Everything that makes advertisers happy is to the detriment of humanity as a whole. Everything that makes advertisers’ jobs easier also makes it easier for authoritarian governments. “Innovation” is no longer about creating new things, it’s about taking what already works, breaking it, shoving ads on it and charging a ransom in the form of a premium subscription.
On the other hand, there are endless ad-skipping tools, pages and sites where the main attraction is the lack of ads without a subscription. More and more people are talking about how intrusive and annoying ads are, even those who make their living from them. As the efforts of big tech to please advertisers grow, so do the efforts of ordinary people to screw them.
Very Cyberpunk.
What Bill Hicks said
Online ads can be easily circumvented, I am more annoyed with giant billboards polluting public spaces. Oh well, one more reason to spend more time in nature.
Recently I’ve become more aware of how intrusive traditional advertising methods are: billboards everywhere, radio commercials interrupting the music, etc. It’s incredible how immersed we are in that crap and how most of us don’t realize it.
Modern marketing, post WW2 was the privatization of propaganda.
Advertising exists to manipulate behavior beneficial to clients, out of target groups. It is propaganda and psychological manipulation. The days of simply informing people of products and services is a fairy tale. Maddison Avenue was built off of Nazi Germany’s mass media propaganda strategies.
I loved those old Chevrolet commercials from the 1930s that explained things like how a differential or transmission works in a car and I’m not even a car guy
I only remember the one, but yeah that was an absolute gem
Have you seen they live? Seems relevant.
LOL no, the advertisers won that war decades ago. It’s been an occupation ever since.
I propose we make a massive product database. If you need to buy something, you can see your options there on a level playing field. Companies who spend more money don’t get any more visibility than any other. If you don’t feel like spending any money, the database isn’t trying to push you down a spending spiral.
And then for convenience, add a shopping cart so it’s not a separate research step - congrats, you’ve invented Amazon.
My idea is a bit different. You would be able to define exactly what you are looking for, and the database would display the results a the order you want.
Let’s say you want a refrigerator with specific dimensions and features. Then, you would sort the results based on how loud they are, with the most silent ones at the top. You look at the results and realize that some models draw too much power, so you filter out all the E and F tier entries.
You know, basic database query stuff.
Yes but now do a search for the item in your cart and buy it somewhere else.
I absolutely agree with you. But where I live, Amazon is cheaper than any other sellers, online or stores. I hate it but I only have so much money to spend.
If you continue to support monopolies, soon you’ll have less to spend.
Nah, we’re not doing this “vote with your wallet” shit anymore.
That’s just capitalist propaganda really.
Do what you need to do to survive and eek out some small form of happiness.
The time when we could actually fix these problems without direct action is long gone now.
Average consumers are in a lose/lose situation. Choice is a privilege that not everyone can afford.
Amazon is everything but a level playing field and it is highly manipulated.
Congrats, you missed the whole point about Amazon.
As others already replied, the business model of Amazon (and any marketplace that sells its own products within it while being part of an oligopoly) is precisely to prevent unbiased comparison. Amazon gets data on all the products being sold on its website, its warehouses occupancy … then make Amazon Basics and replace them. They did that before also with diapers among many other examples e.g. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/emails-detail-amazons-plan-to-crush-a-startup-rival-with-price-cuts/ but they also do the same with software products, e.g. AWS.
So no, clearly Amazon is not about having fair comparisons and a shopping cart. Amazon is about being the ONLY shopping cart one can have fill it with Amazon products.
PS: to clarify also something very obvious but just in case it’s not so, Amazon by the simple fact of controlling the order of search results control what customers can, or can not, see and thus compare and in fine buy. Even if it did not sell it’s own products (which again, it does) it would still be able to manipulate what customers buy. That is, again, the opposite of an unbiased product comparison service.
It would be so nice if there was one place to look for housing. So tired of rental scams.
At least you are an adult so you have the tools, cognitive and cultural, helping you see the problem. Imagine a very young kid, say 5 years old, watching exciting video content. They do not yet possess such ways to protect themselves from for-profit manipulation.
Just few days ago I finished the IMHO excellent “Buy The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence” by Henry A Giroux and Grace Pollock so you can already understand where I’m going with this.
Yes, advertisers are terrible, they make money by manipulating our thoughts, probing our deepest desire, toying with our emotions in order to sell us whatever is made by whomever pay them the most. But… you and I are fully formed human beings in the sense that we are adults. We spend years navigating through the world, getting scamming, learning how to spot lies and marketing pitches. The problem is, as showcased by Disney in that example (a very important example!), the process is not random. It is a very thoughtful and strategical one, namely how to transform a human being to a consumer from the youngest age.
Anyway I won’t dig into the obvious but the book ends with a couple of practical links e.g. commercial free childhood (what a name, how can how even imagine that would be needed?) which since then became https://fairplayforkids.org/
If you prefer a video on the topic the 2001 yes still relevant 2001 documentary (52 min) “Mickey Mouse Monopoly - Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power” https://films.mediaed.org/Film/Mickey_Mouse_Monopoly/f56fd530-8724-460b-b2bc-6eba9868f0e7
I personally pulled that thread also thanks to the more recent 2016 article “Teaching Disney Critically in the Age of Perpetual Consumption” https://www.jstor.org/stable/45157190 but, again, the point is that it’s systemic.
Advertising, marketing, and the stock market are the worst aspects of capitalism, and the system could be improved dramatically with heavy restrictions on all of those. Yeah it would shrink the economy, but the new steady state would be much better. Less waste, better stuff.
The economy doesn’t represent the people, doesn’t feed anyone and doesn’t reflect their well being.
You have my vote.
Advertisers waste our time which is the only measurable currency we are all spending at the same rate
Chris Hayes spends a good deal of time on this subject in his book The Siren’s Call which I can’t recommend enough.
Meh, the advertisers are the ally, not the other way around. Still, a good point.
Very Cyberpunk.
Just another battle ground of the class war that has been waged since ruling class figured out they can dunk on pedons
The advertisers are merely a tool for the investors, the people who own everything. The “haves” as it were. They are always at odds with and trying to squeeze money and labor from the rest of us, you know, the “have nots”.
Something something you basically just figured out communism on your own
Every single communist regime ended up operating in this exact same way…
I am not following if OP actually figured anything out beyond that this is a class war.
Is this a self affirmation or are there other people in your shower?
I would also like to know who else is in their shower.
It is I, I am in OP’s shower!
No, the person in OP’s shower is me!
There could be thousands of people in that shower if they were pondering in the rain!
Our shower comrades
.ml many loofahs
