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posted by martyb on Sunday July 19 2015, @09:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the averse-to-adverts dept.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation carries a piece of analysis/commentary on the societal ethics of advertising. I found it fascinating by the depth of arguments (true, there is a bias, but it's likely that most of us soylents share it); do take your time to read it in full, my attempts to summarize it below is bound to fail:

Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted.

Two problems result from this. The solution to both requires legal recognition of the property rights of human beings over our attention.

First, advertising imposes costs on individuals without permission or compensation. It extracts our precious attention and emits toxic by-products, such as the sale of our personal information to dodgy third parties.

Second, you may have noticed that the world's fisheries are not in great shape. They are a standard example for explaining the theoretical concept of a tragedy of the commons, where rational maximising behaviour by individual harvesters leads to the unsustainable overexploitation of a resource.

A classic market failure

The advertising industry consists of the buying and selling of your attention between third parties without your consent. That means that the cost of producing the good — access to your attention — doesn't reflect its full social cost.

...Since advertisers pay less to access your attention than your attention is worth to you, an excessive (inefficient) amount of advertising is produced.

...It's a classic case of market failure. The problem has the same basic structure as the overfishing of the seas or global warming. In economics language, people's attention is a common good.

Why now?

First, as we have become more wealthy our consumption decisions have become more valuable...

Second, a shift in social norms has made it more acceptable to sell other people's attention.... Anyone in a position to access our attention, like the managers of pubs or hockey arenas, will be approached by multiple companies offering to pay a fee to install their advertising screens, banners, or cookies...

Thirdly, technology has made advertising even more intrusive. Not only is it now possible to print advertisements on grocery store eggs and to put digital displays above pub urinals.... Every moment we spend on the internet or with our smart phones is being captured, repackaged and sold to advertisers multiple times...

Counter-counter arguments: How economists defend advertising and why it isn't enough

  1. The direct value of advertising First is that advertising gives consumers valuable information about the sellers and prices of products they want to buy. The favoured example here is the classified ads section in newspapers.... Perhaps it was the case in 1961 that consumers struggled to find such information for themselves. But it is hard to see how this can still be the case in the internet age...

    Advertising can be used to reduce competition: high spending by rich established players drowns out information from smaller newer competitors and thus creates an entry barrier, converting markets to oligopolies...

    Second is the counter-intuitive claim that brands communicate their trustworthiness by their conspicuous expenditure on advertising not by what it actually says....[but]Companies wanting to demonstrate their confidence in their products don't have to waste so much of our time to do so. There are all sorts of more constructive ways of spending money conspicuously.

    Third, is the social status that advertising can confer on a product and its consumption. What's the point of buying a Rolex or Mercedes unless the people around you know that it is expensive and are able to appreciate how rich and successful you must be? The business logic here is sound, but not the moral logic.

  2. Financing public goodsAdvertising is the financial model for many pure public goods like terrestrial television and radio, as well as club goods like newspapers, Google's search/email and Facebook... Advertising provides an alternative revenue source that makes it possible to profitably provide such services universally at the marginal cost of production — that is, zero.

    There are alternatives. If these things are so valuable to society there is a case for supporting them from with taxes — grants, license fees (many national broadcasters) or payments for ratings. This is a well-established system for funding public and club goods...

    Alternative models, like that of Wikipedia, are sometimes possible and are more socially — that is, economically — efficient. Wikipedia's value to consumers is in the hundreds of billions of dollars while its annual operating costs are only $25 million...
      Obviously Wikipedia's operating costs are so low, like Mozilla's, because of its volunteer labour force. But that fact just makes one wonder why we couldn't have a "democratic" Facebook too, and whether that would not be superior from a social welfare perspective to the current "farming model" of extracting maximum value from its members-cum-livestock.

The right to preserve our attention

Advertising is a valuable commercial opportunity for businesses with access to consumers' attention, or their personal information. For the companies that buy and sell our attention it is — as all voluntary transactions must be — a win-win. But advertising lacks the free market efficiency that is claimed for it. Advertising is made artificially cheap, like the output of a coal burning power station, because the price at which it is sold doesn't reflect its negative effects on third parties — us.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by gznork26 on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:15PM

    by gznork26 (1159) on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:15PM (#211183) Homepage Journal

    Now that it's been proven that we can translate brain states into what the person was thinking, to the point of controlling devices and even controlling another person's limb, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine tech that can put thoughts into our heads. That's been done for a long time in SF, after all. So imagine having advertising beamed into people's brains, advertising that you can't opt out of because you have no clue how to go about doing that. That's the idea at the core of a short story called "Spokesman". I write these things to explore the implications, but it's still pretty unnerving to see how close we're getting. Have a read...

    http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/short-story-spokesmen/ [wordpress.com]

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by VortexCortex on Monday July 20 2015, @01:18AM

      by VortexCortex (4067) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:18AM (#211237)

      Oh dear, it seems I'm obliged to don the storytime tinfoil and tell you a tale of yesteryear.

      Once upon a time, in the mid 1970's, a spinoff from the allegedly defunct MKULTRA project discovered the Microwave Auditory Effect. [wikipedia.org] This is a method for remotely producing sound inside someone's head, whether they want to hear voices or not. Other methods were discovered of manipulating minds with directed energy weapons. [wired.com] These were utilized against the public in order to try driving people crazy via inducing irrational emotions, causing confusion, anxiety, and invoking paranoia as part of COINTELPRO. [wikipedia.org] During this time a disinformation campaign was created to conflate activists and conspiracy theorists who protected themselves from attack as insane. As successful as the media meme was, being called a "Tinfoil Hat Conspiracy Theorist" did not reduce the effectiveness of said headgear. As the energy weaponry became more common knowledge the Army was cleared to use some forms as crowd control via "pain rays" that heat people with microwaves. [youtube.com] As the federal agencies began using the tech to harass people more often the police took an interest and have been equipping themselves and their jails with energy weapons. [youtube.com] Other energy weapons for mind control could also be mounted on such platforms with minimal modification and some contractors began prototyping this psychological weaponry. [wired.com] However, the projects went dark and the Army removed the V2K (voice to skull) page it once had publicly available. [wired.com]

      Interestingly enough, one of the original applications of the voice-to-skull microwave technology would be to have a "hypnotist" whisper subliminal thoughts into a target's head. This was echoed again in the article about screaming microwave crowd deterrents when it was suggested that instead of a hypnotist they could employ an advertisement agency and rather than enemy soldiers they could target ordinary consumers by whispering subliminal purchasing suggestions into their minds instead of invoking horrific psychological terrors (how one tells the difference is beyond me).

      Dr. Sadovnik also makes the intriguing suggestion that, instead of being used at high power to create an intolerable noise, it might be used at low power to produce a whisper that was too quiet to perceive consciously but might be able to subconsciously influence someone. The directional beam could be used for targeted messages, such as in-store promotions. Sadovnik even suggests subliminal advertising, beaming information that is not consciously heard ...

      Now, just as I was once considered insane for suggesting that the government was spying on all communications under the Carnivore [wikipedia.org] and ECHELON programs decades before Snowden's PRISM leaks, I am still considered quite crazy for suggesting that Mind Control rays are very real -- "Mad as a Tinfoil Hatter", you might say. I've catalogued much evidence first hand of the use of even more advanced energy weaponry secretly deployed against citizens, but you'll have to wait for someone else to go public to hear about it (or until the state foolishly disappears me and one of my deadman's switches leaks the keys to my insurance files).

      And that, gznork26, is how Tinfoil Hats were born.

      • (Score: 1) by gznork26 on Monday July 20 2015, @01:28AM

        by gznork26 (1159) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:28AM (#211242) Homepage Journal

        Thanks for taking that next step for me. I'd read about a lot of that stuff already. Getting people to take the first timid step out of 'accepted reality' can be the hardest, and trickiest part of waking them up to what's really going on. Tell them too much all at once and a lot of people throw up their 'shields' and turn you off entirely.

      • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday July 20 2015, @03:20AM

        by captain normal (2205) on Monday July 20 2015, @03:20AM (#211264)

        Didn't you ever hear of tin foil hats? like a Faraday cage, it can block all kinds of radiation.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
      • (Score: 2) by penguinoid on Monday July 20 2015, @04:55AM

        by penguinoid (5331) on Monday July 20 2015, @04:55AM (#211287)

        You're the first real live tin foil hat conspiracy theorist that I've had contact with.

        To be honest, the non-tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists sound crazier -- it seems that the government really can influence your emotions and get a voice in your head using EM waves. Although if I was worried about that I think I'd go with an EM field strength detector/recorder, as the hats aren't in style anymore.

        --
        RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Monday July 20 2015, @11:39AM

        by wantkitteh (3362) on Monday July 20 2015, @11:39AM (#211374) Homepage Journal

        Damnit, how can I mod this informative AND funny at the same time?

      • (Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Monday July 20 2015, @12:57PM

        by dr_barnowl (1568) on Monday July 20 2015, @12:57PM (#211386)

        I do wonder if the Hum [wikipedia.org] is actually a psych-ops programme sometimes - for those affected it certainly is debilitating to one degree or another.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @09:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @09:51AM (#212607)

      Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"

      Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:21PM (#211187)

    Applied ethics is how some logicians make their money at research institutions. At my local the consensus is very strong that non-solicited advertising is unethical behavior akin to stopping someone on the street and making them look or listen to you (depending on the medium we are talking about).

    Solicited advertising such as purchasing a magazine or going to a website on backpacking supplies containing advertisements for backpacking gear and only backpacking gear is just fine.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:33PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:33PM (#211191) Homepage

      The most poisonous cunt I ever dated majored in medical ethics.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @01:27AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @01:27AM (#211241)

        I'm sure she misses you too.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @05:23AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @05:23AM (#211293)

          And for the same reason.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @03:22AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @03:22AM (#211265)

        I can understand that. Medical ethics is a nexus between the incredibly intelligent, those that deal with things that matter but do not objectively exist (ethics, morals, intrinsic values), and the egotastic world of healthcare. A mix that could readily attract intelligent, egobound people obsessed with both conviction and applying their own subjective thoughts as facts others should conform to.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Monday July 20 2015, @03:49AM

      by Francis (5544) on Monday July 20 2015, @03:49AM (#211273)

      The more I read up on willpower and decision making, the more convinced I am that we need rules against most forms of advertising.

      You may not fall for one particular ad, but if you're subjected to enough of them across the course of a day or a week, you'll eventually run low on willpower and buy the product. Even if you don't buy the product, the willpower you're using to avoid buying things that they're tempting you to buy is a resource that you have a right to exploit for yourself.

      One thing I've learned is that when I get a high pressure sales pitch in my inbox to go to the bottom and read the price first. In most cases I'll then stop reading, but if the price is within my budget, I might go through and read the rest of the email. It makes it a lot easier for me to say no than if I were to read the conventional way from the top down. But, usually I refuse to buy thing just because they think they need a high pressure sales pitch. If they need to pressure me into buying it, it's not likely to be a good deal for me.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday July 20 2015, @07:41AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Monday July 20 2015, @07:41AM (#211321) Journal

        Even if you don't buy the product, the willpower you're using to avoid buying things that they're tempting you to buy is a resource that you have a right to exploit for yourself.

        So true. Right now, I am exerting all my energy and strength to not buy a Microsoft "Surface". Yes, I rationally know it is a piece of tech dreck (hey, is that a word? Dibs if not!), but the ads make me subliminally think that if I had a laptop with a detachable keyboard, somehow young people would find me hip and cool and fun to be around. Some of them may even want to . . . Wait, that is just the ad talking. I really need to get a grip. OK, I will go to Distrowatch and see what new Linux distros are out. Not doing it. Alright, I will work on that driver for German Equitorial Mounts that needs some tweeking. Nothing says "cool" like astronomical mechanics, dude! Still not working. I am having to consciously expend effort to resist Microsoft ads. It is almost like the Verizon ads where they admit they are an asshole company, but ask you to come back, because birds hate buffering. "Birds hate buffering"? Do you know how much it costs me in thinking cycles just to process that as bullshit?

            No, advertising in classical economic theory was purely market information, things like what, where, how much. In the Fifties, with the rise of psychotropic warfare, the purpose of advertising was not to facilitate the satisfaction of demand that already existed, but to actually create demand, demand for things you had no idea you wanted, like Microsoft and Apple, Hula Hoops and Furbies, non-term life insurance, and an erection lasting less than four hours. Yes, at that point advertising became "information warfare", the rape of desire, run by Mad Men.

        So, instead of the internet being funded by the mind-rapers, how about we institute a reverse micro-payment regime? You want me to look at your propaganda? Sure, pay me for my time. No guarantee, expressed or implied. In fact, your advertisement may have the opposite effect. The Surface ad had done nothing but reinforce my hatred, and a deep and abiding hatred it is, of the Beast of Redmond, adding those seconds of my life that i will never get back to the years of the Blue Screen of Death I endured until I discovered Linux. I have never seen a Linux ad. Strange, don't you think? Those who do not advertise are the ones who will succeed, because, plainly, they do not need to create false demand.
            No, advertising i

        • (Score: 1) by Francis on Monday July 20 2015, @03:38PM

          by Francis (5544) on Monday July 20 2015, @03:38PM (#211460)

          That's the main reason why I use adblockers. I make the decision once that I don't want to view ads and for the most part I don't have to think about it any more. That's why those direct to email ads are so much more effective. The people getting them are likely to read them, or at least not block them and they'll likely sit down and actually read them if it's something that's interesting rather than reflexively ignoring them.

          Of the things I buy online they area ll things that I was either searching out or that I received via email from a trusted source. In the nearly 2 decades I've been online I've never, not even once, bought something based upon an ad that I saw on a site. And these days I outright refuse to click on ads that appear to be targeting anything other than the content of the site with a text ad.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday July 20 2015, @09:28AM

        by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Monday July 20 2015, @09:28AM (#211347)

        You may not fall for one particular ad, but if you're subjected to enough of them across the course of a day or a week, you'll eventually run low on willpower and buy the product. Even if you don't buy the product, the willpower you're using to avoid buying things that they're tempting you to buy is a resource that you have a right to exploit for yourself.

        It takes zero willpower, because advertisements don't make something tempting. At least to me.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @10:26AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @10:26AM (#211362)

          Think of it from a physics perspective. Making a decision costs energy in your brain that could have been used elsewhere. Just because it was an easy choice does not mean the energy was not expended.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Monday July 20 2015, @11:53AM

          by wantkitteh (3362) on Monday July 20 2015, @11:53AM (#211376) Homepage Journal

          I'm sticking with Firefox simply because the combination of AdBlock Plus and Ghostery works best on that browser. This pairing not only removes virtually all the adverts from the pages I visit, but also makes it nigh-on impossible for cross-site trackers to follow me as well. The only problem is those few small sites I find very useful who derive their entire income from advertising. You know the kind, usually a simple messageboard or basic blog template set up by the two guys who look after the whole shebang and made that awesome little program/tool/whatever that you've been using for years, developing it as a hobby and giving it away for free. I can honestly say I envisage myself doing something not too dissimilar myself in the near future. They ask you to whitelist them so they can make the money they need to survive, which I'm all for, but I can't do that without revealing myself to all the agencies I've been so studiously avoiding everywhere else. I could spend some time contacting them and sending them five quid or whatever to express my gratitude - I already frequently do that on Twitch or Soundcloud when I've found someone worth watching/listening to, and I understand I'm far from alone in this habit, so how do we get that habit transferred from the higher perceived value media of music and video streaming down to the lesser-appreciated web page?

        • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday July 20 2015, @01:49PM

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 20 2015, @01:49PM (#211413) Journal
          • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday July 20 2015, @09:34PM

            by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Monday July 20 2015, @09:34PM (#211595)

            Yes, a predictable response. But there are exceptions to everything.

            If you don't even believe what I tell you about myself, there's not much I can do or say. My purchasing choices simply do not show advertising influence; that's not what I base my decisions on. If people choose to listen to advertisements (which is silly), that's their problem.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheLink on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:03AM

            by TheLink (332) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:03AM (#211820) Journal
            And that sort of research is based on samples of people who responded to an advertisement or invite or similar right? Think about it. ;)

            Seriously. It may be true that people in general are susceptible even if they say or think they aren't, but I don't think the research proves it yet. I doubt they randomly selected people from a census list and _forced_ them to participate in the research. So there's plenty of selection bias. It's not valid to pick from the pool of people who responded to ads or invites and conclude that people in general are susceptible to ads even if they say they aren't.

            You're not picking from the groups of people who'd go "fuck you, go away!" or people who just ignore you completely and do their usual routine; or people who prefer to stay very private (thus they're not going to let people do research on them, and they might even be able to avoid having their names on marketing/survey lists); or many other people who don't/won't respond to ads for other reasons.
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday July 20 2015, @05:58PM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday July 20 2015, @05:58PM (#211490) Homepage
          Indeed. Not just not tempted to buy, but not even tempted to read. More so, not even tempted to see - I normally don't even read spams that get through my filter as I delete them all at the from/subject stage. If I don't recognise the sender, or the subject isn't something specific that a stranger I'd want contact with would contact me about ("regarding your website" doesn't count), then it's the 'd' key. I have no idea how many people who were unable to write sensible subject lines I've trashed, and, to be honest, I don't care - that's their problem.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:23PM (#211188)

    ...is somehow morally acceptable, even though it is technically child labor

    humanity as a whole has no morals

    • (Score: 2) by penguinoid on Monday July 20 2015, @05:00AM

      by penguinoid (5331) on Monday July 20 2015, @05:00AM (#211288)

      That's because performing valuable tasks isn't some horrible plague that must be kept from our young ones at any cost.

      --
      RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by gidds on Monday July 20 2015, @01:32PM

      by gidds (589) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:32PM (#211405)

      Bad argument, IMO.  Child acting is worlds away from the sort of dangerous, harmful work that children were once forced to do up chimneys and down mines.

      WP defines [wikipedia.org] child labour as "the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially, or morally dangerous and harmful."

      And it's perfectly possible to engage child actors in a way that preserves their childhood and ability to attend school, without any mental, physical, social, or moral dangers.  After all, we also employ them in movies, plays, musicals, etc. without any public outcry.  (I believe, for example, that for stage shows several rotating casts are usually employed, giving each one plenty of time to attend school and enjoy life without monopolising their time.)

      I hate advertising as much as many here (probably more), but there are plenty of perfectly valid arguments against it.

      --
      [sig redacted]
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:25PM (#211189)

    I won't do business with anyone that spams my inbox.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:52PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:52PM (#211196) Homepage

      I'm gonna PUKE! HHHHHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHHGHHGHGUHGUHGHULULGLGHLGGUHGHGLHGULGGGAAAAHHAAHHGHGHAHGHAHGAGHAAAAAAHA.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pogostix on Monday July 20 2015, @02:28AM

      by pogostix (1696) on Monday July 20 2015, @02:28AM (#211252)

      I got a SMS spam from a large company recently. I called their 800 number and complained. I sent them an email to complain. Basically saying I was disappointing they would do that and hope that they would re-think the practice.
      SMS spamming would drive me to cutting all ties with a company.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @02:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @02:51PM (#211445)

      But enough of that happens, then the competitor will send ads in the other companies' name. (Pepsi could send blind email for Coca-Cola, for example.)

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:46PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:46PM (#211193) Journal
    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:47PM (#211194)

    I spent 5 hours yesterday and 3 more today (so far) trying to clean the advertising crap off my brother's laptop. He downloaded 1 (yes one) program that he thought interesting and it offered no hint that it would proceed to install dozens of other crap programs that generate spam adverts in his browser. I "uninstall" a program only to find it re-installs itself on reboot (leaves a service behind to facilitate that).

    All that's left is something I can't find that forces ads onto IE. I installed Pale Moon and will encourage him to use that instead. I put AdBlock Plus and Ghostery on it too.

    I've only known one professional advertising person in my life - he was a pathological liar. Remember that Dudley Moore movie - "Crazy People" where none of the professional advertising guys can tell the truth even if forced? - yeah, like that in real life.

    It seems that the only people intent on having advertising imposed on us are a collection of sociopaths that seem to think that we will spend money on anyone that annoys us a lot.

    Fuck the lot of them.

    • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday July 20 2015, @12:49AM

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Monday July 20 2015, @12:49AM (#211227) Homepage Journal

      On the IE front, your probably dealing with something injecting itself as a COM object (also known as "Browser Helper Option" when dealing with IE). Unfortunately, there's no easy way to see what has hooked into wininet with stock Windows tools. Best thing you can do is change the key in the registry that prevents IE from loading them, and then setting registry permissions to prevent it from being written to (though this won't help if a service checks it running as LocalSystem). Here's a guide from Microsoft on the topic: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/298931 [microsoft.com]

      --
      Still always moving
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday July 20 2015, @01:32PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:32PM (#211404) Journal

      I've only known one professional advertising person in my life - he was a pathological liar. Remember that Dudley Moore movie - "Crazy People" where none of the professional advertising guys can tell the truth even if forced? - yeah, like that in real life.

      I worked in professional advertising in NYC on the digital side of things, in what advertising tends to call "the studio," that is, the artists, programmers, composers, etc that know how to do things as opposed to sit around and have beautiful ideas as "the Creatives" do (ie., the copywriters and creative directors). I worked at McCann-Erickson (you'd know them from their famous Mastercard formula, "A day at the ballpark: $100. 2 hotdogs with mustard: $15. A day sharing the religion of baseball with your son: Priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard"); JWT ("Built Ford Tough"); Ogilvy; and Mediavest (they do harder to see stuff like product placements in movies). So I have a pretty good measure of the people in advertising.

      The Account people are pathological liars, but then, they're salespeople and so are they all no matter the industry.

      The Studio people are like technicians and craftsmen in any field. They know their work and do it well with their heads down.

      The Creative people are narcissists. Very creative, at least at the bigger agencies that can pay them top dollar and attract the best talent. They are all fundamentally frustrated, though, that their genius is yoked to the crass and vulgar task of selling shit to people on behalf of corporations and MBA clients who are as dull as dishwater and just as torpid and whose only throughline is greed and the desire to kiss up to advance. Creatives live and breathe pop culture. They are always chasing trends. They worship musicians and artists and directors and see themselves as their little brothers. They dream of breaking into music or writing or film. But they almost universally don't because they're too afraid or too compromised by the nature of their work.

      I can say that nobody thinks about advertising on such a deep philosophical or economic theory level as in TFA. Why? They don't have time. They're usually juggling a score of accounts and campaigns, shooting from the hip and trying to get the client to bite on a concept. They're not worrying about meta anything, at least, not meta in this way. They bill their time by the hour, and no client wants to pay them to sit around and think deep thoughts about the Economic Value of Advertising in the World. The clients want the creative funny smart people to hand them something memorable on a silver platter that will boost sales of Widget X that they'll then personally take credit for with the CEO of company X and win them accolades at cocktail parties at their summer cottage in the Hamptons.

      That's it, and that's all.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by everdred on Monday July 20 2015, @06:02PM

        by everdred (110) on Monday July 20 2015, @06:02PM (#211491) Journal

        Hi, copywriter here. You're pretty much mostly right.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:55PM (#211197)

    "The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
    - Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio [imdb.com]

    ##

    "Do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll call, every word you say is suspect, you're a corporate whore and eh, end of story."
    - Bill Hicks

    ##

    Memorable quotes for
    Looker (1981)
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes [imdb.com]

    "John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."

    ##

    "It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)

    ##

    "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director

    ##

    "The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
    - Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History

    ##

    George Carlin:

    "The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

    But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

    You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

    ##

    [1967] Jim Garrison Interview "In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same. I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."

    ##

    "Everything we see has some hidden message. A lot of awful messages are coming in under the radar - subliminal consumer messages, all kinds of politically incorrect messages..." - Harold Ramis

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Monday July 20 2015, @12:24AM

      by SubiculumHammer (5191) on Monday July 20 2015, @12:24AM (#211214)

      Great argument for Bernie Sanders, 2016.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @03:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @03:10AM (#211262)

        Bernie is the new RON PAUL!

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by TheMessageNotTheMessenger on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:57PM

    by TheMessageNotTheMessenger (5664) on Sunday July 19 2015, @10:57PM (#211198)

    During my commute I have to walk past moving advertisements that also make sounds, in the form of large TV screens.

    I think the sound is a step too far. I can look away if I'm not interested, but the effort required to not hear the advertising is too much. Do I plug my ears every time I walk past? Do I put in earbuds and crank them high enough so I can't hear the ad anymore? That's trading a nuisance for ear damage and seems like a shitty deal.

    TV and Radio have their ads, but those can be avoided by bringing your own music or video. Storage is cheap! Legal and ad-free streaming alternatives are also growing in popularity.

    E-mail spam is bullshit but spam filters are very good nowadays, so that's also easy to ignore. I haven't seen spam advertise something that isn't a scam, so I'm not sure if there's any legitimate reason for it to remain.

    Web surfing has its ads, and they're become quite reasonable over the decades. They don't animate, they make no sound, they don't do popups. Easy to ignore. (there are still exceptions). Unfortunately they track you between websites (as do social media buttons) and there's no effective opting out. On top of that, compromised ads delivery networks are often used to spread malware. Safer to block them until they solve that problem.

    The worst kind of advertising is when I don't know it's an advert! A shilled story, youtube review, discussion thread. There is no reliable way to recognize these. The only clue is that the badly done ones tend to give a very one-sided view of things.

    --
    Hello! :D
    • (Score: 2) by penguinoid on Monday July 20 2015, @05:15AM

      by penguinoid (5331) on Monday July 20 2015, @05:15AM (#211291)

      I think the sound is a step too far. I can look away if I'm not interested, but the effort required to not hear the advertising is too much. Do I plug my ears every time I walk past? Do I put in earbuds and crank them high enough so I can't hear the ad anymore? That's trading a nuisance for ear damage and seems like a shitty deal.

      Maybe you can raise a stink, file a public nuisance complaint -- although no doubt they bought permission. Maybe pee in their speakers?

      --
      RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by NCommander on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:24PM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:24PM (#211201) Homepage Journal

    Advertising is a blight on the internet and in media as general; most of the data collection done by corporate entities is all in attempt to make advertising more effective, more targeted. Furthermore, media creators bend to serve advertisers; just look at reddit's recent spat with "accepted content". If there was no profit in it, I doubt we'd see the sheer amounts of data collection currently done by major corporations like Google. I accept the fact that quite a few sites simply can't support themselves

    I'm very happy that SN is self-sufficent without needing to resort to advertising, we don't have to bend over and sanitize ourselves. If people think I'm overstating this, one example is that TVTropes had to remove most of its content related to adult entertainment. I honestly won't be surprised if a lot of thought that went into both Slashdot Beta, and its current "enhancements" is a ploy to try and increase the amount of ad revenue they can get. I realize nothing going to get better as long as corporations believe adversing brings value, but I can hope for the day that many of the practices we revile ad companies for will end.

    --
    Still always moving
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Marand on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:57PM

      by Marand (1081) on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:57PM (#211207) Journal

      I honestly won't be surprised if a lot of thought that went into both Slashdot Beta, and its current "enhancements" is a ploy to try and increase the amount of ad revenue they can get

      If you've seen the mobile version of the site lately, you wouldn't have any doubt at all about their intent. At some point after the "beta" fiasco and their "we listened to our users and rolled it back! we promise" bullshit, they started putting giant fucking advertisements at the end of the main page and in between the summary and comments on individual summaries. By "giant" I mean that the 2x2 ad square (four ads total) takes up probably 80% of the screen and has to be scrolled past to get from summary to comments. On the main page it's at the end, but is followed by even more ads, taking up about 95% of the screen space. Easier to avoid there, but they make up for this by inserting smaller adverts into the list of summaries.

      I made the mistake of visiting one day when I was out and not much was going on. Figured I'd see how much cross-posting there was between here and there and see if SN had posted anything they hadn't yet. I immediately regretted the decision; it's so bad I thought I accidentally loaded a Sourceforge download page instead.

      The problem is, it's easy to miss this sort of downhill slide on a site because of things like adblockers and NoScript. The admins start abusing the readership, but the people that provide the good comments are also likely to be blocking the shit that would scare them away, so they continue to give the site free content in the form of insightful or funny remarks without realising just how sleazy the site they're helping has become.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NCommander on Monday July 20 2015, @12:40AM

        by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Monday July 20 2015, @12:40AM (#211223) Homepage Journal

        I still occasionally check Slashdot, and I've found the most recent changes are actually worse than beta; honestly, what pissed me off was their response to the "audience", combined with a completely dysfunctional commenting system. For those reading this comment and weren't there for beta, the new discussion system was the unholy lovechild between D2 and discus. What really got me seething was their response to the "audience" that got me to the point of wanting to take action, which lead me to the altslashdot movement. I haven't been to their mobile site in quite awhile, the old one used to regularly lock up my Nexus 5 though due to the sheer amount of javascript that abomination uses. While I'd like SN to grow a mobile site, we'll do it with modified CSS + HTML via the theming system.

        Watching them dick around with the site, it's pretty clear that they don't really have much understanding on how to run or manage slashcode; the site looks flat out broken when you use the old D1 system, user preferences are completely hidden (I'm not sure I can find a link to the homepage preferences anymore), and there are weird visage bits all over the place. I get the distinct impression they're tacking on bits via the plugin system, and have no idea how the core goes together.

        --
        Still always moving
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday July 20 2015, @02:16AM

          by mhajicek (51) on Monday July 20 2015, @02:16AM (#211251)

          Why have a mobile site? Any device worth it's batteries can load standard web pages, and they will get better with time. I do about half my browsing on my phone, and the standard pages are always preferable to the mobile versions. I think mobile versions are a short lived concept.

          --
          The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Monday July 20 2015, @03:33AM

            by captain normal (2205) on Monday July 20 2015, @03:33AM (#211268)

            Bingo!! And just what the hell are "Aps"? Why does every website need a client on your device, be it mobile phone or computer?

            --
            When life isn't going right, go left.
            • (Score: 3, Touché) by penguinoid on Monday July 20 2015, @05:20AM

              by penguinoid (5331) on Monday July 20 2015, @05:20AM (#211292)

              And just what the hell are "Aps"?

              I think they're a type of data-mining tool.

              --
              RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by MrNemesis on Monday July 20 2015, @05:28AM

              by MrNemesis (1582) on Monday July 20 2015, @05:28AM (#211295)

              Why does every website need a client on your device, be it mobile phone or computer?

              Makes it considerably easier to get access to your contact list and GPS location.

              --
              "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @06:55AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @06:55AM (#211314)

              And just what the hell are "Aps"?

              Another way of saying Ads.

          • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday July 20 2015, @08:17AM

            by TheRaven (270) on Monday July 20 2015, @08:17AM (#211329) Journal

            Why have a mobile site?

            Two reasons. One (which is increasingly becoming less important) is that mobile devices often mean 'paying for bandwidth', so having a low bandwidth version can be useful. Slashdot actually had a low-bandwidth version for a while back when a lot of the users were on modems, with fewer images and a reduced set of comments. The second is the screen size. It is possible, with style sheets, to have conditional rendering, but it's often better to avoid downloading and processing all of the big site to get at the functionality. For this done well, take a look at the FlightAware mobile site: it doesn't do everything that the main one does, but it presents the core functionality in a way that's a lot easier to use on a small-screen browser.

            --
            sudo mod me up
          • (Score: 2) by tibman on Monday July 20 2015, @03:17PM

            by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 20 2015, @03:17PM (#211456)

            Many companies design their sites for a specific width and ignore what resolution the browser is actually at. Any smaller than their designed resolution and you get scroll bars and any higher leaves blank spaces on the sides. SN goes down to 700px before scrolling but expands to any width. So it would work pretty well with any high-res device. Reading the front-page could suck on a low res device because after scrolling down some you'll have 50% gray background with a column of content in the middle. A good mobile site is identical to the real site and just uses some CSS (and maybe JS) to improve visible content. The front-page would have to vertically stack the navigation on top of the content or something if the resolution was low. Otherwise it sort of looks like slashdot beta, a thin column of content.

            I totally agree though that normal sites are better than mobile. For some reason companies make super shitty mobile sites that can't do half of what the regular one can.

            --
            SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Monday July 20 2015, @04:57PM

        by hankwang (100) on Monday July 20 2015, @04:57PM (#211480) Homepage

        "If you've seen the mobile version of the site lately,"

        [Plug] That's why I browse that (green) site mostly using avantslash - http://avantslash.org/ [avantslash.org] . There's also a version for Soylentnews at http://soylitenews.org/ [soylitenews.org] (not operated by me).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:25PM (#211202)

    My local public radio station got bought out by APM, and now it spends about half the air time bitching, moaning, begging for donation. To the point that I now listen more AM talk/sport raido stations than the so-called "ad-free" NPR.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:41PM (#211205)

    And the global warming is the culprit. Fuck Google/global shits.

  • (Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:49PM

    by SubiculumHammer (5191) on Sunday July 19 2015, @11:49PM (#211206)

    Is it morally justifiable to advertise?

    Well. That depends on if you are taking advertising for Hillary or Bernie Sanders.

    In the former, you represent the 1%, and it is morally vapid. In the latter, your advertising is likely a donation for a cause you believe in, and is commendable.

  • (Score: 1) by acp_sn on Monday July 20 2015, @12:31AM

    by acp_sn (5254) on Monday July 20 2015, @12:31AM (#211218)

    the technology is almost to the point where we can have adblock in meatspace

    no more billboards, bus wraps, logos, posters, or excessive attention grabbing signage

    what a glorious time it will be to be able to walk down a city street without being assaulted by people who think they have the right to trespass on your senses to sell you crap

    also billboards should be illegal, they are a theft of the commons

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @12:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @12:37AM (#211221)

      Yes. But unless you cover your face, they will still know you.

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday July 20 2015, @12:31AM

    Im not saying this because I find it annoying. Im saying this because there are far too many websites that monetize through advertising. I am concerned this could kead to economic collapse.

    Many websites are costly to operate. Ultimately someone has to pay real money for a product ir service. Amazon did OK through the dot com crash and subprime meltdown but not so with many ad-supported sites.

    The world's economy is growing at only a modest rate, but the number of web pages and mobile apps is skyrocketing. This leads to ads paying less and less per click or impression. That's why they are so obtrusive. From time to time I try to read an article but cannot until I Like it on Facebook; instead I close the tab.

    There are many ways to monetize websites, most are well documented but startup founders prefer not to read the fine manual.

    By contrast print advertisingbworks better but then its not obvious how to monetize a website with ink and dead trees.

    Working Software enjoyed great success with direct mail when they fell out of favor with the channel. I intend to give direct mail a try sometime soon but am unsure what oroduct or service I will flog.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Monday July 20 2015, @12:56AM

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Monday July 20 2015, @12:56AM (#211229) Homepage Journal

      I've described SoylentNews's business model to quite a few MBAs, and I've been told it wouldn't work. I've been laughing at the irony for the last year. SomethingAwful basically runs off a similar model that we do, with the exception of requiring pay-to-post. They're still alive and kicking.

      For small websites, cheap hosting will cover you, but if you've got a real community, its not unrealistic to ask members to pitch in to pay the bills (I vaguely remember that due to traffic and ezBoards pricing, gold community was something like $300 a year). If reddit was privately owned, or non-profit, I'm pretty sure they could cover their hosting and legal costs off gold subscriptions + gilding. I used to frequent a webform known as "Sonic 2 Beta" on ezBoard, and they were able to get their community together to buy premium subscriptions to keep the ads off their forums until they migranted to dedicated hosts.

      Long term, I'd love if we grew to the point that we could hire staff, but even if that never comes to be, I'm fairly sure we'll be able to cover our hosting costs more or less indefinitely as long as we continue to support the community.

      --
      Still always moving
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Monday July 20 2015, @08:20AM

      by TheRaven (270) on Monday July 20 2015, @08:20AM (#211331) Journal
      It's worse than that. Businesses that charge for their service increasingly have to compete with ones that are free (ad-supported). They then have to reduce their ad spending and you end up with an ad ecosystem that is entirely cannibalising itself. If you want to see this taken to extremes, take a look at browser-based games - about 90% of the ads that you see are for other ad-supported games, so they're just shuffling money between each other with Google taking a cut each time. What are they going to do when the advertisers that make up the 10% are gone?
      --
      sudo mod me up
  • (Score: 1) by hurwitz on Monday July 20 2015, @01:01AM

    by hurwitz (4938) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:01AM (#211232)

    I don't think paying people will defeat adblockers. Disable your adblocker and receive $0.000X per ad impression? I doubt that will work; most people don't understand how valuable their data/screen-face-time is. Facebook makes dumptrucks of cash on the arbitrage between how much people think their attention & data is worth (you know, nothing) and how much the advertisers think it's worth.

    I am unmoved by "please disable your adblocker to keep this site alive" messages. If you can't afford to host your site (and you can't gather donations), go under (please). Cancel your hosting, give up your domain. If your site is too expensive to host, charge an annual fee and maybe run less crapware/advertising/analytics/JavaScript.

    There is always a market for ad-free services. Don't like GMail ads? Use FastMail. Don't like analytics? Run uBlock/ABP. Don't like ABP-approved ads? Edit your /etc/hosts. Don't like television ads? Watch Netflix. When Netflix runs ads (they will), buy blu-rays/DVDs. Don't like Spotify ads? Buy MP3s/CDs/vinyl. Don't like billboards? Don't look at them. Don't like bullshit news sites? Read Soylent. et cetera..

    It's about time for ubiquitous Internet-as-a-Service, a VPN/ISP that provides you ad/analytics-free browsing to HTTP(S) servers. Of course, it's only a matter of time before that would get ads, too (Cable TV, anyone?).

    • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday July 20 2015, @01:30AM

      I am unmoved by "please disable your adblocker to keep this site alive" messages.

      In general , I agree with your sentiment. But there are (very few) cases where I value what the site provides, and I will open up adblock. Spiceworks.com [spiceworks.com] is one of those sites. I value the free software they provide, and the very well maintained, high signal to noise IT community that they have running. The ads they run are static ads for their advertisers. I don't spend nearly the time there that I used to (some other site has been sucking up a lot of time lately), but supporting them is, at least for me, worth seeing the ads.

      --
      "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday July 20 2015, @01:35AM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:35AM (#211244)

      Don't like ABP-approved ads?

      Don't they have the option right in the main menu to disable that? At worst it's on the first page of options when you bring up the dialog. Can't really make it any easier to find than that.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday July 20 2015, @01:13AM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:13AM (#211236)

    OK, I guess I'll be one the one dissenting voice here in all this anti-advertising vitriol.

    Yes, I do agree that most advertising is unnecessary, annoying, and a waste of resources and people's time.

    However, not *all* advertising is bad or worthless. Without advertising, you probably wouldn't know about a lot of products. I'll give a few examples: you're having some kind of problem with your car or whatever, and start Googling for an answer. On the text ads on the right, you see a small ad for a product that looks like it might fix your problem. You click on it, read about it, and it looks like just what you need, even though a minute before you didn't even know it existed.

    You're shopping for something on Amazon (or some other larger retail website), and you've found a product that looks perfect for whatever you need it for. On the page there's a section that says "people who bought this also bought these products...". One of these looks like a great accessory for this thing you bought, so you buy that too, even though you weren't specifically looking for it.

    You're driving through an unfamiliar town and you're hungry. You see a building ahead with a lighted sign out front that says "Gino's Italian Restaurant"; you like Italian so you stop there. Without a highly visible sign out front, you would have passed it by.

    Now of course, someone will probably try to argue that some of these aren't "advertising", but they really are. They're trying to get you to buy something that you may or may not have been specifically looking for; they're all forms of advertising.

    There's plenty more examples like this. Advertising can be really useful for educating consumers about the existence of products/services, and not all of it is uninvited. Any company's website is basically an advertisement. If you want to buy a car and you go to a dealership's website to see what they have in stock, that's an advertisement, as well as an informational resource (no point bothering to visit in person if they have nothing you want on the lot), for instance.

    I do wish we could get rid of a lot of the uninvited advertising out there. It's annoying, ugly, and wastes our time. But some of it really is useful.

    • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Monday July 20 2015, @02:51AM

      by stormwyrm (717) on Monday July 20 2015, @02:51AM (#211258) Journal
      TFS talks about advertising as being a commons, and advertising is the exploitation of such a commons. Beneficial things come from all such exploitation of course, just as we get energy from burning fossil fuels and releasing the resultant exhaust into the atmosphere, and advertising helps to provide revenue for media such as television and the Internet, but all such exploitation comes at a cost. Burning fossil fuels has as a cost in the form of air pollution, and the cost of advertising can be thought of analogously as being a sort of mind pollution [johnleach.co.uk]. Seeing a sign for an Italian restaurant when I'm hungry and feel like Italian food is like getting energy from burning fossil fuel. Seeing a sign for an Italian restaurant when I'd rather eat something else is a few moments of my attention stolen from me that I will never get back again, and is like inhaling a whiff of smog. Now, some advertisers get it into their heads that customising the ads they show so they produce ads that are targeted to their viewers, but that requires tracking people to know what they can about them, but that's just a different sort of mind pollution, and arguably a more pernicious sort, like adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline (getting close to a car analogy here!). A balance needs to be struck here and I don't know if it is possible to impose it without having something like a government involved. There are laws in some jurisdictions that regulate advertising in public places, and there are also laws regulating the use of things like tracking cookies and so forth.
      --
      Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday July 20 2015, @03:47AM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday July 20 2015, @03:47AM (#211272)

        Seeing a sign for an Italian restaurant when I'm hungry and feel like Italian food is like getting energy from burning fossil fuel. Seeing a sign for an Italian restaurant when I'd rather eat something else is a few moments of my attention stolen from me that I will never get back again, and is like inhaling a whiff of smog.

        The problem is that if no restaurants advertise at all (meaning they don't even have road signs, and they don't sign up with Google Maps so you can't even look them up), then you're going to go hungry unless you brought some food with you on your road trip, and most restaurants will close for lack of business (those that stay open will only survive by word-of-mouth, which isn't that much help when you're traveling).

        like adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline (getting close to a car analogy here!).

        Tetraethyl lead was necessary back then for engines to run reliably, and they didn't understand the downsides so they didn't bother looking for better solutions until they figured that out. It's not like they just put that in there for the hell of it, or to make money in some sneaky way.

        There are laws in some jurisdictions that regulate advertising in public places, and there are also laws regulating the use of things like tracking cookies and so forth.

        This is most likely what we need, because when given free reign, advertisers usually go way too far. So, for another car/restaurant analogy, this is exactly why most locales have sign ordinances, limiting where signs can be placed, how large they can be, how distracting they can be, etc. So it's perfectly acceptable to place a sign on the road in front of your business so people can find you (even if they weren't specifically looking for you), but you can't make it billboard-sized in most municipalities, because many businesses would do just that if they could, so they had to make laws against it.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by prospectacle on Monday July 20 2015, @01:42AM

    by prospectacle (3422) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:42AM (#211247) Journal

    1 - You can reduce exposure. Ad-blockers for your browser, mute the tv during breaks. Also, while it's not always voluntary when a billboard catches your eye, you have control over how long you look at and think about it.

    2 - You can wash your hands after exposure. Just a few moments of considering what basic need the ad is trying to appeal to, what your existing plans were for meeting that need, and how the suggested product or service compares to alternatives, is enough to neutralise most of the effect.

    3 - You can be innoculated. Learning the basic techniques and motivations behind advertising is enough to make most of them backfire. Every slippery argument, weasel word, and undertone that "this will make a big difference to your quality of life, trust us, we only have your best interests at heart" will make you a bit more averse to ever giving money to the company behind that message.

    4 - You can build up a natural tolerance. Through low dose and low risk exposure with enough time to recover, you develop immunity. Eventually you've seen similar things before and have developed psychological anti-bodies that quickly adapt to any new strains.

    The biggest obstacle is realising that you're not born immune, and that they don't have your best interests at heart. Once you accept those, then like germs or viruses, it's easy to greatly reduce the harm.

    However you will need to take care of the innoculation for yourself and those you care about. Most governing parties depend too heavily on either ads working directly, or on money from people who advertise a lot, so this stuff is unlikely to be taught in public schools any time soon.

    --
    If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @03:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @03:12AM (#211263)
      And to take the analogy one step further: just as not all micro-organisms cause disease and some even are beneficial to health, not all advertising is evil. Unfortunately, in this day and age things have gone too far the other way.
      • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Monday July 20 2015, @03:24AM

        by prospectacle (3422) on Monday July 20 2015, @03:24AM (#211267) Journal

        You're right, complete sterility is not desirable (or possible), in either case. The answer is innoculation against known diseases, moderation of exposure, and good habits to minimise the risk of serious infection.

        --
        If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @01:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @01:07PM (#211392)

      One thing that actually can be fun is to intentionally misinterpret slogans negatively.

      For example, take the slogan "Intel inside." This can be easily interpreted as a warning message: "Stay away from this; it has Intel inside."

      Well, you could also notice that "intel" is often used as abbreviation of "intelligence" in the sense of "gathering information". So "Intel inside" could also interpreted as "it's spying on you." Well, actually that also fits the warning message interpretation.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by gidds on Monday July 20 2015, @01:18PM

      by gidds (589) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:18PM (#211397)

      I fear it's worse than that; much worse.

      Yes, you can analyse an ad, see how it works, and rationally rebut it.

      But by then, you've spent a while exposing yourself to the brand and its message.  Which is exactly what the advertisers want, as your unconscious mind will have absorbed it all.

      In a few weeks, you'll have forgotten the ad, and why you should ignore its message.  But you'll remember the brand, and the subtle associations it had.  So next time you have to make a choice between the brand that's familiar and has the right associations, and one that you've never heard of, you're more likely to choose the former.  The advertising has worked.

      And that's just one of the ways that adverts can sneak under your mental filters.

      If you asked 100 random people, I bet nearly all of them would claim that advertising didn't work on them; that they were too smart to be affected by it.  But if that were the case, why would advertising be so valuable?

      Advertising works even on people who think they're too smart for it.  (In fact, I've read claims that advertising works better on people who think they're too smart for it.)  That's why it's so insidious, and so dangerous.

      The only safe way not to be swayed by advertising is not to see it.  (And not to have any dealings with anyone who has.)

      Or, as Joshua put it:
       
          A STRANGE GAME.
          THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
          NOT TO PLAY.

      --
      [sig redacted]
      • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:02AM

        by prospectacle (3422) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:02AM (#211670) Journal

        You misunderstand me. I'm not too smart for advertising and sometimes it works on me.

        If you think you're just too smart for (bad) ads or they just don't work on you then you're likely to be complacent and take no measures to protect yourself. That may be why they work better on people who think they're naturally, effortlessly immune.

        However if you think you're powerless to counter their effects then you're going to be paranoid and excessive in your measures to avoid it.

        My point was how to deal with it effectively, as one deals with viruses (which I'm also not too smart for and which sometimes work on me). It's about avoiding some, actively countering others, and developing a strong immunity through conditioning.

        It's not about being too smart any more than not catching flu is about being too healthy. You don't avoid catching the flu because you're a healthy person, you avoid catching it because you're either immune (from previous exposure or innoculation) and fight it off before it takes hold, or you're not exposed (enough) to it in the first place.

        You're right that simply seeing through an ad once, with great effort, won't stop it working subtly over time, and indeed it means spending a bit more time thinking about it than you otherwise would have.

        But that's once, or twice, or occasionally. When you've built up a strong habit of seeing through ads on purpose, after repetaedly taking time to consider thier motivations, techniques, so-called arguments and evidence, then there are two important effects that occur:

        1 - It becomes very quick to recognise the weakness and dishonesty in any new ad. It's like developing antibodies
        2 - Many ads start to backfire, giving you a negative emotional impression of the product, because you start to see and remember their dirty tricks more easily and more prominently than any features of the products themselves.

        Intelligence is not the issue, it's conditioning.

        Also I mentioned several ways to reduce the amount of advertising you see or hear, which is also an important measure.

        --
        If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
    • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Monday July 20 2015, @01:31PM

      by Murdoc (2518) on Monday July 20 2015, @01:31PM (#211403) Homepage

      I think that the point is that these are man-made viruses, and maybe we should stop doing that.
      Yes, how is another, possibly more complicated question, but we have to agree on this one first.

      • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:10AM

        by prospectacle (3422) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:10AM (#211674) Journal

        We can ban some techniques like outright lying, being too loud, being too big, being in certain places, but I don't think we can ban advertising, or that many people would really want to.

        It would mean:
        No signs outside shops.
        No logos on products that might be seen in public.
        No (visible) sponsorship of events.
        No signs visible from the road, on private property.
        The only free to air media is government owned.
        No posters in shop windows.

        And probably worst of all, none of those free city maps with all the ads for local attractions when you arrive at the train station.

        --
        If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
        • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:28AM

          by Murdoc (2518) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:28AM (#211679) Homepage

          The only kind of "advertising" that is actually needed would be some sort of central repository list of businesses, basically like the phone book. If you want to know about their products, go to their store or phone them. If it is a mail-order business, order a catalogue. And today, sure have a website, complete with online store if you want. But aside from a phone/fax number, address, and web address, the only thing that should be posted about said companies are consumer reviews (not sure yet how to get around paid shills though), or BBB type reports.

          Yeah I know it's not going to happen, unless we become a lot more socialist, but anything else is a waste. And yes, unethical, because it's manipulative, and a waste.

          • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:06AM

            by prospectacle (3422) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @01:06AM (#211694) Journal

            It's not just about what is needed, it's also about what it's fair and reasonable to ban.

            Look through that list again and tell me which ones it would be ok to punish people for. Start with this simple example: you put a poster in your own shop window advertising one of the new products you have on the shelf (made by another company). The poster was made by that company.

            You also have a poster advertising your friend's band.

            --
            If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
            • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:23AM

              by Murdoc (2518) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @02:23AM (#211714) Homepage

              Punishing people? It's punishment to not allow unethical behaviour?

              In either of your examples, when I see such a poster, my brain has to make a decision: Do I want this thing, or not? The choice is not between this thing and all others in its category. Either I buy that product or I don't. Either I go to that concert or I don't. How is that fair to all the other people having a concert out there the same night that I didn't see ads for? Perhaps there are others I'd like more. And what if I decide to plan to buy a ticket to that concert, but then I see a huge wowy commercial on TV for a different concert that looks totally awesome, so I decide to go to that instead. You're poor friend in local band loses out because he couldn't spend a million dollars on advertising like this other band could. But I might have liked them better. I wouldn't know unless I checked out their music somehow in a more fair and balanced way.

              So why can't it be like going to movies (not counting movie posters and commericals), where a person decides "Gee, I'd like to go to the movies tonight." They then check the paper, or some theatre website to see what's playing. They see a list of names and times. If they don't know anything about these movies, they can check online reviews, Wikipedia articles, whatever, maybe even online trailers. That's all fine and good, because it's about opt-in not opt-out. I went to them. I decided I wanted to watch a movie, or go to a concert, or whatever. I am comparing them side-by-side in a manner that isn't trying to steal my attention towards one and away from others, likely using advanced psychological techniques that if a human used them on you, would be arrested for being a con-man, but when companies do it, it's ok for some reason because we're conditioned to it.

              So yes, putting up a little poster in a window or whatever may seem harmless, but it isn't, and while not a big deal, it opens up the door to much greater abuses.

              • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:28AM

                by prospectacle (3422) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:28AM (#211742) Journal

                Ok let's say you ban people putting posters in their own shop windows:

                Let's play a fun game called where does the ban kick in. Pick a number:
                1 - I assume people can still have a sign with the name of their shop, in their own shop window?
                2 - Can they include a nice logo on that sign?
                3 - What if they include a basic description of their services as part of the sign?
                4 - What if it's a favourable description?
                5 - What about a menu in the window, with meals and prices? It's useful for those considering eating there, saves them time, but it's also promotional.
                6 - Maybe that's ok, but what if the menu has descriptions that make the items sound really nice, on purpose?
                7 - What if the menu has pictures?
                8 - What if they're quite nice pictures?
                9 - What if some pictures are bigger than others, or have more positive descriptions?
                10 - Can I put actual items I have for sale in the shop window, inside my own shop?

                The extreme case, of course, is that shops have no windows at all, and simply a name on the door, but with no description of what's inside. I'm guessing you're not really advocating for this extreme. Even then the location and size of the shop determines how likely people are to notice it and wonder what's inside.

                So where's the line, and once you've drawn the line, how would you punish those crossed it?

                If you want to ban something you need to know what you're banning, and how you enforce it. Otherwise you might do more harm than good.

                --
                If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
                • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:55AM

                  by Murdoc (2518) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:55AM (#211748) Homepage

                  I know that you're probably going to laugh at me for being a kook but my answer is 0. This very conversation made me think about the issue more deeply, and the logical conclusion to the argument I presented to you before is that there is no reason to have anything other than the company's address outside their store, that is sufficient for anyone trying to actively locate the store. Anything else diverts attention in the manner I already described. E.g. A person walks by and sees "Jazz City". They think "I like jazz, I wonder what's in there?" They go inside and it sells instruments, or is a jazz cafe, or whatever. "Neat!" They think, "I'll have to go there again!" Completely unfair to all the other music stores/jazz cafes in the city. The only thing those other companies could do to try to get that person's attention (so that they could even try to make a comparison) is to make even more noise, become even more noticeable, and so the escalation of competitive advertising begins to the ridiculous proportions it's at today, and still growing.

                  As to how to enforce it? As I said before, we'd have to be a lot more socialist. I'm for free-market nothing. Actually I think even having stores around is still not going far enough, but that has nothing to do with the issue of advertising. There's already plenty of laws saying what businesses can do and can't do (a staggering amount actually), adding in these wouldn't be difficult from a purely paperwork perspective. The only thing stopping us is our pro-free market politics. So yes I realize how difficult it would be to actually put such changes into effect from a political standpoint, but that doesn't mean it's not an ideal that we can work towards as a society.

                  • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:59AM

                    by prospectacle (3422) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:59AM (#211770) Journal

                    I won't call you a kook, but I will say two things about taking things that far, and having promotion-free shops:
                    1 - I would personally hate to live somewhere like that.
                    2 - People would still advertise.

                    Regarding 1:
                    - We could have no open air markets.
                    - We couldn't browse and compare restaurants and their menus when looking for somewhere to eat.
                    - It will take much more time and effort to learn of what products are services are even available (it's often slower to browse and search some neutral directory than just look around you).

                    Regarding 2:
                    - People will be paid to go into certain shops frequently (maybe in different disguises throughout the day), so others see them doing it and think "Well that place looks popular, I'll check it out".
                    - Shops will employ staff who pretend to be customers so you see and hear what products they're buying, and maybe you overhear them saying how much they like it.
                    - People will be paid to "innocently" discuss products they like with their "friends" while in public, in earshot of others.

                    So now we'd have to ban visibly entering a shop or audibly discussing anything in public that might involve a product or service.

                    What next?

                    --
                    If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
                    • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:39AM

                      by Murdoc (2518) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:39AM (#211871) Homepage

                      "1 - I would personally hate to live somewhere like that."
                      Yeah, no one trying to manipulate you and take advantage of you. Or waste billions of dollars on things that add no benefit to society. That would suck something awful. Or is that it is not what you are used to, and do not yet see the benefits of such changes?

                      "We could have no open air markets."
                      Aside from some sentimental attachments, would there be any practical benefit lost? And either way is what you think you're gaining worth the cost of all we put up with today? There a million other ways to entertain yourself.

                      "We couldn't browse and compare restaurants and their menus when looking for somewhere to eat."
                      No, the opposite is true. When you're sitting in a restaurant, you can only compare its menu to others you've seen, and remember. With a central directory, you could compare side-by-side, along with pictures, prices, consumer reviews, perhaps even recipes, of *every other restaurant*.

                      "It will take much more time and effort to learn of what products are services are even available (it's often slower to browse and search some neutral directory than just look around you)."
                      You're forgetting one important factor: travel times. Sure it might seem like a long time comparing every example of one type of business all at once in a directory, but it sure beats driving all around town to each and every one of them. Not to mention a lot cheaper too.

                      "People will be paid to go into certain shops frequently (maybe in different disguises throughout the day), so others see them doing it and think "Well that place looks popular, I'll check it out"."
                      I really can't imagine anyone doing that. It could easily be a popular sex shop, or geek hobby store, or imagine any place you'd rather not just randomly walk into. And for the few people that do decide to do that, I don't think that hiring people to try and make a place look popular would be cost-effective.

                      "- Shops will employ staff who pretend to be customers so you see and hear what products they're buying, and maybe you overhear them saying how much they like it.
                      - People will be paid to "innocently" discuss products they like with their "friends" while in public, in earshot of others."
                      They already do this today. Sad but true. Yes, given all these restrictions companies would still be highly motivated to find ways around them, just like they are with any restrictions. The only thing restrictions on bad behaviour can hope to accomplish in any system that employs money is to limit them, because you will seldom get rid of them. The only way to do that is to change the rules of the game so that they are no longer rewarded for successfully accomplishing bad behaviour, but that would require even more changes that might seem too extreme.

                      So the argument that these measures aren't worth it because they are not 100% effective doesn't work. Any amount is worth it unless there is some other cost, and then it's just a matter of comparing the two.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:34PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:34PM (#212127)

                        "We could have no open air markets."
                        Aside from some sentimental attachments, would there be any practical benefit lost?

                        Yes there is a massive practical benefit lost. Being able to browse a variety of real-life products (not just text or photos in a directory which may be out of date, incomplete or not detailed) from variety of different sources in the one place. It would be much faster and more accurate to see what's available. Open air markets go back thousands of years and are a great place to find things and meet people.

                        Similarly for browsing restaurants, you can't tell from an online directory what the real food and atmosphere looks like just from text and carefully prepared photos.

                        You also couldn't sit in a cafe with a view of the street or in the street itself and meet your friend passing by, because that would risk exposing passers by to a view of what kind of business it is, their menu, etc.

                        There would be virtually no street life of any description. If people took their food out to the park to eat, everyone would see what shops they were bringing the food from, and what the food looked like, how many people went there, and how much they seemed to enjoy it. Pretty soon it would be obvious who sold what kinds of food and how popular they were. Then shops would start astroturfing in this manner.

                        And either way is what you think you're gaining worth the cost of all we put up with today? There a million other ways to entertain yourself.

                        Between "All we put up with today" and "No posters or even windows in shops, and no open-air stalls", there's a lot of middle ground. It's not all or nothing.

                        You're forgetting one important factor: travel times. Sure it might seem like a long time comparing every example of one type of business all at once in a directory, but it sure beats driving all around town to each and every one of them. Not to mention a lot cheaper too.

                        In cases where this is true (where the various sources for what you want are all spread around) it's already easy to look things up, but people don't always do this and for good reason. When you need a variety of things, and go to a shopping distict with lots of shops down the same street, it's often easier to just look around to see what's available, and faster, and gives more detailed information. You can look things up as well, as you go. Without getting a sense at least, of what's available, you may not know what some good options are that meet your needs. Lots of things are invented or released or refined every day and often you learn about them by seeing one in a shop passing by.

                        "- Shops will employ staff who pretend to be customers so you see and hear what products they're buying, and maybe you overhear them saying how much they like it.
                        - People will be paid to "innocently" discuss products they like with their "friends" while in public, in earshot of others."
                        They already do this today. Sad but true. Yes, given all these restrictions companies would still be highly motivated to find ways around them, just like they are with any restrictions. The only thing restrictions on bad behaviour can hope to accomplish in any system that employs money is to limit them, because you will seldom get rid of them. The only way to do that is to change the rules of the game so that they are no longer rewarded for successfully accomplishing bad behaviour, but that would require even more changes that might seem too extreme.

                        So the argument that these measures aren't worth it because they are not 100% effective doesn't work. Any amount is worth it unless there is some other cost, and then it's just a matter of comparing the two.

                        If these were the only options available, they would be done a lot more. You would have a great increase in people audibly proclaiming (in a private discussion mind you, none of your business) how great some product or service is, especially when you were walking towards a competitors shop. Right now there are lots of far less intrusive options for advertising.

                      • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:42PM

                        by prospectacle (3422) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @11:42PM (#212129) Journal

                        Sorry forgot to sign in. See response above.

                        --
                        If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
                        • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Wednesday July 22 2015, @05:09AM

                          by Murdoc (2518) on Wednesday July 22 2015, @05:09AM (#212196) Homepage

                          Being able to browse a variety of... products...from variety of different sources in the one place

                          Like I already pointed out, you can become aware of far more products from far more sources with a directory than you can IRL. Also, such markets seldom have competing vendors. And even if they did, you are still not comparing any of them to any of the others available to you elsewhere, including other such markets! So again, it's not fair to the other sellers, and not wise for you. A market in one area may be inflating their prices because of being next to a wealthier neighborhood for example.

                          real-life products...not just text or photos in a directory

                          Only useful in small set of products, since most of what we buy comes in boxes or other packaging anyway. And that is where the consumer and other reviews can come in.

                          which may be out of date, incomplete or not detailed

                          Strawman. May happen occasionally today because retailers generally prefer in-person visits, but if this were the primary method of "advertising" they'd be a lot more invested keeping things up to date and accurate.

                          Similarly for browsing restaurants, you can't tell from an online directory what the real food and atmosphere looks like just from text and carefully prepared photos.

                          No more than you can be just passing it by. You'd have to go in to see it to get that, and you'd only have a set of restaurants to choose from based on your walking habits, which would be a much smaller set than a directory would contain. I'd much rather check that out first, make a list of all the ones I'd like to check out, then visit them. It'd be by choice rather than by random chance. You'll be far more likely to find what you like with this combination of actions than relying on luck.

                          ...from text and carefully prepared photos.

                          You're forgetting the customer and other reviews as well.

                          You also couldn't sit in a cafe with a view of the street or in the street itself and meet your friend passing by

                          Now you're really reaching. How often does that happen, really? It's never happened to me. And you could still have outdoor locations that were separated from the streets. Personally I'd find that preferable to all the noise and smell of traffic. For those few who would still prefer it that way, well, I'll have to call that a minor loss compared to what happens otherwise.

                          There would be virtually no street life of any description.

                          What is "street life" anyway? What makes it so special? Sure I like going "window shopping" with my friends in my city's artsy district where all the cool stores are, getting an ice cream and/or cheese smoky while enjoying the outdoors at the same time, if that's what you're talking about. But I only go to the stores I like anyway, and pass the others by. There's no reason I couldn't find out where those stores are (and the food vendors) from the directory first and do the same thing. The only difference is that I wouldn't be bothered by all the places I'm not interested in.

                          If people took their food out to the park to eat, everyone would see what shops they were bringing the food from, and what the food looked like, how many people went there, and how much they seemed to enjoy it. Pretty soon it would be obvious who sold what kinds of food and how popular they were. Then shops would start astroturfing in this manner.

                          There's no reason to have any business names on the packaging. The reason they do that today is precisely for what you describe, advertising! So yeah, that wouldn't be allowed either. People would have to ask what it was you were eating. And that is no different than word of mouth anyway, which is itself not a deliberate action on the part of the businesses. As for astroturfing I've already addressed that.

                          Between "All we put up with today" and "No posters or even windows in shops, and no open-air stalls", there's a lot of middle ground. It's not all or nothing.

                          No, but anything else would be arbitrary, and thus people (especially the businesses) would be arguing over where to draw that line. No one would agree, and even if/when an official decision was made, there would be constant lobbying to push it back (look at copyright terms today). 'All or nothing' is the only practical measure.

                          And if we're going on the premise that it is still unethical, then compare it to something else that is, like violence, or stealing. Should we say it's ok to slap or punch someone if it doesn't put them in the hospital? Or it's ok to steal up to what, $10? $50? Where do you draw the line?

                          In cases where this is true (where the various sources for what you want are all spread around) it's already easy to look things up, but people don't always do this and for good reason.

                          Yes, because they are not comparison shopping, or they have already been convinced by advertising to buy from a certain business instead of another that may very well be better for them. If people want to be that lazy in the system I'm describing, they can just pick something at random from the directory and go there, assuming they already don't know the location of anything, which is unlikely. They could just go to wherever their friends and/or family go.

                          it's often easier to just look around to see what's available,

                          Exactly, like I said, they are not comparison shopping. They just see what's available and buy it regardless of whether there is a better deal or product somewhere else.

                          a shopping distict with lots of shops down the same street... it's often easier... and faster

                          Really, walking down the street and going into several shops really takes less time than browsing a web page with search functions? I don't think so.

                          and gives more detailed information.

                          Like I said before, only in a minority of circumstances because most things come packaged. But even that is irrelevant in this case because you are only getting information on one product or from one business, not all the others that you could find out about, unless you spend a lot of time driving around town. So you are either fast, or informed, you can't be both by shopping in person.

                          And this isn't even getting into salespeople, who are there specifically to make money, so many, if not most of them are there to mislead you, not help you. This makes you far less informed than if you were to do your own research online, comparing products and services, with links to reviews and even technical introductions to new technologies or product types. E.g. if you didn't know whether to buy a plasma-screen TV or an LCD, a properly maintained directory would have unbiased, accurate information you could use, as opposed to a salesperson who wants to make a commission, or clear out last year's product. Sure, they are not all like that, but how easily can you tell? And why should you even have to try?

                          You can look things up as well, as you go.

                          Same under my suggestion, so how would that change anything?

                          Without getting a sense at least, of what's available, you may not know what some good options are that meet your needs.

                          Sure, and you can find out a lot more online than you can in person, even today. In a purely directoried system, it'd be even better. Thinking of buying a new computer? Just type in "latest computers" or "newest computers" or fastest, etc. and get a side-by-side comparison from every manufacturer and retailer, with results filtered however you like, by price, distance, OS, color, etc. That instead of just what's available in one store.

                          Lots of things are invented or released or refined every day and often you learn about them by seeing one in a shop passing by.

                          Maybe for you. I learn most of the time about new stuff online, from the stores' websites themselves, or product related websites (like say a "car" website that reviews new cars). This would be a trivial loss that people would quickly adjust to. Really, if you are relying on street advertising to tell you what's new and exciting, you're sure not getting all the information you really want.

                          If these were the only options available, they would be done a lot more. You would have a great increase in people audibly proclaiming (in a private discussion mind you, none of your business) how great some product or service is, especially when you were walking towards a competitors shop. Right now there are lots of far less intrusive options for advertising.

                          Entirely possible. Hey, maybe it'd would become obtrusive enough that people would notice and start ignoring these people, even shaming them for being corporate shills. Either way, as I already said, this method can't stop 100% of this bad behaviour, no law can. All you can do is try to minimize it. And if you do want to eliminate it, well there are options for that too if you're willing to change economic systems.

                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @07:16AM

                            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @07:16AM (#212225)

                            I think this is the crux of the matter:

                            What is "street life" anyway? What makes it so special? Sure I like going "window shopping" with my friends in my city's artsy district where all the cool stores are, getting an ice cream and/or cheese smoky while enjoying the outdoors at the same time, if that's what you're talking about. But I only go to the stores I like anyway, and pass the others by. There's no reason I couldn't find out where those stores are (and the food vendors) from the directory first and do the same thing. The only difference is that I wouldn't be bothered by all the places I'm not interested in.

                            So walking down a street or pedestrian strip that may be full of shops, I would see a series of blank-walled buildings with their addresses printed on them, with no windows showing their contents, no artwork on their signs, no outwards facing kiosks, no tables out the front, no menus at the door, no open stalls, etc. If I went into a cafe I'd have no view of outside, even if this street was next to the ocean or on top of a mountain.

                            In my opinion this removes one of the most pleasant, social, interesting and useful aspect of many commercial districts: Exploring and browsing actual things and actual stores - not a catalogue of them - as you walk around outside.

                            Any benefits to be had from taking away attention-grabbing posters are in my opinion tiny, even irrelevant by comparison.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Monday July 20 2015, @05:30AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Monday July 20 2015, @05:30AM (#211296) Journal

    Yes, step this way, gentle folk! We have the three breasted whore of Babylon, the "always on" internet network, and the happy happy solution to all your problems: it's a gun. But not to worry! We have other prostitutes available, who have degrees of law and have passed a bar! Totally clean, in other words! So step right in, just this way! Windows 10 is free!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @06:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @06:13PM (#211497)

      Come inside, the show's about to start.
      Guaranteed to blow your head apart.

      Rest assured, you'll get your money's worth.
      Greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @07:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @07:42AM (#211323)

    Advertising, real estate and politics. Without them, pathological liars would have no career path.

  • (Score: 2) by Geezer on Monday July 20 2015, @09:36AM

    by Geezer (511) on Monday July 20 2015, @09:36AM (#211348)

    Farce. Pure, simple farce.

    The stock in trade of advertising is dishonesty. Deliberate misrepresentation and intentional manipulation can never, ever, be cast as moral.

    All sales types, like attorneys and politicians, are professional liars. They have no more integrity than a common pickpocket.

    The entire business is built on disingenuous bullshit, so how can it ever be "moral"?

    The whole discussion is pointless.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @01:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @01:22PM (#211398)

      This. Anyone who has taken some marketing classes in college will[should] recognize right away that it is all about psychological manipulation.

      How such manipulation could ever be considered moral or acceptable in a supposed decent society is beyond me.

      At least on the internet adblockers are a thing. It only blocks the obvious ads. The problem is that most 'content' is really just sponsored news anyway.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @09:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @09:56AM (#211355)

    I don't think advertising as such is unethical.

    There are however types/methods of advertising that are also unethical (note that the list below is not necessarily complete, and in no particular order):

    • Ads which cannot easily be recognized as ads (for example "product reviews" which are actually product ads disguised as review).
    • Ads that you are unable to avoid with reasonable means (for example ads at the doctor's office, as you cannot reasonably avoid going to the doctor; OTOH you can mute your TV during ads, so TV ads are not in that category; however TV ads without a previous "here come ads" introduction are; they also may violate the first item of the list).
    • Ads for unethical products/behaviour.
    • Invasion of your privacy (like tracking) in order to produce targeted ads.
    • Ads that use stimuli going beyond the stimuli normally expected in that context (this includes TV ads that are louder than the surrounding program, animated web ads on otherwise static web pages, etc.)
    • Ads that steal valuable resources of the targeted person (that includes ads eating up non-negligible internet bandwidth/data volume, or web ads eating CPU time)

    Apart from that, it is also unethical for ad networks not to check the content they deliver for malware. A big step forward would be a 100% liability of ad networks for any damage resulting from malware they deliver.

    • (Score: 2) by prospectacle on Monday July 20 2015, @11:25AM

      by prospectacle (3422) on Monday July 20 2015, @11:25AM (#211372) Journal

      Good list. These seem like unequivocally bad techniques that could be (and in some cases are) legally banned.

      There are other cases that might be a gray area, but are quite a dark gray, like ads for drinks with lots of sugar and no fibre when people are already (on average) way too fat; or ads that are clearly trying to mislead you into believing something (with their phrasing, sequencing, etc), without directly lying.

      IMO these are unethical but shouldn't be illegal. Possibly they should be mocked, definitely they should be criticised.

      --
      If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @06:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20 2015, @06:14PM (#211498)

      A big step forward would be a 100% liability of ad networks for any damage resulting from malware they deliver.

      WOW There...Big Time!! Hold your horses matey...
      This is web 2.0, it's in the cloud. We can't be held responsible for the ads we serve. What is this, communism? Why do you hate our freedoms?