The War on General Purpose Computing

Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by dbspin on Sunday December 04, 2022 @12:40PM (#33855773)

One minor correction - no one 'wants' ads. People are reluctant / unable to pay for the hundreds of daily services they use, given the death by a thousand cuts nature of subscriptions, and the failure of microtransactions to ever become a reality. So we tolerate ads (to a point). But no one actively wants ads. This isn't a social contract that was agreed to. In fact, enormous numbers of people go out of their way to avoid them, online and off - using ad blockers, arriving late to the cinema, 'pirating' media they already have 'legal' add riddled access to. Completely agree with you in relation to the bad incentives at work, but adverts are not a desires outcome either.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by BuyMyBitcoins on Sunday December 04, 2022 @12:44PM (#33855819)

I agree with you almost entirely with one tiny caveat. The only time I am receptive to advertisements is when I am actively and intentionally looking for a product, service, or solution. But I share your assessment that the vast majority of the time advertisements and the tracking infrastructure around them are unwelcome.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by kelnos on Sunday December 04, 2022 @04:46PM (#33858264)

That's a terrible time to be receptive to advertisements! The ads are trying to get you to pick their particular product over their competitors, for reasons that have nothing to do with quality or suitability for your needs.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by em3rgent0rdr on Sunday December 04, 2022 @12:45PM (#33855821)

I want ads to a certain extent. Particularly when they are informing me of something that I likely want but wasn't aware of and which I wouldn't have stumbled upon without the ad.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by drdeca on Sunday December 04, 2022 @01:10PM (#33856053)

I agree, but also ads which are repetitive and which I can clearly communicate why I am not a potential customer, can be quite annoying.

It would be nice, I think, if people who are shown ads could add tags to the adds for the type of product/service the ad is for, or other aspects of the ad (e.g. “this ad is horny”), and indicate classes of ads which they claim they would not be interested in, which, hopefully, advertisers would prefer to show ads for their products to people who would be potentially receptive.

For example, I do not watch horror movies, and I don’t think this will ever change. I find video ads for horror movies a little stressful (not like, in a way that is an actual problem for me, just unpleasant), and I think it would be to the advertiser’s benefit and my own for their ads to be shown to someone else instead of me.

Similarly with ads for fashion, or at the very least for women’s fashion. I can imagine the possibility that there could be some kind of clothing item where I’d be interested in buying due to an ad, though probably not anything advertised using the word “fashion”.

If ads are supposed to have the benefit of introducing potential consumers to goods/services that they might be interested in buying, why don’t they allow users to provide more information about what they aren’t interested in? It seems like it would be beneficial to all parties.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by est31 on Sunday December 04, 2022 @01:24PM (#33856181)

> if people who are shown ads could add tags to the adds for the type of product/service the ad is for, or other aspects of the ad (e.g. “this ad is horny”), and indicate classes of ads which they claim they would not be interested in, which, hopefully, advertisers would prefer to show ads for their products to people who would be potentially receptive.

This exists already (at least to some extent): https://support.google.com/My-Ad-Center-Help/answer/12155451...

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by drdeca on Monday December 05, 2022 @02:15PM (#33870382)

I’ve seen this, or at least parts of it, yes, but it doesn’t resolve my issue. The thing it lets you tell it “don’t show me these” is limited to a list of 5 things, none of which are “this is for a horror movie” or “this is horny”.

The other section about interests and brands, uh, well they seem to just not work for me? Like it keeps saying “we will populate this section once you’ve been shown more brands/ads”. I don’t have an ad blocker installed. This is both on my phone and on my laptop, and is the case for all my google accounts?

I know it at least used to have an “interests” section that I could update, but that didn’t really solve my problem either.

The reason I specified a viewer-tagged system is because it would, I would think, avoid the problem of [the categories that one can mark oneself as dis/interested in] being largely useless?

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by dbspin on Saturday December 10, 2022 @04:47PM (#33937182)

By definition you can't want something you're unaware of.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by emptybits on Sunday December 04, 2022 @01:15PM (#33856103)

> One minor correction - no one 'wants' ads.

Yes, in 2022. I have ad fatigue. PTSD, even, from the onslaught and effort to avoid them.

But I recall a time when I enjoyed ads and actually looked forward to them and paid good money for magazines, and to a lesser degree TV, full of ads that somehow seemed informative and civilized and entertaining. Byte Magazine, The Computer Shopper (all ads! yet I paid for it!), Car & Driver, Popular Mechanics, Bicycling, you name it. I don't think this is nostalgia; I was informed and entertained. Never again, I suppose...

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by narrator on Sunday December 04, 2022 @01:28PM (#33856224)

When ads are hyper-targeted to niche products offered by small businesses that I am a fan of, they are actually not bad. I like the ads on Facebook, but not as much on other platforms like TV since TV ads are just random pray and spray ads, usually by megacorps for things I'd never buy.

Look at Dollar Shave Club. A tiny little company that was able to get to an insane valuation chipping away at the consumer mega corps because of targeted advertising and some good ads. I've heard that small consumer packaged goods vendors are having a tough time now that Facebook got their tracking shutdown. The only people who can effectively market mass market stuff like that now are the megacorps like Unilever and Proctor and Gamble who can do multi-million dollar poorly targeted campaigns.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by dbspin on Saturday December 10, 2022 @04:46PM (#33937176)

Disagree - even if 'dollar shave club' happen to be the ideal razor company for you, once you purchase their product you are still subjected to their advertisements ad nauseam. Frankly I have zero sympathy for companies who can no longer track my data without my explicit consent.

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Re:The War on General Purpose Computing by alwayslikethis on Sunday December 04, 2022 @08:48PM (#33860384)

I have a personal holy war against internet ads and its industry, as a reprisal the destruction of the better internet of the bygone era. I use everything in my power to remove internet ads from my attention - ublock origin, sponsorblock for youtube. Adaway for Android phones. Now I rarely ever see ads on my computer/phone. Real life ads, while also occasionally annoying, is not nearly as harmful as it does not track you or gatekeep information.

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