Comment by mtalantikite | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtalantikite | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> philosophically, is there really a way we can claim that advertising makes you want things in a way that's wrong, as opposed to in way that causes enjoyment just like when you normally want things?

Sure, just look at all the decades of cigarette advertisements and the tobacco companies paying Hollywood movie studios to include their brands in films. That's engaging in subtle mass manipulation that resulted in untold millions of people suffering and dying.

But this is less of what bothers me about ads, because I do agree that desires are largely from social influence anyways. If you don't have the right skillfulness you're still subject to being influenced and lost in what Buddhism calls Tanha.

My main objection is advertising steals my attention without my consent and actively works against me in order to try and get me to pay attention to something that isn't what I'm trying to pay attention to. Say what you will about Banksy, but I'm always reminded of something he (they?) said about ads which resonates with me:

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."

is this a generational thing?

In th 80s and early 90s I subscribed to several computer magazines "Creative Computing", "Byte", "Compute", "Wired" and a few others. I also subscribed to gaming magazines like "Computer Gaming World", "Electronic Gaming Monthly", "Joystik", "Edge", "Game Developer Magazine". I and everyone else bought them in part for the ads. It was how we found out what new games and products where available.

I don't like ads spying on me and I don't like intrusive ads but ad in general are not evil to me.

Another example, I actually enjoy reading ads in public transportation. I'd find out about museums, festivals, and even various interesting services and products I didn't know about.

The advertising in the 80’s and 90’s often also served as a kind of catalogue because there was no other way to find things except word of mouth. That’s a solved problem with the modern internet, if you want to find a type of game, find a good community or similar to the magazines of before, follow a YouTuber or Twitter or whatever you like.

Yes, but not necessarily. I have ads turned on for The Register because they cater to a specific market segment, and also because I like to support the site.

The ads are pretty tightly focused on new technology companies, which I'm interested in. BizCoFoo with a new DB technology that turns stored procedures into pimento cheese sandwiches is not going to find a lot of traction on r/SQL except to generate a lot of noise from people who hate pimento cheese.

Ads aren't an "all this" or "all that" sort of thing. I'm not a fan of billboards, because I think they're ugly and hateful, but when I'm travelling in a place I'm not familiar with, it's handy to know that there's a BBQ joint in 17 miles, which may not be featured on Yelp or Foursquare or whatever.

Ads can be great if they directly inform you of something you want, need, or are interested in. The ad-tech companies, though, are terrible at doing this algorithmically; e.g., seeing ads for dishwashers everywhere right after you've bought a dishwasher. They're also terrible because the first instinct, when a Web site's ad revenue starts to falter, is to add even more ads from other networks to pump it back up.

One or two ads on a Web page is tolerable. Ads that show up every time you hit Page Down? Cancer.

Now you can find out what's available from the internet, on demand, when it suits you and not when it suits the advertisers.

There is so much choice now that you suffer from analysis paralysis unless you get recommendations on what to get, or know how to curate and ruthlessly filter down the firehose of choices down to a manageable trickle. Of course you don't need ads adding their 2¢ to that stream.

To this point, that's actually what I use Instagram for now. I'm almost more interested in the ads on there than the content of the people I follow. I've found clothes brands that I'm interested in, new shoes that fit my vibe, and lots of concerts that I'm interested in. I think the biggest gain for a lot of them is brand awareness. I haven't actually bought much because I don't need new clothes at the moment, but come spring when I'm looking for a new outfit or two, I'm definitely coming back to a couple of those sites.

> is this a generational thing?

Maybe? I’m an old millennial and I never subscribed to magazines for ads. I found out about my interests in other ways, but I did have the Internet by the time I was maybe 12 (in 1996 I’d guess). The only magazines I got as a teenager was 2600 and adbusters.

> I don't like ads spying on me and I don't like intrusive ads but ad in general are not evil to me.

For me I find all advertising intrusive and manipulative. I’ve never owned a tv because I just can’t understand why anyone would want to watch ads like that. I don’t like thinking in moralistic dualisms like good and evil, but I will say I’d be all for a world where advertising doesn’t try to steal my attention and manipulate me.

> Sure, just look at all the decades of cigarette advertisements and the tobacco companies paying Hollywood movie studios to include their brands in films. That's engaging in subtle mass manipulation that resulted in untold millions of people suffering and dying.

As you more or less say in the next paragraph, you're answering a different question I think. Can advertising make you want things that are bad for you? Absolutely. But so can lots of things. I'm asking if the way a desire comes to be makes the desire good or bad, independently of whether the desire itself is good for you.

For the sake of argument I'll say the way a desire comes into being has no bearing on making it good or bad. What is the implication of this with respect to advertising in your mental model?

Yeah, I'm pointing out the thing that I find the most objectionable about advertising which is that it's main function is to steal my attention.

I don't think there is such a thing as a good desire or a bad desire, they are just desire and all desires are something to work on bringing awareness to so they don't rule you.

Advertising a product that does X/Y/Z but also causes cancer without mentioning the cancer means people want a different product that isn’t being sold.

Currently (edit:some) prescription drugs are being advertised with mentions of side effects like death, but what’s being treated isn’t mentioned. That’s clearly not advertising the actual product being sold either, yet it’s also effective.

Care to elaborate?

Are pills being sold by pretty ads that are required to tell people about risks AND required not to tell about what the pill is for?

AND those ads WORK?

Wow

They are allowed to tell you want the pill is for, but I have seen a few commercials where I had no idea what the pill was trying to treat.

Through the various replies here, there's more than enough evidence of harm. It seems you are, at this point, merely defending your prior statement and not addressing the issue in any way. We can attempt to nullify all harmful things by redirecting them with some philosophical meta-analysis, e.g.: harm is good because it leads to growth/development/character. Ultimately, that's an easy way to abstract your way out of recognizing facts. The powerful tools available to advertisers and the persistence of those tools across devices & platforms is beyond most minds to resist. If you want to be philosophical, a better position would be to view such as enslavement because that is the logical endpoint.

> Through the various replies here, there's more than enough evidence of harm. It seems you are, at this point, merely defending your prior statement and not addressing the issue in any way.

What's the original statement you think I'm defending? It sounds like you and a few others are responding to the claim "maybe advertising is completely fine all the time", which is not what I'm saying. I'm responding to one specific argument against advertising, namely the idea that "implanted" desires are fundamentally worse/different than "true" desires.

> We can attempt to nullify all harmful things by redirecting them with some philosophical meta-analysis, e.g.: harm is good because it leads to growth/development/character. Ultimately, that's an easy way to abstract your way out of recognizing facts.

It sounds like you're saying you're against this kind of low-level philosophical argument analysis? Like, if advertising is bad, we should only ever be talking about how advertising is actually bad and never talk about anything else?

If someone said "advertising starts with an A so it's bad" and another responds "are you sure? I think some things that start with A can be good", would you say that's a bad thing to say since advertising is bad overall, so why defend it in any way?

I think if you think advertising is bad and dangerous, it's all the more important to have robust, clear arguments on why exactly it's bad.

> If you want to be philosophical, a better position would be to view such as enslavement because that is the logical endpoint.

"If you want to be philosophical, a better position would be <my position> because <it's correct>".

I guess there's no pulling you through the loop, out of your constructions. So to clarify: implanted desires are worse. This is demonstrable if we only consider the unaccounted cost of profiteering, whether it be ecological or the debasement of other humans. There is no need to transcend to philosophical inquiry because the harm imposed is so evident. You have to acknowledge that, but you chose to elevate your position in argument to the abstract where harm is only theoretical. Second, this is a somewhat absurd oversimplification of my position to create a strawman and, again, elevate your position in some moralistic superiority hierarchy built around meta thinking (all too common) The reason they killed Socrates? Mayhaps. Then you repeat yourself and again strawman my argument. No Advertising isn't bad. There are insidious techniques that the mind cannot distinguish. These are evil/wrong/bad, whatever Newspeak you prefer. Once they are known, they must be prohibited, e.g. as subliminal political messaging was banned. Lastly, it is clear you think highly of yourself and your thoughts... this is clear. However, I believe your rhetoric falls short in this instance

> I'm asking if the way a desire comes to be makes the desire good or bad, independently of whether the desire itself is good for you.

Yes, I think. For example, if I develop a desire because someone lies to me or manipulates me, then the formation of the desire itself is bad (and potentially corrupting since believing lies or being subject to manipulation can lead to further cognitive problems).

As you say desires can push you towards both good and bad things. But we value not only those good or bad things, we also value autonomy and good habits of mind. So in various ways, ill-formed desires can be bad for us.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might find Vices of the Mind by Quassim Cassam interesting. It's more about belief than desire, but I think that the issues are closely related.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/quassim-cassam-vices-of-the-mind...

Banksy sure has thin skin.

This is just another version of people thinking that because something is offensive it should be banned.

Practically speaking what would banning advertising look like? Who gets to decide what is a "worthwhile" product. Sure banning smoking adverts most people agree on as it gives you cancer, maybe alcohol too. But saying if I invent something I'm not allowed to advertise anywhere because someone has decided they want the world to look at certain way, no thanks.

At least in one iteration it'd maybe look like what Sao Paulo did [1], which to my eyes looks quite a lot better than the before pictures. No one is saying what is or isn't a worthwhile product, just don't advertise.

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

Someone one hacker news pointed this out to me before. I'm not convinced. Poor planning law allowed bill boards to be thrown up every where, I've no problem with advertising in my own country (UK), as it requires planning permission.

Also would Time Square be better with no advertising? Another extreme example for comparison.

I was in Times Square last night and yeah, for sure, it would be way better without advertising.

But we definitely should keep the guy that was wearing a mask that looked like it was from the Lion King musical, shirtless, ripped, doing bicep curls with resistance bands, blasting DMX at midnight. I'm here for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com