Like, "Every inch of the new park is covered in sponsor branding" is a problem, but "I had no idea that a store selling towels opened in our town" is also a problem. These are both advertising, at some point you cross from "I didn't know about that, thanks" to "Just fuck off already" and that's too much advertising.
Dispepsi for example, the Negativland album, is premised on the idea that everybody on the entire planet already knows about Coca-Cola and Pepsi, so their continued advertising is entirely futile. Nobody who wants a brown fizzy beverage is unsure whether they could obtain such a thing or what it might be called. So all they're doing is annoying us.
Obviously the guy at the TV network is not going to tell Jim from Ad Co. that it's futile to advertise Pepsi because everybody knows about Pepsi. And Jim isn't going tell Pepsi's Head of Marketing that it's futile to spend money with Ad Co. because Pepsi makes up a noticeable part of Jim's annual sales bonus. The Head of Marketing would no longer have a job if they stopped advertising, so no fear they will spontaneously realise. All of them will prefer to make up stories for why it makes sense to spend more and more and more on advertising, because they all benefit. But does it actually work?
Is it a problem? Maybe in 1995 this would be a problem advertising could fix, but today it's either:
a. I don't need towels so I don't care that this opened.
b. I do need towels and I do a web search for stores that sell towels nearby - at which point I become aware.
Advertising is inferior to an honest catalog of businesses and what they sell - i.e. Google Maps or web search. In the context of web search or business directories, advertising is "putting a finger on the scale" of normal discovery. It's fundamentally dishonest in my opinion.
So why would I need even more ads for the new towel store?
I also don't understand the general hate some people have for websites that are commercially viable without charging an entrance fee. Ads are better than the next-best option.
It doesn't stop because the shareholders demand more money.
It's not about how google wouldn't be able to exist. They can surely exist as a search engine. It's not that expensive. It's about how google is getting worse and worse because of the greed in this sick system. This is what people hate. There were ads from the beginning on, but it was never so bad as it has become today.
Besides that: advertising is stealing my attention. Not only on the internet (where I just use ublock) but everywhere else. It's a disease. It penetrates my brain. I never asked for this. I feel violated by this industry which single aim it is to do just that and as effective as possible.
I despise it.
How do you expect them to earn money? The reality of the situation is pretty clear on this one, it is ad-supported or irrelevance for search engines. We've been watching this market play out for more than 2 decades.
> What you actually miss here is the fact that we're getting MORE ads all the time.
I'm not missing it, I just don't see why you care. I can understand using an ad-blocker, but to get worked up because a site shows ads to support itself is entitled to the point where it is stupid. Ads mean that freeloaders get something good for free, and the people who pay obviously believe they got a valuable service from the ads, or they wouldn't have bought the advertised thing.
By manipulating the order of search results, of course.
> The reality of the situation is pretty clear on this one, it is ad-supported or irrelevance for search engines. We've been watching this market play out for more than 2 decades.
There is no "market". There is google. Searching the internet is googling. If they'd just split out the search business today from the whole Alphabet clutter, they would keep on living. They might not generate more profit every quarter, but if they don't have shareholders with a gun at their back, it should be OK and people would still be kept on googling. I'm pretty sure if they'd focus on making search results better, they'd even become more popular.
> I can understand using an ad-blocker, but to get worked up because a site shows ads to support itself is entitled to the point where it is stupid.
Come on...it's not like in the 90s, where you had to have an ad to pay for the hosting. We're beyond this. You get ads because of ads and the revenue you get on top of whatever you are selling.
> Ads mean that freeloaders get something good for free,
They don't get it for free. They pay with their data and attention. Not only that, but they're being profiled, rated and assessed, and it's not like they become free of that if they pay. The ad-machine is all over the place. You constantly pay while what you get back is less and less. See those huge media platforms.
Ads has become a thing where paying for content was just not manageable in proper time. You had to wire money or send it in a letter. Now, things changed, but somehow it is too late. You can and do pay, and you're still served ads and pay with your data and attention on top. It's not about covering costs anymore. It's about giving less for more profits. Every quarter.
As I said before: It's a disease.
> By manipulating the order of search results, of course.
That is what they do already. The name for it is advertising! What distinction are you drawing between advertising and this income stream where they manipulate the search results? Is your complaint here that you don't like the ads looking visually different?
As happened with other forms of cheap or free media such as regular mail, telephone calls and email, the returns for advertising eventually become a numbers game even when 99.9% of the audience hate them.
I agree, but most people also also feel that content should be free. If content is free, but not ad supported, who pays the people to create it?
Some services seem like facebook and reddit seem ripe for a nonprofit model to use an example that doesn’t require any innovation.
Maybe because y’all are focused on winning big with your options? Maybe that’s the root cause of enshitification?
There are a few nonprofit models for social media, and they aren't making a dent in the big monsters. As far as I'm concerned, social media is where ads belong, but maybe that's because I despise it.
The nonprofit model for content, my wheelhouse, is struggling mightily with this issue, but it all comes down to getting donations, government funding, or getting people to work for free. Even this list of "non-reformist reforms"[2] comes down to getting money from the government or consolidating into media co-ops. Public radio stations get a small amount of government funding as you might know, but a journalistic enterprise beholden to its government is probably actually worse than being beholden to advertisers.
So, as a member of this community of innovators, what are your suggestions?
[1] https://logan-gentry.medium.com/giving-was-down-in-2023-but-...
[2] https://lpeproject.org/blog/taking-media-out-of-the-market/
The absolute last thing I want is for the OSS world to fall prey to the perverse incentives of the ad industry.
Advertising needs to be purged, not embraced.