Comment by mgraczyk
4 months ago
Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever happened as a result of advertising? I don't like rap music, but I think it would obviously stupid of me to claim that it's harmful because I dislike the aesthetics.
What is the steel man for "advertising bad"? Articles like this always take for granted that advertising is harmful, whereas on the contrary I'm starting from a position where advertising is one of the greatest things that has ever happened, enriching us and making our lives far more vibrant and diverse. PS I have never worked on ads and rarely use them for my products, they are just obviously economically beneficial for everyone.
>Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever happened as a result of advertising? … What is the steel man for "advertising bad"?
Electoral politics[0], alcohol, tobacco[1], drugs, gambling, unbridled consumerism … for example
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
[1] https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/throwback-thursday-wh...
The Reichstag fire has absolutely nothing to do with advertising, and imagining that it does completely ignores and trivializes the entire history of pre-Nazi Germany
I don’t agree. I think the Reischtag stunt is very much related to advertising methods
The atrocities subsequently committed are on a whole different level though. I think we might agree on this
it's not really about advertising, but it's effects. advertising per se is not bad, basically it's just some kind of product information. that's all. but it's coming with some negative effects that are bad. SEO and Affiliate are one of the best examples to that. the thing is that advertising is connected to revenue/profit. which is the root cause of all little problems up the stream.
I definitely agree, and I think we should focus on mitigating the actual bad things while either recognizing or considering that the ads themselves are actually good. It's definitely possible to improve the situation and trying to give up and destroy everything will not help (I don't agree that profit motive is bad though, it's incredible and beautiful as an aligning force for humanity)
I agree. Many things we benefit from are free or significantly reduced in price due to the profitability of advertising. I would not want to live in a world where I'd have to find everything through word of mouth and not get to try free versions of services.
> things we benefit from are free or significantly reduced in price due to the profitability of advertising.
Is this actually known to be true? And if so, to what degree and for which products, at which point does it tip into simple manipulation of the customer?
If you'll humor me leaning into the steel man and addressing advertising-as-practiced i.e. ad-tech rather than advertising in the abstract sense:
Data collection is the big harm right now. Advertising companies have enormous databases on ~any individual's interests, political opinions, gender identity, and much more.
The immediate harm of all this data collection is that, while Google has good security practices, the average webshop or advertising middleman does not, and so data leaks are frequent. Stalkers and harassment groups as well scammers and other fraudsters already use such leaked data. This particular harm is in the here and now.
The big looming threat is: What happens when a government decides to tap into these databases. (Y'know. Like they do in China.)
Because right now, should a government ever want to, it can just call up Google, Facebook, whomever else, and ask: "Give us a list of everyone who meets these criteria".
This completely trivializes any kind of large scale oppression of the people. Pre-compiled lists of almost every political dissenter, with verticals across almost every topic imaginable.
It's no hypothetical either. During WWII, the Nazis seized civil registry records in order identify and kill people as part of the holocaust. There's no reason why any future authoritarian government won't do the same to the big ad-tech databases.
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For something in a lighter mood: The one general problem about advertising is that it's an industry prone to quite a lot of fraud. There's an inherent information asymmetry in that advertising agencies have a near-monopoly on not only the performance data, but also how it's gathered.
How many impressions did a video get? Only Facebook knows. What's an impression? Only Facebook knows. And why would they ever be honest about those two things to you, the advertising buyer?
My counter argument to things like this:
As you pointed out, very simple registries are already more than sufficient for government oppression. Detailed data that Facebook collects, like which brand of dog food you prefer, is neither necessary or even helpful for government oppression. The ads data is not even 1% as useful to them as things like telephone records, which the telephone companies will happily send as required by law