
Targeted advertising has become the norm on the internet, and it's hurting us - jrepinc
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjden/targeted-advertising-is-ruining-the-internet-and-breaking-the-world
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throwaway713
It’s a bit hard to take this article seriously when there are FB and Twitter
"share" buttons right under the title. I don't understand how news groups
constantly criticize social media and then turn around and pay for
advertisements and ask people to "share this article" on those very same
platforms.

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apatters
Not to mention the clickbait/hyperbole in the title. I strongly believe that
targeted advertising has negative effects on society, but "breaking the world"
screams "we want to grab and monetize your attention by activating your stress
response, just like advertisers do."

Do they not see the irony? Vice sucks

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nathanaldensr
Yep. We're basically reaching "peak hyperbole" in the English language. All
these actors vying for our attention are resorting to more and more extreme
wording to get our attention. Soon, there won't be new words to use that are
more extreme!

I guess they could say "YOU WILL DIE if you don't read this article" but we
already had that with "copy/paste this message or you will be visited by a
demon" stuff on AOL decades ago...

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mandelken
> Though the rule was far from universally respected, 20th century
> journalism's code of ethics prohibited financial considerations from
> influencing news coverage.

This is a fairytale. Chomsky and Herman wrote Manufacturing Consent 30 years
ago where they popped that bubble.

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PavlovsCat
What bubble? That the various codes of ethics state what they state, even
though they were "far from" being universally respected (which _means_ it was
often broken)? You're just confirming that they weren't universally respected.
But that doesn't change the various codes of ethics themselves, e.g. from
[https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp](https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp)

 _Journalists should:_

– _Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable
conflicts._

– _Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid
political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or
impartiality, or may damage credibility._

– _Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; do not pay for
access to news. Identify content provided by outside sources, whether paid or
not._

– _Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special
interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage._

– _Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines
between the two. Prominently label sponsored content._

Meanwhile, "new media" don't even have that ethos in paper, with or without
"teeth", you might say there are no principles being broken because there are
no principles.

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buboard
But advertising was always targeted. All those sleazy manipulative TV ads that
sway angsty teenagers, targeted. Those baby faces that spin up any hormonal
lady, targeted. The boobs that make plethysmographs spike, targeted. The
internet just shifted the targeting balance from the form of the ad to the
delivery of the ad. People may believe advertising is breaking the world, but
the truth is it is people themeselves that break it.

~~~
sorokod
Sure, it's just that the radius of the target's boolseye has shrunk to the
point of constituting a qualitative change.

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writepub
There are many many hundreds of millions of people who would never be able to
afford a paid-only version of the internet. Imagine a $20/month bundle for all
if Google's services, from search to Gmail, from photos to docs. Many in the
developing world would find that prohibitively expensive.

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foobar1962
> third, monetize that information by performing big data analytics in order
> to show users advertising that is narrowly tailored to their demographics
> and revealed interests

No. Big data analytics allows advertisers to target users. The "targeting' is
for the benefit of the advertisers, not the users.

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billfruit
Perhaps targetted ads can be less manipulative and more information rich than
untargeted ads.

Also, I think, if I had a product to sell, I would want to spent every penny
of my ad budget to be able to get the focused attention of potential buyers
who might be looking for products like mine.

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Tsubasachan
Meh, it employs millions of people. Pretty much every app comes with secret
trackers.

I want no part of advertising and have no need of it but clearly it pays
somebody's bills.

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dmortin
True and it also enables many smaller sites to function. The big players can
adapt to a new revenue model easily, but for a small site maintained by 1-2
peopla it's not feasible to have and ad department or start selling ads
individually.

So aside from its drawback the current automated ad system helps the little
guy site owner and any tightening would only result in the small players
getting eliminated with the big guys continuing to thrive.

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floatboth
> Google pioneered the targeted advertising business model in the late 90s

Weren't Google ads purely contextual until 2010 ish?

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securityfreak
Oh the hypocrisy. Reading about how bad ad targeting and tracking is, while
being welcomed by a huge, annoying modal, covering up half of the text I’m
eager to read, with a large ACCEPT button, or the opt-out button hidden behind
a link on an external page. It’s like sharing those “Delete Facebook” posts,
on Facebook.

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jjbinx007
I also don't appreciate auto playing video wasting all my data and battery
when I'm reading on mobile.

Why can't sites just emulate newspapers of old and statically embed non
tracking ads on their pages? I'll whitelist the site on my ad blocker straight
away.

This shit also causes no end of hassle to those who use screen readers or who
have other accessibility problems.

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securityfreak
This is the industry standard. I wish I had a choice to either pay with my
data ("free" content), or pay with money in a subscription model. Just like
Zuckerberg was asked, whether he would consider a subscription model. The
formula is quite simple: monthly income divided by the number of users, that
came out around $11 a month, if I recall correctly. This, of course, isn't in
the interest of content providers at all. With a growing user base, the unit
price of an ad is growing each month. Users wouldn't agree to an increased
monthly fee based on the number of users. Greed wins. I wouldn't mind ads in
principle. I hate intrusive ads. Does anyone know, why the Acceptable Ads
movement isn't globally spread yet? I think this could be a middle ground for
advertisers and users. [https://acceptableads.com](https://acceptableads.com)

