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A comment on Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations. Parent comment

Re:Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations by fauigerzigerk on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @02:12PM (#22110311)
I don't think ads should be obliterated. People will always try to influence other people and ads are just one way of doing that. In my opinion, there are far more nefarious, manipulative and intransparent ways of pursuing the same goal.

Also, ads are currently indispensible for privacy as weird as that may sound. There is currently no widespread, privacy preserving form of electronic payment, and I very much doubt that there will ever be one.

What we should do is regulate/restrict ad targeting and make sure that advertising is as transparent as possible.

But none of that has anything to do with Google's reputation issues and conflict of interest. Google should split off its ad business from all other activities. Otherwise they will always remain an advertising company and distrust in everything else they do will only grow.

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Re:Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations by loceng on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @08:03PM (#22113528)
How about an "ad system" that people actively engage with when they're wanting to discover vs. being bombarded everywhere - perhaps not understanding the implications of manipulation of ads have on them? At minimum it changes the user experience greatly.
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Re:Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations by fauigerzigerk on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @03:54AM (#22115815)
We can always wish for things to be less annoying, but the difficult question is how to make it happen without causing more unintended consequences than intended ones.

You have to ask yourself what advertisers would do if you ban those in-your-face super annoying ads. Stop spending money on trying to influence our decisions? I don't think so.

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Re:Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations by loceng on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @10:20PM (#22124527)
Except other methods will certainly cost more, bringing their cost of products up, and so someone's products who are better and known as such through word of mouth will have a competitive advantage on price.
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Re:Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations by fauigerzigerk on Thursday January 23, 2020 @05:17AM (#22126313)
I'm not so sure about that. Ad spending has remained roughly the same as a share of GDP for over a century.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-03/advertisi...

I think transparency is more important than fighting annoyances.

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