Comment by vikinghckr
Comment by vikinghckr a day ago
Advertisement is unquestionably a net positive for society and humanity. It's one of the few true positive sum business models where everyone is better off.
Comment by vikinghckr a day ago
Advertisement is unquestionably a net positive for society and humanity. It's one of the few true positive sum business models where everyone is better off.
That's obviously not true. It significantly favor those with more money.
It's the exact opposite. Advertising-based model is why the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world have had access to the exact same Google search, YouTube and Facebook as the richest people in the US. Ad-supported business models are the great equalizers of wealth.
DTC pharmaceutical ads, which RFKJR wants to ban for essentially reasons of vibes, cause better health outcomes
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/695475
not merely correlation but causation. the approach used here was part of a family of approaches that won the Nobel in 2012
another good one:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37275770/
advertising caused increases in treatment and adherence to medicine
the digital ads market is hundreds of billions of dollars, it is a bad idea to generalize about it.
that said, of course ben thompson or whoever, they're not like, citing any of this research, it's still all based on vibes
Advertising is a necessary thing and can be beneficial to everyone. I have something to sell, you want to buy that thing, and know you know I'm selling it. Win win.
On the other hand, the advertisement and associated privacy-brokerage industries are a very different story
The whole "attention economy" is a cancerous outgrowth of advertising. When the customer is paying with their time instead of money, wasting their time becomes your goal. The impact on society is hard to measure, but it's not nothing and I would argue a net-negative.
"unquestionably"? Given that vast majority of ads are for harmful self-destructive projects or misleading or lying or make place where they got spammed worse... Sometimes multiple at once.
Spam alone (also advertisement) is quite annoying and destructive.
I became even better off when I installed an ad blocker.