Comment by dns_snek
19 days ago
No because employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions are completely diffused and many steps removed from the harm they cause. That's why ad-tech is so effective in the first place.
Consumer pays $1.10 for a can of coke, $0.10 of that goes to ad-tech, the consumer watches some coke ads, ad-tech pays $0.05 to the publisher and the consumer receives $0.05 in benefits in the form of "free ad-supported content" (which they already paid $0.10 for).
The only way for consumers to avoid this is to just stop spending money with any brand that advertises online, which is completely unrealistic and a much taller ask than asking employees to give up their deal with the devil (and work for just about anyone else except big tech).
Replace “tech” in this scenario with “ammunition”.
Does your argument still hold up?
>”employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions are completely diffused and many steps removed from the harm they cause.”
“employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions directly cause deadly harm.”
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t be voting with our wallets and supporting these people but your initial argument is flawed. They produce goods precisely because consumers buy them…
> Replace “tech” in this scenario with “ammunition”. Does your argument still hold up?
Can you explain why you think it wouldn't?
Tons of principled engineers choose not to pursue opportunities at military contractors, for instance, and this is not widely seen as unreasonable.
I didn't say "tech", I said "ad-tech" and "big tech" (meaning ad-tech like Google, not TSMC) which aren't morally neutral like ammunition is. Invasion of privacy and exploitation of private information is an inherent part of their business model.
"The only way for consumers to avoid this "
Or they could stop drinking coke? But I guess that is too much to ask.
That's what gp said, except Coke isn't the only thing that funds the advertising industry - it's pretty much every product you can buy.
It's not perfect, but you can go a pretty long way by prioritizing store brands when possible.
Stores still fund the advertising industry but to nowhere near the extent that name brand goods do.
You can avoid coke but approximately every brand in the supermarket is funding ad-tech. And even if you can find brands that don't, your supermarket is likely funding ad-tech to advertise itself so you can't go to there at all. Maybe you still have a farmer's market but chances are that they're advertising online.
You can't buy a car or any smartphones you've ever heard of, you won't find an ISP that doesn't advertise online, and good luck finding a decent job without supporting ad-tech.
There's a large difference in the magnitude of spending.
A big chain like kroger, for example, is spending around 10 to 100M. Coke is spending around $5B.
Avoiding national branded products goes a long way in avoiding contributing to the problem.
Things don't need to be all or nothing.
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