Google Search's Death by a Thousand Cuts

Re:Google Search's Death by a Thousand Cuts by wpietri on Sunday July 02, 2023 @04:11PM (#36565173)

Totally. Advertising is fundamentally about distracting someone so you can put money in your pocket without regard to the impact on that someone.

I have a lot of complaints about, say, McDonald's, but they make their money through giving people something of value to them. Advertising legitimizes the making of money in a way unrelated to value delivery. (The same is true about a lot of finance.)

When you combine that with up-and-to-the-right numerical goals and standard executive incentives, over time you pretty much guarantee what Doctorow calls "enshittification". Delivering value becomes at best a side effect of the system.

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Re:Google Search's Death by a Thousand Cuts by AlecSchueler on Monday July 03, 2023 @07:04AM (#36571270)

Aren't McDonald's one of the biggest advertisers in the world? They sell poor quality food on the basis of brand recognition.

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Re:Google Search's Death by a Thousand Cuts by praptak on Monday July 03, 2023 @07:33AM (#36571484)

That's unrelated to the point GP is making. The point is that they are not incentivized to put poison into burgers to get money from the poison industry.

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Re:Google Search's Death by a Thousand Cuts by courseofaction on Monday July 03, 2023 @08:04AM (#36571738)

Well put. Ads are the poison of information.

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