The internet runs on ads.
Ad companies pay for all the “free” popular social media we use. Ad companies dictate to social media what their clients want their ads to be associated with, not associated with, and drive media of all kinds to push inflammatory and click-bait content that drives engagement and views. It’s why you indirectly can’t swear, talk about suicide, drugs, death, or violence. Sure, you technically can unless ToS prohibits it, but if companies tell their ad hosts they don’t want to be associated with someone talking about guns, the content discussing guns gets fewer ads, fewer ads = less revenue, low-revenue gets pushed to the bottom.
So lowbrow political rage bait, science denialism, and fake conspiracies drives people to interact and then gets pushed to the top because it gets ad revenue. Content that delves into critical thought and requires introspection or contemplation languishes.
Ads are destroying society because stupid and rage sells views.
Oh shit, I thought you said “AI” companies and was about to say “nahh, it’s the advertisers” lol.
Yes. Ads are a stain on our species and should be outlawed.
They are a waste of resources, clutter and manipulate our minds, and give a ridiculous advantage to those who already have the money to buy them.
They definitely try, but why do we let them?
Because they have everyone addicted using devilishly addictive algorithms, socio-psychological hacks and platforms designed to amplify it all. Meanwhile, we’re still stuck prescribing individual solutions to these deeply systemic structural issues.
You laid it out so well I needed time to process it, my thanks :)
Exactly. There is no systemic response to the issue
Because we’re farm animals.
Who knew that adverts were the secret power cabal running everything all the time.
read Subprime Attention Crisis. our surviellance state was implemented to sell products. however, the products didn’t sell because online ad models being more efficient than traditional ad models has always been a lie
This is why Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever.
(Join the army)
Kind of funny this has to be discussed in shower thoughts when its a central theme of our entire world at the moment.
Agree. Which is why I get so irrationally annoyed when sharing a good piece of journalism that’s not catering to ad-clicks and the peanut gallery here grabs their torches and pitchforks while shouting “PaYwALL!” despite me posting the gist of the article in the post body (enough to get the gist but not the full article for copyright reasons). It’s one of several reasons why I don’t even bother anymore.
Like, good journalism costs money. That money’s gotta come from somewhere if you want good journalists to be able to eat and keep doing what they do.
That’s all well and fine but if you’re presenting the topic for discussion on a public forum you’re limiting the audience. The gist isn’t enough for complete discussion. So the cries about it being paywalled are completely justified.
good journalism costs money
How much money?
The problem with this “x costs money” rhetoric is that x is usually trying to maximize profit, not give a fair deal.
How can I tell they’re good journalists without reading their stuff first?
By reading the gist that OP provided and deciding if you want to read more.
What if I want to read more but not enough to go find my wallet and hand over personal information?
What if you want a cookie, but not enough to go to the grocery store and buy some cookies?
Then you don’t get any fucking cookies.
What if you want a cookie, but not enough to go to the grocery store and buy some cookies?
I fixed that for you:
What if you want a cookie, but not enough to go to the grocery store and buy some cookies, after showing your ID card for its number to be written up?
The difference being that good journalism doesn’t die because I’m too lazy to get a cookie.
Well, no. It dies because you’re unwilling to fund it. Because apparently finding your wallet is too much effort.
And multiply that times a few hundred million lazy humans and now you know why real journalism is dying.
It’s not a viable business model because people are people.
despite me posting the gist of the article in the post body (enough to get the gist but not the full article for copyright reasons)
when you (and others) do that, it is the best thing on the news/science/sharing articles communities. lets me know whether the article is something i’m interested in reading and something i can comment intelligently on or just something i can shitpost about. i really appreciate it, just thought i’d let you know
Attach the whole article to the post. Copy/paste has been around longer than the author. “Look at what I can read and you can’t” isn’t good for discussion. Author wants food? Let them eat cake.
So you don’t think journalists should be paid for their work?
So you think news should be a privilege for the rich?
You didn’t answer my question. Do you think journalists shouldn’t be paid for their work?
those of us who can afford to should pay for the news. for those of us who can’t afford it, there are a lot of ways around paywalls.
Journalists are being silenced by their work being behind paywalls. I am stretching the meaning of the word “work” here on account of today’s LLMs doing the heavy lifting. I have grown skeptical of journalists consistently putting out organic prose.
Are we stealing their lunch by copying a whole article to discuss something in a niche online community? I can get past some paywalls by disabling Javascript for that site and I’ll still see ads. I’ll gladly steal the toothpick shoved through an olive off the top of their shit sandwich. Subscription paywalls are a cancer growing in the arteries of the information superhighway.
I think the answer always comes down to capitalism
Consumerism.
Consumerism is a symptom of capitalism. Capitalism is the illness
Capitalism does play a part, but it’s more the lack of hard rules to curb it rather than the economic method itself. You want to make an even broader claim, just say “greed.”
Couple of things that are either a definition, obvious, or directly observable in literally every capitalist nation in history:
- the defining characteristic of capitalism is the private ownership of businesses
- the ability to own a business can buy you influence on the electorate legally, through owning ad agencies, newspapers, think tanks, online influencers
- owning a business can buy you influence on politicians legally, by hiring lobbyists, by threatening to take your business elsewhere, by promising politicians cushy jobs after their tenure, by contributing to their campaign through fundraisers, PACs, etc
- this influence gives you the power to change laws and regulations to your benefit
- in particular, it allows you to shape laws to benefit you financially, making the actions in point 2 and 3 easier to do
- in particular, it allows you to get rid of laws restricting you to do the things in points 2 and 3
- it is in the best interest of politicians to deregulate the latter parts of point 3
- as such, a capitalist system where only parts or even none of point 2 and 3 are allowed, has a natural tendency towards a system where they are fully allowed
Leaving all other economic systems aside for a moment*, the idea that this is not a direct and natural consequence of capitalism doesn’t seem to hold water, both on a theoretical and an empirical level.
(*)And we do this because, analogously, arguing your right hand isn’t bleeding by saying your left hand is makes no sense. Capitalism can be studied in its own right. What’s more is that the number of alternative systems is infinite, and I’m sure lemmy has a character limit.
Yes, exactly, and if you continue in this same vein, fascism becomes inevitable, too. Capitalism really must be abolished.
This was an understandable perspective when we had those regulations in the USA, but since FDR’s New Deal, the Republicans have walked back practically every law and regulation we had to curb the greed of Capitalism. This is the natural tendency of Capitalism
That is the tendency of people. Any system is open to exploitation and greed. The restrictions on growing exploitation are only as good as the humans enforcing them, and people suck. There’s always people trying to force cracks in a system to benefit themselves, and some tribal influences that will allow them to do it.
You are 100% correct. People just want to believe that Capitalism is uniquely corrupt. When literally all of human history has seen us exploit and greedily destroy every social and economic system humans have ever engineered. Now including capitalism.
Good regulations prevent critical exploitation, which is why European capitalism is still functional and looked on positively despite still being capitalism.
Only through regulations can an economic system be maintained. US Capitalism is failing because it has been steadily deregulated for the last 40 years.
So yes, Capitalism is poison. But so is blowfish unless you cut it right. Every system we’ve ever built is also poisoned for failure unless it’s always cut down and regulated to its basics.
European capitalism is still functional and looked on positively despite still being capitalism
I’m really sorry to burst this bubble, but as a European, no. Capitalism is devouring us from the inside out. Haven’t you seen that basically every EU nation has a surging far right?
Capitalism is not uniquely capable of being exploited more than the systems which it replaced, but you’re wrong that it can be regulated. Yes, regulations can be passed, but they cannot be maintained. Capitalism will inevitably trend towards fascism as a matter of design. It is just human nature.
This is why we need a system that acknowledges the reality of human nature. That’s why I’m an anarchist. It’s the only system which really accounts for the fact that humans will abuse power for selfish reasons.
Compare Europe’s surge of Far Right to the US’s. They’re handling it a lot better and passing regulations to prevent it in the future. Even getting laws passed to regulate the total use of social media by kids.
I’m not saying capitalism is perfect in Europe, I’m saying it’s a better example of how to regulate it into something sustainable.
Respectfully, the biggest flaw in anarchism imo is that it’s not a system at all. It’s basically just tribalism and immediately devolves into the rule of whoevers strongest in those tribes.
Humans are social creatures. We have literally always made societies based on expanded family dynamics and rules, as that is literally human nature. We want family and structure, and to do that we create rules that structure needs to follow for the family to survive.
Anarchism doesn’t really work for the elderly. The sick. The disabled. Anarchism doesn’t really do anything to protect the families we create as whoever is strongest can just take what they want when they want to.
Granted, Capitalism is horrible, but literally any system we create is doomed to become horrible and fucked up if we cannot regulate it from corruption. If we can’t prevent it from being taken over by strong opinionated assholes, it will also eventually devolve into tribalism.
Literally the problem that needs solving is just our own dark nature. That some of us are born without the capacity to understand our social nature, and survive exclusively through exploiting it. Those people are the sociopaths that have destroyed every society we’ve ever had, including the earliest recorded ones that were basically anarchistic.
It is within our nature to be highly social, but the few of us born without that nature only want to take from others instead of giving.
That dual nature of humanity is something that no civilization we’ve ever built has survived.
Compare Europe’s surge of Far Right to the US’s
It just hasn’t come into power YET. You are being hugely dismissive. I am European and I follow US and European politics extremely closely and I am outright telling you that Europe is a hair away from the same shit, if not worse, than the US. Many EU nations are punishing people for protesting genocide.
Capitalism can not be reformed. It cannot be regulated. It is like a force of nature. It will always lead to fascism. It is inevitable.
You don’t know what anarchism is about, I’d encourage you to learn more about anarchism before dismissing it. I’d recommend checking out an anarchist FAQ.
This is where we disagree. What are the fundemental tenants of capitalism vs say, communism?
(Just doing a thought experiment with you, in good faith)
Respectfully I am not willing to get into this debate. If communism worked, we’d be doing it. Unfortunately so far it seems to have incredibly weak protections against authoritarian takeover despite its overall egalitarian appeal.
E: triggered .ml?
Do you think capitalism works? It very clearly works for some, but would you claim that it works in a broader sense?
Double respectfully back, I have to agree with the other commentor. I dont think you have a good understanding of what communism is. Which is fine. Global North countries, at the behest of the powerful elite, have made it their life’s mission to destroy communism (i wonder why). They do that while pushing Neo-Liberal ideas and agendas constantly (curioussssss).
In your post, you have identified a symptom of capitalism. Not the cause of societal failures.
Also, unlike saying “humans beings are naturally greedy” (which isnt true), capitalism as an economic system reinforces and rewards any greed fhat MIGHT appear in A VANISHINGLY SMALL amount of people (true sociopaths). Whereas, under communism or socialism, those sociapaths would not only be unrewarded, their entire ideology would be forsaken from establishing a foothold in power (please extrapolate to the rest of humanity).
That said, if you dont want to talk about it, its all good baby. Thanks for listening to my Ted talk.
(Btw, this was all in good faith. Genuinely not trying to mock or tesse you. Just being silly).
Lmk if you ever feel like talking more
If communism worked, we’d be doing it.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Respectfully I am not willing to get into this debate.
And this is why you believe that. Head, meet sand.
Props for being polite about it though.
The assumption that I lack knowledge of alternate economic and governing systems and left them unconsidered is as insulting as your smug confidence that any other system is immune to corruption and disparity.
There’s no curbing capitalism. The very thesis of it requires that the most successful 1, find 2, exploit 3, lobby to lock up enough, so to “pull up the ladder behind themselves”, any and all loopholes of the legal system that allows them to get ahead.
You can try regulating it but capitalism will always find a way around your rules.
I disagree. Capitalism can be curbed. The failure is greed on humanity’s part always trying to carve out more for themselves. No system of government or economy has proven otherwise over the long term. They all eventually fail.
E: Lol, downvotes seem to indicate some real confident fools here think they have an alternative all figured out that somehow eliminates what humans have been doing forever.
Capitalism can be curbed.
It can’t. It always leads to fascism. It always has. It always will.
Advertising is one of the most prolific environmental pollutants of economic activity, and needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.
I was thinking about this earlier today.
It’s amazing to me that in my lifetime, ads went from a thing that companies got to do as an extra once they had succes all the way to a thing that runs everything everywhere.
Nowadays if you don’t have ads in some form abusing the algorithm (which is in itself designed to be abused) then you get nowhere.
(Also holy shit this has a lot of comments, seems like people have this on their liver somewhat)
people have this on their liver somewhat
Interesting, I’ve never heard that phrase. Are you a native English speaker, or was that brought through another language? I’m reminded of how in Farsi, the liver is used in phrases that most other languages don’t use it for. Like, instead of calling someone you love your 'heart", you call them your “liver,” but it carries the same intent.
Oh yes, I hadn’t thought about that! Having something on your liver is an expression that’s native to the Dutch language (afaik).
Meaning something that’s annoying, bothering you, gnawing at your conscience, pissing you off,…
That’s an interesting thought, and I would like to add a few things to it.
The whole idea of having ad funded things is fundamentally flawed. It has also become too dominant, and difficult to compete with. Ads are the tool used in this business model, but are they really the root cause of the problems you mentioned? I would say no.
Theoretically, you could still have ads without ruining everything. When other business models aren’t competitive enough, the whole system naturally gravitates to the mess we’re currently in.
I think cheap mobile games have showed that you can charge a small amount of money, and people will be willing to pay up. That way, everything doesn’t have to be ad funded. It’s just that this business model doesn’t appear to be appealing enough in other arenas, and that’s a real problem.
Theoretically, you could still have ads without ruining everything. When other business models aren’t competitive enough, the whole system naturally gravitates to the mess we’re currently in.
There’s no such thing as “competitive enough.” Corporate greed is literally insatiable, inherently and by design. There’s an entire series of Supreme Court decisions – not just Citizens United – that would need to be overturned to fix that.
having ad funded things
Do you remember those free “newspapers” that used to choke your mailbox once a week, or your favorite club? With like 75% ad content and a few poorly written articles? That’s how I learned about the power of advertisment. The internet just put that in hyperdrive. How much of it is driven by ads these days?
The advertisement-based business model has turned out to be highly successful, just like the newspapers have proven. However, magazines were a hybrid solution. You would pay for the magazine, but there would still be a few ads. Reminds me of modern Netflix actually.
Yeah a lot of what many think of typical internet stuff is just a new turbocharged edition of what has existed for much longer IRL.
I think cheap mobile games have showed that you can charge a small amount of money, and people will be willing to pay up.
emulation’s another thing. i was glad to toss the duckstation devs five bucks so’s i could keep it easily updated on my phone (i like the psx generation, it’s great for that screen size) and so they could hopefully afford to keep working on it. it’s been so long i can’t remember if they charged or if it was a patreon thing, but five bucks is five bucks.
I think ad funded stuff is the only way to get things done in a capitalist economy. There may be other types of economies that could get by without ads, but we’ll never know because this is the world we’ve created.
Bill Watterson tried to warn us
i still want a calvin peeing on calvin peeing on fractal sticker
You’re right overall, but the mechanism you listed about advertising only appearing near safe content is not that big of a deal compared to other mechanisms at play:
- psychological manipulation vs competition - the way that a capitalist economy is supposed to work is that a bunch of firms compete to sell you a good or service, you pick the best one for your situation and buy it, then the firm that produces the best good or service gets more resources (money) to grow, rewarding the best product maker.
Advertising breaks this. It lets you spend money on psychological manipulation to get people to buy your product, instead of just trying to produce a better product. True conservative capitalists should fucking hate advertising for distorting the economy, and letting big companies pay advertising money to drown innovative competition, but there are very few of those left these days.
- engagement driven algorithms - because advertising operates on the basis of psychological manipulation rather than actually informing you, it means that its effectiveness always scales with volume.
i.e. I can read everything there is to learn about two different laptops, watch YouTube videos, read all the specs and reviews, and after about two hours of research I’ll know everything there is to know. A company can try and provide me with more information about their product to sway me, but at that point it’s probably ineffective because I know everything about them already. However if they bombard me with slick fun ads that evoke certain emotions in me over and over and over and over and over again, it will create an emotional bias towards one over the other.
This distinction is super important because it is what leads to most of advertising’s ills: most specifically engagement driven algorithms, which social media uses to keep you scrolling and are what are truly destroying society. The amount of human time and effort wasted to them is incalculable, the amount of languished relationships, neglected kids, over tired and angry people etc. is truly jaw droppingly damaging, and it is fundamentally because advertising is a cheap way to manipulate you into buying something, and unlike true education, it’s effectiveness keeps scaling with volume.
a bunch of firms compete to sell you a good or service, you pick the best one for your situation and buy it, then the firm that produces the best good or service gets more resources (money) to grow, rewarding the best product maker.
Advertising breaks this.
TBF, the original meaning of advertising was just that: spread the word about your product. Sure, praise it, add nice pictures, but that’s about it. People need to know that your product is out there, and what it’s like.
The systematic psychological manipulation only started in the 20th century, particularly when a relative of Sigmund Freud came to the USA (there’s an interesting documentary about it called The Century of the Self).
I largely agree with you though; algorithmic engagement is the worst incarnation so far. To put it simple: “Angry People Click More”, see more ads, and are therefore to be targeted.
TBF, the original meaning of advertising was just that: spread the word about your product. Sure, praise it, add nice pictures, but that’s about it. People need to know that your product is out there, and what it’s like.
I get that, if you’re arguing from an economic efficiency standpoint, there was an argument to be made that the spreading of new information through advertising helps to spread new innovative ideas and thus increases overall societal efficiency.
It’s just that a) in the Internet age, we have other, non-advertising ways to spread information (i.e. specs and reviews), and b) if advertising was actually still about genuine education, then it would not scale in effectiveness the way it does with volume and repetition.
I’m not generally disagreeing with your assessment of the current situation, just a little historical BTW.
in the Internet age, we have other, non-advertising ways to spread information (i.e. specs and reviews),
Interesting, I never thought of it that way.
However, most of that is still part of advertising; producers proactively strive to get reviewed.
However, most of that is still part of advertising; producers proactively strive to get reviewed.
Reaching out to reviewers is still technically advertising in the broadest definition of the word, but it is distinct from commercial advertising where companies pay to broadcast their specific messages to users.
This distinction is also reflected in the way that most companies are operated these days: reaching out to reviewers with information and offering them review units would fall under the marketing / communications / strategy department, but wouldn’t be referred to as advertising unless they were paying the reviewer for a positive review, which isn’t even legal in some places.
Follow the money. Advertisement exists because businesses demand it.
Your post is literally shooting the messenger.
🤡s like you are why we have ads.
It’s not that “businesses demand it,” it’s that people (like you) don’t have higher standards.
You might as well tell me it’s my fault that you can’t fly because I pointed out that gravity exists.
I hate them as much as you do, but I at least know where to place the blame.
but I at least know where to place the blame.
Except you don’t. If people demanded more, they would get more.
Since most people are like you and accept ads as an inevitability, that’s what we get.
The messenger is delivering poison. The messenger is the problem.
Who’s paying for and giving them the poison? Corporations.
Yeah, corpos pushing products are using ads, but they’re not the ones determining the engagement algorithm that puts the ragebait in front of you.
And who’s telling/paying them to do that? Corporations.
Both suck, I hear you, but let’s place the blame at the source.
Corporations LOVE that you hate their agencies instead of them. Much like how bands love that people hate Ticketmaster instead of them.
Yeah, I agree. People were doing an en masse boycott, using tiktok as a way to gather, and who to hit, then, bam suddenly the elites have to buy tiktok. I know they did that for other reasons too, controlling the narrative and what people see and know has been the M.O. of the evil elite, since days of old, but it just seemed like interesting timing. If we all just gather and boycott, together, as a movement, do targeted hits, I wonder if we could break their choke hold on us. I know there’s a lot of movements for boycotting, people are moving away from the more evil things. I just feel like it doesn’t get as widely spread as it should? Maybe? And I really appreciated the approach behind the other movement, they targeted one brand for one quarter, in a very calculated and planned strategy, so as not to affect anyone’s jobs.
