Hacker News Reader

Comment by vezirynn | Hacker News Reader

Evidently it's working on SOME front or they'd be putting more profitable ads in.

Still brings up the question of whether the extra revenue is worth annoying part of your user base - but from my experience I'll only ever see 1-2 ads even if I scroll for 5-10 minutes.

View on HN

I don't think "annoying" is quite the right word to summarize this blog post. Sure, ads are often annoying, but the point she was trying to make is that this pattern is somewhat harmful.

Displaying pictures of healthy, fit women in advertising is not harmful, nor does the author actually make that point. All she does is say that it's true, without any argument to back it up. We're simply supposed to accept that because she says it's harmful, it is. There's nothing degrading or overly sexualized about these ads. The fact that the models look good does not need to be a threat to anybody.

I was with the author as long as it was a complaint about how repetitive and uninspired the ads were, but when it morphed into "pictures of healthy people trigger me" is where she lost me. If you are so insecure you can't see an image of a person who is better looking than you are without freaking out, that is nobody's problem but your own. It's not instagram's fault.

There are many other potential body shapes that are healthy and fit. The point is that for most people, the idealized, photoshopped shapes in these ads are actually literally unobtainable. Only a very small percentage of the population can ever achieve these shapes, for a very few years of their lives, and under very specific conditions. And when your media is saturated with only those images of impossible bodies, and the implication that this is the ideal that everyone should meet, even though that’s impossible, then it becomes a problem.

None of the women I saw in those pictures seem to have particularly unattainable or exaggerated physiques. In fact, they look like average, healthy body types easily attainable by regular diet and exercise.

Claiming that "only a very small percentage of the population can ever achieve these shapes" smacks as totally false to me. Do you have any data or sources to back that up?

edit: Would the downvoters care to contribute? I asked for some data or, at the very least, some sound reasoning for the claim that it's literally impossible for the majority of people to have healthy physiques.

They are better than average. Unless the average is only considering the population of 20-30 years old women, in good shape, wearing tight clothes, posing for a photo in a nice scenery.

Ironically, Instagram has good filters and beautify mode to make good looking pictures like that.

Sure, but in the same breath I'm never going to meet the ideal set by the athletes in Gatorade commercials, the men in car, cologne and watch ads, and certainly the spokespeople in gym and fitness commercials.

I will only speak to my experience but I'm not bothered by it. I think because my self-worth doesn't hinge on feeling attractive -- I think I should consider myself extremely fortunate in that respect. But putting ugly people in ads seems to be nothing more a band-aid fix for the problem that a womans's worth is largely determined by her appearance.

Speaking from the perspective of the company posting the ads. Not trying to argue whether it is 'harmful' or not

That's how targeted ads work - if you bought a product in the past, you must be interested in buying the same type of products, every week, forever, and you'll be interested in seeing ads for these products.

And it works extremely well. That’s why, thanks to Amazon ads, I’ve bought 14 vacuums in the last two months.

Sigh.

I really wish the algorithms were smart enough to distinguish between things that you might rebuy frequently (bras are closer to this end) and things that you probably won’t buy again for a long time (like vacuums).

From my experience (engineer at ad retargeting company) the models used for retargeting are very advanced/optimized. They're shown repeatedly because the data suggests that it IS the optimal policy despite the reaction people have to it.

I wonder if they take into account that you made the purchase, or even know about it. If you consider that the only information they have is that you were looking for the product, but may or may not have bought one (or may have returned the one you bought), then their strategy starts making sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com