
What We Have Now Is Not Advertising - octosphere
https://nrempel.com/posts/what-we-have-now-is-not-advertising/
======
DanielBMarkham
There may be a generational thing going on here.

I don't want to play the internet as if it were a video game. I remember the
time before the net, and I want a tool that I use to drive my life narrative
forward, not a tool that uses me to drain my attention span. After some
thought, I really only need plain text for most everything I do -- but heck if
anybody is going to serve that up.

I may be an outlier. I don't know. Perhaps people who don't remember the time
before the net view their phones and information experience as just another
form of video game, just with other real people involved. I'd love to read
some more research in this area.

~~~
nathanaldensr
I'll say what I think you're saying in a different way: The "internet"
(really, the World-Wide Web) has been co-opted from its original purpose of
information dissemination. The WWW's new purpose is now monetization of its
users' time and data. Unfortunately, a combination of corporations _and_ users
themselves have made this reality. We as a species seem unable to wean
ourselves from sweet social nectar (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Agreed. We are getting what we want...good and hard.

Looking at it from the outside, I wonder just how large the gap can become
between what we need the net for -- and what we're getting.

What these companies seem to be doing isn't delivering value as much as it is
preying on the ignorance of the average computer user. Even the innocuous-
sounding "you get this for free, and all you have to do is see a commercial
now and then, isn't that cool?" turns out to be a tracking system undreamed-of
by any dystopian writer in the history of fiction.

Perhaps that situation of customer ignorance will change over time.

------
jasonkostempski
Obviously PR people aren't going to start calling it what it is, but we
should. "Ads" should be referred to as "trackers"; real "ad blockers" (without
whitelists (those should be called "extortion rings")) should be called
"tracking blockers"; "ad networks" should be called "tracking networks"; etc.
Then maybe eventually the average user will understand that when a site asks
to "please disable ad blocking", that's just PR speak for "enable tracking".
"Advertisement" just sounds annoying, but harmless.

Also, if we ever see an actual "advertisement" on the internet, we should
celebrate it, I've noticed maybe 2 in the past 10 years.

~~~
phobosdeimos
Hear hear. If sites ever switch to hosting their own curated ads I will
disable my adblocker.

~~~
jasonkostempski
I'd still have it on for the bad players. There'd likely be no need to
whitelist if you just want to help those playing nice because tracking
blockers don't block ads, they block third-party trackers. Ads hosted natively
would be indistinguishable from other native content. I wouldn't even want an
ad blocker that tried to block that, it would eat up too much processor trying
to use machine learning to figure out what to block, and still get it wrong
half the time. I've been to a couple sites that use traditional advertising
and, as far as I can tell, uBlock Origin doesn't do anything to try and stop
it.

------
ravenstine
While I do agree that the amount of personal information collected on
individuals is perverse, this isn't a new phenomenon as the author might be
treating it.

Long before the internet, people still bought things, and even before they
paid for things with credit cards, they paid with cheques that had their home
address on them. They inevitably filled out paperwork for various things, on
which they complacently included their phone number, which could be cross-
checked using the white pages(and other "deep" sources for those willing to
pay). Most people strangely had few qualms about writing down their social
security number on a piece of paper and giving that to their prospective
employer. Grocery stores began offering free "club" cards for fake deals,
which asked customers to provide personal contact information so they can
"save" a buck on a head of lettuce.

Put simply, people have made their lives open books since before they took the
internet seriously, and before advertising could be so closely tied to
analytics and data harvesting. The retrieval of information is much, much more
efficient, but in principle it's the same sort of transaction. You give out
your phone number once and you can bet it's on lists for good. Actually, you
don't even have to give it away.

Businesses have long existed to compile information on people, buying it from
a variety of businesses, and selling back the aggregated data. Our means of
giving them our data has become much more streamlined.

It's not just that, though. Our handing over of information has become
seemingly more reciprocal in that we hand over our data in exchange for access
to things that are very cheap or free. Facebook may be the prime example of
this principle, since the business itself is based on data aggregation; there
is no middle-person. And, for a long time, people _liked_ Facebook. People
actually like things that are cheap or free in exchange for handing over their
phone number, turning off or not installing an ad blocker, linking their
Facebook profile, enabling GPS tracking on their phone, and allowing apps
access to their contacts, or making their purchase history public(Venmo), etc.

For the average person, it's really hard to beat cheap or free.

~~~
Rjevski
The difference is that back in “the days” (which sadly I am too young to have
experienced), the information you were giving away usually stayed with who
asked for it.

I personally wouldn’t mind giving some personal information away to a corner
shop if it would allow them to serve me better (as in have more relevant
products for me - even though technically they’d be making more money off me
because I would be shopping there more frequently).

I do however mind giving out personal information when I know it’s gonna be
leaked to thousands of shitty companies including Facebook and Equifax and be
offered to the highest bidder, including those with nefarious motives.

~~~
davemel37
This is not at all historically accurate. List brokers have existed for at
least half a century. Tracking advertising with coupons can be traced to the
1800's if not earlier.

Catalog sales, mail order and direct mail businesses have been doing for the
last century all of the same things we do today online.

The only thing that changed is the speed and access of information. The same
way we didnt hear about conflicts two continents away, we didnt hear about the
stores reselling our data.

Im not saying we dont have a privacy problem today, but its far from something
new.

~~~
jphalimi
The scale of the tracking you are mentioning is nothing compared to what ads
platforms do nowadays...

------
yakubin
> Some may feel that this is a paranoid rant – and maybe it is – but I think
> the state of advertising has crossed a line.

It is by no means a paranoid rant. It is a piece of common sense.

~~~
aequitas
In my opinion the line is already crossed earlier when advertising goes from
simply informing me a product exists to tricking me into buying something.
This has been going on for decades already, car manufacturers with their brand
image commercials, subliminal reminder ads I should be drinking Coke or
toothbrush's constant 'revolutions'.

To quote a random person from the internet: "Why are there commercials for
toilet paper, who is NOT buying it?"

~~~
perl4ever
"To quote a random person from the internet: "Why are there commercials for
toilet paper, who is NOT buying it?""

The last time I saw an ad on the internet for toilet paper was yesterday.

There is a wide range in the price of toilet paper, and presumably
profitability. Advertising it is motivated by this differentiation.

Besides personal preference, presumably many people are or can be induced to
be, afraid of guests and SOs judging them if they buy the cheapest 1-ply.

I don't think the principles are much different from automobiles or a lot of
other things, where apparently excessive choices are a means to try to present
a Hobson's choice between a cheap low quality option and an expensive,
differentiated option. The eternal struggle in marketing is to avoid having to
sell a mid-range product for a fair price that maximizes value to the
consumer.

------
patagonia
Some grey hat should write a virus that infects all browsers with ad blockers.

~~~
Rjevski
Even better, kill the cancer at the source by attacking ad network’s servers.

I’m actually wondering, would the record-breaking DDoS attacks we had a year
ago thanks to the Mirai botnet be enough to take down Shitbook if all the
attack traffic was directed at them? What if instead of pure bandwidth-
exhaustion, this capacity was used to flood them with ad clicks or fake page
views to poison their spying with fake data?

~~~
gukov
You know how they say mining crypto is equivalent to the power consumption of
Denmark? I wonder how much of global energy is spent on tracking people.

~~~
patagonia
Mind... blown...

------
wallacoloo
Did anything in the article actually relate to its title? The body never
seemed to claim that “what we have now is not advertising”, but rather it
mostly seemed to say “today’s advertising is not ethical”.

------
davemel37
This is a teeny tiny symptom of much more eggregious problem. Online
publishing and Digital advertising today is essentially a modern day
protection racket. The data targeting is only one iteration of this problem.

Google selling ad space on brand searches to competitors unless you outbid
them. Ad networks selling you in market audiences based on intent to buy from
you anyways...if you dont buy that data, your competitors will... than you
need to use first party data to compete and you spend to remarket to customers
who would buy from you anyways if the ad networks were selling that other
signal driven data to your competitors. Startups and publishers whose entire
business model is ranking in google for your brand name and selling data...
than they all have the chutzpah to claim their targeting and ad network should
get credit for the sale...

Its one big protection racket driven by publishers and ad networks to skim
from businesses...

If the targeting didnt exist for everbody, the cream would still rise to the
top... 80% of online advertising today is only necessary because those same
predators would sell your customers to your competitors if you dont pay to
play!!!

The only solution is to take advertising out of the hands of publishers and
put it into the hands of businesses and consumers...

The incentives are all wrong because publishers and middlemen control the
monetization!

------
tim333
He misses out fbpurity which is rather good if you use facebook
([https://www.fbpurity.com/](https://www.fbpurity.com/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluff_Busting_Purity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluff_Busting_Purity))

------
throw2016
Half the people commenting on HN are in some way or the other involved in
spyware. Having a discussion on surveillance here does little more than dilute
the discussion, diminish the impact and provide a fig leaf of 'debate' when
reality already confirms the choices made.

Google, Facebook and others are SV darlings and large employers. HN is read
mainly by software or startup folks, basic pragmatism means people will want
to keep options open and not close doors.

People have made their choice, shaming and endless debate is not going to
work. Regulations may - personalized advertising especially social or
political is unethical and destructive. But these debates have to happen in
other places where the focus is more on ethics and society and not startups
and making money.

------
cdoxsey
The author mentions Twitter... anyone have any tips for how to use Twitter to
only see recent tweets?

I don't actually use Twitter for anything social, but it is the way I often
find out recent events. For example I commute by njtransit, which has delays
twice a week or so. They provide almost no information via official channels
(announcements or posted on boards), but often you can find details on
twitter...

So I bring up twitter on my phone and search for njtransit, and invariably it
decides to show me a joke some user posted a week ago, or yesterday's delays
-- which is completely useless.

I feel like there used to be a way to show it chronologically. Is that gone
now?

~~~
franknord23
[https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/)

~~~
cdoxsey
thanks that seems to work

------
maniqui
Privacy is what you keep for yourself. Discretion is what you would expect
from others to whom you made privy of your secrets.

Also: thesis #74 of The Cluetrain Manifesto says: "We are immune to
advertising. Just forget it."

~~~
mprev
Ah, yes. The Cluetrain Manifesto. Certainly a product of its time.

------
perfunctory
There was a time when I almost stopped reading books and started to rely on
the internet for most of my learning/information acquisition/leisure reading.
Now I am back to reading books. Paper books. They don't require ad blockers. I
must admin it wasn't very easy to readjust.

------
jchw
>Google makes the worlds most popular mobile operating system and it’s purpose
is drive the company’s bottom line (ad blocking is forbidden).

I don't know what they're referring to here, but this isn't really 100% true
in any case. I'm running Firefox with uBlock Origin on mobile. You can set it
as default browser and it can even be set to replace Chrome inside of other
applications.

When it comes to Android apps, it's true that you would need root to block
ads, but that's more due to application level sandboxing. Of course, I would
not really expect Google to implement hooks for intercepting and blocking
traffic or content in applications.

~~~
earenndil
> Google makes the worlds most popular mobile operating system

Most popular operating system, _PERIOD_.

------
nathanaldensr
The author writes an article on privacy, then ends the article by admitting
they use Siri. The author almost certainly has no actual proof of how Apple
does or doesn't use their information, but instead applies blind faith. The
cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming.

I do everything the author does _and_ I also don't use "assistants" on any
mobile device or PC. If you're going to write an article about privacy and
post it in HN, you should probably back that up with full action, not just
convenient action.

~~~
tux1968
We all make those trade offs every day. You're likely making convenient
choices that compromise your privacy every day too. Do you pay with cash for
everything? Do you appear in public without your face covered? Do you drive a
car?

~~~
nathanaldensr
I didn't write the article. I'm not professing to make perfect decisions. I
just find the author's particular "line in the sand" amusing. "This lack of
privacy is horrible, but I use Siri." It makes no sense.

~~~
ben_w
When it comes to the privacy respect I anticipate from the big three, I also
have a lot of trust in Apple. Not unlimited, but enough to be comfortable.
Amazon’s absolutely at the bottom, to the extent that it puts me off buying a
Kindle Fire. Google… I trust but I don’t know if I should.

(I don’t know what to think about Microsoft. I don’t even know if I’m being
unfair by not counting them as an equal of the other three).

~~~
binomialxenon
Apple is probably still the least bad of the four, but their dealing with
China doesn't exactly inspire confidence from me. If they are willing to
include code to censor the word "Taiwan" in iOS, who knows what else they are
willing to do to appease governments. Also let's not forget they are part of
PRISM and seemingly lied to the public about it.

The other three (Google, Amazon, and MS) are straight-up spyware/surveillance
and barely even bother putting a pretty face on it.

------
quotemstr
The article promotes the conspiracy theory that Facebook clandestinely records
conversions using phone microphones. That's absurd. The author completely
shredded his credibility.

~~~
SilasX
It recognizes the theory’s existence and popularity:

>>This might sound innocuous but the tracking efforts of these companies are
so accurate that many people believe that Facebook listens to their
conversations to serve them relevant ads.

