
We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [video] - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI
======
log_base_login
Without sounding pedantic, I think it's fair to say that the mass media put
out a LOT of material into the public domain merely to acquire the largest
market share of attention.

It is very rare that I read a story in a newspaper or hear one on television
that isn't some form of salacious gossip or eye catching spectacle.

Though I haven't read most of it, Chris Hedges' book: Empire of Illusion,
speaks to this with much greater acuity than I can.

I wish we could all just take a breath of fresh air (whoops, there is an
allusion to another, though admittedly fairly neutral, piece of media) and
remember that we are often much better off without the media dictating what we
think should be important. I fear that the fractionism that George Washington
cautioned us against in his farewell address is driving most of what we
consume from the mass media.

I hesitate even to post this for fear of sounding too alarmist, and for the
possible repercussions on myself from the powers that be in their never ending
fight to be 'right', but I do think that this is a subject that is important
enough to stand up and say "enough is enough". I know I sound paranoid, but as
we become ever more connected, it is not as far fetched as it might seem that
such things transpire. It is imperative that the power remain in the purview
of the public and not those with access to what information money can buy, or
cookies can acquire.

~~~
threeseed
> I read a story in a newspaper or hear one on television that isn't some form
> of salacious gossip or eye catching spectacle.

I am not American and can't comment on all of the stations but I know PBS has
neither of those. Likewise similar public broadcasters do tend to be more
serious and moderate in their reporting: BBC (UK), Deutsche Welle (Germany),
ABC/SBS (Australia) etc

Unfortunately in a competitive media landscape you need viewers. And humans
are just wired to respond to gossip and spectacles.

~~~
ta909123
> And humans are just wired to respond to gossip and spectacles.

A lot of the more worrying things happen as a result of our evolutionary
background I think. We evolved to trust one another ("Was there really a lion
over there, Bob?"), and that trust can easily be manipulated if you leave your
ethics/morals at the door.

I think there should be laws/regulations against anything that manipulates
people based on our evolutionary "upbringing".

------
jchw
I don't think AI signed our death warrant, it just made for better plausible
deniability. I think being able to measure effectiveness fairly concretely
even on the micro level is what did it.

What if you couldn't run JavaScript code on a webpage, track every movement
and send it to a server? What if you couldn't even tell if someone viewed your
webpage? Would AI seem so scary then?

We're giving away too much for too little in return. Better ad tracking isn't
worth losing almost all of our privacy on the most important and influential
information platform of our time.

~~~
0x445442
I remember a story in Wired back in the 99-00 time frame about two guys that
were diamond retailers in Canada. They were enticed by venture capitalists to
move to California to dotcom their business.

After a year or so they shut it down and went back to Canada to return to the
business they'd built over generations. I forget all the details but there is
one detail I remember. They owners were disenchanted with the whole affair and
their take was the internet was nothing more than a massive direct marketing
platform.

------
dooglius
If you want to stop ad-related problems, change the incentives. Consider using
AdNauseam ([https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)), which not only
hides ads like a traditional adblocker, but also clicks them for you. If
enough people use it, it lowers the value of an ad click, and thus lowers the
incentive to optimize for them.

------
cooper12
The title reminded me of a quote from an early Facebook employee [0] :

> The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click
> ads [1]

There's the transcript of the video here btw:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...](https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads/transcript)

[0]:
[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/)

[1]: The quote itself is a reference to the first line of Allen Ginsberg's
"Howl"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl)

> I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

~~~
ModernMech
I remember thinking the same thing in gradschool. There was a lab partnered
with Microsoft, and all their research was focused on ranking search results.
That's it. I felt so bad for the grad students there, who had big dreams about
changing the world, but instead were optimizing ways to get people to click
search results.

~~~
iwintermute
Ranking search results is not the same as clicking ads - it's about organizing
information.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Who is "we"?

Because this is what really matters, what makes a difference: are you
deliberately creating what makes people click to get money, without any
consideration of consequences, or are you creating something beneficial for
others - they find it beneficial and that's the reason they click?
Unfortunately, most content creators, especially on YT, belong to the first
category.

~~~
soared
It's comical how hn always thinks they're above the lowly YouTube famous
content. That type of content exists because people like it. When Jon doe gets
off his 12 hour shift at the factory he's not interest in hn style content, he
wants some mindless slapstick comedy.

~~~
oarsinsync
When I’m done with a 10 hour day working on infrastructure and code, I have no
interest in HN style content. I want mindless slapstick comedy, mostly because
I have no mind left after 10 hours in the office.

~~~
sasaf5
sad truth...

------
siliconc0w
My hope if we will adapt and improve own heuristics and filers to get better
at information processing. It used to be if you saw someone credible looking
on TV tell you something, you mostly filed it away as 'true'. We are learning
that 'truth' isn't really a thing you are told. Someone can tell you something
but they have motives and even with the best of intentions, they're conveying
one perspective or approximation of a complex and chaotic reality. We learn to
be suspicious of entertainment masquerading as news or to catch ourselves when
we begin slipping into a pattern of mindless consumption. In some respects
this is a good thing - we're becoming more cognizant and critical of our
reality.

~~~
anigbrowl
We need a better way to automate that filtering. I'm about as good as one can
get at epistemological filtering and it consumes way too much of my mental
effort. I'd like to just ignore the news and concentrate on artistic
activities but that's irresponsible at this juncture.

------
username223
It's even better: we're building massive surveillance so a few amoral people
can pay poor people to pretend to be rich people clicking on ads. When that
bubble implodes, the holders of the surveillance data will find worse ways to
make money from it.

~~~
wallacoloo
Can you elaborate? Are you referring to "advertising fraud", where these
amoral people host ads and hire poor people to click them, getting a penny
from the advertiser each time? And the poor people are incentivized to pretend
to be rich people because ad impressions on a rich person's eyes are more
valuable?

Or are you saying that the advertising networks themselves train their users
to act like rich people because an ad network with rich people is more
valuable to advertisers (although in this case, the networks aren't _paying_
the poor people)?

~~~
username223
The former: surveillance companies don't have much incentive to stamp out
click-farms, even when they don't run them themselves. See e.g.
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530961/the-hidden-
world-o...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530961/the-hidden-world-of-
facebook-like-farms/)

~~~
wallacoloo
Certainly this is a waste of human potential. I can see that one could argue
that the platforms may be acting unethically by not stomping these like farms
out, or by misleading advertisers by including these unauthentic ad
impressions in their reports, but how are the rich people operating these like
farms acting _immorally_?

Side note: I'm not convinced that the people operating the like farms _are_
wealthy by western standards. Having at one point been involved in the
business side of paid captcha solving, this type of business attracts a lot of
entrepreneurs with little experience who just want to make a quick buck.

~~~
username223
> Side note: I'm not convinced that the people operating the like farms are
> wealthy by western standards.

I completely agree -- click farming is a way for second-world people to make a
living using third-world labor. In the short term, this benefits the
surveillance companies at the expense of their clients. In the medium to long
term, it probably costs their investors and helps inflate another tech bubble.
Seriously shady folks (think Experian, but completely unregulated, at best)
will buy the data when it bursts.

------
netsharc
Is the whole "Facebook records what you type, even if you don't hit post"
real, or just an urban legend?

I've seen Facebook offer me to save a draft of the wall post so I can continue
in case I switch devices, in that case of course it would store my draft
server-side; but I feel like that reiterated claim is an urban legend.

~~~
lazulicurio
Yep, they even released a study based on the data they collected:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15831574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15831574)

------
cup-of-tea
Yeah we told you this would happen 15 years ago.

------
foxhop
Related:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/11/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/11/those_disturbing_youtube_videos_for_kids_are_a_symptom_of_tech_s_scale_problem.html)

------
LeoNatan25
The following is a conversation between Sam Harris and Zeynep Tufekci, where
they further explore the topic:
[https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/persuasion-and-
contro...](https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/persuasion-and-control)

------
cerealbad
utopians building dystopia? more empty alarmist sedation.

bad ideas should be pushed to the front, so they can be viewed and scrutinized
by all.

------
oxymoran
If Facebook gave a damn about any of this, they would stop selling ads and
start charging users for their services. Simple as that. Your move Zuck.

~~~
benatkin
Facebook is a publicly traded company, with a duty to its shareholders to
m̶a̶x̶i̶m̶i̶z̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶f̶i̶t̶s̶serve their best interests. If Zuck
decided to he probably would get thrown out.

~~~
ForHackernews
He can't be thrown out. Facebook issues special classes of share so that
Zuckerberg can never lose control of the company.

[https://www.economist.com/news/business/21729813-multiple-
cl...](https://www.economist.com/news/business/21729813-multiple-class-share-
structures-are-controversial-are-probably-here-stay-facebook-and)

------
kjrose
Essentially the moment our society had food, housing and basic necessities
guaranteed pretty much by default. The optimal way for people to make money is
advertising. If we can automate it so that we increase clicks (a measure for
demand) even artificially then of course that is what will be done until we
discover that has no long term use.

~~~
gboudrias
If food and housing were guaranteed, there would be no homelessness and losing
your job wouldn't be stressful. It's true that we can have more now but we
still always have to worry about falling down to nothing again.

~~~
kjrose
Let me clarify. I mean for all intents and purposes we don’t have a vast
majority of the population working in industries that would be essential for
life and well being but rather producing goods which are not really needed but
wanted and thus need to be marketed for people to want them.

Mea culpa for a lack of clarity.

