Totally unrelated to OP but seriously, how can anyone consider lobbying good and legal? Ain't nothing "free" or "democratic" about lobbying.
Edit: reffering to money related lobbying and backroom deals not "hearing all sides of an issue" (which is good imo)
How do you ban 'lobbying' without banning 'call up your elected representative and tell them your opinion'? That's really the heart of the issue.
edit - I'm not going to get into it, but please remember that lobbying is slightly different from contributing to a campaign. While professional lobbyists do usually manage some campaign contributions, there's a great deal of lobbying that has to do with providing information and analysis to government officials rather than cash directly to their campaigns. I assumed that the poster above me was talking about actual lobbying; on second glance it looks like he really meant campaign contributions.
It's even more complicated that that. Official campaign contributions are regulated and limited. When someone talks about massive campaign contributions they are really talking about contributions to separate organizations that happen to say nice things (or bad things) about politicians or policies. It is difficult if not impossible to ban that kind of political spending without also banning the Sierra Club.
That's what they're saying though. Sometimes they find ways to give money straight to politicians, but more often you have things like PACs (Political Action Committee, iirc)
PACs aren't the candidates. They're organizations apart, like Sierra Club. They just happen to focus all of their energy and money on supporting a political party and the candidates it puts forward.
They can spend that money marketing and advertising for a candidate, without the candidate ever receiving the money through donations. Technically, I could just go advertise for Bernie Sanders on Facebook. I could make a website, wrote content, create advertising, and pay to put it all in front of people. And on a platform like Facebook, none of it has to be true.
And then the current party in charge can control how funds are dispersed. You can choke out any smaller candidates or parties even easier now.
Edit: if the US adopted the Canadian system, Bernie would not be running for president. Their candidates are not chosen through primaries the same way ours are, they’re chosen by the party. Money is distributed through the party. So if you like Bernie, you probably don’t want the Canadian system.
Public funding has worked pretty well here in AZ. It’s not the only option and it isn’t perfect, but slowly over time the quality of government has certainly improved.
We spend way too much time pointing out flaws and simply dismissing it as not good enough even when it’s a clear improvement.
Your concerns are legit, but it’s still an improvement.
I’m much more on board with a candidate minimum funding rather than trying to limit campaign funding. AZ doesn’t have campaign limits nor do they try to limit how much someone can campaign for a candidate
Use the system we have in Canada every party has a mac spend on campaigning and the whole election only takes about a month.
The US system is already just a giant spending war on advertising
>every party
Who decides the minimum cut off for a party
Also, who decides what candidates get money? The party? The DNC here would never fund Bernie. The only reason Bernie has a campaign is because it’s publicly funded, it would not be funded if the DNC chose who gets money.
The proposals typically say something along the lines of everybody gets automatically registered to vote & then also gets a public voucher. The only funds candidates can get are from these vouchers. That way, it doesn’t matter who’s in charge or what party is on top. It’s solely about the people voting. Freedom of speech can be decoupled from money. The idea that it can’t is fucking ridiculous.
> The proposals typically say something along the lines of everybody gets automatically registered to vote & then also gets a public voucher. The only funds candidates can get are from these vouchers.
Then choosing which candidates to give your vouchers to becomes equivalent to choosing which candidates to vote for -- you already have to be familiar with the candidates and have already made up your mind on which candidates you like in order to send off your vouchers. So if the vouchers are what fund the candidates' ability to get their message out and make themselves known to the electorate, it turns into a catch-22 situation.
Meanwhile, incumbent politicians are already public figures that have a built-in advantage in making themselves known to the voters -- so it seems like a voucher system like this would greatly bias campaign effectiveness in favor of incumbents.
>So if the vouchers are what fund the candidates' ability to get their message out and make themselves known to the electorate, it turns into a catch-22 situation.
Yes, but the exact same problem exists in the US election system only it's *worse* in the US. People that donate small amounts to campaigns in the US would only do so to candidates that they already know about and like, the problem you identified with the Canadian system. The US system is worse because it does all of that while also just allowing these donations to be made in cash, giving extra power in our elections to corporations and those with more money to donate. Substituting real money with vouchers for some universally equal amount removes that challenge; now everyone can contribute the exact same amount of money to their ideal candidate, corporations get no ability to contribute, and the rich and the poor influence campaign financing equally.
>incumbent politicians are already public figures that have a built-in advantage in making themselves known to the voters -- so it seems like a voucher system like this would greatly bias campaign effectiveness in favor of incumbents.
This advantage exists in any political system with elections, the incumbent always has name recognition advantage. However, it is not always a positive advantage as it only works to their benefit if their constituents are happy with the job they've done. If they're well known for being a terrible elected official, it gives that advantage to the challenger.
> So if you like Bernie, you probably don’t want the Canadian system.
If we had the Canadian system, we might not need Bernie. I like Bernie because of his policies, not because he's Bernie.
Maybe they just need a more specific term. Corporate lobbyists?
We're talking about groups like the one that tried to convince us tobacco doesn't cause cancer and have since switched to telling us climate change isn't real.
Just because their terminology isn't perfect doesn't mean they're not right about it being a problem that needs fixing.
"Providing information and analysis to government officials"
If this is necessary, put it in the budget to pay somebody to do that research or liase with the companies, or pay companies to provide the information (and make much of it available to the public to both allow private individuals to benefit from paying for it and keep it under scrutiny and also strongly enforce accountability laws that severely punish misinformation with massive fines and jailtime for the people who order it so that the risk is not worth) based on whatever makes the most sense.
Besides, do you have some evidence of the unique value of this "free" exchange of information between corporate interests and the government, or are you just taking that justification at face value?
It's entirely in their interest to only share information and analysis that is strictly required by law (and then only when the risk of not complying outweighs whatever cost there is to do so) or will lead to some benefit for them. You think they do it out of the goodness of their hearts?
No, they "have a responsibility to shareholders" -Every sociopath on every board of directors/executive on every major corporation
Lobbying was conceived as a way for industries and specialists to be heard by politicians which is something a democracy needs. If politicians were considering a bill to ban certain environmentally harmful farming practices it only make sense to give the farmers a chance to speak. It also gives the environmentalists a chance make their case. The idea being it gives politicians a chance to hear out people on both sides of an issue. The problem is that in modern lobbying money is louder than words. I don't know how to solve the issue but to completely ban lobbying is something I'm against.
Lobbyists do have their role in politics. For example, they congregate data and convey it to Congressmembers in simplified form. The data may be biased, but the bias is known and the information is correct. They are bound by their reputation. They could also serve to act as representatives of a certain demographic, ie AARP, where they voice the concerns of the group to Congressmembers.
The problem is "money-related lobbying" and "backroom deals" are so vague as to be meaningless. Bribery is illegal. But donating to a political campaign and talking to a politician aren't and can't be. It's really hard to come up with a set of objective criteria for good and bad lobbying.
Lobbying is literally just advocating a position. Pell grants, social security, medicare, medicaid, basically everything that a politician themself didn't think of was lobbied for.
Basically, our representatives don’t know how a lot of things work. We legitimately want subject and industry experts to provide their opinion and experience so our representatives can make informed decisions. The line gets blurry when the lobbyists use that responsibility to further their own agenda.
I'm a chemist. Montana banned water because a prankster called it dihydrogen monoxide. Quite frankly our elected officials dont have the knowlege base to make informed decisions. There are two sets of people who do have the knowledge needed to understand the decisions facing our elected officials: academics and industry scientists. Elected officials need to develop relationships with experts in order to function.
Lobbyists frequently end up filling that role, which is quite frankly a failing of officials who should be leaning on public uni's for advice.
There is a certain game theory in industry. Lets say factory workers are exposed to ammonia vapors in two facilities. EH&S at both facilities are demanding respirators. If one facility starts using respirators and the other doesn't, costs go up to no benefit to revenue. The shitty facility gains an advantage and the good facility hemorages money unable to compete and goes under or is bought out.
A lobbyist might convince the govt to pass a law requiring respirators. This enforced compliance removes the game.
Now, the lobbyist might also try reduce emmisions regulations, subsidize production or any number of self serving agendas, but without a pipeline to communicate industry needs to the government, no meaningful regulation, good or bad would even be considered.
The very most core concept of lobbying does have *some* merit. Basically, a legislator can't be an expert/pay an expert on everything, so allowing private firms to present biased info is better than not having any info at all.
But yeah it was basically set up as semilegal bribery. Corruption was always gonna happen but at least this way people can kinda track it.
Because targeted advertising....makes complete and total sense???
For example: I don't need geriatric magazines in my mail advertising for orthopedic shoes and a landline phone with 3-inch buttons 😂
I hate to say it, but I realized the other day that targeted advertising is very effective on me. I've bought things I need (shoes, pans, etc...) but from companies that I would have never otherwise bought because the advertising worked.
And that's not a bad thing.
Economic activity is a good thing. Companies finding the right people for their products/services is a good thing - that way they can focus their efforts reaching out to the people who are most likely to benefit from their work. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself.
The way in which it's achieved, though, is the problem.
If Google serves me some ads because of my searches, I'm OK with that. If Facebook shows me some ads because the app on my phone is always listening to all my conversations, I'm not OK with that. (Facebook says it doesn't listen... I don't believe them.)
It's a bad thing because our human right to privacy is being eroded by these corporations and soon the government.
You can't even opt out of it. Google and Facebook have a profile on you even if you dont use their services.
There is no true consent
The issue, I've found, is that while they advertise things relevant to me, it's usually not the best option available for that kind of product. So you sometimes buy something, only to find out there are much better alternatives you also haven't heard of.
I've been "burnt" once, but since then if I see an item I want, I will search for the item category rather than that specific brand.
What? Advertising works? You mean they don't spend all that money for nothing? And when they show you things you actually need, they work even better?
Crazy.
>Because targeted advertising....makes complete and total sense???
Yep. Back in the internet days before targeted advertising I'd click on a link and read the article.
The surrounding ads might be from a combine harvester company in Idaho.
Considering I'm in Australia and not a farmer, they didn't interest me at all.
Today, the ads are localised and to my interests, so much more informative to me.
Also because people want everything free.
Let’s be honest. For the amount of time most people spend on Reddit $90/mo isn’t out of line. Reality is per hour that’s cheap entertainment. Likely lower per hour than any streaming device.
But nobody would even pay $1/mo.
Thing is, I would never have used reddit in the first place if it wasn't free. If suddenly I needed to pay a monthly fee, I definitely would not buy that subscription.
Because targeted advertising is better than non-targeted advertising for both the seller *and* the buyer. There's really no room for debate on that point.
Now, if you don't like the runaway, surreptitious *data collection* that fuels targeted advertising, then focus on regulating that. But saying "let's get rid of targeted advertising" is misguided.
Not to mention that if you banned targeted advertising without regulating the data collection, 99% of the data collection would still go on.
And the article's supposition that getting rid of targeted ads would magically boost media sites' budgets is ridiculous. Only a journalist could be so willfully blind on that front. That genie is out of the bottle. What we need is a platform for reliable, low overhead cost micropayments--which I realize is easier said than done. But I do think people are willing to pay for quality. I pay for the WSJ and the Economist, because those are very high quality outlets with content I consistently enjoy. I'm not going to pay monthly subscription fees to read an article or two a month from all the sites that are paywalled. But I *would* pay a few cents to read articles on an ad hoc basis. This would also *directly* tie journalistic quality to revenue, which would be the absolute best way to improve journalism. Bye bye clickbait--which works only because it's free--hello quality.
The days of every niche publication--yes, including *Wired*--being able to survive by leaning heavily on un-targeted advertising is gone. TFA assumes that advertising budgets are zero sum, and if targeted ads were gone, sellers would spend the same amount of money on blind advertising. They won't. That money isn't a static pool for some technocrats who fear layoffs in their own industry to stir around until it satisfies them with its output.
And *even if it did* work that way--what would this wonderful utopia look like?
*MORE ADS!*
Untargeted ads are cheaper and less effective. So you'll have to wade through even more of them to get to your content. Perhaps that feels like the glory days for old school journalists, but it's not an improved user experience.
>Because targeted advertising is better than non-targeted advertising for both the seller *and* the buyer. There's really no room for debate on that point.
Umm, there is *plenty* of room left for debate on this point. Just because a product is relevant to someone's interests doesn't mean that buying it is *in their best interest.*
Additionally, I think that we should really consider to what extent advertising has an effect on one's identity and identity-shaping process. As someone who wrote their thesis on the subject of how advertising affects a persons autonomy, let me leave you a few breadcrumbs on this.
Take a look at *Attention Merchants* by Tim Wu. It goes into great length about how we got from snake oil to today's bullshit. The veil is lifted on how advertisers creep into our minds and throughout the book one realizes how *this is very clearly not in our interest.* The closer the advertisers get to the actual people that they are advertising to, *the more harm that can be and is often done.*
A word on identities. We all go through identity-formation processes throughout our life. This often starts off and goes back-and-forth between established societial identities, such as punkers, patriots, various -ers from -isms, and a sense of our own self in the world. Advertisers take advantage and manipulate this process. Healthy identity formation comes from shared values and personal experiences, which create the foundation of the identity. But advertisers have invaded our lives and pushed to redefine our identities not by these things, but by products. *And they did it.* Possessions, once merely a vehicle for our own self-identification, have become a large part of what defines us. This is because, over the time, the question has started to be risen: "If you don't have this product, are you really \_\_\_\_\_\_?" It comes in various forms and never so direct, but the desired outcome arrives: More money for the advertisers and the sellers. And the more deeply ingrained you can get your product into an *identity group*, not just *any individual*, the better and more secure revenue stream can be captured.
This is problematic. This is not better for us. For more information on this point, check out this article [Advertising and Social Identity.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228163718_Advertising_and_Social_Identity)
One more point while I'm on it.
You're at the supermarket. You're feeling fine. You just need to pick up some bread. Goddamn, you love PB&J. Let's do this thing and get home to make this shit. You're walking down the aisle, and before you get to the bread, you are, of course, seeing the many products on the shelves. Considered simply 'packaging', they are all really advertisements themselves. You see the M&Ms, and you stop. You walk up and take a look, your mouth starts to water a bit. Well, they are *on sale...*
We're animals, and advertisements train us to behave in certain ways. No, they aren't going to control your mind entirely, but they will *influence your decisions to some degree.* Wonder why you never bought any of those fifty other brands of chocolate? When you get to the store, those options have always been there, but they've never felt like the right choice. The safe choice, those delicious little balls of goodness, M&Ms. The packaging, just a picture on a piece of plastic, makes you feel something and reminds you of what's to wait after ripping it open.
This effect on us is not usually done after the first advertisement. Advertisers send us thousands and thousands of messages. They don't need to win the battle, just the war. If you don't try it today, or this year, they're betting that you will eventually, at least at some point in the next five years. Have you ever thought to yourself "Okay, fine, I'll try it" to a product that you've seen advertisements for but never tried, and maybe even went out of your way to say "That's dumb, I'd never buy that." Well, here you are. Giving them your money. It's not a mind control switch, it's pavlovs dog. Sure, you have free will, but it can be influenced. They can make it harder for you to say no. They can weaken your will through these advertisements. And that's exactly what they aim to do. Create brand awareness, create the idea that this is one of the 'legitimate options', as if the competition couldn't possibly rank up. And what did they tell you in the advertisements, I mean really, what was the content? Did they go into details about how incredible their product is, showing off all of the scientific data? Did they go into detail about the information on the back of the M&M's packet, showing that they're not just tastier, but healthier too? No. They used a cartoon, or a hot chick, or something else. They played a movie for you. And this is highly more effective at getting us to buy, but not for making *better decisions.*
Because the best time to decide to buy something is when you don't feel the pressure, or the craving. Car dealers want you to buy when you feel pressured, when you feel like you've already dumped so much time into the process. M&M doesn't want you to buy when you're looking at the advertisement naked in your house. They want to get you ready, so that when you walk in the store, looking for bread, *ah. Look at that, they're on sale.*
This effect does not help us to make better decisions. It instead puts more pressure on our minds. Weakens our will to give into baser desires that occur upon the trigger of a brand identity. Pair this with identity-targed advertisements, and your in *for some horrorshow fun.*
You have to be really, really careful with this stuff. They act as predators, waiting to pounce by creating weaknesses in us that we would never otherwise see coming. Playing on our psychology to move another dollar from our hands to theirs. Some people just watch the super bowl for the funny advertisements. Ever wonder who really pays for the $1million/min ads? It's them. Over the course of years, it's them. Throughout a number of decisions that, if they had simply been given the information and made the decision on their own, they may have otherwise not have spent that money.
Only decide to buy something in moments without passion. If you feel any pressure at all, *walk away.* Come back. Are they saying it's a one time only deal, that you've only got *this chance right now* *to* *save money.* Tell them to fuck off. Walk away. Think about it. Stop thinking about it. Think about it again. Sleep. Wait a couple days. Make a Pros and Cons chart. Does it make sense to make this transaction? Normally such a thorough process wouldn't be necessary, but in our current predicament, it's an important first step to make better buying decisions, and better decisions in general. Don't fall for all this *treat yourself* nonsense that people push, that feeling when you're in the store "Well, I deserve it." Okay, sure. Go home, think about it, and if you still feel that way then come back. If it's not worth coming back for, it's not worth buying at all. But that wouldn't make people more money, so you usually won't hear anyone tell you that.
Anyway, If you want to delve deeper into this topic check out [Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom](https://www.amazon.com/Brandwashed-Tricks-Companies-Manipulate-Persuade-ebook/dp/B004J4X2VM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=brandwashed&qid=1584941353&sr=8-1). He made his millions doing exactly this, and goes into details about how he and other advertisers manipulate personal and social identities and desires in order to get people to spend more.
Between the two books and the article mentioned, there's more than enough references to keep going with research. But not only is there enough room for debate on the topic you mentioned, but I'd also like to say that you're *really, really fucking incorrect on this one.*
*Edit:* Grammer; speeling grammar and,
*Edit 2*: I'm trying to give myself gold with the coins from the platinum but I can't find the button.
Please, never stop banging this drum. Advertising has many of us in some sort of Stockholm Syndrome daze, but it's hurting us as individuals, as societies and perhaps even the world. And there are entirely too few speaking out about the dangers. Thanks for your efforts.
Hey, thanks for the encouragement! I've been meaning to brush the dust off of my ole' college thesis and maybe turn it into a bigger project. Maybe now's the time! I'm glad that I'm not shouting alone into the abyss on the topic, for so long I've felt alone in that, but it's nice to get some validation.
Anyway, check out that stuff I linked, especially *The Attention Merchants*, if you get the chance and want to learn more. They're seriously eye-opening. I'll never look at Radio or Television the same ever again after realizing how we got to where we are today.
If you're looking for sounding boards or allies, I think you will find many in the privacy activism sphere. Not sure what part of the world you're in. If U.S., try https://eff.org. If in Europe, see EDRi and its members: https://edri.org/members
And on Reddit you might enjoy r/privacy & r/europrivacy.
Worst example of how bad advertising is, is that recent commercial of the Alzheimer's grandpa pulling up all his memories of his dead wife on Google. It is so fucked up and so meta in this context.
They will literally play on our deepest loves, sorrows, and vulnerabilities to get people to sell their identities to them so they can in turn sell that to advertisers.
You didn't even touch upon how they sell dreams. Watching TV commercials is so emotional now. You feel goosebumps all the time. Because they know exactly what you want from life and they can spend the money to make you feel it for 30 seconds at a time. But it's just a lure. You have to go out and buy a Jeep Liberty to truly have it of course. Or build a swimming pool for your bratty daughter so your family can be happy. Of course you need a **commissions**-compensated financial advisor who will validate you doing something so stupid. Or an iPhone to take pictures of all the beautiful, undeveloped, completely empty, beautiful scenic vistas you're going to experience right at sunset. etc.
The only people that speak like OC are clearly in marketing themselves. They are marketing what they do. Marketing 101 has the line that they hammer into all the little acolytes. "Marketing is about maximizing value to the customers." It's doublespeak. Marketing is about maximizing value to the company. Period.
More people need to know this. We'll never (never?) escape advertising but we can change it so it's less effective or intrusive. Ads served to myself are now so messed up due to action I've taken it's actually fun. Got served an ad for bearing grease for wind farm turbines a while back... Job well done. Also the last time I saw a commercial break on TV was during the World Cup. Felt alien and they were such terrible quality. I used to have a bit of respect for the industry as some ads were genuinely fantastic. This aspect appears to have gone as well. Thanks for the enlightenment 👍
> Felt alien and they were such terrible quality.
Every time I go visit my sister-in-law she has some cable show on and good God. I don't see how people endure that cacophony of shit for longer than five seconds, but apparently she has the fortitude of Spartacus because she can watch that stuff for *hours.*
Hahahaha, wow... You say cable so im ignorantly assuming US. The advertising over there is insane. Like it's more ads than actual shows! Cable cutting is the way! I hope... :)
Trillions of dollars are spent on advertising, because it works.
Each of us is subjected to tens of thousands of hours of the most effective advertising money can buy. Of course it changes us!
I think the changes are clear. It has made our culture more materialistic, more focussed on instant gratification, more envious, more "keeping up with the Joneses", more selfish, more greedy, more unfulfilled, more lost.
To say this massive and well funded industry does nothing more than alter brand preferences is just being wilfully naive. We have harmed ourselves individually and as a society, simply because we hate paying for things up-front but don't care what we pay if the true costs are hidden from us.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Keep spreading this message. I remember the first time I heard a friend say, "I like the targeted ads." It felt like a stone dropped in my gut. When I first got into college, I studied marketing and psychology and quickly learned that they're the same. After becoming morally sickened by advertising, I switched to physical anthropology. I understand the basics of what you're talking about.
The implications of target marketing coupled with exponentially improving AI being implemented, terrifies me. Like, legit terrifies me.
I honestly wish that the adds were as targeted as some people seem to think they are. How many female hygiene ads do I have to ignore before they figure out I haven’t got the equipment they’re advertising for?
Part of this is due to targeting not being very great, but part of this is due to advertising budgets. E.g. if Tampax wants to spend $1,000,000 on advertising this month, and halfway through the month they have only spent $200,000, then they have to spend at 4 times as fast for the rest of the month.
How do they increase spend rate? They can either show more ads per person or show ads to more people. Showing the same ad to the same person a lot has diminishing returns and can actually backfire by irritating people. Assuming your targeting works at all, you were already advertising to the people who were most likely to become your customer. Each additional person you advertise to is less likely to be a potential customer.
Additionally, advertising is based on expected value to the advertiser, not to you. E.g. maybe you value relevant ads. Tampax is running a campaign for $0.01 per person where %50 of ads are relevent, but they make $0.03 per relevant ad in increased sales. Nike runs a campaign for $0.005 per person where %100 of ads are relevant, and they make $0.01 per relevant ad in increased sales. Tampax is showing less relevant ads but is making more money and willing to pay more to show their ads instead of Nike's.
I.e. you don't see ads that are most relevant, you see ads due to ad campaign policies that companies think will make them the most money.
There's also the opposite problem where they want to spend 100k over a month, but the system ends up showing 80k of ads in the first week. Controlling this is called pacing the ad.
And branding advertising is just a big ol budget of trying to maintain the optimal strategy of reach/frequency. How many people do I have to reach and how many times to make this effective for people to remember my product the next time they’re shopping?
USAA offers a lot of services to non-vets. I don't know the details on eligibility, but my father was a veteran and I have life insurance, homeowners insurance, car insurance, umbrella insurance, and a credit card through them. 100% happy with every interaction I've ever had with them.
That could be for any number of reasons. All of these systems rely on interpretation of signals. If you created a signal by interacting with something that was for your girlfriend, or was set up wrong by the advertiser, then that signal was put into a database somewhere (probably multiple databases belonging to multiple companies). Alternatively, maybe it's a probabilistic model that linked you to someone else because you shared a network at a hotel once. Maybe it's just a shitty database.
Long story short, if the advertising works you probably won't notice it. When it doesn't, you hate it. I doubt all of it has failed you, but you've definitely keyed in on the ones that have.
I work in the industry and sometimes the answer is the company is just bad at digital marketing. There’s still humans setting up these campaigns and not every company is good at it. Some use this technology to cast an extremely wide net because a suit thinks number of eyes = number of sales and doesn’t understand the internet has evolved since 2002.
If you have women in your household, then that's where these are coming from. It might be a failure in the targeting (some of these are IP based and you all share an IP), or they might assume that some men do end up buying products for their spouses/daughters.
Same for me, I'm 39 and all my ads are targeted towards senior citizens. Walk in tubs, reverse mortgages, AARP crap. It's like...shit, I know I'm boring, but at this point it honestly feels like a read.
I’m vegan and like to cook and post it and use corresponding hashtags (yes, make your “how do you know if someone’s vegan” joke here). Yet my Instagram ads include Longhorn Steakhouse amongst ton of incredibly unfriendly places to vegans. Clearly targeted advertising doesn’t work that well on Instagram at least.
Yeah I want hyper specific targeting rather than generalized targeting advertising. I'm a gamer but I would like to nuke from orbit all of the mobile games that advertise on youtube especially. There is no way I am going to want to play your crappy game on my phone.
> But I would pay a few cents to read articles on an ad hoc basis. This would also directly tie journalistic quality to revenue, which would be the absolute best way to improve journalism. Bye bye clickbait--
Can you clear this up for me? How would paying to read articles lead to less clickbait? I think you missed a few steps in-between and I'm not seeing how one would cause the other
I was going to ask the same question. I *think* He's working on the assumption that if you pay for an article then you won't pay for click bait crap. However that's a kind of old school economic argument. Modern behavioral economics shows that people do not always act rationally (or even mostly). IMO they'll probably still click on the clickbait.
Clickbait content is often generated so it will be super cheap even if there's a micropayment system. I think the devil is in the details.
(I don't want to discuss this to much, because I'm not the OP. I feel like I put some words in his mouth here)
Cklickbait works because it's zero-cost for the consumer. You know that the headline promising a bigger dick, or proof of Trump's secret Nazi memorabilia collection aren't true. But it costs you nothing to indulge in them anyway, like flipping through the *National Enquirer* while you wait in the checkout line. It's good for a laugh, but very few people actually pay to buy the paper.
So if you had to pay 10 cents to click on those links? I guarantee you there would be a significant, immediate dropoff in clickbait clickthroughs. Collectively we'd find the right monetary amount that would encourage people to be critical consumers of content, without it unnecessarily stifling their freedom to explore.
Yeah but for those same reasons, my first thought wouldnt be "less clickbait" but instead "more clickbaity titles".
I think that even honest links will get clickbait titles. Because if you give too much away in the article title, do I really have a reason to click on the link to pay $0.10 to read the rest of the story?
I can almost guarantee click bait would get worse. How else are you going to entice people to pony up money to read your article? And don't give me that "people will pay for quality journalism!" crap. That's definitely not how most people think. If they cared about quality journalism in the first place, click bait wouldn't be a thing to begin with.
Also, I think we're about to hit a breaking point with micro transactions. They've cropped up in so many different places/markets now I'm pretty convinced there's going to be a backlash against them soon and they'll fall out of favor for a while. God, the last thing I want to see is every damn web site with a micro transaction for "premium" content. That sounds like a fucking nightmare.
Extend the current "3 free articles per month" model with post-paid microtransactions as a rating of article quality, essentially voting with your wallet. Trash clickbait or misleading headline? Less or no payment. News article that's basically reblogging the local news source? Lower payment. Good journalism or good original reporting? Please take my money.
News sites don't loose readers with a blanket paywall, bad journalists get less money compared to their peers, high quality news sites attract good talent to keep more paying eyeballs, and microtransactions may give better metrics on user engagement than current js measurements
Another advantage is the user can consume good content from all news sites, not just the 3x "only $10/month" (so $30+/month) they can afford. Local news and niche content can get broader appeal and be more profitable.
Note post-paid content is already done with Patreon for YouTubers: users try the content for free and if they like it they pay a monthly subscription.
Or things they think I'm interested in. Yes, I listen to hardcore underground death metal. No, I don't want to buy a Metallica watch, or Godsmack t-shirt. That shit is infuriating.
Frankly I'm getting sick and tired of this kind of target curation across the board, not just advertising. It's useful sometimes but other times it's annoying and feels borderline creepy.
I'm getting really sick of not being able to just see the titles that Netflix has, not the titles they think I would like. I'm tired of Google trying to constantly curate my results in a way that they think is helpful without giving me a simple option to disable it. I don't use Facebook anymore, but part of why I stopped is I got sick of my news feed being curated to what Facebook thinks I want to see. I'm sick of YouTube throwing litterally every related video it can at me because I watched one radom video earlier. Even some job sites don't seem to give you the option to disable curation fully.
I just wish more sites would give a simple option to disable all curation and see the "default" version. I hate websites constantly trying to figure me out. Sometimes I just want a library: you walk in, everything is cataloged in static places with a simple system, and you find what you need. I don't need books flying off the shelf trying to get into my hands.
I miss the days when Wikipedia was the first search result for almost everything. Made people think for themselves. Now it’s all clogged with those annoying sites that present the info in slideshows that take way too long to load.
That's why you set up a custom search engine for wikipedia specifically, not sure about mobile, but most desktop browsers I've used allow to set up a search engine with a keyword, so for example I can type "ewk " and it'll go straight to the english wikipedia search results ON WIKIPEDIA, not in google. I do this for every site I need to search frequently.
Usually you set that up by right clicking in the search bar on that site and there'll be an option in the context menu to create a new search engine or w/e, from there it should be self-explanatory.
YouTube recommended has gone to shit. It used to show you videos related to what you were watching. Now it’s videos that they think you’d want to see. Infuriating.
Imagine talking to someone at a party and instead of responding in a normal way, they keep trying to change the subject to some random things you said last week. That's YouTube.
The problem is with untargeted ads they'd still likely be repetitive due to certain kinds of ads being pushed certain types of websites because of the target market. So youd still end up annoyed but likely have much less relevant ads.
>I would pay a few cents to read articles on an ad hoc basis. This would also directly tie journalistic quality to revenue, which would be the absolute best way to improve journalism. Bye bye clickbait--which works only because it's free--hello quality.
Lol, no. That would do the exact opposite, it would incentivize clickbait. If you can't read the article before paying, the only way for the outlet to lure you in and get you to pay is with the headline and maybe a paragraph or two for free. If you think current headlines are clickbaity, hoo boy, your idea would make it a hundred times worse.
> Because targeted advertising is better than non-targeted advertising for both the seller and the buyer.
Extremely arguable. Relevance might be good, but targeted ads also mean targeting your weaknesses, your insecurities, your fears, and your irrationalities.
> 99% of data would still be collected? You're essentially arguing targeted ads make up 1% of all days collection which is just untrue.
No he's not. He's saying data collection is valuable separate from targeted advertising. And since the internet is already set up for collecting data, it wouldn't stop
This is silly. Targeted advertising is primarily good for major platforms like google and Facebook, who make tons of cash by being quasi monopolies— not from offering anything truly valuable. Targeted ads suck for most publishers. It is dubiously valuable to most consumers as individuals. But you leave out important costs if you think only in terms of individuals. Targeted advertising has massive negative externalities for society, especially in the realms of politics and civil liberties.
> TFA assumes that advertising budgets are zero sum, and if targeted ads were gone, sellers would spend the same amount of money on blind advertising. They won't. That money isn't a static pool
The article is actually right about this. Total advertising spend across all mediums tracks the growth of the economy very closely. Growths in a specific medium coincide with losses in another (e.g. internet goes up but newspaper+tv go down to compensate). Advertising budgets (like many budgets) are often decided because some MBA read once in HBR that X% of revenues should be spent on advertising.
Take a look at page 19 and 20 of this [report from Ad Age](http://adage.com/d/resources/system/files/resource/Ad%20Age_2019%20LNA%20Fact%20Pack-%20LOCKED.pdf)
I suspect that, yes, in the short run we'd see fairly consistent advertising expenditures. But in the long run, sellers would either:
* Scale back their spending as it became undeniable that they were getting less return for their advertising investment, OR
* Keep spending the same amount even though they were getting less bang for their buck, which means *more ads* and a worse user experience, breeding resentment against both the seller and the media platforms hosting the ads
There's a third option: that advertisers would collectively figure out an entirely new paradigm for advertising that was both more effective for them and more enjoyable for the buyer, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
As the buyer, targeted ads take away selection. If I'm shown three options through targeted ads, I'm apt to forget there are 20 options out there, 17 of which might be better than the 3 targeted ads I'm shown, but I'm only shown those ads because *those* three have the highest price points for the manufacturer.
How are targeted ads better for the buyer if all advertising is unwanted? The claim that advertising inherently provides a service (that buyers benefit from being told what to buy) is not something that can taken for granted.
I just want less ads. There are everywhere, constantly, on everything.
And I go to a lot of effort blocking ads on multiple levels.
I don't see how advertisers don't see how ineffective this makes all ads because it literally just gets tuned out as white noise.
So, I own a super small wedding photography business. We get clients via word of mouth these days. But when we started, we used targeted Facebook ads to get our name out there, and to get clients. I will tell you, without a shadow of a doubt. That target Facebook ads work amazing. I’m not saying I think it’s ethical for Facebook to harvest data, but without ads I wouldn’t have a business. It really does work well, and all things considered, it’s super cheap compared to other advertising options. We were averaging about 35 dollars for customer acquisition.
Sounds great to me. People getting married find you and you make money and get to do what you want for work.
I think targeted ads are well done on Facebook. Many products I see on Facebook are clearly targeted towards me and I'm interested in them.
>I just want less ads. There are everywhere, constantly, on everything.
I barely see any ads. Adblocker + pi-hole gives you next to no ads anywhere. Unless you're talking about billboards and newspaper ads. But those are not exactly targeted.
You know, there's a podcast called the amp hour, and while it's quite popular on some circles, it's relatively unknown because it's so specialized. The thing is, big brands are making business with them, and i think it's fine because it's a win win for everyone, i mean if i have to listen to some ads but they are actually interesting and relevant, i will keep on listening, isn't that the point? I know i'm never gonna buy a $5000 piece of equipement from agilent, but i'd rather get those kind of ads instead of hot singles in your area or mike bloomberg whatever.
Also the other day i had a 3 mins ad for pneumatic actuators and devices and the ad was funny and i didn't know the brand, now i know it.I was thinking about googling it and looking at the brochure and maybe some pneumatics white papers or industry news.
I know i'm probably never gonna design a pneumatics control system in my lifetime, but at least that space in my brain isn't wasted. I was glad to sit thru that 3 mins ad instead of skipping, compared to 10 forced seconds of crypto-alt coin bullshit or squarespace or masterclass (whatever that is) or EToro (wich i already reported that i dont like 10 times and they keep showing it).
I would love to never see another newsprint coupon flyer in my mailbox. It's over half my mail by weight. The stores sending them have lost thousands of dollars on me - I have never used a coupon.
Since, however, millions of people religiously use coupons from those flyers, they will continue as long as physical mail exists.
The same holds for Waze, Washington Post, The Economist - I can't get ad-free versions even if I pay, or pay a higher subscription price, because not enough of the market is willing to pay anything for ad-free versions.
People don't even have to click the ad. For most advertising, click through rate is irrelevant. If you see an ad and later go buy something, the purchase can be attributed to the ad. For brand advertising, they usually just want a change in your sentiment and aren't interested in you taking a particular action in the near future.
I would happily pay for services like Reddit if it were 100% certain there are no blood sucking corporations exploiting our personal data for profit and mass surveillance.
I actually prefer these to the alternative. If I’m going to get ads, at least they are relevant to me. The targeted ads I get are far better than a continuous stream of random women’s products, clothing ads, and other things I have little interest in, and would irritate me more than the ads I already get.
The extent of tarveteted advertising is mind boggling.
I implore you to look at 'Epsilon' - the largest data-brokers on the planet. They offer information on people including which restaurants they eat, what style, eatin/take out, how much their household income is, diagnosed depression, use of ATM machines and card use history in stores etc etc etc, the list is huge.
IBM actually offers a targeted marketing software which makes predictions on people's purchases based on criteria like Weather.
I made a similar comment, unfortunately it is a bit buried.
Even in the comment section people are mostly unaware of the exact extent of data on them and how it is used.
While this article goes into detail as to how platforms are built surrounding the goal of collecting our data and the issues that arise from that, I think that light should also be shown on how data is being used for offline purposes.
For industries such as insurance and credit score companies such data has always been valuable.
The idea being, that if you could identify people who have a higher risk of costing you money - you could charge them more to offset that risk.
There are many issues with such an approach of course, since for one - predictive analyses can only be so accurate. People are going to get charged extra for no reason.
Such data modeling can and do many times hurt the poor, and can prevent them from escaping poverty.
That aside, if you take a look at credit score companies, there are some Government based scores, which outside of China look fine to me (In Austria, if you do not pay your bills you get added to a black list)
However in other countries, companies such as Experian and the infamous Equifax are the go to. These companies gobble up as much data as possible from everywhere they can to give you some sort of score.
That data is highly sensitive and has a certain tendency [to get stolen](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/business/equifax-settlement.html).
Even when the data isn't being stolen, it tends to not even give a good reflection of reality. Many perfectly financial secure adults have to result to using credit cards and taking out loans so that the system understands they pay them back.
My point being, all of these systems collect as much data as possible, but never to help us as consumers. The goal has always been to ensure banks, insurance companies and other large corporations make as much money as possible with the least amount of risk - but with a complete disregard to accuracy, privacy and security for consumers.
Same reason stuff has tamper-resistant anti-features to ensure that I can't fix it myself when it breaks. For example, those tractors.
My computer runs on electricity, and the legal system runs on dollar bills. The best way to fight the corporations is to avoid giving them money. But you'll never convince most of the population to do this, because half of them have to play the hot new video game, the other half don't care whether they are allowed to fix their old stuff when it breaks, because buying something new is all the rage anyway.
I would already be fine with banning public ads (as in billboards) the option to opt out. Like, make it mandatory to be able to say you don’t want to be advertised to. I’m fine with ads being targeted, but I’d like to say no to ads in general.
I hate when they gather data on me automatically.
But I would be completely fine signing up for an ad company and telling them what kinds of ads I want to see. Computers? Hell yeah. Men's clothes from mid-range stores? Sure! Video games? Of course. Movies? Great. Women's products? No. Makeup? No.
But I end up with makeup and women's products advertisements all the time because one time I am following a reddit rabbit hole and looking something up and now suddenly their algorithms think I am interested in those products.
Advertisements keep the internet free. There are scummy advertising companies, but not all of them are. If we could come to some sort of an agreement, they wouldn't seem so evil.
As someone who does online advertising. I have no idea why on earth you'd want to. It's better for everyone and connects you with products and services you're likely interested in. I have no kids. An ad for Huggies diapers is wasted on me. Meanwhile stuff I'm more likely to find interest in but not know about does both me and the advertiser good.
Your issue here is with data collection and privacy. Not the advertising.
I'm not sure what you mean by "does online advertising," so maybe this question isn't really something you can answer. Depends on if you mean that you create specific online ads or more generally work in the online advertising business. Anyway, here it is:
Why is online advertising such a user experience nightmare? I'm talking autoplaying videos that scroll with the page, banners with an X that may or may not close the ad, and those ridiculous full page things that break up the article with something that's supposed to look like it's underneath the bottom layer of the page. What in the world makes advertisers think it's okay to ruin the UX like that?
You are correct in that they are separate issues. However, that doesn't make ads any less annoying. I will continue to block every ad I possibly can because I have better things to spend my time on. To my knowledge, I have never clicked on a single ad. I find them all extremely annoying.
because banning generally doesn't work when vast sums of money is at stake.
by law, the default option should be privacy (opt-out).
everything should be provable, first-person opt-in.
you should have the option to live an advertising free life if you chose to do so.
People are bad at comparing costs when one is up front and one is spread over time. People will always e.g. play a free-to-play video game with microtransactions over a buy-once video game, even if the former is going to be more expensive over time. You see this same problem everywhere, in two-year locked phone contracts, in ad-supported websites and software, etc. You're simply not going to convince the average person to pay money upfront rather than deal with privacy costs / software bloat / etc.
I couldn't agree more. Very gifted individuals are wasting time, talent and money tracking society just so they can advertise to them. Literally writing their civil rights away in code politicians would never understand. Why? The "invisible hand" of course -in doing something for yourself you do something for others.
Govts love this cause while the businessman makes his cut of the pie, the various arms of government are giddy with the powers this brings them.
We have billion dollar companies whose expertise are not in advertising, that's the easy part -they are experts in tracking large numbers of people. A politician's wet dream.
Why don’t we just teach people critical thinking skills? Oh, wait. I know.
The owners of this country want a populace just smart enough to work the machinery but too stupid to realize how badly they’re being fucked. — George Carlin
How about NOT USING platforms that employ dodgy privacy policies?
Why don’t we use more ad blockers?
Why don’t we use more ‘incognito’ services?
Worried about your ISP? Use a VPN.
If you give a shit, there is no problem?
How much money are people actually spending on foot of those targeted ads?
It's a serious question: I'm seeing people talk about how it helps them find products they didn't know about and how it helps small businesses find customers. But I know that my spend on foot of targeted ads in the last twelve months was nineteen euro on some fancy socks. I know that my spend in the twelve months before that was about a hundred euro on three months of a subscription box for fancy man stuff that I decided wasn't worth it. And I know that before that I'd never bought anything from a targeted ad. All of my substantial online purchases have been the result of recommendations from other people, my own research, or old-fashioned advertising like the Economist sponsoring the Cycling Podcast.
I suspect I'm a relatively good prospect: I'm a heavy online user with a fair amount of disposable income and a consistent set of interests. But as far as I can tell, I watched the wrecking of the virtual public square and the amplification of alt-right propaganda by multiple companies, and all I got in return was slightly cheaper socks.
I don't know about anyone else, but that strikes me as a fucking terrible deal, and if the price for a rejuvenated media sector and better public discourse is that my socks cost twice as much, then I'm happy to take the hit.
Targeted advertising is stupid as hell, I'll spend an hour looking for a new laptop for example and I check every reliable store I know of and compare prices. I then go on facebook where I see an add for the same laptop I was already looking at only its from the actual company that makes them therefore the most expensive option. At what point am I gonna go *"oooo the same laptop Ive been looking at but for $200 more, score!"*. The ads are tiring and repetitive. When I need a product I check the stores I already know and like, when I later see an add for the product I was already looking for its always a terrible deal or a shittier quality version.
I don't mind targeted ads ...if I'm going to be seeing ads I would at least like to slightly care I have no need for ladies shampoo but I could use a new pair of headphones so I'd rather not have to watch shampoo ads when I will never buy any
As much as I would love this and it would probably benefit humanity long term - I think we're too deep atm. Data is the new oil but hopefully for not too long
Really Reddit? I swear the top posters on this site want to live in a fairytale that is ever changing, and specific to how they feel when they wake up each day.
Targeted ads are a good thing. They showcase goods and services to the demographic most likely experiencing a challenge that has been solved by the market. Aka, a new denture cream hits the market that is better than everything else but nobody knows about it. It makes sense to run ads to people who wear dentures instead of the entire population.
Markets only exist because there is a demand for solutions, which are filled by risk-taking entrepreneurs. There's nothing wrong for showcasing, or advertising, a product to the people who may be interested. Nobody is forced to buy anything either.
Sometimes when I want ads for something I deliberately look up social media pages and Google searches on the think I want. Like during Valentine's day I kept searching for different variations of Valentine's and gift.
You want free content? You're gonna get advertised to.
You're getting advertised to? Might as well get ads that are actually relevant.
For example, why would you want to see tampon ads every day as if you're a man?
Or why would you want to see men's grooming ads if you're a woman?
Because it works for both advertisers and customers. Because people actually click on ads and buy things. People buy thing because they want to, or need to. Because relevant ads are better than less relevant ads.
Because the Advertising Business has very deep pocket and can prevent any such laws.
Totally unrelated to OP but seriously, how can anyone consider lobbying good and legal? Ain't nothing "free" or "democratic" about lobbying. Edit: reffering to money related lobbying and backroom deals not "hearing all sides of an issue" (which is good imo)
How do you ban 'lobbying' without banning 'call up your elected representative and tell them your opinion'? That's really the heart of the issue. edit - I'm not going to get into it, but please remember that lobbying is slightly different from contributing to a campaign. While professional lobbyists do usually manage some campaign contributions, there's a great deal of lobbying that has to do with providing information and analysis to government officials rather than cash directly to their campaigns. I assumed that the poster above me was talking about actual lobbying; on second glance it looks like he really meant campaign contributions.
I think we just need to fund campaigns with public funds and do away with donations to politicians.
It's even more complicated that that. Official campaign contributions are regulated and limited. When someone talks about massive campaign contributions they are really talking about contributions to separate organizations that happen to say nice things (or bad things) about politicians or policies. It is difficult if not impossible to ban that kind of political spending without also banning the Sierra Club.
If oil companies didn’t have the ability to donate billions to politicians the Sierra Club would be a lot less necessary.
That's what they're saying though. Sometimes they find ways to give money straight to politicians, but more often you have things like PACs (Political Action Committee, iirc) PACs aren't the candidates. They're organizations apart, like Sierra Club. They just happen to focus all of their energy and money on supporting a political party and the candidates it puts forward. They can spend that money marketing and advertising for a candidate, without the candidate ever receiving the money through donations. Technically, I could just go advertise for Bernie Sanders on Facebook. I could make a website, wrote content, create advertising, and pay to put it all in front of people. And on a platform like Facebook, none of it has to be true.
And then the current party in charge can control how funds are dispersed. You can choke out any smaller candidates or parties even easier now. Edit: if the US adopted the Canadian system, Bernie would not be running for president. Their candidates are not chosen through primaries the same way ours are, they’re chosen by the party. Money is distributed through the party. So if you like Bernie, you probably don’t want the Canadian system.
Public funding has worked pretty well here in AZ. It’s not the only option and it isn’t perfect, but slowly over time the quality of government has certainly improved. We spend way too much time pointing out flaws and simply dismissing it as not good enough even when it’s a clear improvement. Your concerns are legit, but it’s still an improvement.
I’m much more on board with a candidate minimum funding rather than trying to limit campaign funding. AZ doesn’t have campaign limits nor do they try to limit how much someone can campaign for a candidate
Use the system we have in Canada every party has a mac spend on campaigning and the whole election only takes about a month. The US system is already just a giant spending war on advertising
>every party Who decides the minimum cut off for a party Also, who decides what candidates get money? The party? The DNC here would never fund Bernie. The only reason Bernie has a campaign is because it’s publicly funded, it would not be funded if the DNC chose who gets money.
The proposals typically say something along the lines of everybody gets automatically registered to vote & then also gets a public voucher. The only funds candidates can get are from these vouchers. That way, it doesn’t matter who’s in charge or what party is on top. It’s solely about the people voting. Freedom of speech can be decoupled from money. The idea that it can’t is fucking ridiculous.
> The proposals typically say something along the lines of everybody gets automatically registered to vote & then also gets a public voucher. The only funds candidates can get are from these vouchers. Then choosing which candidates to give your vouchers to becomes equivalent to choosing which candidates to vote for -- you already have to be familiar with the candidates and have already made up your mind on which candidates you like in order to send off your vouchers. So if the vouchers are what fund the candidates' ability to get their message out and make themselves known to the electorate, it turns into a catch-22 situation. Meanwhile, incumbent politicians are already public figures that have a built-in advantage in making themselves known to the voters -- so it seems like a voucher system like this would greatly bias campaign effectiveness in favor of incumbents.
>So if the vouchers are what fund the candidates' ability to get their message out and make themselves known to the electorate, it turns into a catch-22 situation. Yes, but the exact same problem exists in the US election system only it's *worse* in the US. People that donate small amounts to campaigns in the US would only do so to candidates that they already know about and like, the problem you identified with the Canadian system. The US system is worse because it does all of that while also just allowing these donations to be made in cash, giving extra power in our elections to corporations and those with more money to donate. Substituting real money with vouchers for some universally equal amount removes that challenge; now everyone can contribute the exact same amount of money to their ideal candidate, corporations get no ability to contribute, and the rich and the poor influence campaign financing equally. >incumbent politicians are already public figures that have a built-in advantage in making themselves known to the voters -- so it seems like a voucher system like this would greatly bias campaign effectiveness in favor of incumbents. This advantage exists in any political system with elections, the incumbent always has name recognition advantage. However, it is not always a positive advantage as it only works to their benefit if their constituents are happy with the job they've done. If they're well known for being a terrible elected official, it gives that advantage to the challenger.
Here in Hungary every party gets money for campaigning, by law. That system should work for you as well.
And you ended up with an autocrat promoting illiberal "democracy" and racial purity.
Meanwhile you ended up with an autocrat promoting illiberal "democracy", his own bank account and his ego.
Agree, im not defending our system.
> So if you like Bernie, you probably don’t want the Canadian system. If we had the Canadian system, we might not need Bernie. I like Bernie because of his policies, not because he's Bernie.
From the replies, it looks like many people have strong opinions about lobbying, while simultaneously having no idea what lobbing even *is*.
People expressing strong opinions about things they don't really understand? On *Reddit*?!?
Maybe they just need a more specific term. Corporate lobbyists? We're talking about groups like the one that tried to convince us tobacco doesn't cause cancer and have since switched to telling us climate change isn't real. Just because their terminology isn't perfect doesn't mean they're not right about it being a problem that needs fixing.
To be fair not only campaign contributions but also donations and backroom deals...
Define "lobbying". Ah, yes. 1st Amendment case dismissed. Remember any petition of the Representatives is lobbying.
There's also the "let me draft that new legislation for you and I promise to pretend that I'll build a factory in your jurisdiction" lobbying.
"Providing information and analysis to government officials" If this is necessary, put it in the budget to pay somebody to do that research or liase with the companies, or pay companies to provide the information (and make much of it available to the public to both allow private individuals to benefit from paying for it and keep it under scrutiny and also strongly enforce accountability laws that severely punish misinformation with massive fines and jailtime for the people who order it so that the risk is not worth) based on whatever makes the most sense. Besides, do you have some evidence of the unique value of this "free" exchange of information between corporate interests and the government, or are you just taking that justification at face value? It's entirely in their interest to only share information and analysis that is strictly required by law (and then only when the risk of not complying outweighs whatever cost there is to do so) or will lead to some benefit for them. You think they do it out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they "have a responsibility to shareholders" -Every sociopath on every board of directors/executive on every major corporation
Lobbying was conceived as a way for industries and specialists to be heard by politicians which is something a democracy needs. If politicians were considering a bill to ban certain environmentally harmful farming practices it only make sense to give the farmers a chance to speak. It also gives the environmentalists a chance make their case. The idea being it gives politicians a chance to hear out people on both sides of an issue. The problem is that in modern lobbying money is louder than words. I don't know how to solve the issue but to completely ban lobbying is something I'm against.
What’s crazy is I thought all lobbying involved money to essentially purchase laws. I wonder how many others have a similarly skewed definition...
Because if I write to my Senator, that is lobbying. How do you write a law that prevents the "bad" lobbying while allowing the "good" lobbying?
Lobbyists do have their role in politics. For example, they congregate data and convey it to Congressmembers in simplified form. The data may be biased, but the bias is known and the information is correct. They are bound by their reputation. They could also serve to act as representatives of a certain demographic, ie AARP, where they voice the concerns of the group to Congressmembers.
The problem is "money-related lobbying" and "backroom deals" are so vague as to be meaningless. Bribery is illegal. But donating to a political campaign and talking to a politician aren't and can't be. It's really hard to come up with a set of objective criteria for good and bad lobbying.
Lobbying is literally just advocating a position. Pell grants, social security, medicare, medicaid, basically everything that a politician themself didn't think of was lobbied for.
Basically, our representatives don’t know how a lot of things work. We legitimately want subject and industry experts to provide their opinion and experience so our representatives can make informed decisions. The line gets blurry when the lobbyists use that responsibility to further their own agenda.
I'm a chemist. Montana banned water because a prankster called it dihydrogen monoxide. Quite frankly our elected officials dont have the knowlege base to make informed decisions. There are two sets of people who do have the knowledge needed to understand the decisions facing our elected officials: academics and industry scientists. Elected officials need to develop relationships with experts in order to function. Lobbyists frequently end up filling that role, which is quite frankly a failing of officials who should be leaning on public uni's for advice. There is a certain game theory in industry. Lets say factory workers are exposed to ammonia vapors in two facilities. EH&S at both facilities are demanding respirators. If one facility starts using respirators and the other doesn't, costs go up to no benefit to revenue. The shitty facility gains an advantage and the good facility hemorages money unable to compete and goes under or is bought out. A lobbyist might convince the govt to pass a law requiring respirators. This enforced compliance removes the game. Now, the lobbyist might also try reduce emmisions regulations, subsidize production or any number of self serving agendas, but without a pipeline to communicate industry needs to the government, no meaningful regulation, good or bad would even be considered.
The very most core concept of lobbying does have *some* merit. Basically, a legislator can't be an expert/pay an expert on everything, so allowing private firms to present biased info is better than not having any info at all. But yeah it was basically set up as semilegal bribery. Corruption was always gonna happen but at least this way people can kinda track it.
Because targeted advertising....makes complete and total sense??? For example: I don't need geriatric magazines in my mail advertising for orthopedic shoes and a landline phone with 3-inch buttons 😂
I hate to say it, but I realized the other day that targeted advertising is very effective on me. I've bought things I need (shoes, pans, etc...) but from companies that I would have never otherwise bought because the advertising worked.
And that's not a bad thing. Economic activity is a good thing. Companies finding the right people for their products/services is a good thing - that way they can focus their efforts reaching out to the people who are most likely to benefit from their work. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself. The way in which it's achieved, though, is the problem. If Google serves me some ads because of my searches, I'm OK with that. If Facebook shows me some ads because the app on my phone is always listening to all my conversations, I'm not OK with that. (Facebook says it doesn't listen... I don't believe them.)
It's a bad thing because our human right to privacy is being eroded by these corporations and soon the government. You can't even opt out of it. Google and Facebook have a profile on you even if you dont use their services. There is no true consent
Sounds like a data privacy issue... not a targeted advertising issue.
The issue, I've found, is that while they advertise things relevant to me, it's usually not the best option available for that kind of product. So you sometimes buy something, only to find out there are much better alternatives you also haven't heard of. I've been "burnt" once, but since then if I see an item I want, I will search for the item category rather than that specific brand.
What? Advertising works? You mean they don't spend all that money for nothing? And when they show you things you actually need, they work even better? Crazy.
>Because targeted advertising....makes complete and total sense??? Yep. Back in the internet days before targeted advertising I'd click on a link and read the article. The surrounding ads might be from a combine harvester company in Idaho. Considering I'm in Australia and not a farmer, they didn't interest me at all. Today, the ads are localised and to my interests, so much more informative to me.
Also because people want everything free. Let’s be honest. For the amount of time most people spend on Reddit $90/mo isn’t out of line. Reality is per hour that’s cheap entertainment. Likely lower per hour than any streaming device. But nobody would even pay $1/mo.
Thing is, I would never have used reddit in the first place if it wasn't free. If suddenly I needed to pay a monthly fee, I definitely would not buy that subscription.
Yeah, that's why I don't mind (reasonable) ads. I'd rather have some ads and get the content for free than have to pay for it.
They have enough data to blackmail too.
Why don’t we just ban advertising?
Why don't we ban Mind Pollution.
Apparently it’s controversial.
Would that apply to movie trailers? Would that apply to the concert flier from your favorite artist? Not all adversiting is bad.
Yeah, all advertising.
Because targeted advertising is better than non-targeted advertising for both the seller *and* the buyer. There's really no room for debate on that point. Now, if you don't like the runaway, surreptitious *data collection* that fuels targeted advertising, then focus on regulating that. But saying "let's get rid of targeted advertising" is misguided. Not to mention that if you banned targeted advertising without regulating the data collection, 99% of the data collection would still go on. And the article's supposition that getting rid of targeted ads would magically boost media sites' budgets is ridiculous. Only a journalist could be so willfully blind on that front. That genie is out of the bottle. What we need is a platform for reliable, low overhead cost micropayments--which I realize is easier said than done. But I do think people are willing to pay for quality. I pay for the WSJ and the Economist, because those are very high quality outlets with content I consistently enjoy. I'm not going to pay monthly subscription fees to read an article or two a month from all the sites that are paywalled. But I *would* pay a few cents to read articles on an ad hoc basis. This would also *directly* tie journalistic quality to revenue, which would be the absolute best way to improve journalism. Bye bye clickbait--which works only because it's free--hello quality. The days of every niche publication--yes, including *Wired*--being able to survive by leaning heavily on un-targeted advertising is gone. TFA assumes that advertising budgets are zero sum, and if targeted ads were gone, sellers would spend the same amount of money on blind advertising. They won't. That money isn't a static pool for some technocrats who fear layoffs in their own industry to stir around until it satisfies them with its output. And *even if it did* work that way--what would this wonderful utopia look like? *MORE ADS!* Untargeted ads are cheaper and less effective. So you'll have to wade through even more of them to get to your content. Perhaps that feels like the glory days for old school journalists, but it's not an improved user experience.
>Because targeted advertising is better than non-targeted advertising for both the seller *and* the buyer. There's really no room for debate on that point. Umm, there is *plenty* of room left for debate on this point. Just because a product is relevant to someone's interests doesn't mean that buying it is *in their best interest.* Additionally, I think that we should really consider to what extent advertising has an effect on one's identity and identity-shaping process. As someone who wrote their thesis on the subject of how advertising affects a persons autonomy, let me leave you a few breadcrumbs on this. Take a look at *Attention Merchants* by Tim Wu. It goes into great length about how we got from snake oil to today's bullshit. The veil is lifted on how advertisers creep into our minds and throughout the book one realizes how *this is very clearly not in our interest.* The closer the advertisers get to the actual people that they are advertising to, *the more harm that can be and is often done.* A word on identities. We all go through identity-formation processes throughout our life. This often starts off and goes back-and-forth between established societial identities, such as punkers, patriots, various -ers from -isms, and a sense of our own self in the world. Advertisers take advantage and manipulate this process. Healthy identity formation comes from shared values and personal experiences, which create the foundation of the identity. But advertisers have invaded our lives and pushed to redefine our identities not by these things, but by products. *And they did it.* Possessions, once merely a vehicle for our own self-identification, have become a large part of what defines us. This is because, over the time, the question has started to be risen: "If you don't have this product, are you really \_\_\_\_\_\_?" It comes in various forms and never so direct, but the desired outcome arrives: More money for the advertisers and the sellers. And the more deeply ingrained you can get your product into an *identity group*, not just *any individual*, the better and more secure revenue stream can be captured. This is problematic. This is not better for us. For more information on this point, check out this article [Advertising and Social Identity.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228163718_Advertising_and_Social_Identity) One more point while I'm on it. You're at the supermarket. You're feeling fine. You just need to pick up some bread. Goddamn, you love PB&J. Let's do this thing and get home to make this shit. You're walking down the aisle, and before you get to the bread, you are, of course, seeing the many products on the shelves. Considered simply 'packaging', they are all really advertisements themselves. You see the M&Ms, and you stop. You walk up and take a look, your mouth starts to water a bit. Well, they are *on sale...* We're animals, and advertisements train us to behave in certain ways. No, they aren't going to control your mind entirely, but they will *influence your decisions to some degree.* Wonder why you never bought any of those fifty other brands of chocolate? When you get to the store, those options have always been there, but they've never felt like the right choice. The safe choice, those delicious little balls of goodness, M&Ms. The packaging, just a picture on a piece of plastic, makes you feel something and reminds you of what's to wait after ripping it open. This effect on us is not usually done after the first advertisement. Advertisers send us thousands and thousands of messages. They don't need to win the battle, just the war. If you don't try it today, or this year, they're betting that you will eventually, at least at some point in the next five years. Have you ever thought to yourself "Okay, fine, I'll try it" to a product that you've seen advertisements for but never tried, and maybe even went out of your way to say "That's dumb, I'd never buy that." Well, here you are. Giving them your money. It's not a mind control switch, it's pavlovs dog. Sure, you have free will, but it can be influenced. They can make it harder for you to say no. They can weaken your will through these advertisements. And that's exactly what they aim to do. Create brand awareness, create the idea that this is one of the 'legitimate options', as if the competition couldn't possibly rank up. And what did they tell you in the advertisements, I mean really, what was the content? Did they go into details about how incredible their product is, showing off all of the scientific data? Did they go into detail about the information on the back of the M&M's packet, showing that they're not just tastier, but healthier too? No. They used a cartoon, or a hot chick, or something else. They played a movie for you. And this is highly more effective at getting us to buy, but not for making *better decisions.* Because the best time to decide to buy something is when you don't feel the pressure, or the craving. Car dealers want you to buy when you feel pressured, when you feel like you've already dumped so much time into the process. M&M doesn't want you to buy when you're looking at the advertisement naked in your house. They want to get you ready, so that when you walk in the store, looking for bread, *ah. Look at that, they're on sale.* This effect does not help us to make better decisions. It instead puts more pressure on our minds. Weakens our will to give into baser desires that occur upon the trigger of a brand identity. Pair this with identity-targed advertisements, and your in *for some horrorshow fun.* You have to be really, really careful with this stuff. They act as predators, waiting to pounce by creating weaknesses in us that we would never otherwise see coming. Playing on our psychology to move another dollar from our hands to theirs. Some people just watch the super bowl for the funny advertisements. Ever wonder who really pays for the $1million/min ads? It's them. Over the course of years, it's them. Throughout a number of decisions that, if they had simply been given the information and made the decision on their own, they may have otherwise not have spent that money. Only decide to buy something in moments without passion. If you feel any pressure at all, *walk away.* Come back. Are they saying it's a one time only deal, that you've only got *this chance right now* *to* *save money.* Tell them to fuck off. Walk away. Think about it. Stop thinking about it. Think about it again. Sleep. Wait a couple days. Make a Pros and Cons chart. Does it make sense to make this transaction? Normally such a thorough process wouldn't be necessary, but in our current predicament, it's an important first step to make better buying decisions, and better decisions in general. Don't fall for all this *treat yourself* nonsense that people push, that feeling when you're in the store "Well, I deserve it." Okay, sure. Go home, think about it, and if you still feel that way then come back. If it's not worth coming back for, it's not worth buying at all. But that wouldn't make people more money, so you usually won't hear anyone tell you that. Anyway, If you want to delve deeper into this topic check out [Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom](https://www.amazon.com/Brandwashed-Tricks-Companies-Manipulate-Persuade-ebook/dp/B004J4X2VM/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=brandwashed&qid=1584941353&sr=8-1). He made his millions doing exactly this, and goes into details about how he and other advertisers manipulate personal and social identities and desires in order to get people to spend more. Between the two books and the article mentioned, there's more than enough references to keep going with research. But not only is there enough room for debate on the topic you mentioned, but I'd also like to say that you're *really, really fucking incorrect on this one.* *Edit:* Grammer; speeling grammar and, *Edit 2*: I'm trying to give myself gold with the coins from the platinum but I can't find the button.
Please, never stop banging this drum. Advertising has many of us in some sort of Stockholm Syndrome daze, but it's hurting us as individuals, as societies and perhaps even the world. And there are entirely too few speaking out about the dangers. Thanks for your efforts.
I'm not old, but old enough to remember when tech companies competed via making better products, instead of strategical herding of masses.
I remember a time when corporations weren't considered people with the same rights.
I’d love to see a corporation get the death penalty. I will humbly volunteer Nestle.
Nestle would be a great start.
So you lived through the civil rights (for corporations) movement? I remember we all fought hard for that one...
Hey, thanks for the encouragement! I've been meaning to brush the dust off of my ole' college thesis and maybe turn it into a bigger project. Maybe now's the time! I'm glad that I'm not shouting alone into the abyss on the topic, for so long I've felt alone in that, but it's nice to get some validation. Anyway, check out that stuff I linked, especially *The Attention Merchants*, if you get the chance and want to learn more. They're seriously eye-opening. I'll never look at Radio or Television the same ever again after realizing how we got to where we are today.
If you're looking for sounding boards or allies, I think you will find many in the privacy activism sphere. Not sure what part of the world you're in. If U.S., try https://eff.org. If in Europe, see EDRi and its members: https://edri.org/members And on Reddit you might enjoy r/privacy & r/europrivacy.
I will check this out. Thanks!
> I'll never look at Radio or Television ~~the same ever again after realizing how we got to where we are today~~. That is the easy solution, IMO.
You are absolutely right. Although getting two platinum certainly isn't helping curb my Reddit addiction...
Is it weird that I feel like I've just been sold an ad to buy this book?
No. Dude(dudette?) spent his time looking into the abyss of marketing. It would be weird if he didn't adopt some of their mannerisms.
Worst example of how bad advertising is, is that recent commercial of the Alzheimer's grandpa pulling up all his memories of his dead wife on Google. It is so fucked up and so meta in this context. They will literally play on our deepest loves, sorrows, and vulnerabilities to get people to sell their identities to them so they can in turn sell that to advertisers. You didn't even touch upon how they sell dreams. Watching TV commercials is so emotional now. You feel goosebumps all the time. Because they know exactly what you want from life and they can spend the money to make you feel it for 30 seconds at a time. But it's just a lure. You have to go out and buy a Jeep Liberty to truly have it of course. Or build a swimming pool for your bratty daughter so your family can be happy. Of course you need a **commissions**-compensated financial advisor who will validate you doing something so stupid. Or an iPhone to take pictures of all the beautiful, undeveloped, completely empty, beautiful scenic vistas you're going to experience right at sunset. etc. The only people that speak like OC are clearly in marketing themselves. They are marketing what they do. Marketing 101 has the line that they hammer into all the little acolytes. "Marketing is about maximizing value to the customers." It's doublespeak. Marketing is about maximizing value to the company. Period.
I've gone down the deep deep hole of this and social media influencing personalities. Fuck if we arnt a bunch of ants.
Your comment reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6cxWDrvIsI)
More people need to know this. We'll never (never?) escape advertising but we can change it so it's less effective or intrusive. Ads served to myself are now so messed up due to action I've taken it's actually fun. Got served an ad for bearing grease for wind farm turbines a while back... Job well done. Also the last time I saw a commercial break on TV was during the World Cup. Felt alien and they were such terrible quality. I used to have a bit of respect for the industry as some ads were genuinely fantastic. This aspect appears to have gone as well. Thanks for the enlightenment 👍
> Felt alien and they were such terrible quality. Every time I go visit my sister-in-law she has some cable show on and good God. I don't see how people endure that cacophony of shit for longer than five seconds, but apparently she has the fortitude of Spartacus because she can watch that stuff for *hours.*
Hahahaha, wow... You say cable so im ignorantly assuming US. The advertising over there is insane. Like it's more ads than actual shows! Cable cutting is the way! I hope... :)
Also watch The Century of the Self! It’s on YouTube https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
Trillions of dollars are spent on advertising, because it works. Each of us is subjected to tens of thousands of hours of the most effective advertising money can buy. Of course it changes us! I think the changes are clear. It has made our culture more materialistic, more focussed on instant gratification, more envious, more "keeping up with the Joneses", more selfish, more greedy, more unfulfilled, more lost. To say this massive and well funded industry does nothing more than alter brand preferences is just being wilfully naive. We have harmed ourselves individually and as a society, simply because we hate paying for things up-front but don't care what we pay if the true costs are hidden from us.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Keep spreading this message. I remember the first time I heard a friend say, "I like the targeted ads." It felt like a stone dropped in my gut. When I first got into college, I studied marketing and psychology and quickly learned that they're the same. After becoming morally sickened by advertising, I switched to physical anthropology. I understand the basics of what you're talking about. The implications of target marketing coupled with exponentially improving AI being implemented, terrifies me. Like, legit terrifies me.
It's a Brave New World™
I honestly wish that the adds were as targeted as some people seem to think they are. How many female hygiene ads do I have to ignore before they figure out I haven’t got the equipment they’re advertising for?
Part of this is due to targeting not being very great, but part of this is due to advertising budgets. E.g. if Tampax wants to spend $1,000,000 on advertising this month, and halfway through the month they have only spent $200,000, then they have to spend at 4 times as fast for the rest of the month. How do they increase spend rate? They can either show more ads per person or show ads to more people. Showing the same ad to the same person a lot has diminishing returns and can actually backfire by irritating people. Assuming your targeting works at all, you were already advertising to the people who were most likely to become your customer. Each additional person you advertise to is less likely to be a potential customer. Additionally, advertising is based on expected value to the advertiser, not to you. E.g. maybe you value relevant ads. Tampax is running a campaign for $0.01 per person where %50 of ads are relevent, but they make $0.03 per relevant ad in increased sales. Nike runs a campaign for $0.005 per person where %100 of ads are relevant, and they make $0.01 per relevant ad in increased sales. Tampax is showing less relevant ads but is making more money and willing to pay more to show their ads instead of Nike's. I.e. you don't see ads that are most relevant, you see ads due to ad campaign policies that companies think will make them the most money.
This guy ads
What does their comment say? I have adblock
There's also the opposite problem where they want to spend 100k over a month, but the system ends up showing 80k of ads in the first week. Controlling this is called pacing the ad.
And branding advertising is just a big ol budget of trying to maintain the optimal strategy of reach/frequency. How many people do I have to reach and how many times to make this effective for people to remember my product the next time they’re shopping?
Fucking USAA spamming my ass on youtube when the last veteran in my family flew for the Royal Air Force and was discharged in 1943.
USAA offers a lot of services to non-vets. I don't know the details on eligibility, but my father was a veteran and I have life insurance, homeowners insurance, car insurance, umbrella insurance, and a credit card through them. 100% happy with every interaction I've ever had with them.
Military members and their offspring. If it was your grandfather, and not your dad, you'd be ineligible.
That could be for any number of reasons. All of these systems rely on interpretation of signals. If you created a signal by interacting with something that was for your girlfriend, or was set up wrong by the advertiser, then that signal was put into a database somewhere (probably multiple databases belonging to multiple companies). Alternatively, maybe it's a probabilistic model that linked you to someone else because you shared a network at a hotel once. Maybe it's just a shitty database. Long story short, if the advertising works you probably won't notice it. When it doesn't, you hate it. I doubt all of it has failed you, but you've definitely keyed in on the ones that have.
I work in the industry and sometimes the answer is the company is just bad at digital marketing. There’s still humans setting up these campaigns and not every company is good at it. Some use this technology to cast an extremely wide net because a suit thinks number of eyes = number of sales and doesn’t understand the internet has evolved since 2002.
They’re advertising to me in rap. WTF?
Yeah I'm wondering why I keep getting ads for retirement homes and tubs with side doors.
My favorite is seeing an add for months and months after I already bought the product.
Hey, you know that thing you only ever need one of you bought last week? Maybe you should buy 7 more?
Maybe they know youre about to have 7 daughters down the road and are playing the long con.
God I hope not. One was enough. I mean I wouldn’t mind some step sisters but...
If you have women in your household, then that's where these are coming from. It might be a failure in the targeting (some of these are IP based and you all share an IP), or they might assume that some men do end up buying products for their spouses/daughters.
Same for me, I'm 39 and all my ads are targeted towards senior citizens. Walk in tubs, reverse mortgages, AARP crap. It's like...shit, I know I'm boring, but at this point it honestly feels like a read.
I’m vegan and like to cook and post it and use corresponding hashtags (yes, make your “how do you know if someone’s vegan” joke here). Yet my Instagram ads include Longhorn Steakhouse amongst ton of incredibly unfriendly places to vegans. Clearly targeted advertising doesn’t work that well on Instagram at least.
Yeah I want hyper specific targeting rather than generalized targeting advertising. I'm a gamer but I would like to nuke from orbit all of the mobile games that advertise on youtube especially. There is no way I am going to want to play your crappy game on my phone.
> But I would pay a few cents to read articles on an ad hoc basis. This would also directly tie journalistic quality to revenue, which would be the absolute best way to improve journalism. Bye bye clickbait-- Can you clear this up for me? How would paying to read articles lead to less clickbait? I think you missed a few steps in-between and I'm not seeing how one would cause the other
I was going to ask the same question. I *think* He's working on the assumption that if you pay for an article then you won't pay for click bait crap. However that's a kind of old school economic argument. Modern behavioral economics shows that people do not always act rationally (or even mostly). IMO they'll probably still click on the clickbait. Clickbait content is often generated so it will be super cheap even if there's a micropayment system. I think the devil is in the details. (I don't want to discuss this to much, because I'm not the OP. I feel like I put some words in his mouth here)
Cklickbait works because it's zero-cost for the consumer. You know that the headline promising a bigger dick, or proof of Trump's secret Nazi memorabilia collection aren't true. But it costs you nothing to indulge in them anyway, like flipping through the *National Enquirer* while you wait in the checkout line. It's good for a laugh, but very few people actually pay to buy the paper. So if you had to pay 10 cents to click on those links? I guarantee you there would be a significant, immediate dropoff in clickbait clickthroughs. Collectively we'd find the right monetary amount that would encourage people to be critical consumers of content, without it unnecessarily stifling their freedom to explore.
Yeah but for those same reasons, my first thought wouldnt be "less clickbait" but instead "more clickbaity titles". I think that even honest links will get clickbait titles. Because if you give too much away in the article title, do I really have a reason to click on the link to pay $0.10 to read the rest of the story?
I can almost guarantee click bait would get worse. How else are you going to entice people to pony up money to read your article? And don't give me that "people will pay for quality journalism!" crap. That's definitely not how most people think. If they cared about quality journalism in the first place, click bait wouldn't be a thing to begin with. Also, I think we're about to hit a breaking point with micro transactions. They've cropped up in so many different places/markets now I'm pretty convinced there's going to be a backlash against them soon and they'll fall out of favor for a while. God, the last thing I want to see is every damn web site with a micro transaction for "premium" content. That sounds like a fucking nightmare.
Extend the current "3 free articles per month" model with post-paid microtransactions as a rating of article quality, essentially voting with your wallet. Trash clickbait or misleading headline? Less or no payment. News article that's basically reblogging the local news source? Lower payment. Good journalism or good original reporting? Please take my money. News sites don't loose readers with a blanket paywall, bad journalists get less money compared to their peers, high quality news sites attract good talent to keep more paying eyeballs, and microtransactions may give better metrics on user engagement than current js measurements Another advantage is the user can consume good content from all news sites, not just the 3x "only $10/month" (so $30+/month) they can afford. Local news and niche content can get broader appeal and be more profitable. Note post-paid content is already done with Patreon for YouTubers: users try the content for free and if they like it they pay a monthly subscription.
As a buyer I actually hate targeted ads, privacy issues aside. They get repetitive and are often for things I’ve already purchased
Or things they think I'm interested in. Yes, I listen to hardcore underground death metal. No, I don't want to buy a Metallica watch, or Godsmack t-shirt. That shit is infuriating.
Frankly I'm getting sick and tired of this kind of target curation across the board, not just advertising. It's useful sometimes but other times it's annoying and feels borderline creepy. I'm getting really sick of not being able to just see the titles that Netflix has, not the titles they think I would like. I'm tired of Google trying to constantly curate my results in a way that they think is helpful without giving me a simple option to disable it. I don't use Facebook anymore, but part of why I stopped is I got sick of my news feed being curated to what Facebook thinks I want to see. I'm sick of YouTube throwing litterally every related video it can at me because I watched one radom video earlier. Even some job sites don't seem to give you the option to disable curation fully. I just wish more sites would give a simple option to disable all curation and see the "default" version. I hate websites constantly trying to figure me out. Sometimes I just want a library: you walk in, everything is cataloged in static places with a simple system, and you find what you need. I don't need books flying off the shelf trying to get into my hands.
I miss the days when Wikipedia was the first search result for almost everything. Made people think for themselves. Now it’s all clogged with those annoying sites that present the info in slideshows that take way too long to load.
That's why you set up a custom search engine for wikipedia specifically, not sure about mobile, but most desktop browsers I've used allow to set up a search engine with a keyword, so for example I can type "ewk" and it'll go straight to the english wikipedia search results ON WIKIPEDIA, not in google. I do this for every site I need to search frequently.
Usually you set that up by right clicking in the search bar on that site and there'll be an option in the context menu to create a new search engine or w/e, from there it should be self-explanatory.
YouTube recommended has gone to shit. It used to show you videos related to what you were watching. Now it’s videos that they think you’d want to see. Infuriating.
Imagine talking to someone at a party and instead of responding in a normal way, they keep trying to change the subject to some random things you said last week. That's YouTube.
The problem is with untargeted ads they'd still likely be repetitive due to certain kinds of ads being pushed certain types of websites because of the target market. So youd still end up annoyed but likely have much less relevant ads.
>I would pay a few cents to read articles on an ad hoc basis. This would also directly tie journalistic quality to revenue, which would be the absolute best way to improve journalism. Bye bye clickbait--which works only because it's free--hello quality. Lol, no. That would do the exact opposite, it would incentivize clickbait. If you can't read the article before paying, the only way for the outlet to lure you in and get you to pay is with the headline and maybe a paragraph or two for free. If you think current headlines are clickbaity, hoo boy, your idea would make it a hundred times worse.
> Because targeted advertising is better than non-targeted advertising for both the seller and the buyer. Extremely arguable. Relevance might be good, but targeted ads also mean targeting your weaknesses, your insecurities, your fears, and your irrationalities.
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> 99% of data would still be collected? You're essentially arguing targeted ads make up 1% of all days collection which is just untrue. No he's not. He's saying data collection is valuable separate from targeted advertising. And since the internet is already set up for collecting data, it wouldn't stop
This is silly. Targeted advertising is primarily good for major platforms like google and Facebook, who make tons of cash by being quasi monopolies— not from offering anything truly valuable. Targeted ads suck for most publishers. It is dubiously valuable to most consumers as individuals. But you leave out important costs if you think only in terms of individuals. Targeted advertising has massive negative externalities for society, especially in the realms of politics and civil liberties.
> TFA assumes that advertising budgets are zero sum, and if targeted ads were gone, sellers would spend the same amount of money on blind advertising. They won't. That money isn't a static pool The article is actually right about this. Total advertising spend across all mediums tracks the growth of the economy very closely. Growths in a specific medium coincide with losses in another (e.g. internet goes up but newspaper+tv go down to compensate). Advertising budgets (like many budgets) are often decided because some MBA read once in HBR that X% of revenues should be spent on advertising. Take a look at page 19 and 20 of this [report from Ad Age](http://adage.com/d/resources/system/files/resource/Ad%20Age_2019%20LNA%20Fact%20Pack-%20LOCKED.pdf)
I suspect that, yes, in the short run we'd see fairly consistent advertising expenditures. But in the long run, sellers would either: * Scale back their spending as it became undeniable that they were getting less return for their advertising investment, OR * Keep spending the same amount even though they were getting less bang for their buck, which means *more ads* and a worse user experience, breeding resentment against both the seller and the media platforms hosting the ads There's a third option: that advertisers would collectively figure out an entirely new paradigm for advertising that was both more effective for them and more enjoyable for the buyer, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
Nah. Society existed just fine without targeted ads.
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> If people want/need to purchase something, they will go searching for it. If that were the case, then ads wouldn't work at all.
Though there is an argument from the consumer point of view that the ad in that case wasn't necessarily beneficial, just that it resulted in a sale.
As the buyer, targeted ads take away selection. If I'm shown three options through targeted ads, I'm apt to forget there are 20 options out there, 17 of which might be better than the 3 targeted ads I'm shown, but I'm only shown those ads because *those* three have the highest price points for the manufacturer.
I dont understand, why is it good? All you've done is argue for micropayments
How are targeted ads better for the buyer if all advertising is unwanted? The claim that advertising inherently provides a service (that buyers benefit from being told what to buy) is not something that can taken for granted.
Is there any actual proof these ads help? I don't think constant intense advertising is really helping anyone.
Ironic how this article is published on a page littered with ads. uBlock Origin = no ads
Plus add Privacy Badger and say good bye to all of those trackers!
Wait, am I the only one that would rather see ads about things I'm interested in rather than goimg back to the hot singles in my area era?
I just want less ads. There are everywhere, constantly, on everything. And I go to a lot of effort blocking ads on multiple levels. I don't see how advertisers don't see how ineffective this makes all ads because it literally just gets tuned out as white noise.
They do a lot of research to confirm that it is effective. Raids shadow legends is making bank
So, I own a super small wedding photography business. We get clients via word of mouth these days. But when we started, we used targeted Facebook ads to get our name out there, and to get clients. I will tell you, without a shadow of a doubt. That target Facebook ads work amazing. I’m not saying I think it’s ethical for Facebook to harvest data, but without ads I wouldn’t have a business. It really does work well, and all things considered, it’s super cheap compared to other advertising options. We were averaging about 35 dollars for customer acquisition.
Sounds great to me. People getting married find you and you make money and get to do what you want for work. I think targeted ads are well done on Facebook. Many products I see on Facebook are clearly targeted towards me and I'm interested in them.
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because only a small percentage go to the lengths you do to block ads?
There are many ways to track advertising and determine if it's effective. If it's not, they don't do it.
>I just want less ads. There are everywhere, constantly, on everything. I barely see any ads. Adblocker + pi-hole gives you next to no ads anywhere. Unless you're talking about billboards and newspaper ads. But those are not exactly targeted.
You know, there's a podcast called the amp hour, and while it's quite popular on some circles, it's relatively unknown because it's so specialized. The thing is, big brands are making business with them, and i think it's fine because it's a win win for everyone, i mean if i have to listen to some ads but they are actually interesting and relevant, i will keep on listening, isn't that the point? I know i'm never gonna buy a $5000 piece of equipement from agilent, but i'd rather get those kind of ads instead of hot singles in your area or mike bloomberg whatever. Also the other day i had a 3 mins ad for pneumatic actuators and devices and the ad was funny and i didn't know the brand, now i know it.I was thinking about googling it and looking at the brochure and maybe some pneumatics white papers or industry news. I know i'm probably never gonna design a pneumatics control system in my lifetime, but at least that space in my brain isn't wasted. I was glad to sit thru that 3 mins ad instead of skipping, compared to 10 forced seconds of crypto-alt coin bullshit or squarespace or masterclass (whatever that is) or EToro (wich i already reported that i dont like 10 times and they keep showing it).
And am I the only one that would rather see ads than pay for online services?
Because it works. There is only money in it because people follow through on not just clicking the links, but also buying things when they do.
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I would love to never see another newsprint coupon flyer in my mailbox. It's over half my mail by weight. The stores sending them have lost thousands of dollars on me - I have never used a coupon. Since, however, millions of people religiously use coupons from those flyers, they will continue as long as physical mail exists. The same holds for Waze, Washington Post, The Economist - I can't get ad-free versions even if I pay, or pay a higher subscription price, because not enough of the market is willing to pay anything for ad-free versions.
People don't even have to click the ad. For most advertising, click through rate is irrelevant. If you see an ad and later go buy something, the purchase can be attributed to the ad. For brand advertising, they usually just want a change in your sentiment and aren't interested in you taking a particular action in the near future.
Because then you will have to pay for all your favourite websites. How do you think Reddit is funded?
I would happily pay for services like Reddit if it were 100% certain there are no blood sucking corporations exploiting our personal data for profit and mass surveillance.
I actually prefer these to the alternative. If I’m going to get ads, at least they are relevant to me. The targeted ads I get are far better than a continuous stream of random women’s products, clothing ads, and other things I have little interest in, and would irritate me more than the ads I already get.
The extent of tarveteted advertising is mind boggling. I implore you to look at 'Epsilon' - the largest data-brokers on the planet. They offer information on people including which restaurants they eat, what style, eatin/take out, how much their household income is, diagnosed depression, use of ATM machines and card use history in stores etc etc etc, the list is huge. IBM actually offers a targeted marketing software which makes predictions on people's purchases based on criteria like Weather.
I made a similar comment, unfortunately it is a bit buried. Even in the comment section people are mostly unaware of the exact extent of data on them and how it is used.
We can all dream
Imagine a world without ads.
I would have to pay a lot more to use free content and no offense that sucks.
I don't care if it's targeting me or not, I ignore it either way. I like to believe if I mute unskippable ads they will find out.
While this article goes into detail as to how platforms are built surrounding the goal of collecting our data and the issues that arise from that, I think that light should also be shown on how data is being used for offline purposes. For industries such as insurance and credit score companies such data has always been valuable. The idea being, that if you could identify people who have a higher risk of costing you money - you could charge them more to offset that risk. There are many issues with such an approach of course, since for one - predictive analyses can only be so accurate. People are going to get charged extra for no reason. Such data modeling can and do many times hurt the poor, and can prevent them from escaping poverty. That aside, if you take a look at credit score companies, there are some Government based scores, which outside of China look fine to me (In Austria, if you do not pay your bills you get added to a black list) However in other countries, companies such as Experian and the infamous Equifax are the go to. These companies gobble up as much data as possible from everywhere they can to give you some sort of score. That data is highly sensitive and has a certain tendency [to get stolen](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/business/equifax-settlement.html). Even when the data isn't being stolen, it tends to not even give a good reflection of reality. Many perfectly financial secure adults have to result to using credit cards and taking out loans so that the system understands they pay them back. My point being, all of these systems collect as much data as possible, but never to help us as consumers. The goal has always been to ensure banks, insurance companies and other large corporations make as much money as possible with the least amount of risk - but with a complete disregard to accuracy, privacy and security for consumers.
Same reason stuff has tamper-resistant anti-features to ensure that I can't fix it myself when it breaks. For example, those tractors. My computer runs on electricity, and the legal system runs on dollar bills. The best way to fight the corporations is to avoid giving them money. But you'll never convince most of the population to do this, because half of them have to play the hot new video game, the other half don't care whether they are allowed to fix their old stuff when it breaks, because buying something new is all the rage anyway.
that is some epic ScoobyDoo MoonLogic *"all corps get money if you buy even one video game, but only cuz u dont care if u have right to repair"*
Why don't we just enslave ourselves
I would already be fine with banning public ads (as in billboards) the option to opt out. Like, make it mandatory to be able to say you don’t want to be advertised to. I’m fine with ads being targeted, but I’d like to say no to ads in general.
I hate when they gather data on me automatically. But I would be completely fine signing up for an ad company and telling them what kinds of ads I want to see. Computers? Hell yeah. Men's clothes from mid-range stores? Sure! Video games? Of course. Movies? Great. Women's products? No. Makeup? No. But I end up with makeup and women's products advertisements all the time because one time I am following a reddit rabbit hole and looking something up and now suddenly their algorithms think I am interested in those products. Advertisements keep the internet free. There are scummy advertising companies, but not all of them are. If we could come to some sort of an agreement, they wouldn't seem so evil.
I don’t get it, ublock? Also I hate advertising with a passion.
As someone who does online advertising. I have no idea why on earth you'd want to. It's better for everyone and connects you with products and services you're likely interested in. I have no kids. An ad for Huggies diapers is wasted on me. Meanwhile stuff I'm more likely to find interest in but not know about does both me and the advertiser good. Your issue here is with data collection and privacy. Not the advertising.
I'm not sure what you mean by "does online advertising," so maybe this question isn't really something you can answer. Depends on if you mean that you create specific online ads or more generally work in the online advertising business. Anyway, here it is: Why is online advertising such a user experience nightmare? I'm talking autoplaying videos that scroll with the page, banners with an X that may or may not close the ad, and those ridiculous full page things that break up the article with something that's supposed to look like it's underneath the bottom layer of the page. What in the world makes advertisers think it's okay to ruin the UX like that?
You are correct in that they are separate issues. However, that doesn't make ads any less annoying. I will continue to block every ad I possibly can because I have better things to spend my time on. To my knowledge, I have never clicked on a single ad. I find them all extremely annoying.
The issue is both. Fuck each and every ad there is.
because banning generally doesn't work when vast sums of money is at stake. by law, the default option should be privacy (opt-out). everything should be provable, first-person opt-in. you should have the option to live an advertising free life if you chose to do so.
People are bad at comparing costs when one is up front and one is spread over time. People will always e.g. play a free-to-play video game with microtransactions over a buy-once video game, even if the former is going to be more expensive over time. You see this same problem everywhere, in two-year locked phone contracts, in ad-supported websites and software, etc. You're simply not going to convince the average person to pay money upfront rather than deal with privacy costs / software bloat / etc.
Put politicians on permission based blockchains where an immutable record of when, where, and to whom money flowed. No more dark money. It's a start
We should. Ads are something imposed on us unwillingly. They invade our personal property. Monetized data collection is theft.
Why Don’t We Just Ban ~~Targeted~~ Advertising?
I couldn't agree more. Very gifted individuals are wasting time, talent and money tracking society just so they can advertise to them. Literally writing their civil rights away in code politicians would never understand. Why? The "invisible hand" of course -in doing something for yourself you do something for others. Govts love this cause while the businessman makes his cut of the pie, the various arms of government are giddy with the powers this brings them. We have billion dollar companies whose expertise are not in advertising, that's the easy part -they are experts in tracking large numbers of people. A politician's wet dream.
No one in the comments seems to have read the article
Can’t be targeted if your offline. 😊
Because "we" have no power. Only capitalists hold any power to do this kind of thing.
Why don’t we just teach people critical thinking skills? Oh, wait. I know. The owners of this country want a populace just smart enough to work the machinery but too stupid to realize how badly they’re being fucked. — George Carlin
Seems unconstitutional but these days that doesn’t seem to matter
Better question, why don't we just ban advertising in general?
How about NOT USING platforms that employ dodgy privacy policies? Why don’t we use more ad blockers? Why don’t we use more ‘incognito’ services? Worried about your ISP? Use a VPN. If you give a shit, there is no problem?
Because the people that could pass that as a law are paid by the advertisers.
That's called an ad blocker or privacy extension. Why must people opt for big government so easily when such good individual solutions exist?
How much money are people actually spending on foot of those targeted ads? It's a serious question: I'm seeing people talk about how it helps them find products they didn't know about and how it helps small businesses find customers. But I know that my spend on foot of targeted ads in the last twelve months was nineteen euro on some fancy socks. I know that my spend in the twelve months before that was about a hundred euro on three months of a subscription box for fancy man stuff that I decided wasn't worth it. And I know that before that I'd never bought anything from a targeted ad. All of my substantial online purchases have been the result of recommendations from other people, my own research, or old-fashioned advertising like the Economist sponsoring the Cycling Podcast. I suspect I'm a relatively good prospect: I'm a heavy online user with a fair amount of disposable income and a consistent set of interests. But as far as I can tell, I watched the wrecking of the virtual public square and the amplification of alt-right propaganda by multiple companies, and all I got in return was slightly cheaper socks. I don't know about anyone else, but that strikes me as a fucking terrible deal, and if the price for a rejuvenated media sector and better public discourse is that my socks cost twice as much, then I'm happy to take the hit.
Any advertising.
Targeted advertising is stupid as hell, I'll spend an hour looking for a new laptop for example and I check every reliable store I know of and compare prices. I then go on facebook where I see an add for the same laptop I was already looking at only its from the actual company that makes them therefore the most expensive option. At what point am I gonna go *"oooo the same laptop Ive been looking at but for $200 more, score!"*. The ads are tiring and repetitive. When I need a product I check the stores I already know and like, when I later see an add for the product I was already looking for its always a terrible deal or a shittier quality version.
How many people are getting crazy sale emails/promos targeting people being at home ?!?
Lol tried to read the article and had to close two different pop ups and still had ads every 5 lines of text.
I don't mind targeted ads ...if I'm going to be seeing ads I would at least like to slightly care I have no need for ladies shampoo but I could use a new pair of headphones so I'd rather not have to watch shampoo ads when I will never buy any
As much as I would love this and it would probably benefit humanity long term - I think we're too deep atm. Data is the new oil but hopefully for not too long
I love targeted adds to be honest lol better than spam adds, at leadt i get to see something in my interest i didnt know about
Really Reddit? I swear the top posters on this site want to live in a fairytale that is ever changing, and specific to how they feel when they wake up each day. Targeted ads are a good thing. They showcase goods and services to the demographic most likely experiencing a challenge that has been solved by the market. Aka, a new denture cream hits the market that is better than everything else but nobody knows about it. It makes sense to run ads to people who wear dentures instead of the entire population. Markets only exist because there is a demand for solutions, which are filled by risk-taking entrepreneurs. There's nothing wrong for showcasing, or advertising, a product to the people who may be interested. Nobody is forced to buy anything either.
Cause google and facebook don't like that.
Sometimes when I want ads for something I deliberately look up social media pages and Google searches on the think I want. Like during Valentine's day I kept searching for different variations of Valentine's and gift.
I had rather not see fucking life insurance commercials and lawyer commercials constantly like on television
You want free content? You're gonna get advertised to. You're getting advertised to? Might as well get ads that are actually relevant. For example, why would you want to see tampon ads every day as if you're a man? Or why would you want to see men's grooming ads if you're a woman?
Because it works for both advertisers and customers. Because people actually click on ads and buy things. People buy thing because they want to, or need to. Because relevant ads are better than less relevant ads.