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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

This is unfortunate. Adtech is a cancer. We don't need to give it time to adapt, we need to shut it down.

Ads will definitely not disappear, only the tracking aspect. It will be more contextual ads probably, related to what page your are looking at, less related to you as an individual.

And that is both a user-respecting and effective way to advertise!

This would have been true for this change as well, clearly if Apple chose a different path means that it's not as clear cut as you imply here. And yeah contextual and stuff is nice but will simply not drive the same revenue for publishers.

This isn't true, targeted advertising only gets publishers about 4% more revenue, despite adtech's claims it's over 50%. And when adtech is banned, revenues will stabilize around remaining activity.

You deliberately choose to ignore all of the studies that disagree with you except the one that you agree with that has very obvious flaws. Here's a summary of the literature[1]. Personalized ads have become popular because they perform better for the buyer, and that makes buyers willing to pay more to show them to their customers. Buyer goals align with conversions. The history of advertising online started with contextual, there is zero evidence to support the claim that revenue will only drop 4% when any company submitting bids for contextual vs personalized ads can show you that the CPMs they are willing to pay can easily be 2-3x if not even higher for high worth users.

[1]: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1juu6UBguR7ru1Rhfyor9...

Ads have effectively disappeared for a number of years now for those who use a sensible approach to ad blocking (i.e. a combination of ingress blocking, DNS blacklists and browser-based blocking). This could change if content providers start using different approaches to ad insertion - e.g. video ads merged into the original content, ads as part of original page content - but even those avenues will be neutered within not too long. It probably makes sense for ad purveyors to not fret too much over ad blocking users since these users often react negatively to advertising and as such are better left alone.

In most cases I find direct ad insertion (as in ad sponsership of the creator) a lot less offensive than some algorythmetic insertion based on some unknown metric. At least then the creator has to decide if the ad they are running is acceptable in their product.

That isn't ad insertion but sponsorship. What I mean is for the server to present a single video stream which does not contain markers to identify advertising content, more or less the way many netcast ads are inserted into the audio stream.

> video ads merged into the original content

That is already a thing and there are already countermeasures: https://sponsor.ajay.app

> Ads will definitely not disappear, only the tracking aspect.

Ads without tracking are an even less effective business model. We don't have to make ads stop working entirely, we just have to make them sufficiently ineffective that they're not worth paying enough to make ad revenue worthwhile.

Not with that attitude they won't.

Do you realize the number of free services that one uses thanks to ads? Not everyone can afford to pay for these. I for one use gmail, google maps, google calendar, google docs, etc. Every day

Do you realize how much bullshit people buy that they do not need because of ads? People end up with much less money because of that. And the environment suffers too.

And no, without apps people would be able to discover new things. Current ads are not about facts but connecting feelings with products.

It's not exactly like people weren't buying things before the internet. Hell, there's advertising on the walls of Pompeii. If anything, better advertising gets us to buy stupid shit people are actually more interested in than before.

At least we're not buying pet rocks now.

Psychology and a normalization of false promises (thus far will make you a real man, this product will make you desired) only started around 1900.

The benign ads can still be seen in China when people write their service and a phone number on the wall, basically the only graffiti you will see there.

This has to be one of the most uninformed comments I have ever read on HN.

Are we seriously going to blame ads for people buying stuff they need? I mean come on, this seems like a South Park episode, the Ads are self-aware and made us do it.

Current ads are not about facts? Please do tell when was a time ads were not about trying to awake emotions inside prospective customers? Check out The 22 Irrefutable Laws of Marketing by Jack Trout and Al Ries, a book old almost 30 years yet still holds today. Marketing (offline or online ads, it's all the same basis) has and always will be part psychological.

I don't know for you, but I would rather appreciate an ad about something which I found useful (a sponsored job posting in my field of work on Instagram) than get a random ad like the early 2000s ("This russian young lady can't wait to meet you").

While we might not like or appreciate ads from a technical perspective, it is beneath a developer's pride we must come to terms that ads are what puts bread to our tables.

Innovation and progress, especially in the internet age has occured thanks to the business potential of marketing and ads.

If ads would not make people buy things there would not be so much money in that business.

Ads started using psychology and emotions around 1900.

I would prefer a world without those ads. Here in Germany I even still have to endure ads for tobacco.

Ads would be completely unnecessary where I work, we have solely customers that pay a recurring fee.

The only innovation in advertising is about lying better to people and spy more on them. Ads have wasted so much potential of talented developers and creative people.

> Do you realize how much bullshit people buy that they do not need because of ads? People end up with much less money because of that.

Other people's issues with financial self-control isn't a solid basis for being against something. By that logic, alcohol, clothing stores, videogames, literally anything that might influence people to buy things they don't really need is bad.

There's a line where what you call "people's issues with financial self-control" becomes a societal/systemic problem. Alcohol and gambling are the classic examples where extra taxation and regulation like age restrictions come into play. Where is that line for general advertising? I don't know. But it's out there.

P.S. Speaking of videogames, I'm of the opinion that many mobile "gatcha" games should be regulated like gambling products. Hoping legislation catches up in this regard.

Ads are manipulative. You do not choose ads but they are in your face. And since recently are completely violating our privacy.

Alcohol is rightfully regulated. Video games in their modern pay to win kind should be too.

What is life without feelings ?

There are plenty of free alternatives to Google that don’t rely on ads and respect your privacy.

What are some free products that don't rely on ads?

Gmail -> ProtonMail free tier Google Maps -> Open Street Maps (although I personally use Ordnance Survey Maps) Google Docs -> I use LibreOffice because I don’t need the cloud functionality Google Calendar -> I currently use a Synology NAS to host my own but I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Proton Calendar

As a disclaimer to this I actually pay for ProtonMail and OSMaps because they’re products I use daily and feel that they deserve the money, however they do have free tiers and there are free alternatives to most Google software. I’d strongly suggest looking into de-Googling, there’s an entire subreddit dedicated to it.

Literally every service the previous poster mentioned has an ad free/ tracking free alternative which ships with the iPhone. Aside from that, there are too many "free products" without advertising to list them so you'd need to be more specific.

They are not free, if you need to buy a phone to use them.

> They are not free, if you need to buy a phone to use them.

If you don't have an iPhone/ iPad/ Mac, how else would Apple's privacy/ tracking policies apply to you?

We're talking about advertising and apps on iOS, those apps are absolutely free (and ad free) on any devices under discussion here. Otherwise, please feel free to ask about any other specific app on any other platform, because in almost all cases there is a free solution without advertising.

The idea that the world needs to run on advertising is nonsense. Likewise that developers/ end users somehow "need" advertising.

Most OSS I suppose.

like what?

Do you realize that you can have ads subsidizing free services without any tracking or using any third-party services?

Obviously, companies generally make more money with tracking, otherwise they wouldn't do it, and that means more investment in free services.

Those types of ads definitely exist, but make a lot less revenue, which in the end impacts free services.

Sure, those people can “opt in” if they choose. The point is that it should default to not track unless the user knowingly and willingly chooses to be tracked (in exchange for services if you like).

This is just letting people know that the apps which use the advertising are tracking them. If people don't mind getting tracked to fund their apps, they can opt in.

I don't have any trouble with advertising and tracking... so long as it's clear and obvious that it's happening and you have an easy way to opt out. This should make both sides happy.

The world would be arguably a better place if all of those services went dark tomorrow. Everything offered there can be done elsewhere by better products with less user harm, for free, today.

Meaningless drivel. Billions of people rely on these free service, but in some unspecified place they could be done better, without some unspecified harm. OK.

Services should not be able to stalk my online activity indiscriminately without my knowledge and consent.

It pays for the modern web. It is probably in need of more transparency and clear user defined controls but hardly a cancer.

And what have we gained from it? Toxic unconstrained social networks, more methods to make everyone feel uglier and worthless, endlessly consume random crap without producing anything of value, and robotic hamburger making shops that no one asked for and are somehow IT related?

This site, for one, is funded by job ads. No one forces you to use it, or any other "toxic" site that makes you feel "ugly and worthless". If you think the entire web (or the entire ad funded web) is toxic and makes you feel "ugly and worthless" what are you doing here?

I don't think anyone would have a problem with advertising if all advertising was as respectful and unobtrusive as HN's job ads.

Do you think Apple's changes will affect HN's ad business?

No. The discussion is about ads in general.

Vacation homes in Lake Tahoe, the most important thing in life.

By your logic the conclusion is that the modern web is heavily cancerous, which arguably it is. There are other ways to pay for innovation and tools, to be preventative-proactive so cancer can't exist or at least not thrive.

Clearly those unspecified other ways aren't working well enough, or ads wouldn't be so dominant.

The problem is that the advertising way is "cheating" in the sense that its victims are not aware they're being exploited; otherwise this article wouldn't have been written and the proposed UI change (which aims to shine light on what the advertising industry is doing with your personal data) wouldn't cause such an uproar.

There are areas where a totally "free market" doesn't work in the long-term benefit of society and regulation typically steps in. This is why for example health and safety is a thing (even though not caring about that would make businesses more profitable) or that in most civilized countries you are not allowed to dump toxic waste in the river even though it's cheaper than paying to have it recycled.

economic engine !== automatically good. The Triangle Trade was an economic engine, too.

Given the number of newspapers and blogs closing every year, it doesn't actually seem to be the case that adtech successfully pays for the "modern Web".

Lots of businesses go broke, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the idea of paying for things as "cancer", similarly the fact that some websites go broke doesn't mean we should dismiss ads as "cancer".

I was replying to someone who asserted that adtech pays for "the modern web". I dispute that statement. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and nobody has ever provided evidence that adtech actually pays for what we know as the Web today. We get lots of assertions as to such, but never proof.

It's a large reason why software engineers are making a lot of money.

Money made by taking advantage of others is unethical money. If your salary is propped up by adtech, you shouldn't be making that money.

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