Re:HIV Is Reported Cured in a Second Patient
by TeMPOraL on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @05:03AM
(#19309472)
> This way of propelling progress forward requries efficient markets, and markets need to connect products with people who want and can benefit from those products. No advertisement is directly forcing anyone to buy or do anything, they just provide information for people and help locating people who might otherwise not have knowledge of the products they might want.
That's the motte-and-bailey[0] defense of advertising that I particularly dislike. Yes, connecting products & services with people who want them is a crucial ingredient for efficient markets. But that's not what most advertising is about, that's not what the advertising industry is doing, that's not what adtech is working on. Ads as made and experienced today (and for the past 100 years), are all about emotionally manipulating people, about convincing people who know about a product to buy it when they otherwise wouldn't, about brainwashing people with brand associations so that in their moment of weakness they'll default to the advertised brand. The end result is customers making suboptimal purchasing choices, and the externalities are noise and utter destruction of all communications media.
As for "cancer on society" part - the following is an incomplete list of problems brought on us by advertising industry: spam, robocalls, telemarketing - all three having a spectrum from just annoying to outright fraud. Dark UX patterns. Blogspam, content marketing and wholesale flooding of the Internet with free garbage to gather eyeballs. Outrage-inducing news reporting. "Native advertising" (aka. just straight up dishonesty). Leaflets and other advertising material overflowing garbage bins everywhere and spilling on the pavements of every city. Excessive light pollution. Billboards distracting drivers. Social media influencers and other "individual advertisers" directly eroding trust you have in recommendations of people who aren't your immediate family. Having to protect your elderly parents from getting scammed by both criminals and reputable companies alike. Having to protect your kids from Elsagate-style video content. And yes, wholesale tracking and privacy violations too.
I could go on, and on, and on. My belief is that advertising is poisoning society from the inside, while at the same time causing absurd amounts of waste through negative-sum games (when competing for a fixed pie of customers, all your advertising efforts work to cancel out the advertising efforts of your competitors).
That's the motte-and-bailey[0] defense of advertising that I particularly dislike. Yes, connecting products & services with people who want them is a crucial ingredient for efficient markets. But that's not what most advertising is about, that's not what the advertising industry is doing, that's not what adtech is working on. Ads as made and experienced today (and for the past 100 years), are all about emotionally manipulating people, about convincing people who know about a product to buy it when they otherwise wouldn't, about brainwashing people with brand associations so that in their moment of weakness they'll default to the advertised brand. The end result is customers making suboptimal purchasing choices, and the externalities are noise and utter destruction of all communications media.
As for "cancer on society" part - the following is an incomplete list of problems brought on us by advertising industry: spam, robocalls, telemarketing - all three having a spectrum from just annoying to outright fraud. Dark UX patterns. Blogspam, content marketing and wholesale flooding of the Internet with free garbage to gather eyeballs. Outrage-inducing news reporting. "Native advertising" (aka. just straight up dishonesty). Leaflets and other advertising material overflowing garbage bins everywhere and spilling on the pavements of every city. Excessive light pollution. Billboards distracting drivers. Social media influencers and other "individual advertisers" directly eroding trust you have in recommendations of people who aren't your immediate family. Having to protect your elderly parents from getting scammed by both criminals and reputable companies alike. Having to protect your kids from Elsagate-style video content. And yes, wholesale tracking and privacy violations too.
I could go on, and on, and on. My belief is that advertising is poisoning society from the inside, while at the same time causing absurd amounts of waste through negative-sum games (when competing for a fixed pie of customers, all your advertising efforts work to cancel out the advertising efforts of your competitors).
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[0] - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey