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Comment by RHSeeger | Hacker News Reader

With the caveat that I _don't_ have any particular insights into the solving the problem...

> I think they understand the situation and insights better than anyone.

> The current set of incentives and technology are why we are here.

> If there is a good alternative, they are also the ones likely to know it.

This reads a lot like "lets get the drunk drivers together to figure out how to make the roads safer". I mean, sure, they may have more knowledge about the causes.. but they've also made it very clear they don't care about making things better.

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I think it's a big assumption assume an entire industry of professionals doesn't want to make things better. It's obvious they have multiple interests pulling at them from different sides. I'm sure quite often they have to make a compromised decision because the CEO wants something extremely stupid or invasive.

> I think it's a big assumption assume an entire industry of professionals doesn't want to make things better.

The industry has been making it very clear and overt for years now that what they consider "making things better" is directly opposite of what normal people consider "making things better".

The marketing industry only makes money by making things worse for us all. They are concerned, though, with finding out exactly how much worse things have to be before it starts interfering with their income streams.

>an entire industry of professionals doesn't want to make things better

Their industry is marketing. That's their profession. If they want to make it better, they should quit. They do not quit, ergo, they do not want to make it better.

I think that is a pretty simple caricature of how people operate. People have multiple competing desires and various incentives. Various definitions of better, which may not align with your own.

Given a offer of same pay and the ability to use the same skills, I think people would choose to to make things better instead of worse. That means they would like to make it better.

You are making a different absolutists claim, that any desire to make things better doesn't count if someone wont sacrifice everything for it.

This is by its nature a comparison, and not a statement about one things.

Keep in mind that this all in question of if people in marketing might have knowledge or insight about changes in advertising.

This is a very hostile, almost childish view. Online ads make it possible for many services to be essentially free or even possible in the first place.. I and many others gladly accept being shown ads in return for something we desire. Personalization is great too, It might be as well relevant to me. There is nothing inherently bad in this situation. I've been watching youtube long before I had any money to spare on it.

This is a very hostile, almost childish view. In a great many cases (but not all) the free service with online ads outcompetes one that is provided without any income whatsoever, with someone's voluntary spare resources. By displacing the better service, the one with ads makes the world worse, and if it couldn't exist, the world would be better.

How do you think they outcompete the superior service? Why do consumers pick the add laden YouTube over add free options?

YouTube is not one of them. Think of recipe sites.

I agree that recipe sites are a dumpster fire.

Im not sure that I directly attribute that to advertising itself, as much as upstream SEO choices.

I dont mind at all if a recipe includes commission links or ads. I hate that the optimal SEO format is to waste as much of the readers time as possible.

That said, I also see your point in how SE results have an incentive to bury valid non-commercial results.

Ad-based online apps are dying? Content providers are fleeing to Patron etc because they actually see any of the money that way.

Sure, they may or may not care. However, if you care, talking to them would be the best place to start.

There is a big difference between seeking the knowledge where it exists, and expecting the subject matter experts to solve the problem. This is doubly true when it is something you perceive as a problem and not them.

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