alt Hacker NewsAdvertising is a cancer on society. It corrupts all forms of media, ever since the invention of publishing and broadcasting. The internet is its most lucrative victim yet. It's where they've taken the sociopathic ideas pioneered by Bernays to their maximum expression. It is the most powerful global psychological manipulation machine, influencing everything from what we spend our money on, to how we think and act. It is unequivocally a major cause of the sociopolitical unrest and conflicts we see today. The really insidious part is that most people don't consciously realize they're being manipulated, and are happy to exchange that for some "free" products and services. This has, of course, made many companies very rich, by operating in a dark data broker market exchanging the data we've given them, and more prominently, data they've stolen or inferred from us.
To people working in these companies: you're complicit in the breakdown of society. Grow a moral backbone, quit, and boycott them.
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Advertising is like pollution. Normal people realize they’re getting poisoned, but they still get to where they need to be, so don’t bother to change it.
We need to make collected data and metadata public. If a cabal of advertisers is considered an ethical steward of the information, a public database can’t be much worse. Scare the bejeezus out of moms and pops and watch the tide shift.
OK great, taking what you've said as true, what's your solution?
How will one fund the server costs for newspapers, social networks and search engines?
Note that lots of people won't (or mostly can't) pay, so how does a social network work in this case?
Forcing people to fork out money for any product or service they used also made many companies very rich. See Microsoft, Oracle... A very long list. But you're so hyperbolic and hysterical I don't even know where to begin.
One small beacon of hope, perhaps, is that I see perspectives like this becoming more common over time. A few years ago there were (anecdotally) way more true believers in the current MO of pervasive profit seeking to the detriment of all else, true believers in the "free market" etc.
It's easy to see how absurd the practice of advertising is if you think about the actual dynamic.
As human beings we all have intentionality. When we want something, we seek it. "Hey, I really need to cut the lawn, let me find a lawnmower"—I'll go out and research lawnmowers to find one that helps me accomplish my intended goal.
Advertising totally inverts this dynamic. Instead, apropos of nothing, some person I don't know and have no relationship with interrupts some other thing I am in the middle of intentionally doing to tell me all about their fancy lawnmowers. At its worst (and most effective) it short circuits my own potential formation of intentions and reshapes my intentions, manipulating me, and at its least effective it's just a completely annoying distraction from what I was originally trying to do. It's horrible and antithetical to any notion of respect and dignity you might ascribe to the limited time of other human beings.
If somebody works for tobacco or predatory lending they are stigmatized. Perhaps we should extend it to people working in advertising or anything causing the major problems in society today. From sugar drinks to algorithmic timelines.