
Advertising Is a Cancer on Society - TeMPOraL
http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
======
wpietri
He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race.
Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a
great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's
products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other
companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste.

For example, everybody on the planet is now familiar with soft drinks. If
anybody has never tasted Coke, it's not by accident. But Coke's ad budget is
enormous. If all soft drink companies stopped advertising tomorrow, society
would not be worse off. And we'd have billions of dollars [1] to spend on
something useful.

Like the author, I won't work on ad tech. I don't like manipulation and I
don't like waste, and most advertising is both.

[1] e.g., [https://notesmatic.com/pepsico-advertising-and-marketing-
bud...](https://notesmatic.com/pepsico-advertising-and-marketing-budget/)
[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081315/look-
co...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081315/look-cocacolas-
advertising-expenses.asp)

~~~
dwild
I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room,
if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now.

Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and
reminding you that this product exists.

Ads are the only way to reach her market. You could argue that search is a
good one too (which is true), but sadly people have trouble paying to watch
videos online, there's no way they would pay for a search engine. We are still
not really high in the search result after a year of existence either and
paying for ads is a good way to get people on the website (which I'm sure will
help our position in search results).

EDIT: In case it's not clear, I don't believe she deserve to be higher than
other escape room in the search result, we have actually almost no competition
close to us and it's pretty much why she started that business. Simply that
Google have no metric to know that her website has to be higher than another
one, so clicks are needed to provide some.

She always asks people what they think of the experience once they are done
and recently one even said that we are not visible enough. It's a pretty great
feedback, we are lucky that's our main issue, but sadly ads are the only way
to become visible to others.

Ads are almost amazing by allowing investment into market that people aren't
ready to pay for but yet provide great entertainment, learning experience or a
great service. Without ads, I probably wouldn't be the developper that I am
today because the guy that did the great tutorial that create the passion in
me wouldn't have time to works full time on them.

~~~
Zeklandia
If you have to tell people they need something then they don't need it. Escape
rooms are an entertainment luxury. When there is essential work that needs to
be done (infrastructure, healthcare, education, &c.), it makes sense that it
takes psychological manipulation to convince people that what they really need
to do with their time and effort is temporary entertainment. If you want more
customers, provide something that people find more necessary, like childcare.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Your argument sounds an awful lot like "how dare you do anything escapist when
there are big problems in the world."

~~~
ehmish
No it's more that I'd your product fulfills a real need, people will find you.
The fact that people don't without advertising says it isn't a real need.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
There's just a lot of presumptions buried in statements like this that I have
trouble getting past. What criteria do we use to establish a need is "real"
once we get past life requirements? Do I need a better chair? A better
keyboard? A more efficient car? A monthly rail pass? The criteria you and
several other comments in this thread use seems to include "if you found out
about it through an ad, it's not a real need," which is the original canonical
definition of "begging the question."

~~~
Zeklandia
If nothing else in your life gave you the idea to buy something but an
advertisement did, it's not your idea to buy the thing. I needed a new chair
because the one I used to have gave me back pain. I went on Amazon to look for
a replacement chair, and because I use an ad-blocker (uBlock Origin), I didn't
see any advertisements for chairs (whether there are other features of Amazon
that could count as advertising, like the Amazon's Choice branding is, sure,
debatable but also besides the point). Instead, I saw a list of chairs with
information about them. I looked through the list and found the one I thought
would best suit me and bought it. Why did I buy it? Because I felt I needed it
since I was concerned that my old chair might have caused back problems if I
kept using it.

Since I bought the chair on Amazon, when I don't have an ad-blocker on, like
on other people's computers, I can see Amazon showing me advertisements for
other chairs. Why? They are trying to convince me, because I showed a
willingness to buy chairs, that I need more chairs. There are all sorts of
flashy listings showing off the neat gimmicks their chairs are capable of, all
to convince customers like me that what we have isn't good enough.

They can't make money if they solved people's problems, so either they design
things to break (like planned obsolescence) or they psychologically manipulate
people into thinking they have problems they don't have and sell them the
solution (InfoWars is this taken to the extreme).

There is a difference between putting information out there for people who
want to find it and blasting information at them to get in someone's head and
convince them they need to do something for your own benefit.

------
blodovnik
This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who
are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works.

I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't
exist without advertising.

It's a childish and immature opinion really.

Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working
at an organization that does not advertise. Loathing advertising and at the
same time depending on it for income is deeply hypocritical.

~~~
smt88
What valuable things wouldn't exist without advertising?

~~~
blodovnik
Computers. And if you want to be pedantic, you'll say but they would exist for
military etc!!!!!

But if you're not being pedantic you'll agree that most stuff relating to
computing exists in its current form in lockstep with yhe ability of companies
to sell and therefore advertise their products.

Not just computers but everything related to them too.

~~~
c3534l
How on Earth did you come to the conclusion that computers wouldn't exist
without advertising?

~~~
jdietrich
Home computers were initially a novelty item, sold mainly through direct-
response advertisements in magazines like Popular Electronics. This early
hobbyist market created the economies of scale that made a mass market home
computer a possibility.

In the late 70s and early 80s, most people simply had no idea why they would
want a computer; The first home computer adverts in the mainstream media
didn't really sell the benefits of one computer over another, but sold the
_idea_ of the computer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7_j_ABrkn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7_j_ABrkn8)

Without that kind of advertising, it's entirely plausible to believe that home
computers might have been a fad, with the computer resigned to being a
specialist tool for business and industry. There's a parallel universe where
the home computer and video game boom never happened because nobody told
consumers why they might want a computer, the 6502 and Z80 remained niche
microprocessors for embedded applications, Woz went back to HP and Bill Gates
finished his degree and got a job at Honeywell.

~~~
c3534l
The fact that people were already reading about electronics in magazines they
bought with their own money shows that people would have known what computers
were regardless. Those advertisements only worked because the audience was
already interested in computers. Those computers also already existed and the
notion that no one would have used a computer if an ad didn't tell them to is
absurd. Computers exist because they're useful and fun and they were purchased
by people who wanted computers and were willing to seek out products they
wanted.

------
c3534l
I wanted to mention that advertising kills the ecosystem for free and cheap
stuff. People say things like "TV wouldn't exist without advertising," but TV
would probably be better without it since networks would have to convince you
to pay them, rather than just stop you from flipping through the channels.
Certainly the news would be better because TV news tries to tease the viewer
to watch past the commercial break with intentionally false and misleading
statements.

Advertising isn't free, its costs are just hidden. They wouldn't spend money
if it didn't relieve you of yours. People who watch TV do pay for it, it's
just that the mechanism by which it happens is a magic trick of persuasion.
The only question is do advertisers provide a legitimate service to society
that is worth paying for and enough to support what we pay to adertisers.
That's the only way advertising can be "free" \- if it is self-funded service
worth value in and of itself.

IMHO, marketing is a good thing, and advertising can be when it's sufficiently
targetted. Getting the word out about a new product is fine. But most
traditional advertising that tries to sell an image or feeling is a blight.

~~~
scarface74
So how do over the air networks convince people to pay for them? Do you want
them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box? So instead of having
information that anyone can access for free, people who can’t afford a monthly
subscription should lnt watch tv?

~~~
jerf
"Do you want them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box?"

You sound like you think this is some sort of impossibility, but that's
exactly how cable provided multiple packages back in the analog days....

The reason OTA networks aren't allowed to do that is that the spectrum is
considered a public resource and the government made that a term of their
lease. There's nothing impossible about that idea.

~~~
scarface74
I’m aware of this. But that’s the point. By advocating getting rid of
advertising, you’re advocating DRM.

------
t34543
If you stop watching ads for awhile and go back to it you’ll see how mind
numbing it all really is.

I aggressively block ads - no exceptions.

~~~
dudul
When I moved from Europe to the US I just couldn't believe it. In my home
country there is one commercial break during a 2 hour movie. It's a little
longer than the breaks in the US, but there is only one. There is also one
during a 45minute TV show, and none during a 20minute show.

I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't
believe people were putting up with this.

~~~
archy_
I wish America would group TV ads together, it would make them much easier to
skip and would remove the need for forced cutoffs (you really notice them when
watching on non-cable sources)

~~~
yellowapple
I'd go the other direction: don't group them (a lot of shows already account
for / include commercial breaks, so it ain't like they're _that_ disruptive)
but make them shorter. The shorter the commercial, the less likely a viewer is
to skip them or change the channel, which means more engagement. The ad's
subject wins (more engagement), the viewer wins (less ads), the channel wins
(more engagement + less supply = more leverage to charge higher prices for ad
slots). Win-win-win.

\----

If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this
premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more
commercials than actual music, with the sole exception of one station in Reno
(96.1 Bob FM) that does hour-long non-stop music split up by very short (1-2
minutes at most) commercial breaks. I've also noticed that I never feel the
need to switch from Bob FM to some other station because I know that the music
will come back soon. Unsurprisingly, those commercials are way more impactful
than the ones on other stations specifically because I'm actually listening to
them instead of skipping them.

I'd like to take that to a greater extreme with 29-minute music blocks
separated by single 30-second commercials (with 15-second station
identification blurbs on either side of it, or perhaps combining them into a
30-second news update for e.g. traffic and weather). Companies probably
wouldn't pay a premium for these ads at first, but I suspect once they see the
upticks in customer engagement they'll be more willing to bid higher for those
slots.

~~~
magduf
>If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this
premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more
commercials than actual music

Of course. They're all owned by ClearChannel these days, so why should they
play more music than ads? What are people going to do, switch to another
(ClearChannel) radio station? You might also notice the ads are usually
playing at the same time if you switch between stations.

Non-NPR radio is basically just like landlines and cable TV these days. The
only people who still use/listen to/watch these things are dinosaurs who
haven't moved on to streaming radio (or just buying your own music),
cellphones, and streaming movies, so these companies are milking these people
for all they're worth.

~~~
yellowapple
> The only people who still use/listen to/watch these things are dinosaurs who
> haven't moved on to streaming radio (or just buying your own music),
> cellphones, and streaming movies

Or people like me who drive cars that predate the widespread availability of
AUX jacks (which I've worked around by using one of those cassette adapters,
but I know of at least some people who drive cars in that awkward phase where
cars had neither.

~~~
magduf
If you can't afford a newer car, that's understandable. If you have the means,
though, cars that old are downright dangerous in a crash, and if you spend
much time in your car it makes sense to upgrade to something newer that won't
get you killed. People walk away from crashes in newer cars now that would
have killed or severely maimed them in cars made 20 years ago.

~~~
yellowapple
> If you have the means, though

I don't, at least not comfortably (I probably could swing buying a newer car,
but it'd definitely be painful). There are millions of Americans out there for
whom that's probably out of the question entirely. And then there's the people
who can't afford streaming radio (and/or a device + data plan to actually
stream it) or buying music outright, or otherwise don't want to pay for those
things, and at the same time don't feel like sailing the high seas for it (if
your sails catch my drift).

~~~
magduf
>I don't, at least not comfortably (I probably could swing buying a newer car,
but it'd definitely be painful)

Remember also, older cars cost a lot: they might not cost much to buy, but
they cost a lot to keep running, because of repair costs. If you do your own
work and have the time, this might not be a big issue, but for a lot of people
it definitely is, and it's why they trade up to a newer car every so often:
the repair costs on the old car become greater than the value of the car, so
it's cheaper to just sell it and buy something newer that isn't breaking down
all the time. On top of that, don't forget the cost of having a breakdown, as
this can affect your job.

~~~
yellowapple
I feel like I'm at a dealership, lol

No, my repair costs + price of my current car ain't anywhere near what it'd
cost to buy a newer car, at least not yet (if it gets to that point where it
really is cheaper to buy a newer car than to fix my current one, then fine,
but so far that hasn't been the case). This kind of assumption also hinges on
the idea that newer cars don't break down as often (which may be true
statistically, but is nowhere near guaranteed).

At best, one could argue that I'd save a lot in gas due to efficiency gains
and/or electric drivetrains. That's probably true in the case of electrics,
which is why I'm saving up to that effect, but those are - unfortunately -
pretty expensive, especially for my needs (I routinely haul enough stuff to
justify at least an SUV, if not an outright truck). In any other case, it'd
take a _long_ time to get to break-even.

~~~
magduf
Depending on how much work you do on your own car, and how long you keep it,
new cars may not be a great investment, since they depreciate so rapidly.
Basically there's a bathtub curve: too-old cars have very high repair costs,
and too-new cars have high depreciation. So if you really want to be frugal,
you want a car that's between 2 and 10 years old I think, depending on your
finances and what you want to drive.

>This kind of assumption also hinges on the idea that newer cars don't break
down as often (which may be true statistically, but is nowhere near
guaranteed).

It's absolutely true statistically. It might not be guaranteed because there
are lemons out there (as well as Chryslers...), but in general it's absolutely
true: machines wear out over time so of course older cars have more things
breaking on them. But some are definitely better than others. I know someone
with an '01 Toyota Camry with 300,000 miles on it and it's still running
great, though it's needed a few minor body things fixed (like a side mirror,
probably broken by getting hit by something). I wouldn't expect an '01 Chevy
to be that reliable, and certainly not an '01 Chrysler.

>I routinely haul enough stuff to justify at least an SUV, if not an outright
truck

My suggestion here if you want to save gas is (assuming whatever you're
hauling isn't too heavy, and this is an occasional task and not everyday) to
get a car, add a tow hitch, and get a 4x8 utility trailer. I had one of these
for a while and it was pretty fantastic for things like hauling appliances or
furniture in town.

------
hinkley
Long, long ago, someone suggested their extremely simple fix for advertising:
stop letting companies declare it as a business expense.

The Law of Unintended Consequences always gets you in weird ways, and I'm not
a lobbyist or a public policy person, nor do I know anyone highly placed in
those fields.

But one of the ways companies slowly fail is by choosing to sell harder
instead of making their product better. If we lower the rate of return on
advertising dollars by 15%, won't that shift some more money into R&D,
logistics and other divisions that provide something approximating value
(although one unintended consequence I can see is an increased focus on strip-
mining the Third World, literally and figuratively).

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
there's a better way. Just have consumers stop buying products that are
advertised. it's so easy.

i can only imagine that consumers love the advertisements, otehrwise, why
would they buy the product?

~~~
hinkley
No such thing has been proven. Brand recognition is higher even for brands
whose ads piss you off. Over time you forget why you were so mad.

I had a coworker who insisted you could just chose not to participate. My
argument to him was the same I’ll make to you: the other side is using
psychological warfare. It’s privatization of propaganda tactics. That requires
something a bit more vigorous in response than taking your ball and going
home.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
There's nothing stopping anyone from not buying the product. Just because you
recognize their brands doesn't mean you have to buy it. I really don't get it.
For example, I used to hate the Dodge ads: they really rubbed me the wrong
way. It's very easy for me to not buy Dodge products.

and as far as pyschological warfare goes. Just don't let it affect you. Only
buy things you want or need and don't let yourself be manipulated so easily.

~~~
hinkley
Yeah that’s why it’s called warfare and not conversation. You’re tricking the
person into doing something they don’t want to do by overcoming their defenses
and reasoning to work against their own interests.

You are either a zen monk or have a huge blind spot. Who else would offer this
sort of advice?

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
I've never bought anything I don't want or need. For me, it's not difficult,
that's why its so hard for me to understand why it's not he norm.

------
fsloth
Modern advertising is propaganda and agitation. While commercial entities have
advertised their wares for as long as there have been commerce[0], the modern
mass hallucination inducing form became the norm only after the world wars.

The essence of propaganda is to weave a story and engage the target population
in an action that creates commitment to the story and creates secondary effect
due to social proof as people see other people committing.

This is the essence of modern marketing as well.

Cancer is not really a well thought out way to describe it, it sounds a bit
fanatical.

There is nothing conspiracy like about this. This is all well known and
researched.

General public is just kept ignorant of it. I don't know why. Maybe it's
because the more you know about how propaganda works the less effective it is?
Thus teaching people en mass how propaganda works would make even benevolent
attempts at mass mind control less effective.

[0] Branding is nothing new. In the viking age particular german swords were
very well thought off - and they had particular inscription on the blade. The
brand was so strong that blacksmiths around baltic created "pirate" copies of
the blades by writing the same inscription - or, as some were illeterate,
attempted to copy the markings resulting in almost-but-not quite correct
spellings. As their clients were likely illiterate as well I don't think it
mattered for business.

~~~
perfunctory
> Maybe it's because the more you know about how propaganda works the less
> effective it is

Actually propaganda is so effective exactly because it works even when you
know that it's propaganda. People remember the message but not the source of
the message.

------
starpilot
We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of
arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads
are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human
knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.

~~~
_petronius
> Google has provided incalculable value to the world

I'm not convinced by this statement, and I'd be genuinely interested to hear
your reasoning behind it. Is it specific products? Specific technologies?
Although Google has built some interesting stuff, I can't think of anything
off the top of my head that they've done that was either a) something that
couldn't have been invented without them, or b) only unique due to their
ability to scale it out, rather than a true innovation.

~~~
ziddoap
The problem with arguing your viewpoint is that no one can prove something
wouldn't have been invented without Google. So, no matter what is listed, you
can just say "someone else might have invented that".

And regarding your second point, what would the practical difference be to the
consumer if the innovation happened because of their ability to scale out, or
"true innovation"?

You don't need to like Google to admit they have added value to the world.

~~~
_petronius
You may be assuming you know my viewpoint without me having presented it in
full, but anyway I wasn't looking to argue in bad faith, I guess I just see a
strong difference between "successful company that has made money and cool
products" and "added incalculable value to the world." That's a very strong
statement!

The parent comment was looking to weigh the problems of the ad-supported
economy and the ills brought about by that described in the article against
the value Google has brought to the world, and I just don't see how the two
stack up, so I wanted to understand their weighting of the latter.

Everyone seems keen to write haigiographies of companies that in all honesty I
mostly find ... okay I guess? Could do better but they make cool stuff? I
don't "hate" Google, but I do think that a company the size of Google doesn't
need such zealous defenders, it needs a critical society that pushes it to do
better with the crazy resources it has, and one of those things is to examine
the ways in which it's basic revenue model is harmful.

~~~
ziddoap
I didn't think you were trying to argue in bad faith, and you are correct that
I had assumed you presented your full position in your initial post - my
apologies.

And I agree, "incalculable" makes it quite a strong statement, and I probably
wouldn't have chosen that word myself.

I think it's important to consider that Google is not the sole inventor,
proponent, or user of advertisement. You probably aren't claiming that either,
but the way your statement reads(" _problems of the ad-supported economy and
the ills [...] against the value of Google_ ") leads one to believe that you
put those two things on equal footing. Google certainly evolved advertising,
and is certainly a major player, but they aren't solely responsible. So, to
weigh "Googles Good" vs. "Advertisements Ills" is hard to reconcile.

"haigiographies" is a new word for me, cheers!

------
bluetwo
I would say the theft of attention and concentration is a cancer on society,
but I agree overall.

To those who say there is no other model, you are not correct.

~~~
jkeuhlen
What are the other models that exist and are currently working? As someone who
is looking to build a free consumer product, I don't know what else exists
that can offset my costs other than advertising. I hate paywalls just as much
as advertising, so I'm opposed to just charging for access.

~~~
klum
If you expect income, you're not really looking to build a free product, are
you? Seems to me, a paywall (or similar) is the honest way; those who get
value from your product give value back, in the most direct and transparent
way possible.

(I know I'm trivializing the question; I'm not in your situation and I don't
know the perfect model for your product. But I disagree with just lumping
together "paywalls" and "advertising" in the same category of "non-desirable
things".)

~~~
GenghisSean
> If you expect income, you're not really looking to build a free product, are
> you?

You hit it right on the nose. I'd rather pay not to have strings attached than
get something free with hidden other costs.

------
perfunctory
Compulsory quote

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can
buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose
or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a
spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on
television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods,
and rock stars, but we won't."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_\(film\))

~~~
paulcole
Maybe I'm misinterpreting but didn't the movie show that everything Tyler does
and says is 100% wrong?

~~~
alexashka
No. The movie shows a very real problem that many people experience. It goes
on to show a partial solution of getting in touch with your primal emotions
(beating the shit out of each other). It then turns into a cult and cults have
a tendency to go off the rails.

It's a multi-layered story that resists simplistic interpretations, which is
why it is so beloved by so many.

~~~
paulcole
> It goes on to show a partial solution of getting in touch with your primal
> emotions (beating the shit out of each other).

Should be clear that the way the characters go about this is an awful, awful
solution.

The reason it is beloved by many is that the simplistic story encourages
"deep" interpretations.

------
solidsnack9000
Maybe some of it...but without any advertising at all it would be really hard
to know what products or out there or even that there is a restaurant on the
other end of the block.

~~~
OrgNet
reducing consumption would be a benefit if you think about it from a climate
change angle...

For restaurants, I usually search for them in a directory and not in ads...

~~~
alephnan
In NYC, there are many pop up events including food events, which wouldn’t
show up in a food directory site, but they do show up on Instagram ads.

~~~
buckminster
My town has a couple of stuff-happening-today directories. (Or this week or
this month.) Doesn't NYC?

~~~
alephnan
There’s just so much going on I guess. There are times where I don’t mind FB
knowing what my interests are.

------
cm2012
Advertising (Which appears to be defined in your broad doc as anything that
gets your attention without asking for it first) is the worst way to get
people to pay attention to things, except for all the other ways. The
alternative to "advertising" is the rate of people discovering new things
dropping to 1% of what it is now.

1% of products have natural virality and will be found on their own. The other
99% of products and services in existence, no matter the quality, needs to be
promoted so people can find them and use them.

Say you make an app that helps plumbers do their job well. If every plumber
used it, plumber productivity would go up 50%, making life easier for all. It
cost you years of your time and lots of money to make this great app, and you
need a lot of plumbers to buy it to afford to continue working on it.

There's a big plumber app on the market already, but yours is way better.

How do you get plumbers to hear about your product?

1) The press? Uninterested. Plumber magazines or sites? Very low traffic - no
way to scale.

2) Call or knock on doors of every plumber near you? If everyone did this, the
spam would be unreal. Also inefficient and not scalable.

3) Referrals? You get some, but most plumbers aren't chomping at the bit to
help their competitors. And because you started with so few, referrals are a
snails pace and by no means exponential.

4) Organic postings and SEO? The big plumber app is way ahead of you. And 100
other worse apps clog up the listings. No one sees your posts.

See the problem? Without ads, you can't grow many many categories of genuinely
valuable products. Even if no one else is advertising, you can't really grow
without them.

This is barely a hypothetical by the way. I've worked with a dozen companies
with similar situations.

Here's a real life example:

I was just hired to scale marketing for a particular app. This app currently
has over 100 real reviews online, averaging 4.9 stars out of 5. Retention is
nuts - 98% of people who ever started using the product (which has a monthly
fee) are still using it. The company is three years old.

Perfect to take off, right? But few industries are actually viral. We just
doubled the number of new customers per month using FB ads in the first two
months of scaling it out, and we'll scale much further over the next 3.

Anyone who works in start-up growth will tell you the same things I am.

~~~
wpietri
> 1% of products have [...] 99% of products and services [...] plumber
> productivity would go up 50% [...]

Did know that 97% of statistics are made up on the spot?

The problem with your fictions here is that they're based in a world with a
lot of advertising. In your fantasy, people just sit around dying of thirst
because there's nobody to advertise water at them. But in reality, people
would still find ways to get what they need.

I find great new products all the time despite living an ad-free life. I find
them through friends. Through internet discussion like Hacker News. And
through sites like Wirecutter and Consumer Reports. I don't find my life
particularly lacking.

Would ending ads mean it would be harder for businesses to manipulate their
growth numbers? Sure. So I can get why you feel panicked at the thought. But
you're used to a world where everybody's burning investor money to get
attention, so it's required to do the same. Maybe think about the world where
nobody can do that. I promise you, it'll keep on turning.

~~~
cm2012
My job is talking to start-ups and established companies that want to grow.
It's not a fiction to say that most companies don't grow if they don't promote
themselves.

~~~
philwelch
Because they’re operating in an adversarial environment where every other
business engages in advertising. It’s game theory.

~~~
cm2012
They're operating in an adversarial environment where other businesses
_exist_.

~~~
philwelch
If they merely existed but didn’t engage in advertising, you could advertise
and, consequently, outperform them. But they all know this too. This is the
game theory I’m alluding to. It’s a Prisoners Dilemma except with added
externalities in the cases where anyone advertises at all.

Now, how does the prisoners dilemma get solved? External enforcement. In
advertising that might entail laws and regulations to curtail advertising.
These laws and regulations may be net positive to the erstwhile advertisers
themselves in this scenario. (The equivalent mechanism in the actual prisoners
dilemma is that snitches get stitches.)

~~~
cameronbrown
You could never remove advertising without silencing companies. Let that sink
in. As long as companies exist and have tools to reach out, even if it was a
free Facebook post, they're always going to do that.

~~~
dwaltrip
It is possible to heavily reduce available advertising channels with some
clear regulations. It isn't that hard to imagine. Sure, it wouldn't be
perfect, but there is a wide range of "advertising pervasiveness and
harmfulness" that we can dial the knob down on.

~~~
wpietri
Exactly. We don't have to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And it's not like I object to companies publishing on their own channels. They
can have a website, a Twitter account, a Facebook account. If people volunteer
to read that, great. If we just eliminate paid manipulation, it'll be a huge
step forward and we'll free up enormous sums of money.

------
joekrill
This discussion always makes me think of one of my favorite NewRadio scenes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrnMbhMgmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrnMbhMgmw)

It makes a really important point, though: where do you draw the line at what
is considered "advertising"? It's a pervasive part of humanity.

> Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing.

That's life, though, isn't it? Me convincing my employer I'm the best person
for the job. Convincing my wife I'm the best choice for a husband. Ultimately,
everything becomes a sort of "advertisement". It's a very slippery slope.

It's even more interesting that this article even says:

> When I say "advertising", I use this term somewhat loosely...

Which is a problem when you want to make bold claims like "Advertising as
cancer".

~~~
perfunctory
> Me convincing my employer I'm the best person for the job

To do that I presume you would actually have to _believe_ that you are the
best person for the job. Otherwise you would fill emotional distress, as
normal people do when they lie. Professional marketers on the other hand don't
have to believe in what they sell.

~~~
joekrill
They don't _have_ to believe it. But I think many do (Whether they are lying
to themselves is another thing). Most sales/marketing folks I've worked with
actually _do_ believe their product is superior and the best.

I don't think it's really as black-and-white as your suggesting, though. In
the "employee/employer" context: there are plenty of employees who do think
they are the best person for a job. In most cases that's probably just not
true, given the size of a candidate pool. Are they lying to themselves?

------
rhema
Anyone know the old Bill Hicks joke?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU)
I think advertising is part of the human condition. Once people want
something, they tend to change how they relate the facts to better fit their
self interest. I see this as an evolution-created short cut. So, while it is
valuable to recognize it, demonizing it may not turn out to be that useful.
Instead, if we take that advertising is as inevitable a phenomena as language,
we can try to avoid its pitfalls as consumers and producers.

------
carapace
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

> Edward Louis Bernays ... was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of
> public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father
> of public relations".

> Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928)
> gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field
> of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred
> Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncle Sigmund Freud, he
> described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined
> how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to
> control them in desirable ways.

~~~
beautifulfreak
I highly recommend the documentary, Century of the Self, which details how
Bernays' theories about advertising were put to use by Nazis.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self)

------
robbrown451
I'd like to see solutions offered, that aren't just of the "do things that are
against your own self interest" variety. Anything that requires you do
something that individually hurts yourself in a tangible, measurable way,
while not giving you benefit in a tangible, measurable way, falls under this.
For example, if you boycott, you notice the impact on yourself because it is
undiluted, but almost never will you notice the impact of your actions because
it will be spread among everyone.

So here's a radical suggestion. Legislation that says: any web site or app
that shows ads should offer an option to view the site without ads, by paying
for access, and that is priced reasonably (approximately equal revenue as ads)
and with options for "a la carte" vs. bundling. Any provider of ads (adSense,
etc) has to provide this service as well.

It's complex legislation, I'm sure, and tricky to get right. But it's better
than tilting at windmills, as this article leaves me feeling it is doing.

------
jdietrich
There's good advertising and bad advertising. Calling all advertising "cancer"
is ludicrous.

My YouTube subscription feed is full of stuff that is some form of advertising
- music instrument retailers demonstrating new products, advertorial content
from tool manufacturers, tutorials from software companies and so on. It's all
paid for out of the marketing budget, it's all intended to sell more product,
but it's also a useful service to me as a consumer.

Back in the day, I bought computer and music magazines in large part _because_
of the advertising. It's how I kept up to date with the industry, it's how I
learned about new products that weren't necessarily available in my town and
it's how I found out the market price for products.

How do consumers find out about new products without some form of advertising?
How do manufacturers find a market without some form of advertising?

------
natalyarostova
Anyone else find the user of 'cancer' in these terms to be frustrating? Having
had to experience the pain of people I care about having cancer, it
immediately just makes me feel like shit. I guess maybe I'm just sensitive...

~~~
gilbetron
I've had cancer, and I've had people close to me die of cancer, so I can see
where you're coming from. Even the mention of it would freak me out - I
remember when my mom was dying of cancer, and I was being treated for it,
watching an episode of Stargate to escape from it - and one of the characters
in the episode was dying of cancer - so much for escape!

But, then again, somethings really are as virulent and aggressive as cancer,
and I'm ok with them being compared to it. I'm fine with the (needed, imo)
reaction.

------
tathougies
No its not. I had to move quickly last week. Needed to find someone who could
take some stuff. Remembers the 1800gotjunk commercials. They fixed my problem.
I guess I could have used google but without ads google wouldn't exist so...

~~~
t34543
Phone books still exist.

~~~
falcrist
I don't know what they're like these days, but when I was younger, the vast
majority of the phone book was a series of advertisements for various
businesses.

------
japhyr
I live in a small town in southeast Alaska, and we are exposed to much less
advertising than people in more densely populated parts of the US. We have no
billboards, we don't have any large box stores, and we don't have cable TV in
our house. When we travel, my 8yo is fascinated by all the advertising around
us. He finds a lot of it funny because he hasn't been overexposed to all the
standard tricks that advertisers pull.

But, he is already deeply frustrated by the intrusiveness of online ads. He is
old enough and informed enough to be aware that he's being manipulated, but
not old enough yet to consistently spot the manipulation that online
advertisers use on his own.

A little advertising is a good thing. Inundation is not a good thing, and we
are far past the inundation stage.

------
megaman821
I feel this is a new trend among people.

* I don't like something. * Why do people do it? It is not even effective. * It should be outlawed.

If you and a bunch of other people like you think advertising is a waste of
money, what is preventing you from starting your own company that does not use
advertising? I promise you the government will not come and force you to buy
commercial time or Facebook ads.

~~~
stronglikedan
It's not a new trend. There's always people that think big, regulatory
government is the answer to everything, and people just cannot be held
accountable for their own actions. It just seems worse now that they can spout
their nonsense to the masses, but good thing they're still a (very) vocal
minority.

------
alephnan
Targeted Instagram ads have been very useful to me recently. I just moved
apartments, and the ads have been showcasing products that I wouldn’t have
otherwise known about.

The argument can be made that maybe I didn’t need these things in the first
place. But I want them, it makes me happy, and these ads have saved me time.

~~~
smt88
This is a pretty rare ad experienced. They're much more commonly used to
generate desire that doesn't need to exist; to manipulate public opinion in a
harmful way; to sell dangerous products; to astroturf; etc.

The fact that people attempt to ignore most ads, with varying degrees of
success, tells you that they're net-harmful.

------
cletus
I really detest the general "hate" of advertising. Don't get me wrong: I'm a
zealous ad blocker, largely because advertising can (and does) go over the
line of being intrusive. Also I think the dirty secret of ad tech is ad
personalization has pretty limited value.

But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need
or want. There might be a bakery 2 miles away you'll really enjoy. How will
you find out about it if they don't advertise? Being strictly reliant on word-
of-mouth is woefully naive (IMHO).

Take Google search, the user is literally looking for something. Why isn't an
ad an appropriate response to someone searching for a search for "ozark jetski
for hire"? As long as ads and organic search results are clearly
differentiated, IMHO this is totally fine.

Certain behaviours obviously need to be restricted, like I'm a big fan of
outright outlawing advertising to children. But advertising in general? In
what world is that reasonable?

~~~
luckylion
> But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might
> need or want.

That's in the article. He's arguing the exact point that advertising has a
legitimate function in a market to inform about products. They've outgrown
that, he continues, and now they do not inform, they convince (and often lie
to do so).

------
Xixi
I really have a dual view on advertising: as a person I hate being on the
receiving end of ads (especially when the ads follow me through my
browsing....), on the other hand as an entrepreneur I'm quite happy to have
means of advertising my tea subscription service [1]. "Build it and they will
come" doesn't quite work. People have to hear about your product somehow.

I don't do much advertising at all for Tomotcha as our churn is low and I am
quite content with the number of subscribers right now. But from time to time
we send a tea to an "influencer" or run an adword campaign. It helps.

[1] When I mention my tea subscription service
([https://tomotcha.com](https://tomotcha.com)) right here on HN, does it count
as advertisement? It should, because it is, thankfully HN as a community of
entrepreneurs is rather forgiving about self-promotion. Other communities
(some subreddits) can be very hostile towards it...

~~~
arkades
And here I go rewarding your self promotion, but when else do I get to ask
directly?

I just skimmed your site. It looks like it’s all greens. Is that correct?

~~~
Xixi
We send very different kind of teas, but they are all Japanese teas. So for
instance we only sent black tea once [1] so far because wakocha is pretty
rare, though it is gaining in popularity among tea producers. I recently found
a very good one produced in Tanegashima, we may send it soon. Otherwise most
teas will fall in either the roasted family (hojicha), or in the non-roasted
family (sencha, gyokuro, etc.), with sometimes teas that are really infusions,
not actual teas (like Zaracha).

But taking just non-roasted green teas, there is a lot of variations.
Depending on the way green tea is prepared, it will taste very different.
Difference can come from the steaming (asamushi -> futsumushi -> fukamushi,
from light and quick to deep and long), from the shading, or lack of shading
(sencha -> kabusecha -> gyokuro from no shading to a lot of shading). Then
there are teas prepared with different part of the tea plant: my favorite tea
is actually called karigane, and is made of twigs instead of tea-leaves.

The teas are definitely all quite different, there are many to try.

[1] [https://tomotcha.com/en/blog/2018-012-wakocha-
toyama/](https://tomotcha.com/en/blog/2018-012-wakocha-toyama/)

~~~
arkades
I am a pretty dedicated tea dork, even if I don’t particularly love Japanese
tea. I’ll give it a shot.

~~~
Xixi
Thank you :)

If you want a discount, you can use this coupon: REDDIT

------
necovek
I prefer to simply say "marketing _today_ is immoral": it is using
scientifically proven methods to manipulate us into doing something we would
otherwise not be inclined to do.

I don't mind informative advertising: "hey, we are making this thing which can
help with this" is ok. But that's a rare breed of ads nowadays. One of the
eye-openers for me was when I noticed in my early student (and shaving :))
days how all Nivea shaving products were branded as being for sensitive skin
(does your skin turn red if you pull razor over it?): I've simply stopped
buying their products. They've scaled back on that, but I didn't "forgive"
them their attempt to manipulate me.

As a cancer survivor myself, I don't mind the analogy and term, it just seems
to not be explicit enough about what the trouble is with ads today: you have
to work backwards to establish parallels from "cancer" to "advertising".

~~~
davidivadavid
Curious to know what's so problematic about the Nivea claim that it's for
sensitive skin?

~~~
necovek
As I mentioned, _all_ of their products were being marketed as being for
"sensitive skin". Eg. a skin that turns red and/or itches after you shave with
a very sharp razor: I would generally expect that almost everyone's skin
behaves like this. So by saying "sensitive", they were attempting to
manipulate me into thinking how my (and everybody else's) skin is sensitive so
I need their "special" products.

~~~
davidivadavid
If you expected that, you would most assuredly be mistaken. Skin sensitivity
is a thing that people experience on a wide variety of levels. Some men can
shave every day and experience no redness whatsoever. Some can't begin to
think of doing that without redness/pain/etc.

------
paultopia
This is the first I've learned about things like the "Evercookie," and now I'm
wondering if there's a U.S. Attorney out there who would be interested in a
CFAA prosecution.

I utterly fail to see how it could be the case that website scraping arguably
violates the CFAA (though I have my doubts there), but this kind of malware
deliberately designed to violate the expressed intent of people to remove data
from their own machines, for the purpose of accessing identity information,
doesn't.

Interestingly, if you try to download the zip file of the evercookie repo from
github, Chrome detects it as malware and blocks it. That makes me rather more
confident in the security model of Chrome.

------
autoexec
> "There's really nothing stopping any government from tapping into this total
> surveillance infrastructure other than lack of will."

Why assume a lack of will at this point? We know they routinely approach
companies about collecting the data the company collects. They've clearly
demonstrated the will to collect our data regardless of legality. (Does/did
this site have a warrant canary?)

At this point I treat all ads as hostile. As much as websites try to make you
feel guilty for blocking their ads I feel zero obligation to allow or support
their efforts to manipulate me or compromise my privacy and security.

------
libertine
Advertising is as much of a cancer as any form of communication.

What's happening is that the barrier of entry - better yet let's use the
industry terms: the cost reach of advertising campaigns is low thanks to the
internet that drove the cost of distribution of information close to 0.

So you're just seeing what was once a privileged tool open to the masses - and
it's bad. Anyone can have access to it with a credit card.

Now just because there's a lot of bad advertising, probably the great majority
of it, doesn't mean it's a cancer. Else everything that's abused in a bad way
is a cancer.

------
wallflower
I’ve always wondered about the hundreds of millions spent on election (mainly
TV) advertising in the U.S.

Is all that money paid for airtime an indirect subsidy or transfer of wealth
to those who own media companies?

------
casualm
How much free reign does anyone have when it comes to advertisement? I feel
that the biggest issue is not only the volume / spam of advertisement, but how
much misinformation it projects.

If the quantity of advertisement can be curbed in such a way that corporates
are more conscious of how much space they have on television with
advertisements (time limiting law), as well as what message they can convey,
this starts discouraging and treating in-your-face advertisement less of a
prioritiezed form of pitching a product.

------
godDLL
While I understand both the purpose (cultivate desire, entice, inform) and the
necessity (forward movement, economy, business) of advertising, I'd still like
to get about my life without it. Unhindered by it.

The noise to signal ratio of the modern Internet is such that I, as a
technical person, someone that finds it preferable to read instead of listen
or watch; I still find myself on Youtube 99% of the time. Almost all of my web
browsing is now Youtube. AND I HATE IT.

~~~
godDLL
What I'd like to see is an HTMLx that addresses the core needs of the Web-
using entities, and an ecosystem of Web extensions that expand on the
capabilities of it. So, something like what smartphones with their apps and
markets are doing. Basic call and message capabilities, but then there's
TrueCaller and WhatsApp and the like.

"Please support our project by enabling advertising on this domain [OK]
[Later] [Never]" "For Youtube Movies please install DRM/x264 package from the
market [OK] [Later] [Never]" "You will need to enable storage, code, and
gaming modules to use Itch [OK] [Later] [Never]"

Because browser extensions suck. Browsers suck. Mobile browsers suck. The
experience of the Web sucks, for anyone that knows better. Shopping, gaming,
streaming, syndication and publishing all suck big time.

------
RivieraKid
I remember thinking years ago that advertising would slowly disappear because
we would have tools which would help us make optimal market decisions, so
people would just use those and ignore the ads.

Basically, I imagined a website where you pick the type of service or good
that you're interested in, fill out some sort of questionnaire and then get a
list of recommendations which are optimal for your situation.

------
buboard
There is one part of the anti-advertising rhetoric which has to do with the
fact that we spend so much time online and advertising is very visible there -
after all Google, an advertising company, is the largest and most important
internet company. That's unfortunate of course. There is another part though
that is not just fed up with advertising, but comes from a certain trends
towards protecting "my safe space". It's more prominent in the latest
generations and it's a knee-jerk reaction to anything that might spread speech
that is not explicitly desired (not just acceptable). It's the same aversion
that sometimes makes people intolerant to their neighbors who don't share
their own views. I think the article similarly slid quickly from advertising
to all forms of manipulation, forgetting that paid advertising (pamphlets) is
what enabled a number of positive revolutions in societies, from martin luther
to french revolution to the bolsheviks.

~~~
Zeklandia
There is a difference, whose significance seems to be lost on you, between
peer-to-peer, voluntary communication and centralized, forced distribution.

You are not forced to read pamphlets nor do they insert the content of the
pamphlets into your newspapers and letters. Typically the only thing you are
forced to do by someone distributing pamphlets is to tell them whether you'd
like to take one. If advertisements had to ask whether you wanted to see them,
the entire industry would collapse.

Pamphlets are also not magically distributed to everyone. People have to
decide to help distribute them, which means other people have to cooperate
with you to help you spread your message. It is also easier for others to
interfere in your efforts, as, unlike online, people can see who and where the
information is coming from, and they can also more easily and directly inhibit
distribution. On the other hand, any individual can buy a Facebook ad and,
with enough money, shove it in millions of people's faces with little to no
oversight. Hence, it is easier to spread misinformation (like anti-vaccine
propaganda) through Facebook than in real life.

~~~
buboard
> If advertisements had to ask whether you wanted to see them, the entire
> industry would collapse.

Online ads - and most ads tbh - don't force you to do that either. They want
to attract your attention but you re free to ignore them. I used pamphlets as
the equivalent of advertising in older times, i m sure people would consider
them just as pushy/spammy back then as we consider online ads now. They are
not peer-to-peer by definition - there is no point preaching to the choir.

~~~
Zeklandia
You aren't free to ignore them. To even look at them to identify whether they
are advertisements takes time. Even if it took a millisecond, with a billion
people looking at it that's 12 days of man-hours lost on every advertisement.

Pamphlet distribution is peer-to-peer. People have to distribute them to other
people. However, Advertising is usually lopsided: typically a group of people
working together, like a magazine corporation, or a machine, like with
Facebook, is distributing content to people. And again, receiving ads from
these places is not voluntary. You cannot engage with the activity but refuse
receiving advertisements, unlike my experience of walking around on university
campuses and refusing pamphlets I am offered.

------
raz32dust
Advertising is not a bad thing in itself. Think of newspaper advertisements
(paper edition). I think I owe a lot of my success to a newspaper ad I saw
which led me to apply to join for advanced math and science classes. We have
had it for centuries, and there will always be some form of advertising
around. A "ban" on advertising is neither practical nor fruitful. What is bad
is specific, targeted advertising based on user behavior or deep knowlege
about the user. This is somewhat vague, of course - if I buy a car magazine, I
expect to see car ads which the publishers have posted because they know that
the people who buy the magazine are car enthusiasts. It is a question of
precision - I am ok with ads targeted at IPs from, say Queens area in New
York, but not ads that use my precise location or street. Age should be
completely out of bounds except for general statistics like - readers of this
newspaper tend to be 20-30 year olds.

------
w1nst0nsm1th
He could ad : ads kill information.

As an example, google "cbd oil vs cbd isolate" or "why is cbd isolate in
powder form...", in order to understand the difference and the relation
betweens the 2 components (knowing Canabidiol should already be an oil, as its
name suggest) and why cbd isolate is under the form of powder and not liquid
as CBD oil.

Everything that come in the first results pages are fake blog posts from
commercial sites or commercial offers. We quickly understand one contains the
other after reading the first 3 pages from the result. But we never find an
article explaining the actual chimical nature of cbd isolate (or pure form of
cbd) or even an actual scientific study about cbd.

It's only the same and repeated argument, "article" after "article" about one
pure form contained in another... and that for the first several result pages
from a meta-search engine like searx (searx.be in this example with setting
settle to include in general results Bing, Google, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo
and StartPage).

The good information has been covered under a thick layer of low density
infomertial bullshit.

It's like trying to watch a movie in the middle of car traffic : You can't
hear anything from the movie original soundtrack.

It take to further research, like "why is cannabidiol a powder", to have
access in the first result page to actual independant articles for cbd, but
under the form of its less "commercial" name, "cannabidiol"... to learn that
lot of claims about cbd are not founded on actual scientific researches.

In short, the word CBD have been hijacked by commercial entities for profit
and lost the biggest chunk of its actual meaning.

Information is lost in the process.

And I still don't know why cbd isolate is in powder form.

------
araneae
How old is your daughter?

> This is why my kid isn't going to watch YouTube. If and when we decide to
> show her any children's show, it'll be from a manually curated set of videos
> downloaded and streamed from a NAS.

Until what age? I doubt this resolve will last until 18, particularly when
they become old enough to know what their friends are watching. The vast
majority of video content isn't legally downloadable, and even illegal
downloading is a bit difficult because children's shows aren't as widely
shared as content aimed at adults. (Even really popular shows like Paw Patrol
have surprisingly limited availability.)

If you want to limit ad exposure, using subscription services like Netflix is
more practical, as does purchasing shows on a per show basis on YouTube (which
granted gets very expensive). Public broadcasting is also typically ad free;
in the UK we have iplayer which has ad-free children's programming available
for streaming.

------
annadane
At the risk of much hate and downvotes, this is I feel the prototypical
example of one of the issues with HN. Disagreeing is fine, but this is a
pretty long, detailed article yet half the comments here are "the author is
wrong, there's nothing wrong with advertising"

------
thorwasdfasdf
Advertising never works on me unless it's for a product I already wanted in
the first place in which case i would've gotten it anyways. But other than
that, I'm completely immune. I've calculated, less than 0.25% of my earnings
go towards a product that was advertised to me.

I have no idea what brand my clothes/shoes are, if any. None of the food I buy
has any branding whatsoever. ever seen a branded cucumber? nope, neither have
I. I only buy new eletronics when the old one breaks, and I almost always get
the cheapest one. Other than that, almost all of the rest of my spending goes
to housing and savings/assets.

If everyone was like me, the advertising industry might not exist, or at least
be much smaller.

~~~
neop1x
the thing is that maybe you are smarter than average. Maybe most people buy
impulsiely, who knows..

------
13415
I'd rather be worried about whether advertising is (cost-)effective. Couldn't
there be an advertising industry bubble? I block all ads online nowadays, but
when I didn't, I found it hard to believe that they could be worth the money.

~~~
kristopolous
The bubble theory on ads is interesting.

Around 2009 I saw it as "unprofitable venture backed companies advertising on
unprofitable venture backed platforms" as if it's some kind of matryoshka doll
system that works as a baton passing from one generation of bad investments to
the next - no revenue is trading hands, just poorly placed investor money:

A kafkaesque anarchy of people siloed at companies named after adjectives
spelled without vowels passing pixels for sale among each other hoping that
some unicorn will fall out of their back pocket.

~~~
lioeters
I see how invasion of privacy fits into this self-reinforcing kafkaesque
matryoshka bubble: massive collection and statistics of people's personal data
are being used as _advertisement for the advertisers_.

------
dan-robertson
I wonder why we don’t see any kind of tax on advertising (or maybe we do?). It
seems to me like a way to recoup some of the social cost of advertising. It
also seems like it could be popular with eg some European governments as a way
to get companies like google and Facebook to pay some tax on the profits they
make. If the tax were per estimated impression then it would encourage more
accurate estimates of volume (or at least it could curb the inflation of the
estimates) as companies offering advertising would be incentivised by taxation
to keep estimates low, and by competition to keep estimates high. Perhaps
instead there would be some kind of gdpr inspired tax on collecting unneeded
information to cover the societal cost of breaches and leaks and tracking in
general.

A few reasons that we don’t see this:

1\. It seems a slightly weird thing to tax. On the other hand, sugar taxes are
becoming a thing in some places.

2\. Elected governments may not want to piss off the media companies who they
feel elected them.

3\. Maybe people don’t care about advertising and so would feel like such a
tax was for some hidden purpose. São Paulo (iirc) banned almost all public
advertising. I wonder how the people there feel about it.

------
ajflores1604
I'd say silver lining of advertising as it's done today is that the budgets
are so high, I know many artists that would not survive without it.

My behance feed is full of artists doing amazing things, being supporded by ad
company budgets. GMUNK actually has a great talk on this, I think it's 'pearl
5'
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CP8UjRxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CP8UjRxk)

There would have to be a fundamental shift in our economic system, not just
'advertising', for artists to be able to have a support system outside of
corporate sponsorship and gigs.

------
cavneb
I agree with many of the ideas with the comparison, however to call
“advertising” as a whole is cancer is out of touch. I believe what should be
said is “modern-day digital advertising”. I speak with advertisers all the
time and they choose us because we display ethical ads (website is
codefund.io). We do not track, profile, or collect information. All of our ads
are chosen and displayed solely based on the context of the site.

We all need advertising in order to enjoy the free services we all use. Cancer
is something that nobody should have to live with. Advertising is something we
can all live with if done ethically and responsibly.

------
raister
"You Promised Me Mars Colonies. Instead, I Got Facebook." Buzz Aldrin

------
socalnate1
"Businesses are made of people, and people have ethics. If you're running one,
consider the way you advertise. Are you aiming at making mutually beneficial
transactions, or are you just trying to milk you users out of their hard-
earned cash? Not all advertising is inherently harmful to individuals or
society. "

So, some kinds of cancers are OK. It's hard to take this sort of article too
seriously when it undermines it's own point so effectively.

~~~
GavinMcG
I think you're reading "is" in a particular (and reasonable) way, but there
are other ways of reading it. For example "is" can mean "is _essentially_ " or
_fundamentally_ , or it could mean "is _currently_ ".

The fact that advertising doesn't have to be a cancer is compatible with the
claim that it is one at this point in history.

------
smitty1e
"What can be done about it? I honestly have no good ideas"

One possibility would be setting up some sort of cloud/container solution that
isn't really trying to TOR is up, but does manage to obscure and filter
traffic enough to harden us mortal targets.

Up from there, perhaps there is some tarted up proxy as a business model that
supports doing social media and searching in a low-fingerprint way.

These ideas must have been explored already, so tell me who has some good
products, HN.

------
gatherhunterer
Most comments are referring to a claim that the author did not make: that all
advertising and the practice of business marketing should be abolished
unconditionally.

~~~
davidivadavid
That's probably because the author uses loaded language, and bases the whole
article on an analogy with cancer, which has a slight tendency to evoke the
worst kind of crap people can think of and want to entirely get rid of at all
costs.

~~~
gatherhunterer
What loaded language? Loaded language appeals to a stereotype, this is just a
provocative analogy. The use of an attention-grabbing title does not mean that
one should be excused for creating a straw man instead of debating the actual
content.

~~~
davidivadavid
If you're going to bit nit-picky about words:

"In rhetoric, loaded language (also known as loaded terms or emotive language)
is wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion
or stereotypes."

Provocative analogies can use loaded language, for example when they appeal to
emotions. Riddling your text with things like how advertising "infects",
"destroys", "corrupts", is "industrial scale abuse" and so on, is loaded
language that's not conducive to debate.

Regardless, I've debated the actual content elsewhere in this thread, and many
times in the past directly with the author over Hacker News. I'm familiar with
his position — it's hardly uncommon — and his arguments. They're not
uninteresting, but I'm not sure they're helping push things forward much.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks for the critique. I'll consider how to discharge some of the
unnecessarily loaded parts - it wasn't my intention to push emotional buttons
here, though it's hard to avoid doing that by accident given that I have
strongly negative emotions to the topic I've covered.

However:

> _Riddling your text with things like how advertising "infects", "destroys",
> "corrupts", is "industrial scale abuse" and so on, is loaded language that's
> not conducive to debate._

I used those terms not because of their emotional implications, but because I
believe they are accurate in terms of actual mechanics. When some aspect of
our daily lives, which used to work perfectly well without ads, start to
accumulate them until the point they no longer can exist without them, I feel
the terms "infection" and "corruption" are apt.

------
dwaltrip
It doesn't seem that impossible to implement clear regulations that would
significantly mitigate the overwhelming amount of aggressive advertising that
we are surrounded by today.

Obviously, it wouldn't be perfect. But we don't need perfection here.

It also seems fairly obvious that there are plenty of alternative ways -- both
existing currently and those that could be developed -- for informing people
about various products or solutions to problems.

------
habosa
There is certainly too much advertising, and a large portion of it is the
worst kind: distracting, privacy-invading, or both.

However some advertising is very good. I go to work to make money and I want
to spend it ... how do I know what to buy? I like video games, an ad that
tells me there's a new game coming out for a console I own is really useful to
me! I'm not embarrassed to be a consumer and to be open to influence.

------
sjh
I recall watching, some years ago, a documentary about the making of Tetris in
which one of the contributors noted how much less colourful public spaces were
in the advertising-free Soviet Union compared to the West.

Which isn't to say that a better balance couldn't be struck (in the West and
elsewhere) now, but 'cancer' is the sort of thing you want to eradicate rather
than moderate.

~~~
kyruzic
So you think the reason the Soviet union was less colourful was because there
wasn't ads?

You realize that advertising isn't what created coloured paints or what allows
us to plant flowers right?

~~~
sjh
> So you think the reason the Soviet union was less colourful was because
> there wasn't ads?

I think it can have been a contributory but not a determinative factor.
Mainly, I was just relaying an interesting observation, about the impact of
advertising on public spaces, that I hadn't heard elsewhere, or previously,
which prompted me to think that eradicating advertising probably isn't an
optimum solution.

------
Zeklandia
This article, that came out today, shows to what degree advertising is a
cancer: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-
phon...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm)

------
formalsystem
I honestly wish I could get a data only phone without a dedicated phone
number. I get an average of 10 calls a day from random spammers claiming I'm
owed $5,000 to IRS etc...

Only thing stopping me is a lot of companies have moved to 2FA via my call
phone number as opposed to an authenticator app.

------
datadata
What if advertising spend was taxed at an incredibly high rate?

Would this reduce the overall amount of advertising and cause the remaining
advertising to be smarter and more effective? Could this even be implemented?
Could it be subverted?

------
president
I would be okay with advertising if they were at least truthful. There are too
many false claims and statistics. Business should not be based on misleading
people but somehow that's where we are today.

------
maximente
author mentions AdNauseum but also that there's significant fake click
detection: anyone have any idea as to how effective defeating AdNauseum by
advertisers is?

------
stevesearer
My site [https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) doesn't
really fit into the box the author writes about here.

Our ads are self-hosted, static images that basically just show pictures of
office design products. We also have an area that is literally just a listing
of office design products which works kind of like a catalog.

We also sell the ads ourselves and do not participate in ad networks. The only
3rd party scripts we use are a google font and google analytics and the site
still works if you block them.

While we are an exception, I'd like to see more people take the approach we
do.

------
alephnan
Thoughts on NYC Subway ads? They are sort of entertaining sometimes, when
there isn’t cell signal underground.

~~~
jborichevskiy
Strong dislike. I'm already paying $2.75 per ride - how much are the ads
subsidizing my ride by? I couldn't find anything on it with a cursory search
but my guess is not much - far less than the psychological cost of getting
toothbrushes, mattresses, food delivery services, and who knows what other ads
shoved into my face any direction I look. I think the worst ones are the TV
show/movie ones lining the subway walkways where I feel like I'm walking
through some sort of physical channel directory.

I do think the space should be reserved and used for advertising city services
such as 311 information, elderly housing services, housing rights etc. It's a
great way of educating the city residents about benefits and rights they might
not otherwise be aware of.

------
Bayart
We're just piggybacking on the Adnet for content and a smidgen of
productivity, aren't we ?

------
Saephoed
Advertising is good [for all]; making stuff hard to evaluate and compare isn't
[for consumers]

------
dgudkov
I guess, the next step now should be declaring "Sales Is a Cancer on Society".
I believe one could draft a similar list of downsides for sales and sales
tactics.

Jokes aside, advertisement itself maybe not a "cancer on society", but click-
based advertisement is definitely ruining the internet and damaging the
society. Can't wait until its era is over.

------
k__
We need to decouple advertisement from money.

Why should someone with more money get to show off more?

More money doesn't mean a better product.

But what is the alternative?

A nationalized ad network? Like public healthcare, you pay X% of ... IDK ...
your sales or something... but the amount of money doesn't determine what you
get.

In public healthcare, your medical needs determine what you get, what would be
an equivalent in business?

------
oneil512
Without ads we wouldn't have a way to incentive free content creation. Simple
as that.

~~~
criddell
The only reason we call it _content_ is because it's just filler for the
spaces between ads. I understand why ad tech and platform people call it that,
but it kind of bugs me when people call themselves content creators.

~~~
oneil512
No, literally all free content, videos, media, blog posts, whatever you want
to call it, has to rely on advertising if they want to make a profit.

~~~
criddell
How do you explain Wikipedia?

~~~
oneil512
_if they want to make a profit._

Wikipedia is a non-profit.

~~~
criddell
That's true, but it's still a successful corporation that is supported by
users and donors (to the tune of $100 million each year).

------
albertop
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is an eye opening book related to this
subject. The ads are only a first and small step.

------
dennisgorelik
On most content websites I strongly prefer advertising over paywall.

Occasionally I make an exception and signup for premium services (e.g. Netflix
and YouTube Premium).

------
galfarragem
I prefer to say: Advertising is the heart of Capitalism. Ads pump the blood
(comsumption) to keep Capitalism alive.

------
joantorres
The real cancer on society are religions. Not only they are totally useless,
but they have been obstructing critical thinking and the progress of
sciencific development for thousands of years.

~~~
dang
We don't want religious flamewars on HN, so could you please not post like
this here?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
joantorres
Sorry, understood.

