The Billion-Dollar Machine vs. One Free Extension
(midwest.social)
Advertising is a perk
Control is the goal
I agree that that is the goal, but also think that the control was much tighter before the internet. When all the information was centrally broadcast and curated. Now they may create a more personalized control feed, but I can still go outside of the feed. Until that is closed too.
You have to remember that the people in charge of advertising spend are c-suite executives, and c-suite executives are the absolutely dumbest rung of society. Invasive advertising makes them feel important, and nothing else in the world matters more than their feelings.
My dad asked me the other day if I had seen some commercial for something and I was like "I block ads on the net and don't watch regular TV. How would I have seen it?"
I don't even see the ads I see. If an email or text message looks like an ad then I'm probably not reading it either. Nonstop ~~spam~~ ads caused me to be this way. I sure as sh*t am never clicking on an ad to buy anything. I don't think I have ever clicked on an ad and bought something through the ad.
I'm happy to not be able to relate to someone wanting to talk about an ad. Especially if the focus of the conversation isn't on how annoying ads are. I get that they can sometimes be funny or clever or whatever but that just isn't a facet of humanity that I care to celebrate.
It sucks to miss movie trailers. Its ironic, I subbed to a youtube channel to catch trailers, the only ads I wanted and it spammed shite edits of trailers and I gave up.
Fortnine actually made a video explaining how Google's ads are a scam.
In a nutshell, they don't convince people to buy things. They predict that someone is about to buy something, shows ads for it and then take credit for the purchase.
Wouldn't that only count if the buyer actually bought the stuff through clicking on the ad?
No. Watch the video they explain it well
I will
For a second there I was wondering why Fortnite of all things was making a video on this
Right, when they can host concerts then why can't they do courses on privacy or ads?
A coworker scrolling mentioned double stuffed Oreos, something she hadn’t had in a while. Boom, next ad: double stuffed Oreos. “They” really are listening.
This is true, but it I can't escape the fear that it is far more fragile than we realize. What happens when they start coming after adblockers harder?
I do those Google survey things for Google Play money.
Google, the biggest spyware company ever to exist.
99/100 of the things it sends are "Have you been to any of these places recently", and none of them are even in my state.
I don't understand. You have my location. Why are you asking me about shit in Texas?
In the end I get a dime for my time and sometimes I spend it on some game.
They keep asking me the same shit too. No, I still don't have a kid. No, I'm still not interested in football. No, I still don't have a degree and I'm not trying to get one. No, I still don't rent. You know which of your apps I use, better than I do I'd assume, why ask me?
Honestly, if there's a good reason for why they want me to answer the same stuff over and over and give me 8 cents every time, please do tell.
They want to catch you contradicting yourself, then they'll know you are an unreliable survey subject (aka, a liar :) ). That's why you build am alternative persona for this. I keep insisting I work in an industry I am not, I have kids I don't, and make as much money I never.
Okay but these questions are basically all I'm getting. I don't have any opportunities to be unreliable if I'm always just given the same five questions designed to be traps.
What also gets me, is occasionally it does give local places. But it's still off.
Like, I go to Walmart and it sends a survey and it's like, "Were you at the Dairy Queen or the car wash?" And basically every business next to the giant Walmart, but not the Walmart.
look there's this HEB with a sushi bar, tortilla press, and a bakery twice the size of the largest house i've lived in.
have you been there? fresh tortillas = best tortillas.
Fresh corn tortillas are indeed very good
they even had good fresh flour tortillas. that was my go-to snack when i lived near there
LOL, I don't even know what a HEB is.
why would i ask about not-texas? their haw has hardly any yee in it
The actual truth is the people paying for ads are rubes.
When it came out that Facebook’s “pivot to video” numbers were all fake nobody batted an eye. Marketing departments have failed to apply any statistical rigour for decades and all fall prey to the the idea that if you target ads well enough they work.
If you even have a marketing department they exist to spend money, so as long as they have charts and graphs they’ll ignore the users and keep asking for budget.
When did advertising become so evil? It's always been there, but today it's ridiculous. Even the targeted ads are useless.
Imagine if all these companies spending billions on vast networks of advertising actually used that money and energy on something, anything, useful. This meme is on point.
He’s not fully responsible by any means, but the impact Edward Bernays had on modern advertising and public relations is rather profound. It’s gotten more evil in the past couple decades, but it’s always been a force for coercion and manipulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
There's to many people on the planet if this is what we come up with. Vile
As you've said, it's always been this way. It's just the internet has supercharged their ability to serve them
Ever see Mad Men?
Personally I have not but given that I like the main actor in his current show where he steals shit from his rich neighbours, I think I'm gonna have to grab it
Like tracking and imprisoning dissidents? Because that's the usefulness we are going to get.
Clean, cheap energy? Imagine that world.
When your generation isn't advertised to anymore, it's a strange feeling. My uncle who is in the boomer range, they stopped advertising to them and he and my aunt really took it hard. Like I said, it's a weird thing to go through.
When they stopped advertising to my generation when I was early 20s, I watched them start trying again around the late 20s. I was kind of in the fuck you phase at that point.
My point is, if you're in a booming type generation, you probably don't know what it's like to have no advertising towards you anywhere. Some generations, no one cares what you think.
Note: Not a bad thing to be not advertised to, but it's a shock when it happens. You realize how much of it is out there.
More like precisely targeted ads of stuff I've already bought and don't care about anymore...
I don’t own a smart tv. I have no streaming services. I use Firefox with Ublock. I have an ad block on the one game app I play (Scrabble). If a podcast tries to play an ad I will drop everything to hard focus on the phone and hit the ff until it’s back. I don’t even have an Amazon sub. What do they hope to accomplish?
Granted, I’ve done some home maintenance for a relative and there’s zero effort there to avoid ads. Not even a mute as they play YouTube ads via their smartTV. So, maybe that’s everyone else.
If a podcast tries to play an ad I will drop everything to hard focus on the phone and hit the ff until it’s back.
I decided to try getting into podcasts the other day. I started listening to one, hit an ad, and immediately shut it off.
Until I figure out how to get some kind of "SponsorBlock for podcasts" (I looked into it a little, but the solutions all seemed to involve a selfhosted middleman instead of something built directly into an app on my phone), no podcasts for me.
So, maybe that’s everyone else.
Most people are pretty helpless. They just take what comes out of the box.
IMO consumerism-driven learned helplessness is one of the biggest problems of our society (right behind Euclidean zoning and failure to enforce antitrust law).
That is most everyone else.
You'd be surprised how few people go even slightly out of their way to avoid ADs.
... And it makes sense we're the minority, cause if we weren't I guarantee you the industry would be much more rabid in stopping us.
That's a good point. Enjoy it while it lasts. They'll lock down adblockers eventually.
