I am really confused by this position.

How do you propose that companies should promote their products and services, if not through advertising?

Are you somehow suggesting that they should just sit there and hope that people who have never heard of their product independently decide they happen to want or need that product and seek it out, unprompted?

You say "people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed, Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore": Surely you don't think you speak for everyone?

You certainly don't speak for me.

I am not some blind sheep who is suckered into buying things I don't need. I am a grown adult who can make informed decisions with my money, including sometimes buying frivolous or unnecessary things.

I hate these arguments that assume everyone is stupid except for the person making the argument. It feels like there's some weird savior complex at work.

People have free will and are allowed to spend their money as they wish, and I think YOU are the cynical one if you think otherwise..

> Are you somehow suggesting that they should just sit there and hope that people who have never heard of their product independently decide they happen to want or need that product and seek it out, unprompted?

Yeah, it's even got a name: shopping.

> Yeah, it's even got a name: shopping.

So, for direct to consumer companies who only ship online, SEO?

Here's the thing: ads can be useful.

Awhile back I got a, highly targeted, ad for high protein sugar free cereal. That's awesome! I am 100% the target audience for that product, and until I saw that ad I had no clue it existed! To find a product like that I'd have to search for it, but I would never search for an entire new category of product that I didn't know about.

Same thing for the fitness app I am using (BodBot, it is amazing!). I am quite literally healthier right now because of a targeted advertisement.

Was I aware of fitness apps before then? Sure. But the ad for BodBot was informative about what features differentiated it from the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other competing apps.

Do most ads suck? Sure. Should ads be highly invasive? Nope. But interest tracking and basic targeting actually help me find products and services that I want to buy!

Facebook in particular, for all the things wrong with it (long list!) has some amazingly relevant ads that inform me of products that I never knew about.

So let's designate .biz as the place where advertisements live, and turn it into the online yellow pages (plus all the other scum to be expected) and ban anything resembling advertising from every other TLD.

Those who want to shop know where to go. Those who don't, know where to avoid.

hey man, that's great and i'm happy you're healthier because of advertising. My experience has been the opposite (yes, advertising making me and my family UNhealthier -- mentally and emotionally). I don't want targeted ads, but I can understand that you do.

Perhaps there is a way we can both enjoy the internet in our preferred ways. Perhaps not, I don't know.

And how do you know about the existence of a product to go shop for in the first place, if not through advertising and promotion?

Or do you have infinite time to go browse every single store in your city on the odd chance that you'll see something you want?

There are these wonderful things now called search engines. And they existed before online advertising was tied to search, so before you say search engines would not exist without advertising attached to search queries, think again.

How do you know to search for something if you haven't heard about it before... via some kind of... promotion?

I get the point you're making, but I hope you realize you're just backpedaling from your original "no advertisements ever!" statement.

I believe in giving people better control over how they receive ads (I personally run an ad blocker in my browsers and a Pi Hole on my network), but you position that there should be no advertising at all, and that all ads are unethical is just silly, and you're proving that point yourself here..

It must be hard to be this naive ^^

I assume you meant to reply to sbarre

You’re proving my point.

Look at how much of a web you have to spin for yourself, just to conclude that it is indeed fine to have others tell you what you need to buy.

The false dichotomy you pose is ridiculous. People seek out information on what to buy all the time. But when I am listening to music, watching television or film, or reading a fucking news article, that is not the time I want to be given that information. It is unsolicited and I don't care about it.

Hey, I'm not sure why you're answering me from 2 separate accounts (I know it's you because you accidentally(?) replied to another post from your other account with this one, speaking in the first person about the other message).

People seek out information on what to buy because at some point they found out about it via (perhaps indirectly) the provider's promotional efforts (i.e. advertising).

We can certainly talk about the appropriateness of when an where to advertise, but that's a very different topic than your ALL ADS ARE UNETHICAL screeds that you've posted in like a dozen threads on this topic from 2 different accounts..

Never mind continuing to believe that somehow those of us who engage with advertising are lying to ourselves or somehow less in control of things than you?

Now who's spinning a web..

I like what that guy is doing, but I still have to agree with you. To me ads are just money focused propaganda, abusing human psychology to make people spend money they on crap they don't need.

If you'd like to suggest another way to make OSS sustainable, I'd be all ears.

A bit more color here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...

Rather than open source, let us return to Free Software. The point of our labor is not to ensure that we are paid; it is to tear down the systems which create inequality and scarcity in the first place.

You've obviously thought this out extensively and decided to advertise. Who am I to offer a better solution? You know your business domain, revenue needs, etc better than me or anyone else.

However, that does not mean I have to agree to advertising -- whether it is labeled ethical, green, sustainable, cage-free or whatever. If you're lucky, you won't have a lot of extremists like myself visiting your site; i.e. the advertising will be successful.

I'm working on https://snowdrift.coop for that.

We could use help, particularly from anyone who's good with css.

there is no such a thing as an ethical comment.

Comments are a cynical deployment of our knowledge of crowd wisdom, media manipulation, and statistics to make people part with their opinions for others they wouldn't think they agree with.

--

Sorry, there is such a think as "more" ethical ads. If you want to be pedantic and argue they should use "more" suit yourself. But things are not black and white, your comment is in itself "manipulating" the reader trying to convince them that ads are all the same and that they cannot be put on an ehtical spectrum which is not true: tracking ads vs billboard, I'd much rather a billboard (which I hate in and on itself as they are usually just making the place they are in uglier).

I'm not trying to manipulate anyone. I'm voicing my opinion. I don't buy anything from advertisements. Period. When I need something, I shop for it. And if you think I'm alone, you're kidding yourself.

That may be the case but you can’t discount the possibility that when you are shopping for something, your choices are influenced by advertising that you have previously been exposed to whether you are aware of it or not. Your decision to go shopping for something in the first place may be influenced by it too.

that's totally fine. I prefer a world without advertisement, ideally. I disagree with you that there is no spectrum of ad ethics.

And while you are not "trying" to manipulate anyone (maybe), I also disagree that you are not effectively influencing your reader thoughts to some degree.

The analogy I made is: even an internet comment does, on a smaller scale, less maliciously, use persuasion techniques: should we get rid of discussion forums too? I don't think so, and while an ad-less world seems like a nice experiment, sounds pretty unrealistic, regulating (outlawing would be nice) tracking in ads? More realistic and fixing 80% of what's wrong with 20% of the effort if you ask me

You're right that an ad-less world is impossible. Advertisements existed before you and I were both alive and they will exist when we're gone.

But that does not mean I have to partake in them, watch them, or allow them to consume my attention and time. I also don't need to spend my limited time on this planet trying to "fix advertising". I can simply block them and ignore the ones that slip through, and get on with my life. If this is an issue that is dear to your heart, that sentiment undoubtedly feels dismissive. I'm sorry about that.