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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

Is it just twitter or in other places too?

Here in slovenia, the "real world" ad space (public ad displays, posters, jumbo posters,...), which was once full of ads for random commercial stuff (supermarkets, cars, fashion brands...) is now getting filled with ads for blood donations (nationalized healthcare, so not a private clinic), theatre and drama stuff (again, state financed) and even some leftover anti-firecracker 'ads' still left on since the time before the new year. There are still a lot of purely commercial ads, but the ratio is visibly shifting, as if companies are running out of marketing budgets, or don't want to advertise during the "depressive" months (people spent money for presents in december and are not spending so much now).

Could be anecdotal and just something happening locally though.

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I was subscribed to TIME magazine around 2008, and it was astonishing to see whole issues with hardly any ads. I think it is as you said: When money is tight, it is comparatively easy to cut marketing spending for some time (easier than lay-offs, for example) and in addition to that, marketing might be less effective when people try to figure out how to cut their spending.

Most marketing experts agree that cutting spend during a downturn is one of the worst things you can do — typically space is going much cheaper than in the boom times, so it gives brands a chance to acquire mindshare / brand recall cheaply. On the other hand, for brands that do cut spend, the drop off is swift, and costs a lot to recover when the economy picks up again. Still, cutting in a downturn is not at all uncommon.

Who looks out a year ahead? Most people currently making the decisions in a role won’t be there in a year or two.

Not to be cynical, but of course they would say that, their livelihood depends on it.

Maybe they would, but it also has the benefit of being true — and backed by empirical research.

Let's see it then.

Advertising spend is likely down in general. The interesting thing here is that big brands are pulling out entirely. I can assure you that Coca Cola is still advertising, but they’re not doing it on twitter anymore.

Maybe Elon doesn't want to sell sugar water but rather change the world?

I’m not sure that ruining a second-tier social network counts as changing the world. Well, I suppose making the world marginally more irritating is a change of sorts.

How could that not be anecdotal and local in this context?

I mean seriously...I don't even know what you try to say here. The topic is some internet product living of ad money and they're losing it. How is your "real world" ad space in Slovenia even remotely related to what's happening at Twitter?

I was saying that (atleast here, what i've personally seen and assumed), companies seem to be reducing their spending budgets for ads in general, even the ones targeting offline people with offline ads (i use and adblock online, so I don't see the ads at all), so I was wondering if this is a trend that's happening on twitter too (generally much lower budgets for marketing, meaning less ads in general everywhere, including twitter), or if my assuption is wrong, companies are still spending the same huge amounts for ads, just not on twitter anymore.

Yeah, take a look at snap's performance over the last year. That's a very relevant similar product, and it's the same.

"But Elon's the devil and look how twitter is ruined" is a great headline for people who hate him, but it's not really accurate.

I don't think Elon is the devil (the devil is evil by necessity, and therefore lacks the agency required for blame).

The right comparison here is Twitter versus other social media companies: they've all probably taken a hit, but Twitter's hit appears to be worse. One then has to explain why that is.

> the devil is evil by necessity

That's the first time I read this one. Isn't the devil "fallen" in some way, or rejecting/splitting from heaven in most cultures?

There are different characterizations of the devil in different cultures and faith: a "fallen angel" is a common one, and "personification of evil" is another common one. My interpretation of the latter is that you can't really "personify" evil unless you're necessarily evil, which in turn precludes the possibility of any agency.

I see the "personification" as the addition of agency. In fact I would say the the exact point of personifying evil is so you can blame it. Turning around and saying you can't blame it because we personified it seems a bit backwards to me, as if what you are really objecting to is the personification in the first place.

In what sense can we blame the devil? Isn't that a bit like blaming rain for being wet?

Put another way: the defining aspect of the devil is evil; the devil can't not be evil, because to be the devil is to be evil. This is effectively a stripping of autonomy: if you can't not be something, there's no meaningful sense in which you can blamed for being that thing.

But that applies to everything you choose to define after what it does. By the same logic, I shouldn't deplore that gangs are engaging in violent activity, because we define a gang as a group that commits violent activities. A gang is violent by necessity, or it would be a regular group.

The point was about autonomy: you can argue about the necessary definition of a gang, but a gang is filled with human beings making decisions as rational agents. The devil, as characterized, is incapable of making the sorts of decisions that humans make (such as whether they should join a violent gang).

In other words: there's no contradiction in deploring a violent gang, because the actual object is a product of autonomous behavior; the gang could always cease to exist if its members chose to behave better. On the other hand, deploring the devil is a contradiction in terms: what else would the devil be but the devil?

Why couldn't the devil cease the be the devil, like a gang ('s members) can cease to be a gang? Of course he wouldn't be the devil anymore, but that's fine by me.

Just like the rain can stop. It doesn't stop being wet, the concept is not redefined, it just ceases being there.

My point is that you are adding that characterization onto the concept, it does not logically follow from our definition of the concept, "the devil is the personification of evil", that it is evil by necessity. It might be that it is a being incapable to stop (no way for me to disprove it, unless someone can meet him; you can certainly write the story that way, or you can write it another way, with fallen angels or a Santa Clause) but it is perfectly imaginable that it could. Of course, it would stop being the devil as to the common definition. But nothing in the definition of the concept says that it doesn't have the agency to stop.

Veering entirely off topic, but between the two fictional characters of god and Satan, god is far more evil: deaths attributable to god in the bible - 2,000,000+; deaths attributable to Satan in the bible - 10. And don’t forget all the women and children god sanctioned in to bondage. Satan was also apparently the talking snake that encouraged Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, freeing humanity from the mental stupor god had endowed us with. Satan seems a rather decent fellow compared to god, and Elon seems much more like the petty, vindictive, thin-skinned god than the calculating Satan. But I digress.

Edit: spelling

Old or New Testament?

This take is a relatively new and common one that arises from internalizing theology from ‘The Simpsons’, God is actually not considered a being in Christianity: https://thecatholicspirit.com/featured/father-barron-with-fa...

The root word for devil is ~~ the spirit of division. Ie human tendency to divide, form tribes, and kill each other.

It’s not all _that_ new; in particular the idea that Old Testament God is evil has been a recurrent form of Christian heresy basically since Christianity was invented (arguably _before_ it was invented; Marcionism was _really_ early). Often these heresies have the God who sent Jesus as a separate entity.

The idea that Satan is the good God is probably more recent, granted.

Yeah, the serpent always seemed to me reminiscent of Prometheus.

Except Satan tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was the catalyst to introduce original sin and death into the world to begin with, so technically Satan's body count is the sum of all humanity. Except Enoch and Elijah and maybe Moses, for some reason.

I mean, the whole fable is a logical disaster. If you really believe the story then death is a great thing because you get eternal life in heaven; under the biblical schematic death is effectively irrelevant because you persist forever regardless. So eating of the tree was a good thing, really, because heaven is the best place ever and if you could not die you could not get to heaven. Therefore, Satan is really the first savior.

Well yes, the whole thing is ridiculous. I'm just saying that if your metric for good and evil is body count, the entity who basically tricked humans into dying to begin with still comes off worse.

Also (according to Christian doctrine,) the default destination for human souls is Hell, not Heaven, because original sin is immutable. The vast, vast majority of humanity will wind up burning in Hell for eternity, including many Christians.

Again, except for a few people God just decided to let in because he liked them.

But who created Satan, and the forbidden fruit? If Satan is responsible for the later consequences of his earlier actions, then surely we should apply the standard equally?

My understanding is that the Christian god is also omnifacient, meaning that he's also to blame for any deaths attributable to the devil (being the creator of the devil and all).

Edit: Except, of course, in the sense that the Christian god is also said to be omnibenevolent. It's left to the reader to determine how these qualities consistently combine.

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