking at recipes on Epicurious, just stop following me around, creeper (google)
nickpp 2y ago
> convince you to buy stuff Ever bought something you didn't actually want? Were you persuaded to want something? What was the exact mechanism? Were you lied to? "Made to" somehow? > net positive for the world How exactly do you find out what is "net positive for the world"? Who assigns the the values and who does the tallying?
- consteval 2y ago
  > What was the exact mechanism? We don't actually know, but we know it exists. Because otherwise people wouldn't bother paying for ads. Your average person can identify hundreds of brands instantly. What's the value of that? Billions? Trillions? Certainly, when cigarettes and chewing tobacco were advertised most people did it. Granted, the addiction helps because you only need 1 successful conversion for a life-long customer. Well, now very few people do that in the US. Without a shadow of a doubt in anyone's mind, the abolishment of those ads had something to do with it. One of the most common fallacies I see is that choice is a binary. You either chose something, or you didn't. Meaning you were forced. In actuality, choice is incredibly complex. There are thousands of individual events that will influence your choices. What you're doing right now could be influencing choices you make next decade, and you wouldn't know. You can control people's choices without forcing their hand on anything. You can introduce information and events that sculpt their mind without so much as lifting a finger. It's a form of mind control, but not in the TV sense. Because people make the choices themselves. Making someone do something is almost worthless. Convincing someone it's in their best interest to do something is where the value actually is. Look back at wars and our use of propaganda and try to break down what the end-goal is. It's not "making" people do something.
  - nickpp 2y ago
    We are learning and teaching machines. We can't help influencing and being influenced. Any interaction we have with another human being will influence us. Reading a book, an article or a simple blog or forum post will influence my mind. A lesson or a chat will influence me. Even a smell or a color will generate thoughts and actions in me. We can't help it - they are using the same mechanism we use for learning and without that we can't survive. But does that mean that they control me? Only if this information comes from only one side and is well integrated in my regular trusted information streams overwhelming my defenses. Like propaganda. Or a Guru. Or an academic institution. Ads on the other hand are quite easily defeated because they are both clearly delimited and coming from numerous, competing directions. In a world without Ads I would be very vulnerable to them. In our world though they are reduced to a more utilitarian function: to inform me. They tell me what options are out there, what is available and how to get it if I so choose. I don't think they can "make me" do anything against my own interest or even change my mind. They can merely inform me and I have no problem with that.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Because of organic search, not because of the ads. It has had a massive effect on the economic opportunities of newcomers. You can open a restaurant outside of the main walking street of a place and get customers through Google Maps. You can have a small business selling almost anything online and people will find you using Google search. Before that you'd have to rely on traditional advertising for anybody to know you exist, which is neither cheap nor effective. Today you can start a business and pay 0 in advertising, and Google will still help customers find you through organic search. Don't underestimate how much freedom that gives people to strike it out on their own.

pawelmurias 2y ago

I would prefer to see ads for things that I want rather then see ads for stuff I couldn't care less about. If I get convinced to buy useful things it's a win/win.

idle_zealot 2y ago
If you and enough others find such fine-tuned recommendations helpful then they would continue to exist without intrusive advertising. There are entire magazines full of ads that people pay for.
timeon 2y ago
This seems like Stockholm syndrome.
EasyMark 2y ago
That could an opt in option, but the rest of us don’t want it. Google (or whatever ad company replaces it (Addled?) could give you the chance to opt in to ads and leave the rest of us alone. I’m fine with seeing ads about hunting when I’m on a gun sales website or local restaurants if I’m looking at recipes on Epicurious, just stop following me around, creeper (google)

nickpp 2y ago

> convince you to buy stuff Ever bought something you didn't actually want? Were you persuaded to want something? What was the exact mechanism? Were you lied to? "Made to" somehow? > net positive for the world How exactly do you find out what is "net positive for the world"? Who assigns the the values and who does the tallying?

consteval 2y ago
> What was the exact mechanism? We don't actually know, but we know it exists. Because otherwise people wouldn't bother paying for ads. Your average person can identify hundreds of brands instantly. What's the value of that? Billions? Trillions? Certainly, when cigarettes and chewing tobacco were advertised most people did it. Granted, the addiction helps because you only need 1 successful conversion for a life-long customer. Well, now very few people do that in the US. Without a shadow of a doubt in anyone's mind, the abolishment of those ads had something to do with it. One of the most common fallacies I see is that choice is a binary. You either chose something, or you didn't. Meaning you were forced. In actuality, choice is incredibly complex. There are thousands of individual events that will influence your choices. What you're doing right now could be influencing choices you make next decade, and you wouldn't know. You can control people's choices without forcing their hand on anything. You can introduce information and events that sculpt their mind without so much as lifting a finger. It's a form of mind control, but not in the TV sense. Because people make the choices themselves. Making someone do something is almost worthless. Convincing someone it's in their best interest to do something is where the value actually is. Look back at wars and our use of propaganda and try to break down what the end-goal is. It's not "making" people do something.
- nickpp 2y ago
  We are learning and teaching machines. We can't help influencing and being influenced. Any interaction we have with another human being will influence us. Reading a book, an article or a simple blog or forum post will influence my mind. A lesson or a chat will influence me. Even a smell or a color will generate thoughts and actions in me. We can't help it - they are using the same mechanism we use for learning and without that we can't survive. But does that mean that they control me? Only if this information comes from only one side and is well integrated in my regular trusted information streams overwhelming my defenses. Like propaganda. Or a Guru. Or an academic institution. Ads on the other hand are quite easily defeated because they are both clearly delimited and coming from numerous, competing directions. In a world without Ads I would be very vulnerable to them. In our world though they are reduced to a more utilitarian function: to inform me. They tell me what options are out there, what is available and how to get it if I so choose. I don't think they can "make me" do anything against my own interest or even change my mind. They can merely inform me and I have no problem with that.

carlosjobim 2y ago

Because of organic search, not because of the ads. It has had a massive effect on the economic opportunities of newcomers. You can open a restaurant outside of the main walking street of a place and get customers through Google Maps. You can have a small business selling almost anything online and people will find you using Google search. Before that you'd have to rely on traditional advertising for anybody to know you exist, which is neither cheap nor effective. Today you can start a business and pay 0 in advertising, and Google will still help customers find you through organic search. Don't underestimate how much freedom that gives people to strike it out on their own.