You want to use any of those things, you’ll have to pay their toll booth, figuratively or literally.
You want to use any of those things, you’ll have to pay their toll booth, figuratively or literally.
Except for marketers! I don't think there's a less sympathetic category of technologists, save for maybe CSAM peddlers.
You're upset that you can't get "visibility" into whether the bullshit ad you tried to ram down my throat landed on target? You're worried that I'm a dormant user and my phone will silently delete the spam you sent to try to hook me back into engaging with whatever worthless product you're hawking?
World's tiniest violin, buddy. Boo fucking hoo. Your last paragraph says the "senders" (read: spammers) who make it through the next decade intact will be, to lightly paraphrase, the ones who send messages the recipients actually wanted. You say that like it's a bad thing!
The computer is in my life because it is a tool that does the things I want. It is not an open mic for marketing sleazebags to try to sell me shit. May every single one of your attempts to invade my life and hijack my attention be flushed swiftly down the toilet.
> Almost like there are aligned interests there rather than a purely adversarial relationship.
You might very well be the exception, but for something like 99% of marketing content that reaches me, our interests aren't aligned. First of all, they want to generate "needs" where there weren't any before and probably shouldn't be. A pizza ad produces the wish for unhealthy food. A fashion ad produces the wish for new clothes (even though I have enough) and probably even changes the societal dynamics of individual expression and personal style to be consumption oriented.
Second, even if I have a legitimate need for a solution, they still want me to buy their product, consume their media, give my attention to them. I, on the other hand, want to be informed by a neutral third party about the pros and cons of some product. Sure you can say "but unhappy customers are bad for us", but there are actually very few niches, where this signal is powerful enough to align incentives, because information and power asymmetry limit the customers understanding of product quality and their leverage to correct harmful market dynamics.