Byte Magazine: The C Programming Language (1983)

Re:Byte Magazine: The C Programming Language (1983) by lolinder on Friday September 09, 2022 @07:33PM (#32786139)

Have you considered that your experience may not be representative of everyone else's experience? You can't know the objective facts of what ads Walter sees. You also can't know how people experience ads subjectively.

For myself, I have a really hard time focusing on anything in the presence of visual or audio distraction, with ads just being one example. I wear earmuffs all day while working just so I can focus. The equivalent on the internet is adblock. Without adblock and uBlock origin's element zapper, I simply cannot function on the internet today.

Are you implying that my sensitivity to distracting noise in every aspect of life is somehow influenced by a meme about internet ads?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Byte Magazine: The C Programming Language (1983) by ajross on Friday September 09, 2022 @08:48PM (#32786591)

I don't see how you could read what I wrote and take it to mean that it's not possible that anyone ever, anywhere, saw a poorly targetted ad on a web page somewhere. In fact I see my point as sort of the converse: there's a deeply annoying undercurrent in HN discourse that seeks to use the word "advertising" as a shorthand for all sorts of ethical problems that are complicated and nuanced.

When, no, advertising is doing what it always has. Internet advertising, broadly, is well-targetted. It just is. (For really obvious reasons! Of all the people who want ad targetting to work most, the advertisers and the ad brokers are at the top of the list!)

[ Parent | on HN ]