[yallpendantools]

Ads per se are not evil. The motherfucker we'd want to shoot, however, is targeted advertising and especially those that rely on harvested user data.

In a sense, I'm just agreeing with a fellow comment in the vicinity of this thread that said GDPR is already the EU's shot at banning (targeted) ads---it's just implemented piss-poorly. Personally formulated, my sentiment is that GDPR as it stands today is a step in the right direction towards scaling back advertisement overreach but we have a long way to go still.

Ofc it's impossible to blanket ban targeted ads because at best you end up in a philosophical argument about what counts as "targeting", at worse you either (a) indiscriminately kill a whole industry with a lot of collateral casualties or (b) just make internet advertising even worse for all of us.

My position here is that ads can be fine if they

1. are even somewhat relevant to me.

2. didn't harvest user data to target me.

3. are not annoyingly placed.

4. are not malware vectors/do not hijack your experience with dark patterns when you do click them.

To be super clear on the kind of guy talking from his soapbox here: I only browse YT on a browser with ad blockers but I don't mind sponsor segments in the videos I watch. They're a small annoyance but IMO trying to skip them is already a bigger annoyance hence why I don't even bother at all. That said, I've never converted from eyeball to even customer from sponsor segments.

I'd call this the "pre-algorithmic" advertising approach. It's how your eyeballs crossed ads in the 90s and IMO if we can impose this approach/model in the internet, then we can strike a good balance of having corporations make money off the internet and keeping the internet healthy.

[magarnicle]

Yeah I want my cake and to eat it too. I get annoyed when ads are irrelevant to me, and I get creeped out when they are too relevant.

I want to be able to browse the internet for free, where the sites have a sustainable business model and can therefore make high-quality content, but I don't want to have to sign up to a subscription for everything.

I want to be able to host websites that get lots of views, but I don't want that popularity to cost me.

Can someone please come up with something that solves all of these dilemmas for me?

[magarnicle]

I realise this comes across as a sarcastic defence of ads. It's sincere - I don't like ads but I want everything the provide.

[jason_oster]

Ads are mostly evil. No one said that ads were inherently evil. It's bad enough that ads are mostly evil.

Let's be clear what we mean by "evil". My time is valuable. I have a finite number of heartbeats before I die. If I have to spend 30 seconds watching a damn soap commercial before I get to watch a Twitch stream, that's 36 heartbeats I will never get back. Sure, I could press mute and do something else for 30 seconds that seems more valuable, but that doesn't fit my schedule. Stealing heartbeats is evil.

I have so far optimized against wasting my heartbeats by paying subscriptions to remove ads. Spotify, Twitch, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, and a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Because it's worth $150/month or whatever to not waste my time with the most boring, uninteresting, irrelevant, nauseating crap that advertisers come up with.

And thank science for SponsorBlock, because sponsored segments in videos are the devil. Sponsored segments use the old non-tracking advertisement model. They pay publishers practically nothing because they aren't paying for conversions, but for an estimate based on impressions and track record woo. Bad for publishers, bad for advertisers, and bad for content consumers. Everybody loses. I'm well over my lifetime quota of BS from VPNs, MOBAs, and plots of land scams. So many heartbeats lost.

[yallpendantools]

The parent post I was replying to:

> banning advertising on the Internet. It's the only way. It's the primordial domino tile. You knock that one over, every other tile follows suit. It's the mother of chain reactions.

You, jason_oster, a clown:

> Ads are mostly evil. No one said that ads were inherently evil. It's bad enough that ads are mostly evil.

Also you in the same clown breath:

> sponsored segments in videos are the devil. Sponsored segments use the old non-tracking advertisement model.

I'd lol but I'm already lmao.

> Stealing heartbeats is evil.

Appeals to emotion like that, you not only have a prospect in stand-up comedy but a long and prosperous career in political communications, if not being a politician yourself. Your two skill sets complement each other rather nicely judging by the current zeitgeist.

The only way someone could steal your heartbeat (or, frankly, anything) is if they made it unavailable to you. If your heartbeat were unavailable to you for the length of time you mentioned, you'd be dead. The only thing you should worry about stealing your heartbeat is your diet (and that includes diet coke) and sedentary lifestyle. You can't blame ads on this one.

I'll grant you a good faith interpretation of your Valentine's-worthy sentimentality. Replace "heartbeats" with "time" or "attention" and you have an argument at least worth considering.

But the thing is, you can't really prevent spending these resources; they tick away regardless. You can only choose where and how to spend them to make it meaningful. Your time is there to be spent, your attention exists to be called. All I'm really advocating for is that ads be moderated so they don't detract from anything else unfairly. Ads are information too and we need information to function. And like any form of information, they only become toxic and detrimental if they purport to be any more important than they really are.

That said, it makes your example all the more ridiculous, complaining about a thirty second ad when you are about to, excuse me, watch a livestream which would eat at your set amount of time/attention/heartbeat in far greater magnitude.

> Sponsored segments use the old non-tracking advertisement model. They pay publishers practically nothing because they aren't paying for conversions, but for an estimate based on impressions and track record woo.

You also seem horribly misinformed about how sponsored segments work. Sponsorships are tracked heavily though differently. That's why they always ask you to use their sign-up/discount code or click the link in the description. It's how publishers/content creators prove to advertisers the reach of their channel.

Go watch some ads so you can make an informed opinion on them yeah? It won't kill you and I then wouldn't have to respond to gasp human-generated slop post. Pepsi had some banger ones in the 2000s.

In conclusion, this all really reminds me of my favorite poem:

> Hey, Jason Oster, quit your bullshit

> Stop pulling things out of your ass!

> You won't find gold there

> Just shit and curly pubes

Not quite Shakespeare but rolls off the tongue quite nicely, especially that last line.

[MBCook]

I’ve never figured out what I think advertising should be. I currently do basically everything I can to get rid of it in my life.

I’m totally fine with outlining targeted advertising. But even classic broadcast stuff poses the dilemma for me.

I have absolutely noticed I miss out some. As an easy example I don’t tend to know about new TV shows or movies that I might like the way I used to. There’s never that serendipity where you were watching the show and all of a sudden a trailer from a movie comes on and you say “What is THAT? I’ve got to see that.”

Maybe some restaurant I like is moving into the area. Maybe some product I used to like is now back on the market. It really can be useful.

Sure the information is still out there and I could seek it out, but I don’t.

On the other hand I do not miss being assaulted with pharmaceutical ads, scam products, junk food ads, whatever the latest McDonald’s toy is, my local car dealerships yelling at me, and so much other trash.

I’ve never figured out how someone could draw a line to allow the useful parts of advertising without the bad parts.

“You’re only allowed to show a picture of your product, say its name, and a five word description of what it’s for”.

Nothing like that is gonna be workable.

Such a hard problem.

[ulbu]

what if ads were displayed only on request? “hi, ad page, I need some shoes, let’s go!”

[knowriju]

So basically what Google & Amazon does and ban what Meta & Apple does ?