It's slightly easier to post stuff on something like lithub (or Facebook, Medium, etc.), but then how much does one really care about this if the excuse is that doing something about it is a minor inconvenience?
People want their cake and to eat it to. They want don't just want to get read. They wanna get paid for it. Too bad the marginal value of any particular writer is about the same as it costs for hosting them. Zero. So we all get barraged with endless crap because fools still think writing essays online is a serious career path.
(The serious career path here is making middle brow YouTube video essays. Still questionable, but at least you might get paid.)
Your comment makes me think of Ostrom's Nobel-winning work on governing [natural] commonses[1]. The framework she developed over 40 years makes a case that public goods problems are often misunderstood, and often created by government. Gov does this under the guise of ostensibly attempting to support management of the shared resource, but is likely just trying to render the landscape into a format legible to gov itself. It abstracts away the power and ability to both monitor & enforce, among other things.
Her framework says collective stewardship of common-pool resources is possible under ~8 clear guiding properties: (we need to read creatively to think how this generalizes to digital commonses like the internet and data trusts)
1A. User Boundaries: Clear and locally understood boundaries between legitimate users and nonusers are present.
1B. Resource Boundaries: Clear boundaries that separate a specific common-pool resource from a larger social-ecological system are present.
2A. Congruence with Local Conditions: Appropriation and provision rules are congruent with local social and environmental conditions.
2B. Appropriation and Provision: Appropriation rules are congruent with provision rules; the distribution of costs is proportional to the distribution of benefits.
3. Collective Choice Arrangements: Most individuals affected by a resource regime are authorized to participate in making and modifying its rules.
4A. Monitoring Users: Individuals who are accountable to or are the users monitor the appropriation and provision levels of the users.
4B. Monitoring the Resource: Individuals who are accountable to or are the users monitor the condition of the resource.
5. Graduated Sanctions: Sanctions for rule violations start very low but become stronger if a user repeatedly violates a rule.
6. Conflict Resolution Mechanisms: Rapid, low cost, local arenas exist for resolving conflicts among users or with officials.
7. Minimal Recognition of Rights: The rights of local users to make their own rules are recognized by the government.
8. Nested Enterprises: When a common-pool resource is closely connected to a larger social-ecological system, governance activities are organized in multiple nested layers.
[1]: http://web.pdx.edu/~nwallace/EHP/OstromPolyGov.pdf
(anyhow, hopefully this seems interesting, but pls disregard if not :) )
There are a couple of prerequisites to add to that:
First, Local social and environmental conditions can be articulated in an internally consistent and coherent manner.
Local stakeholders largely agree on the captured articulaton as correct.
s/internet/www/
The internet is a medium. Interconnected ASNs. Cables, switches, routers, etc. It's hardware.
Whereas the above statement -- which sounds very much like a media-ready soundbite from another author, Shoshana Zuboff -- presumes that a medium is synonymous with whatever it is used for, e.g., a www filled with "content" created as bait in order to lure consumers whereupon "content providers" can then surveil, collect data, process and commercialise it.
If the internet, the medium over which our bits travel, is funded by collection, analysis and trade of data, then why are we paying ISPs? Who is paying the costs of sending all this data to those who will analyze and commercialise it. Consumers are funding those transfer costs.
Users pay for the Internet. Advertising pays for the Web.
I liked the bit about data collection, the rest seems a little out there.
Who says what is in our interest to buy? If people are not interested, they don't buy.
Pit us against each other? Destroy 'our' society? What about individuals going their own way? Must we stay together and agree?
Who gets to decide what is disinformation? Again, must we agree? Predictably, the next words are about democracy.
The entire premise of democracy rests upon voters being able to consume and digest information on their own. If the author doesn't trust voters that far, then why trust them to vote on our lives and property?
if people don't want to be abused, they won't stay near abusers? I think we are beyond the point where we need to recognize that psycology is a weapon and even knowing how it works won't make you immune to it
This is because a politically active group knowing your religion could reasonably lead to being murdered or expelled from a country on a mass scale (eg, the world's rich history of kicking Jews out of various places [0]). That could happen anywhere because change is quick. A for-profit corporation knowing my religion ranges from a non-issue to inconvenient except that it is likely to leak to political actors.
The government moving in to fix these issues has a pretty solid risk of doing more harm than good. Countries who had bad SARS scares tended to do well at handling the coronavirus, and other countries tended to do poorly. Similarly I really only trust the European governments to handle privacy at all well because they still have recent scars from what happens if the government can discriminate easily between its citizens.
The people who are of most concern in the privacy debate are much more likely to be hiding out amongst the vocal "oh no there is disinformation" crowd than a credit card company or medical insurer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Expulsions_of_Jews
People that say "oh ads don't affect me" have always confused me and reminded me of a line
> The greatest lie the devil ever made was convincing everyone that he doesn't exist.
But I'm also from a society that's traditionally been far less consumeristic than the West. (Although we're slowly getting there, yay!) I'm often dumbfounded when I read anecdotes on here and other forums about the stupid shit Americans buy. Not casting a value judgment or anything, just reporting how it feels from over here.
That said, I've seen some compelling ads this year - it seemed more a function of correctly guessing my interests and tastes than successfully influencing my behaviour.
While the actual product being advertised may be irrelevant, do remember the names of the companies selling them? Congratulations, the ad was successful
I can't think of any company names that I'm not a customer of. I can think of a few products (Raid Shadow Legends), but it seems like that's a pretty huge investment just to make me remember a product I know I'm not going to use.
I actually find this hard to believe.
I can name at least several car companies that sell cars I can't afford and probably never will (Porche, Ferrari, Lotus, Aston Martin, McLaren, or even Tesla). I prefer Coke over Pepsi and don't buy soda unless I'm at a fast food place yet I recognize at least a dozen brands. I don't shop at Walmart when I don't need (< once a year) to and never been to a Sam's club. I don't own Cyberpunk or even a Windows machine. I haven't been to a McDonald's in the last 5 years except when presented with no alternative (~3 times?). I've never played CandyCrush yet you can't open a Windows machine or a phone app without being bombarded with it (Angry Birds used to be like that too). You can't open Reddit without political memes (many are actually ads). Every single one of these companies/products has also advertised to me and I'm willing to bet you as well.
Either you're able to afford a lavish lifestyle or I'd like to know how I could live in this blissful world that you found (and escape the advertised filled one I live in).
I think the difference is that I live in a different country. I don't consume much local media and even if I did there are few enough local products that you would've heard of all of them by word of mouth. Take the soda as an example. I've certainly seen Coke and Pepsi ads, but I've not seen (or at least can't remember) ads for about half the sodas in my local supermarket. Even when Coke released Coke Zero the first time I found out about it was seeing it on a shelf in a store.
But let's say that all of what you're saying is true. The effect from it seems quite small. I'd estimate that I spend at least 5 minutes a day seeing ads.
So what I'm trying to say is that you think you see 5 minutes of advertising but I'm fairly confident you see substantially more (and if not, you're not just an outlier, but an extreme outlier). I'll give another example: the link from this post not only contains several ads on its page, but is an ad itself([0]). And I want to re-emphasize that many memes you see are also ads (again falling under the native category).
Ads have changed a lot in the last decade and if you think ads are just popups, the things on the side of your screen, or what plays between your favorite show, then you're not keeping up[1]. And more importantly, you have to think beyond products (I think this is our major disconnect).
There are only a few brands of toothbrushes in supermarkets here. I've seen ads from them, but the reason I know the brands exist is because I've used their toothbrushes or paste. In the store I pick whatever's cheap.
But I guess some things to look out for. There are far more than just "you might be interested in this product" type of ads. There are political ads, public awareness ads, moral campaigns/religious ads. There are ads that aren't intended to get you to buy a product but rather to be satisfied with your purchase (see coke). There are ads that are used to sell prestige and status associated with a brand (see cars and watches). There's native advertising[0] which often goes unnoticed and is a frequent guest on HN. The tricky things of ads is that they come in a wide variety of flavors but people think "coke" is the only kind of soda. It is also a cat and mouse game. Old Spice created their ridiculous ads (called anti-advertising) to stand out because saturation of one type took over. Native advertising has been growing over the last decade and taken prominence in the space and the entire intent of native advertising is to be an ad without the reader/viewer knowing that they are watching an ad.
Sure, maybe they don't affect you. But how sure can you be? Especially with the knowledge of native advertising. But let's assume they do not work on you. Does it matter if they work on others? It would be an absurd notion to suggest that they don't. With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on ads per year (by single companies!) it would be a bit odd for them to be throwing this money down the drain. It would be a bit odd for politicians to do this as well. And once you accept the notion that political ads are a thing I think you have to accept that ads can persuade people to do things beyond buying a product. Carnegie and Rockafeller both used advertising to increase their public image in the early 20th century.
It would be odd for people to spend so much money on something that isn't effective.
Edit: I wanted to give a good example. If you watch "The Boys" on Amazon Prime (great show) you can see how Starfire's memes are all in fact a part of a marketing scheme and about brand awareness. This would be a version of native advertising, and one we've seen quite frequently, especially around political campaigns. But I don't think these types of memes even register as ads in most peoples' minds.
On YouTube we’re up to 2 pre-rolls these days along with an interstitial per 10 minutes, the in-stream advertising by the programme itself, the youtube page furniture ads and the obligatory roll of affiliate links in the description box.
I see none of it because i know how to avoid it but i’ve seen family members change how they use youtube as a result. E.g. opening an episode of a show on their phone, putting the phone down to go do something else then come back and rewind to the start and begin watching. I totally see how they got there but its absurd.
I think we're finally back to how it used to be on video sites: ads everywhere. This was the norm before YouTube, because video hosting is expensive.
Today you can buy it but it’s more expensive here $16-$22 despite lower median household incomes than in the US and i think it might be missing some features - Iirc the US version includes YouTube Tv.
No, it never has. YouTube TV is $65/mo in the US, YouTube Premium (formerly Youtube Red) is $12/mo.
According to this logic, consumers are helpless children. If we accept this, (I don't) the nanny state managing the purchases of childish consumers easily follows.
Perhaps drug addicts would be a less inflammatory comparison. Drug prohibition has arguably done more damage, and failed to eradicate drug addiction. We aren't talking about protecting helpless victims from violence. We are talking about using violence to prohibit individuals from freely trading with each other.
We are back at the core of the issue which I presented above. Who should decide what is a 'legitimate' purchase?
I’m only pointing out that there is an imbalance of power: a company can use a drone strike on your mind, you can defend yourself with a popsicle stick. Good luck.
I’m not proposing a solution but seems clear to me that individuals don’t have the power nor the weapons to defend themselves from what corporations with teams of psychology trained employees want them to do or think.
The problem is not whether we should make the product illegal, it’s whether instilling the need/want for the product in the consumer, especially with creepy tracking, profiling, micro targeting techniques available for cheap nowadays should be regulated (I think it should, for full disclosure)
>(sales) techniques available for cheap nowadays should be regulated
If I am reading you correctly, you're saying that some sales techniques are illegitimate?
Aside from outright coercion, marketing is not violence. Comparing it to a 'drone strike' sounds like hyperbole. Fraud and violence should be regulated. Segmenting an audience and targeting them with products is neither of those.
I have trouble with, "there ought to be a law!". We have so many laws already. Regulations increase each year. The Internet has been a free and open place. It created so much growth because it was a new, largely unregulated frontier.
We've observed regulatory capture in other industries. More laws will do little to protect consumers. Gov has almost no incentive to punish those who are collecting data for them. History shows that the big players will gain an advantage, while smaller publishers won't be able to afford the compliance costs. More platforms and walled gardens will follow.
If regulation were a panacea, the developed western world would be a utopia. Perhaps individuals would be better served by educating themselves and thinking critically about advertisements, propaganda and the media they consume.
> Fraud and violence should be regulated
Fraud is just "fraud" because a law says so, otherwise it would just be a entity taking advantage of some other entity (that has a disparity of information about what is going on). It's not violence either, so I'm surprised you would want fraud to be regulated.
I was going to respond further but I think we are in agreement that in the ideal world there would be less regulation. In the real world regulation not always works and has side effects.
Some people still think that that imperfect solution is better than letting corporations do whatever they want, and that yes education is good, but (in my opinion) it's not only long term "solution", it might not be enough against psychology.
Unless they're convinced by persistent-enough marketing[1].
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
Politics without compromise doesn't sound like a democracy, or a healthy society in general.
Not only that, but there's much more to advertising than goods. We have advertisements for political campaigns that try to persuade voters, pubic service announcements that try to persuade people to take certain actions, religious marketing, prescription ads that tell you to ask your doctor, etc. Ads have never been about awareness but persuasion. This is even more clear when you investigate why Coke has ads or car commercials. Coke already has the market. They advertise to make you feel like you're choice was good, and you to feel good. Car companies advertise to build prestige and years later when you buy a car you have brand prestige.
It's never been about awareness, it's about selling you an idea as much as it is selling you a product.
"Shop at XYZ Pharmacy! Our prices are 5% lower than our competitors!"
That's an ad, it's persuasive, but it's also about awareness. There doesn't seem to be any moral issue with it.
Even if I replace our theoretical 5% savings with a picture of a scantily clad woman, or a group of young and happening business people, that's still persuasion - but we haven't suddenly created some moral harm.
Vote for X! Y is going to destroy America! <insert imagery of America being destroyed under Y>
A political ad is substantially more than awareness (which I'm not denying as being a part, I'm saying it is a small part). But this ad, like most, are there to convince you. It is still an ad.
This isn't to say that there aren't awareness based ads. There's also shitty ads run by first year film students. But these aren't what people are being bombarded with on prime time TV, in Times Square, or on popular websites. This isn't a mathematical proof where a single counter example discredits an entire thesis, because we aren't working in absolutes here. Acting like it does is arguing in bad faith. For what it is worth, the examples I gave for Coke and car commercials are taught in first year marketing courses as well as psychology courses.
That is an immensely naive statement. I'll take a very small stab at why. It's not advertisements people pay for. It's the behavior manipulation. Calls to action and being able to change the way people act.
It's based on consenting and supporting a shared set of morals, values, and fundamental ideas that define how a nation is organized, and which rights and obligations its citizens have and are bound to. This is formally enshrined in a constitution.
Why support such a framework? Because you trust that it will provide affordances towards personal security, liberty, well being, happiness,... and so on.
Such a framework only works if enough people back it. This is what requires collective trust. You trust that your neighbours support the same basic principles and are willing to back and defend them when push comes to shove.
Democracies tend to fall apart when people stop supporting these basic principles, and start distrusting others. This typically tends to happen in times of crisis when the foundational principles no longer are perceived as adhered to by other members of society.
That perception can be real or false. Real as in an economic crisis causing millions to lose their home without receiving relief from the state they back. False as in being goaded or manipulated into believing that those foundational principles no longer are adhered to by large fractions of society. The latter typically happens by playing at strong emotions, and ignorance.
A good example is how populists leverage polarization. You define an out-group, you attack that out-group and you describe them as not adhering to the foundational principles that govern the state. The twist is to use rhetoric that gradually shifts the goal posts that define those foundational principles. Each step of the way, you keep building and retaining consent as you refine your ideas. Down the line, populists win when they succeed in transforming that consent into legitimate authority.
> Whatever democracy we have depends on how well organized the general population
Any democratic society is self organizing. This creates a paradox, then.
That is, it organizes itself by popular vote. And this includes, paradoxically, the potential to organize itself towards disbanding the very principles that govern it's democratic organization.
This is why a lawful democracy can only survive if enough people are willing to band together and keep defending its very ideas and notions. Regardless of their present personal predicament.
If the people making up the democracy are too naïve and uneducated to defend against external and internal threats then democracy will fail. Reality is that which happens regardless of your political beliefs.
https://thenib.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/mister-gotcha-...
That's a decent quote, not really anything new for most of us around here, but I think that hits on quite a few points in just one paragraph. I think this post is part of her book on Privacy?
It's always funny to read stuff like this when it's on a site that shows almost 50 things blocked between Privacy Badger and uBlockO. I know it's out of the author's hands, but I wonder how she feels about being on a site that's part of the problem she's writing about.
"The internet is primarily funded by the collection, analysis, and trade of data—the data economy."