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Comment by devsquid | Hacker News Reader

Man, ads are great. They allow content to be targeted towards people that could potentially not afford the content and towards people that might not necessarily use the product normally. The world is already significantly divided by wealth. Assuming someone poor even has access to a service like Google, imagine if it was behind a paywall. Could they afford it? If not imagine how much of a life advantage someone wealthier has over those would can not afford it. Your idealistic 'superior' ad free world is as alienating and as segregated as Silicon Valley is...

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The whole point of ads is to convince people to buy things that they may otherwise not. That seems like the opposite of helping poor people. Also, if you are struggling financially, ad supported "content" is probably not a major concern in your life, and certainly not a solution to your problems.

"If I were starting life over again, I am inclined to think that I would go into the advertising business in preference to almost any other. The general raising of standards of modern civilization among all groups of people during the past half-century would have been impossible without that spreading of the knowledge of higher standards by means of advertising."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

That was a time before modern communications technology made it very easy for knowledge of higher standards to spread naturally, and a time of much less dangerous advertising. Advertisers today literally use brain scanners to design adverts that manipulate people most effectively. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing And advertisers have the ability to test and refine their ads far beyond what advertisers of Roosevelt's time could do, using tracking that would be considered stalker behaviour if an individual did it. If advertising reverted to 1930s level there'd be much less need to defend yourself from it.

I don't know if this quote is true but advertising in Roosevelt's times was really different. It was not a creepy tracking business tracking everything you do and traditional advertising was much less present everywhere back then.

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I'm doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. Seriously, I know the marketing people: 'There's gonna be a joke comin' up.' There's no fuckin' joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself...borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something...rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence."

- Bill Hicks

You know people once thought tobacco was good for their health too.

Of course ideally, the country would provide some form of no questions ask aid. But I live in the US and its a very 'touchy' subject. So I must always seek a solution that embraces corporatocracy, believe me I am very much for tax supported wealth redistribution. It has been shown to be highly successful, but its basically a sin in my country.

A/ws even people struggling financially like to relax and enjoy 'content', should this just be a privilege of the wealthy? Without ads it seems like it would be even more so. As for being a solution to their problems, its not ads, but the type of services ads can support. Using a Search Engine as an example again, they are a way to educate and empower oneself. I used a search engine to teach myself programming and I now am a developer. While of course most poor people could never dream of doing such a thing, for numerous reasons. Making content only accessable behind a pay wall acts to strength someone's,without means, ability to compete in the modern world.

> The whole point of ads is to convince people to buy things that they may otherwise not.

Is it? Or is it to make people aware of product existing? It's a subtle difference.

I don't own a TV anymore, but when I'm visiting relatives, I do watch it a bit on a rare occasion.

My first impression is that every show is hopelessly interspersed with frequent commercials. I don't understand why they put up with it. I am the master of my attention span, not the advertisers or the broadcaster. If I'm too frequently interrupted, I lose interest and find something else to do. Traditional TV has become a non-option to me, not the least because I don't want to arrange my life after the TV scheme.

My second impression is.. why the hell are they spamming me with their commercials? Yes, I DO know about the f* product, I already DO have a favorite brand, and a commercial is not going to make me switch.

But sometimes, extremely rarely, I do learn about a new product (through any kind of ad -- TV or web) that may interest me and then I look for more information or just buy it to test it if it's something cheap (like, e.g., a new coke edition).

Yea do you watch the show House of Cards? I find it to be very entertaining and I highly recommend it, however it's native ads fucking kill it for me sometimes. I kinda hate native ads with a passion lol... But they are proven to be highly effective. However they serve to harm the content and provide misinformation. grrrr

I gave up on cable TV 8 years ago. Before that I would always mute commercials, I despise my attention being broken to sell me stuff I don't want. When we had company they would think it was odd at first but then realize how awesome it was to not have an announcer screaming about dirt, cars and fast-food. I have a serious problem now when going to someone's home and they don't mute commercials, but instead try to talk louder over them.

Side note, my wife lost 35 pounds after ditching cable. She noticed her cravings for fast-food and pizza subsided when she wasn't being bombarded with food adverts all day long. TV commercials are designed to tickle your insecurities and then sell you stuff to lessen those insecurities. That was how we were taught in advertising school. Being aware of the tricks still doesn't always work at lessening their impact.

Poor people aren't robots. They can and do see adverts for things that they don't then buy.

Additionally ad targeting means they might see adverts for things they could afford and that's t be relevant to their life instead of things meant for rich westerners.

The whole mental confusion between advertising and privacy in the technical and media community is really irritating. What's the alternative to advertising? Direct payments. And how do you do those? Credit cards. And what do credit cards have on them? Your legal name and your physical address. And how do they work? You provide those details to the seller.

Good luck using Tor or even incognito mode on a an without adverts.

> Poor people aren't robots. They can and do see adverts for things that they don't then buy.

Ah, the grand delusion of advertisers put out again. Sure, people aren't robots, but if ads couldn't influence their behaviour no one would pay for them and there wouldn't be any.

Its definitely true ads are highly effective and one must admit highly effective on oneself as well. Look at Microsofts recent resurgence, their marketing budget has begun to rival that of Samsung and anecdotally I see their ads everywhere. However ads are not the end all. There are many deciding factors why someone buys a product outside of purely ads, but again ads are a very strong driving force. I don't think internet ads are nearly as effective at 'mind-influencing'(not being sarcastic) as the traditional mediums. I actually click on ads frequently on the web, because I see a product that might interest me. For example, I see an ad for Linode and it presents me a compelling price point so I go and investigate it. hmm I am not entirely sure what I set out to say in this response, but I don't think the point that ads are what keeps people poor is very accurate. I believe a lack of access to resources particularly relating to education and opportunity are what keep poor people poor.

In my world, Microsoft started to turn hate into, "I will take a second look at what you are offering--maybe--if I'm in a good mood." Their advertising is still just noise, and a huge waste of money in my world.

I started to turn when they offerd some products for free.(I still don't use the products they offered, but it was a nice gesture.) The best Ad I heard was on here. A guy commented, 'I like my Surface. I use it to take notes in class.' I started to think about the possibilities this devise could offer over Apple's products.

I still have some healing to do though--I was in Costco today and looked at a Surface, but just pushed one key and walked away. Do a few more acts of kindness Microsoft, and get that Surface price as low as possible; I will seriously think about giving you money again or at least push a few more keys. I don't think I will ever pay for your OS though--just on principle. As to ads, I think Microsoft is wasting money. Manufacture good hardware, and keep giving away software--people will notice.

You have barely used their hardware, but you believe it to be good hardware. Seems like effective ads to me. Have you actually used the device? Its kb is terrible and its touchpad is a joke. MS natives ads have dominated news feeds for the last few months. A/ws these points are meaningless. Just observing trends.

MS paid amd gave a ton of Surfaces to the NFL to use on TV... They were used as iPad stands for the first week , until MS clarified the contract requirements.

It pretty amusing to see pro advertisement people argue that ads aren't predatory because they're not ACTUALLY effective you see..

That would truly be a foolish argument to make. However the argument I am making is, is ad supported content is one of the few monetary schemes which allows you to produce a product that allows for poorer people to part of the audience.

They are still paying for it with every product they buy because prices include the ad budgets. At best you could argue that poorer people are subsidized by richer people because they buy more and therefore pay for a larger share of the ad budget but ads certainly don't make stuff free for poorer people. Whether they would be better off with no advertising at all, i.e. if they still pay a larger share of the ad budgets than what the ad supported stuff they consume is worth, I can not tell.

Your argument supposes that you know the surplus earned by brands segmented by user wealth group (how much money users give to brands after using the service - how much they would without)

That's a strawman. (And wow, am I surprised to be able to say that to anyone on HN).

What's actually argued is advertisements aren't 100% effective, in that they can't force you to purchase a product as a mind-controller.

Ads let you know a product exists, may convince you that it's worthwhile or better than competitors, and offer reminders to keep the idea of the product on your mind. However, that's all the same things a carefully crafted in person sales-pitch could do, and sales pitches aren't mind-control even though they are far far more effective than any number of internet banner ads can be.

You're arguing with a straw man. I never said ads don't influence behaviour. Obviously they do. My point is they don't exert the kind of scary mind control power that some people like to pretend they do - adverts increase sales, but so does having a shop window with your goods on display, so does putting your products in specialised parts catalogues, whatever. There are lots of things you can do to increase sales and which can count as marketing of some kind.

My point is to claim poor people are exploited by advertising is nuts. It's the other way around. Advertising is why poor people can have exactly the same gmail account with all the same features as a rich guy can. Nuke advertising and you evict poor people into a ghetto web. These people at Mozilla don't seem to be thinking these things through at all and that's a problem ..... there was a time that I had a lot of technical respect for Mozilla and Firefox, but it seems every time I read about the projects these days they're doing something that I find to be kind of dumb.

Yes, the purpose of ads is to convince people to buy things that they otherwise may not. But shouldnt that be a positive thing, more often than not? Traditional reasoning would suggest that someone buys something because it improves their lives, so selling it to them is a positive act.

I had a startup that made PowerPoint collaboration software, and we advertised on Google for terms like "work on presentation at the same time" and "PowerPoint collaboration." We got almost all of our users from Google, and most of these users were thrilled to find our software which they wouldn't have been able to find without targeted ads.

I agree, advertising is very important for the web. I think adblock is a step too far. If companies cannot generate revenue through advertising then they will need to start charging for their products which would be a negative for most people.

I would like to see Mozilla take the lead on bad advertising. Ads which cripple browser performance and page load speeds. These ads would then be automatically blocked by the browser. It would be similar to when apple decided to disallow flash on ios.

Just as apple encouraged a move away from flash, this would encourage content providers and advertising companies to create lighter, less intrusive ads.

Basically it would look at blocking ads which are known to track, ads which take a long time to serve, ads which prevent the page from loading till the page loaded (this might be difficult) and full ad overlays (again, could be difficult to identify)

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need." -Tyler Durden

Or, as I drummed into my kids heads, "If they have to advertise it, it is almost certainly not good for you."

Why not? The world is not wholly evil. I know plenty of ads which accurately demonstrate what is good about a product. It seems like you should teach them, "Learn to think for yourself, even if someone says something or believes in something it is not inherently true." But that is a scary thing to teach a child, as an effective teaching of such would invariably lead to them thinking differently than you.

Oh, we certainly tried to teach our kids to think for themselves, too. I believe we were moderately successful. They frequently disagree with me on a whole range of stuff, and nobody finds it scary or threatening.

Nevertheless, I do not believe that any good whatsoever comes from advertising. It is all, without exception, an attempt to propagandize. If nothing else, the underlying agenda is, "Consume, comsume, consume! You don't live up to <impossible image>. You're inadequate and hopeless until you buy <stuff>." Not a healthy message.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/seat-belt-30th-annivers...

http://www.sussexsaferroads.gov.uk/info/safer-for-drivers/se...

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insi...

Ah quote from a movie made by privileged ppl for angsty privileged ppl to think they are smarter than the other ppl in their society. A guaranteed formula for success. :) A word of advice quotes without arguments do not truly mean anything, particularly quotes from box office successes. Watch out I might start quoting Rihanna or Eminem at you! ;D

However addressing the quote directly. If Tyler Durden truly had that simplistic of a view of modern human life, than he sadly lacked any empathy for his modern man. As the character in the film suffered from some form of Bi Polarism that would make sense. Dealing with his ego over shadowed his ability for him to comprehend others. Didn't really like the film tbh.

You didn't address the quote directly. You launch an ad hominem attack at the film creators (privileged ppl), the film viewers (angsty privileged ppl), and finally you criticize the Tyler Durden character. Your post is completely devoid of substantive criticism. Does advertising not have us chasing cars and clothes? Does it not influence us to buy things we previously didn't know existed? You won't say.

If there are specific words or phrases in the quote you disagree with, point them out. If you have compelling, relevant quotes from Rihanna or Eminem, feel free to share them and add to the discussion.

To address the quote directly, I don't see how advertising has us working jobs we hate (unless you work for an ad agency and don't enjoy it).

Who pays for the content? Noone, ads make it free!

Who pays for the ads? Companies.

Who pays the companies? The customers.

When I check out at the grocery store, I pay for all the ads of the store, the suppliers, the factories and all the tools and services they use.

If I could deduct all these fees for all my purchases, I would gladly distribute that money directly among content providers of my choice. It would likely be shocking to learn how many google searches that would pay for.

The point is the ads provide "liquidity". By viewing the ads on their site, you're doing basically exactly what you said except you don't need to subscribe to 40+ different sites.

I get really frustrated by paywall sites, even those I have subscriptions to (journals) when I need to enter my credentials. People complain ads are disruptive while looking for information, I find the process of logging in or not being able to access something I want because I need to get a subscription a lot more disruptive.

Also - a side effect of paying for every site you go to is selectivity. You'll end up locking yourself into a bubble. I'd only be willing to pay for more conservative news sources since that's the majority of what I read/enjoy. It's healthy for me to get alternative perspectives from sources like The Guardian or I'll never challenge my own opinions.

  tracking != advertising

Clearly, but the Blog post is also about ads.

advertising hosted on the same domain as the website might not track you beyond the domain itself. But since most websites share common ad networks those ad networks can effectively track you while showing their ads.

How would they do that without the ability to use the same cookie? The only way I can think of is to track you by ip address.

Well, for one, they could fingerprint your browser: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Is that really done to any real extent? The majority of users will have a standard configuration anyway.

Yes and no. In my tests with live traffic (fingerprint,ip) tuple was as good as standard tracking cookie. Sometimes even better because I could match "incognito" modes as well. This was however only for desktop browsers. Mobile has much higher conformity and yielded mostly false positives.

YMMV of course but for my purposes it was not worth it.

I imagine ipv6 would drastically reduce the chance of false positives for collisions.

Yes and No. The client could hop over a bunch of ip6-addresses, since there would be an abundance of them.

Used to work in paywalls (think New Yorker), we used both Supercookies and Fingerprinting.

Most good paywalls that support metering will now use some kind of fingerprinting at a minimum.

Follow the link if you haven't already. You'd be surprised how unique the "standard configuration" is. For example, my desktop PC with a fresh install of Firefox is unique among the data that site has collected.

by IP address may be good enough per session and each session could be tied to per more persistent IDs in cooperation with the sites embedding the ads, e.g. via the javascript loading some parts of the ads. So even if you block cookies to the ad network's domain they could still store cookies on any site that embeds their JS directly.

They demand attention I don't want to give. They track my browsing and take information about me without my consent. They try to run code on my computer without even asking permission.

No thankyou.

They obtained your permission to run code when you directed your web browser to load the page.

And they lost my permission when I blocked the ad URL.

Of course they didn't. I requested a document from them, they obligingly sent it. It's entirely up to me how (or even if) I render I it.

How much would a Google search cost me if it wasn't ad supported?

Some numbers from 2009 say 1.18 cents/search:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110201052634/http://billwarner...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110938

Yea but the question is impossible to answer. Google would have had to balance many differ factors, both of which would have changed as they grew larger.

If google started taking money for searching they would quickly be marginalized.

How exactly? I thought we are assuming that advertising would become worthless if everyone was blocking the ads...

Consider alternatives such as DDG or YaCy and their cost structures.

The alternative need not replicate all of Google's infrastructure.

Ads allow for a form of market segmentation that no one has been able to do so far. Offering a free version with ads and a premium version without ads is just about as far as we have gone so far.

A working advertisement market doesn't require to have advertisements forced onto everyone they can. People can opt-in by members ship cards, news letters, and subscriptions, which that mean people who receive it has a positive association rather than negative one. At that point an ad blocker do not serve any purpose, as users would turn them off.

You're trying too hard.

Before Google the Internet was more useful. Smaller and more content focused. I'd gladly go back to hotbot or whatever to get away from Google and their ilk.

A combination of disconnect, Adblock pro, and self destructing cookies gets me there.

I am trying to hard?

What, no one has ever criticized you for overblown rhetoric?

I feel like I present a pretty sound argument. This is done via rhetoric of course, but what isn't. In what way is it overblown? I am not taking it to an extreme, I am actually pointing out the extreme the blog poster has taken.

"Before Google the Internet was more useful" Wow, could not disagree more. It's order of magnitudes easier for me to find a good answer for virtually any question. Not to mention how much better gmail is than mail clients of old. Or google maps, my lord how it has simplified my life.

Google isn't solely responsible for this, but them and other ad-financed companies played a crucial part in building the web as we know it to day. And for me, and everyone I've ever met, the web is a lot more useful today than 15 year ago.

I don't find Google results to be noticeably different from other search engines. For many types of questions wolframalpha is a much better option.

"It's order of magnitudes easier for me to find a good answer for virtually any question"

And as a result your ability to retain the knowledge fades. You outsource your memory and ability to think at your own peril, my friend.

I'm not sure how you can have this opinion unless you've only ever used google search as a basic calculator or spell-checker.

The way I see it, the Internet has had three major business models:

1. Academia. Money is obtained from teaching and grants, which requires researchers, which requires publications, which can be made on the Internet.

2. Ads. Content and services attract users, ad networks pay for pixel space / clicks / views.

3. Payments. Users pay for content and services directly. They are otherwise in the deep web.

There are combinations (such as Premium, which is a mix of Ads and Payments), and marginal other models (such as donations, which are typically for free content and (yet rarer) services).

Considering I am running a successful donation-supported service, I can tell you it does not pay the bills. It merely sustains itself. Projects such as app.net show that even payment-based projects can be challenging.

I remember very well the Internet before Google. It was a cesspool of junk, with banner ads being very common. You must have been living in a different world back then.

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