Seems on par. Now they're going after the only valuable resource left, the niche communities where you try to find actual products worth a shit. I'm glad I left, it was already becoming mostly bots.
Seems on par. Now they're going after the only valuable resource left, the niche communities where you try to find actual products worth a shit. I'm glad I left, it was already becoming mostly bots.
For a while our small lfg WhatsApp group was swarmed with spam/scam bots. And the ads look like a paid service because they link to unrelated and very niche Etsy, Amazon and ebay offers, depending...
For a while our small lfg WhatsApp group was swarmed with spam/scam bots. And the ads look like a paid service because they link to unrelated and very niche Etsy, Amazon and ebay offers, depending on the conversation. Custom drone parts, rare TCG packs, DIY kits, entire RPG gaming tables.
Looks like the MO was that every few hours it'd look at the current conversation, cross reference with their product list, one of its identities would engage a with generic statements (often hinting that they have a solution), then droping a link and recommendation after after someone asks.
Some guys got suspicious when most links would not ship here and figured out how to reliably bait it. But the admins could not keep up and just shut the whole thing down.
In unrelated news, WhatsApp has just decided to force Meta AI front and center on all it's users for no good reason. I'd happily switch if all my work, family, community and friends were not there. Seriously, my muscle memory is scuffed because search results now return dumb AI queries to the top of the search box.
Maybe try and enlighten some of them to switch. If you're jot gonna try, it will not work out by itself. I was in similar shoes a few times and I know you can't possibly be 100% successful, but it...
Maybe try and enlighten some of them to switch. If you're jot gonna try, it will not work out by itself.
I was in similar shoes a few times and I know you can't possibly be 100% successful, but it is worth a try. Even if just your family moved and maybe some friends too.
If you have your own group of friends (tabletop players, it seems) it should be even more poasible to take the whole group elsewhere. I'm not talking hundreds of people, but your local group.
It was a growing group of adults with families, clinging to the hope that someone figures out how to host a regular table. Think the last actual meet was boardgames before Christmas 2019. Group...
It was a growing group of adults with families, clinging to the hope that someone figures out how to host a regular table. Think the last actual meet was boardgames before Christmas 2019. Group wasn't the biggest loss but the memes were fun.
As for WhatsApp, I know Apple
message app is the main text system in the States, but whatsapp is almost the everything app here. Like Musk just wants what South African WhatsApp is and toxic broadcast communication was the worst path to get there. It feels like WhatsApp is a few APIs away from becoming WeChat here and it will take a monumental impact to dislodge it from anyones life.
I'm just mad that the goalposts have been moved so far back that now I'm fine with Mark Zuckerberg personally reading every one of my messages sent on his single app that governs my life, so long as he gets hes pet AI out of my face.
WhatsApp is dominant here as well. I'm not willing to jump in this train though, the destination isn't the one I want to go to. Yes, I may not be able to quickly send photo to anyone in my address...
WhatsApp is dominant here as well. I'm not willing to jump in this train though, the destination isn't the one I want to go to. Yes, I may not be able to quickly send photo to anyone in my address book, but hey, we still have emails and they still do what I want them to do.
And I managed to persuade some (well, actually most) of my close friends to jump on my train with others not even knowing I wasn't left standing on the platform and I ride different train.
I'm also the weird guy who runs Linux instead of (prevalent) Windows. Yeah, I agree, I'm the one that is labeled different. I'd rather be different than indifferent, though. But it costs me...
About 10% of my contacts have moved to Signal over the years, but Whatsapp is the default choice for chat groups of fellow professionals, and leisure, it's just so ingrained.
About 10% of my contacts have moved to Signal over the years, but Whatsapp is the default choice for chat groups of fellow professionals, and leisure, it's just so ingrained.
I consider it being sad. It's sad that people are depending so much on one app. Even more so on the app that is owned by one of the biggest companies in the world. They don't realize they are at...
I consider it being sad. It's sad that people are depending so much on one app. Even more so on the app that is owned by one of the biggest companies in the world. They don't realize they are at mercy of Meta and howit wants the app o work (and gain money from it). People are indifferent, they don't care. They don't realize that this "not caring" is actually not caring about themselves.
Nothing we can do about it, sadly. We can and should try to enlighten them, but we can't force them. And we don't even want to force them, that would be evil - as evil as them being shoved around by that big company.
Additional context for people not familiar with how embedded WhatsApp for business is in some countries: Need have pictures printed? Send them to your neighborhood photo shop via WhatsApp. Need to...
I arranged the contract with my movers (as well as a separate contract with a painter/cleaner for the place I was moving out of) via Whatsapp. I think people really underestimate how embedded it is.
I arranged the contract with my movers (as well as a separate contract with a painter/cleaner for the place I was moving out of) via Whatsapp. I think people really underestimate how embedded it is.
So soon adding 'reddit' after your search query will be totally moot. Advertisers continue to chase the dragon leaving a trail of shit behind them. They always choose the lowest, easiest, least...
So soon adding 'reddit' after your search query will be totally moot.
Advertisers continue to chase the dragon leaving a trail of shit behind them. They always choose the lowest, easiest, least moral road that isn't sustainable in the long run. They just bleed things dry. Why aren't they using AI to data analyse the target audience and provide related products?
Fucking skim the bots and look after your communities. Native marketing or lying about testimonials just cheapens the product whereas quality platform gives you the opportunity to actually increase the value for both the customers and the advertisers (and gives you the chance to bill for more).
Quality over quantity. (Okay, enough daydreaming.)
This sort of thing almost make me depressed with how the internet is devolving into an adinfested dystopia. This is just another sad story on top of for example the thing with Roku wanting to...
This sort of thing almost make me depressed with how the internet is devolving into an adinfested dystopia. This is just another sad story on top of for example the thing with Roku wanting to inject ads directly into the HDMI standard.
I go to great lengths to avoid ads in my life and try to limit the exposure for my kids, but it is an uphill battle. I know ads work and is a part of any market economy, but is it really the only way to make the web go around? With all the brilliant people working in tech across the world, is it really necessary to have half of them basically working on getting us to click more ads?
I understand the reason to want to get another humans opinion on some product rather than a marketing speak, but I also think one can research a product purchase to death. Spending hours searching and reading opinions, reviews, comparisons and specifications hoping to find the perfect match rather than just something that is "good enough". Just to argue with myself, I know that is exactly what the big brands wants us to do, by simply relying on brand recognition rather than making a critical informed decision. I don't know what the solution is here. Maybe using something like non-profit testing organizations like Consumer Reports, because it seems like we can't trust random internet people anymore - if we ever really could.
That's what marketing people do; look for anything involving people, and then figure out how to inject advertising into it. The whole process is insane, and stupid. Think about it. You have...
This sort of thing almost make me depressed with how the internet is devolving into an adinfested dystopia.
That's what marketing people do; look for anything involving people, and then figure out how to inject advertising into it. The whole process is insane, and stupid.
Think about it. You have something, like a bar or a community gathering. A place or an event where people come together. Now, it's almost guaranteed that this thing, this event, did not form because they want to learn about new goods, products, and services. Even if they're a hobby group of some kind, they probably formed because they enjoy their hobby (whatever it is). But it's probably just a, you know, gathering. Organic. Probably even fun.
Now, what happens is other people start showing up at the gathering. They come into the bar, they drive up for the gardening club or hang gliding group or whatever. But, unlike everyone else, all they do is want to sell you shit. "Hey, have you heard about this thing you could buy? This service you could get? I can tell you more; in fact, I will right now."
Who would let that guy keep coming? The bar patrons would make the bartender kick him out. In fact, most actual real world establishments (at least in America) almost invariably have "no soliciting" signs up specifically so some marketing person who's begging or selling or informing or proselytizing or whatever can't protest they didn't know when they're ejected.
But everything else in life is just overwhelmed by marketing dicks. Whatever it is, they're like "oooh, we could take that the fuck over, use it to sell. Cool, who can we sell our selling services to?" They're like damn cockroaches. Baseball game starts up on the weekends, Joe turns up wanting you to buy lawncare or lawn equipment from him, while Mary's trying to sell cosmetics, Frida has a line of sports equipment she'll tell you about, and Harry has all the latest news about the new movie coming out next week (and will help you preorder tickets on the spot).
We put up with this. People just let it happen. Worse, anyone who does make something that draws people is like "oh shit, I can cash it." So they do. Their group or gathering or whatever invites marketers in (for a fee), and now it's a marketing event.
The originator sells out (literally, that's what the term means), counts his payday, and meanwhile the group or whatever just sinks and slides and slumps until it's not a thing anymore. Because what was cool about it isn't cool anymore, since all that happens is "hey, buy this now. Would you like to know more? Hold still, here's more. Wait, don't not listen, that's not right; you have to listen, and you have to buy because we pay for all this you ad blocking asshole."
Then the thing isn't a thing anymore, but that's okay because they just move on to screw over the next thing.
The joke used to be "first, we kill all the lawyers." As insane as it is to contemplate, I think marketers might actually be worse. Lawyers don't hover on your damn doorstep. Sure if you end up in the hospital or the mechanic's shop there might be a couple who turn up offering their services, but you might actually even need them then. Meanwhile, everything under the sun, a marketing person is like "opportunity for me to corrupt it."
Great post, and I'll add something I find both galling and motivating. Most usecases, except for some like video and search that are more capital-intensive (and unlike the real-world bar, but like...
Great post, and I'll add something I find both galling and motivating. Most usecases, except for some like video and search that are more capital-intensive (and unlike the real-world bar, but like many physical examples), the costs of operation for most of these social spaces are very low, at least in centralized or small-scale contexts. (e.g. large-scale federation can get more expensive quickly) To me this gap presents a loud opportunity. Disintermediation of the profiteers is economically feasible. It's also pretty important because these forces broadly control how we use technology to connect with each other.
This past week I had nothing to do but watch broadcast TV and it was all the shadiest advertisements. Lawyers were super common, especially if you include the annoying class action lawsuit schemes...
This past week I had nothing to do but watch broadcast TV and it was all the shadiest advertisements. Lawyers were super common, especially if you include the annoying class action lawsuit schemes (it’s always fun to think about how much of that advertising budget is being siphoned away from the victims), but there were also shady weight loss schemes, used car dealerships, and all the misleading product ads you could dream of.
afaik the attorneys usually make a percentage of the award, so I don't think the advertising money is necessarily being siphoned away from victims. Not gonna say there aren't scummy class action...
(it’s always fun to think about how much of that advertising budget is being siphoned away from the victims)
afaik the attorneys usually make a percentage of the award, so I don't think the advertising money is necessarily being siphoned away from victims. Not gonna say there aren't scummy class action suits, but with class action you HAVE to go out looking for members of your class to be remotely successful.
Most of the attorneys that really advertised heavily where I was back in the States were personal injury attorneys -- sometimes those are class action but usually they aren't. The term "ambulance chasers" is sometimes apt but at the same time, those types of lawsuits are often the only way people get compensated after being utterly shafted by a large corporation.
When was the internet not ad-infested? It has always been a cat-and-mouse game between advertising companies and users. The only solution I see is a cultural change. We simply need to pay for...
When was the internet not ad-infested? It has always been a cat-and-mouse game between advertising companies and users.
The only solution I see is a cultural change. We simply need to pay for services and make them non-profit. It doesn't have to cost much since websites make fractions of pennies per impression, and if we remove the multi-billion dollar ad industry from the equation, we can save a lot of money. But since everyone thinks ads are a good way to pay for services, we don't have good micropayment solutions to make that happen.
This situation won't change until users realize that paying via ads is more expensive than paying services directly, and I don't see any trend in that direction. Maybe the system needs to crash dramatically first, like it usually does.
There actually was a period, before 1993ish, up to about maybe 1995, where ads were super rare online. I mean really rare. And when ads started showing up, there were years of upheaval and...
There actually was a period, before 1993ish, up to about maybe 1995, where ads were super rare online. I mean really rare. And when ads started showing up, there were years of upheaval and questions and media pieces about the whole thing. But the marketing folks persisted, kept waving money, and everyone just ... kind of ... let it happen. And now ads are everything unless you run an ad blocker.
And some marketers and even some tech companies (Google, which has turned itself into a giant marketing firm) are looking for ways to ban or eliminate ad block because it's not fair they can't earn every possible cent off your eyeballs, back, and balls.
I dont think ads used to be quite as bad. There were popups for a while but blockers came quickly. But nowadays if I try to search for something I will come to some AI written article with an ad...
I dont think ads used to be quite as bad. There were popups for a while but blockers came quickly. But nowadays if I try to search for something I will come to some AI written article with an ad inserted between literally every sentence.
I really miss the old single ad that used to be dropped on a page, pre massive banner ads that shortly followed. After Chrome stops the ability to block ads, people will go to Firefox. Edge has...
I really miss the old single ad that used to be dropped on a page, pre massive banner ads that shortly followed.
After Chrome stops the ability to block ads, people will go to Firefox. Edge has some half decent adblocking still, and allows for the older ad blockers. However, as YT and others work on ways to block sharing their content unless you allow ads, we're heading downhill fast.
At some point we're going to be left with smaller websites which are the ones people will start visiting to get away from the ads. It's one of the reasons I enjoy Tildes, it's clean!
I wish. My mom just refuses to use any non-Chrome browser because of the integration. Gonna have to hope Lite mitigates the damage from ads enough, last thing I need to see on her computer is just...
After Chrome stops the ability to block ads, people will go to Firefox
I wish. My mom just refuses to use any non-Chrome browser because of the integration. Gonna have to hope Lite mitigates the damage from ads enough, last thing I need to see on her computer is just the sheer amount of malware I used to before I installed an ad-blocker.
It's really disgusting to see once organic spaces that persued profit only to a minimal amount to cover their overhead turned into horrible characatures of themselves via pure, blatant greed....
It's really disgusting to see once organic spaces that persued profit only to a minimal amount to cover their overhead turned into horrible characatures of themselves via pure, blatant greed. Reddits only goal for the last few years seems to have been making as much money as humanly possible at all costs.
It used to provide a real service to its users, but now it's just an engine to give its shareholders as much profit as possible by extracting as much residual goodwill as possible from the work of hundreds of millions of users posting useful information for free.
There's nothing unique about reddit as a platform that makes its userbase any more lucrative to advertisers, save for the fact that it didn't used to be a place designed to appeal to advertisers. Once more people realize that it is, just like every other large online platform, all of that goodwill will dry up, and reddit will no longer feel like a trusted place to get information for most people. At that point it will cease being a lucrative place for advertisers, and they'll leave. Then what will the site have left? We're just watching slow motion website suicide.
I hate how virtually the entire Internet has become this. It makes me really sad and diminishes my faith in the average human.
I think it may actually be possible to trace all of the decline of basic internet usability, accuracy, verifiability and discovery to ad business model and by extension to data business model....
I think it may actually be possible to trace all of the decline of basic internet usability, accuracy, verifiability and discovery to ad business model and by extension to data business model.
There are some truly smart people whose main job is to get as many people as possible to buy things that they do not need or actually want since the amount of money involved is tremendous.
It is a shame that a rival business model with comparable reach never developed. Personally I would take borrowing cpu time.
"Fun" fact, we have Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays (AKA "the father of public relations") to thank for that: See also: Adam Curtis' excellent BBC documentary, The Century of the Self,...
There are some truly smart people whose main job is to get as many people as possible to buy things that they do not need or actually want
His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations, including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations.
Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and Sigmund Freud (his own double uncle), he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and he outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desired ways.
See also: Adam Curtis' excellent BBC documentary, The Century of the Self, which shows just how deep the PR/Ad industry rabbit hole goes, and how devoid of ethics it is at its core.
I've often thought that just including an extra surcharge onto internet service that then gets distributed to website owners via some metrics that are somewhat resistant to being gamed (page views...
I've often thought that just including an extra surcharge onto internet service that then gets distributed to website owners via some metrics that are somewhat resistant to being gamed (page views is the obvious, but really really bad one that comes to mind) would be a much better way of handling the problem.
I really can't stand advertising and the incentives it causes, but the internet being free really causes a lot of free rider problems for websites who operate as a business and post content that's expensive to produce.
It's one of the quirks of how internet culture came into being that the vast majority of people are not at all willing to directly pay for content of any kind on the internet, while at the same time being completely fine with paying for a book, movie, or video game. I don't think there's a really great way to change that culture; sites that operate on a subscription model generally don't do well, no matter how good their content is.
A toll to get into the Internet that then gets distributed based on how useful the sites are to people is the best way I can think of solving it.
My guess is that it has a lot to do with monetization offered. Subscriptions are a commitment as they almost almost auto-renew and are vastly overpriced for casual use. For me personally when...
vast majority of people are not at all willing to directly pay for content of any kind on the internet
My guess is that it has a lot to do with monetization offered. Subscriptions are a commitment as they almost almost auto-renew and are vastly overpriced for casual use.
For me personally when usually simply use a site like this usually once or twice a month subscribing for a month for something like 10$ and with the added risk that I forget to cancel is not something I am willing to do. If on other hand I could give them even an order more than what they would get from the ad impression, I would. I have no idea of course about broader trends but that is my take.
Especially for news sites I wish there was some good option for micropayments for single articles. But it will likely require some sort of corporation between all the news sites with a single...
Especially for news sites I wish there was some good option for micropayments for single articles. But it will likely require some sort of corporation between all the news sites with a single entity that handles payment since fees will make small amount payments worthless. A service called Blendle did something like this but it only lasted a few years.
I’ve been thinking about this too — I don’t have the skills or experience to know if it would actually work but I’ve been toying with an idea for a while where rather than pay some price and get...
I’ve been thinking about this too — I don’t have the skills or experience to know if it would actually work but I’ve been toying with an idea for a while where rather than pay some price and get unlimited access for a month (the current model) you could have it like pay for unlimited access to XYZ articles.
Maybe instead of $10 for a month, I pay $12 for 12 articles — way too high a price for a single article, really, but if the two options were side-by-side when I tried to access something paywalled, I’d definitely be tempted to grab the once-off, don’t-keep-harvesting-from-my-bank-account, more expensive option. Plus, they’d get more of my dollars right now, which I feel like is a win for the business too.
I was looking at kagi a while ago. I think after this continuation of enshittification I might be going harder in that direction. Aside from that I need a change in how I do things anyway so some...
I was looking at kagi a while ago. I think after this continuation of enshittification I might be going harder in that direction.
Aside from that I need a change in how I do things anyway so some focus is needed. My phone and the internet in general need to become more tools rather than entertainment and a social space and I need to go outside and walk on the grass more.
Late reply here, but I just went over to Kagi and I'm pretty happy with the results. I tore through their free 100 searches in a few days and the experience convinced me to take out a...
Late reply here, but I just went over to Kagi and I'm pretty happy with the results.
I tore through their free 100 searches in a few days and the experience convinced me to take out a subscription.
It's pretty expensive here in local dollars, and it hurts to pay almost $200 for a service google provides 'for free', but for my purposes as a fact-focused private individual kagi does a pretty good job of cutting through the dross.
Google - which I once loved - has become almost unusable.
A significant thing about this whole experience though is that I now see subscriptions as kind of inevitable; I reaaaaally didn't want to pay for this service, yet here I am.
But the truely horrible thing is that I know, deep in my heart, that it's only a matter of time until these paid subscription services start advertising to me, too...
I’ve been using AdGuard (paid from the AppStore) and while not as good as uBlock Origin it’s pretty decent without any weird hiccups like this… so far. While you’re in there, Dark Reader is well...
I’ve been using AdGuard (paid from the AppStore) and while not as good as uBlock Origin it’s pretty decent without any weird hiccups like this… so far. While you’re in there, Dark Reader is well worth throwing in your cart.
I don’t think this is about AI bots writing comments… I don’t think Reddit would shoot themselves in the head with an idea like that… I’m interested to see how this looks and if Reddit decides to...
I don’t think this is about AI bots writing comments… I don’t think Reddit would shoot themselves in the head with an idea like that…
I’m interested to see how this looks and if Reddit decides to “break reddit” with comments, there should be a way for automod to remove those.
Reddit doesn't have to allow it. It's already full of spam and bot accounts. Usually bots now, just repost old comments to appear as if they have a legit history. Once they're using AI to respond...
Reddit doesn't have to allow it. It's already full of spam and bot accounts. Usually bots now, just repost old comments to appear as if they have a legit history. Once they're using AI to respond pretty organically, it will be much harder to detect them.
It's going to get to a ridiculous point where every discussion will have a ton of bots posting normal comments, so that when they eventually post their advertising or political comments, they'll look like legit users. It will be pretty easy for a company or a political party to run hundreds or thousands of these bots across various social media just to make it look like regular people like their thing.
Seems on par. Now they're going after the only valuable resource left, the niche communities where you try to find actual products worth a shit. I'm glad I left, it was already becoming mostly bots.
For a while our small lfg WhatsApp group was swarmed with spam/scam bots. And the ads look like a paid service because they link to unrelated and very niche Etsy, Amazon and ebay offers, depending on the conversation. Custom drone parts, rare TCG packs, DIY kits, entire RPG gaming tables.
Looks like the MO was that every few hours it'd look at the current conversation, cross reference with their product list, one of its identities would engage a with generic statements (often hinting that they have a solution), then droping a link and recommendation after after someone asks.
Some guys got suspicious when most links would not ship here and figured out how to reliably bait it. But the admins could not keep up and just shut the whole thing down.
In unrelated news, WhatsApp has just decided to force Meta AI front and center on all it's users for no good reason. I'd happily switch if all my work, family, community and friends were not there. Seriously, my muscle memory is scuffed because search results now return dumb AI queries to the top of the search box.
Maybe try and enlighten some of them to switch. If you're jot gonna try, it will not work out by itself.
I was in similar shoes a few times and I know you can't possibly be 100% successful, but it is worth a try. Even if just your family moved and maybe some friends too.
If you have your own group of friends (tabletop players, it seems) it should be even more poasible to take the whole group elsewhere. I'm not talking hundreds of people, but your local group.
It was a growing group of adults with families, clinging to the hope that someone figures out how to host a regular table. Think the last actual meet was boardgames before Christmas 2019. Group wasn't the biggest loss but the memes were fun.
As for WhatsApp, I know Apple
message app is the main text system in the States, but whatsapp is almost the everything app here. Like Musk just wants what South African WhatsApp is and toxic broadcast communication was the worst path to get there. It feels like WhatsApp is a few APIs away from becoming WeChat here and it will take a monumental impact to dislodge it from anyones life.
I'm just mad that the goalposts have been moved so far back that now I'm fine with Mark Zuckerberg personally reading every one of my messages sent on his single app that governs my life, so long as he gets hes pet AI out of my face.
WhatsApp is dominant here as well. I'm not willing to jump in this train though, the destination isn't the one I want to go to. Yes, I may not be able to quickly send photo to anyone in my address book, but hey, we still have emails and they still do what I want them to do.
And I managed to persuade some (well, actually most) of my close friends to jump on my train with others not even knowing I wasn't left standing on the platform and I ride different train.
I'm also the weird guy who runs Linux instead of (prevalent) Windows. Yeah, I agree, I'm the one that is labeled different. I'd rather be different than indifferent, though. But it costs me...
About 10% of my contacts have moved to Signal over the years, but Whatsapp is the default choice for chat groups of fellow professionals, and leisure, it's just so ingrained.
I consider it being sad. It's sad that people are depending so much on one app. Even more so on the app that is owned by one of the biggest companies in the world. They don't realize they are at mercy of Meta and howit wants the app o work (and gain money from it). People are indifferent, they don't care. They don't realize that this "not caring" is actually not caring about themselves.
Nothing we can do about it, sadly. We can and should try to enlighten them, but we can't force them. And we don't even want to force them, that would be evil - as evil as them being shoved around by that big company.
Additional context for people not familiar with how embedded WhatsApp for business is in some countries:
Need have pictures printed? Send them to your neighborhood photo shop via WhatsApp.
Need to contact customer support for your internet provider or cable streaming service? Send them a message on WhatsApp.
Want to order a cake or pastries from a baker? Send them a message on WhatsApp (or Instagram).
I arranged the contract with my movers (as well as a separate contract with a painter/cleaner for the place I was moving out of) via Whatsapp. I think people really underestimate how embedded it is.
So soon adding 'reddit' after your search query will be totally moot.
Advertisers continue to chase the dragon leaving a trail of shit behind them. They always choose the lowest, easiest, least moral road that isn't sustainable in the long run. They just bleed things dry. Why aren't they using AI to data analyse the target audience and provide related products?
Fucking skim the bots and look after your communities. Native marketing or lying about testimonials just cheapens the product whereas quality platform gives you the opportunity to actually increase the value for both the customers and the advertisers (and gives you the chance to bill for more).
Quality over quantity. (Okay, enough daydreaming.)
This sort of thing almost make me depressed with how the internet is devolving into an adinfested dystopia. This is just another sad story on top of for example the thing with Roku wanting to inject ads directly into the HDMI standard.
I go to great lengths to avoid ads in my life and try to limit the exposure for my kids, but it is an uphill battle. I know ads work and is a part of any market economy, but is it really the only way to make the web go around? With all the brilliant people working in tech across the world, is it really necessary to have half of them basically working on getting us to click more ads?
I understand the reason to want to get another humans opinion on some product rather than a marketing speak, but I also think one can research a product purchase to death. Spending hours searching and reading opinions, reviews, comparisons and specifications hoping to find the perfect match rather than just something that is "good enough". Just to argue with myself, I know that is exactly what the big brands wants us to do, by simply relying on brand recognition rather than making a critical informed decision. I don't know what the solution is here. Maybe using something like non-profit testing organizations like Consumer Reports, because it seems like we can't trust random internet people anymore - if we ever really could.
That's what marketing people do; look for anything involving people, and then figure out how to inject advertising into it. The whole process is insane, and stupid.
Think about it. You have something, like a bar or a community gathering. A place or an event where people come together. Now, it's almost guaranteed that this thing, this event, did not form because they want to learn about new goods, products, and services. Even if they're a hobby group of some kind, they probably formed because they enjoy their hobby (whatever it is). But it's probably just a, you know, gathering. Organic. Probably even fun.
Now, what happens is other people start showing up at the gathering. They come into the bar, they drive up for the gardening club or hang gliding group or whatever. But, unlike everyone else, all they do is want to sell you shit. "Hey, have you heard about this thing you could buy? This service you could get? I can tell you more; in fact, I will right now."
Who would let that guy keep coming? The bar patrons would make the bartender kick him out. In fact, most actual real world establishments (at least in America) almost invariably have "no soliciting" signs up specifically so some marketing person who's begging or selling or informing or proselytizing or whatever can't protest they didn't know when they're ejected.
But everything else in life is just overwhelmed by marketing dicks. Whatever it is, they're like "oooh, we could take that the fuck over, use it to sell. Cool, who can we sell our selling services to?" They're like damn cockroaches. Baseball game starts up on the weekends, Joe turns up wanting you to buy lawncare or lawn equipment from him, while Mary's trying to sell cosmetics, Frida has a line of sports equipment she'll tell you about, and Harry has all the latest news about the new movie coming out next week (and will help you preorder tickets on the spot).
We put up with this. People just let it happen. Worse, anyone who does make something that draws people is like "oh shit, I can cash it." So they do. Their group or gathering or whatever invites marketers in (for a fee), and now it's a marketing event.
The originator sells out (literally, that's what the term means), counts his payday, and meanwhile the group or whatever just sinks and slides and slumps until it's not a thing anymore. Because what was cool about it isn't cool anymore, since all that happens is "hey, buy this now. Would you like to know more? Hold still, here's more. Wait, don't not listen, that's not right; you have to listen, and you have to buy because we pay for all this you ad blocking asshole."
Then the thing isn't a thing anymore, but that's okay because they just move on to screw over the next thing.
The joke used to be "first, we kill all the lawyers." As insane as it is to contemplate, I think marketers might actually be worse. Lawyers don't hover on your damn doorstep. Sure if you end up in the hospital or the mechanic's shop there might be a couple who turn up offering their services, but you might actually even need them then. Meanwhile, everything under the sun, a marketing person is like "opportunity for me to corrupt it."
Great post, and I'll add something I find both galling and motivating. Most usecases, except for some like video and search that are more capital-intensive (and unlike the real-world bar, but like many physical examples), the costs of operation for most of these social spaces are very low, at least in centralized or small-scale contexts. (e.g. large-scale federation can get more expensive quickly) To me this gap presents a loud opportunity. Disintermediation of the profiteers is economically feasible. It's also pretty important because these forces broadly control how we use technology to connect with each other.
But they sure do hover over our interstates! (Not in some states though, o7 Vermont.)
This past week I had nothing to do but watch broadcast TV and it was all the shadiest advertisements. Lawyers were super common, especially if you include the annoying class action lawsuit schemes (it’s always fun to think about how much of that advertising budget is being siphoned away from the victims), but there were also shady weight loss schemes, used car dealerships, and all the misleading product ads you could dream of.
afaik the attorneys usually make a percentage of the award, so I don't think the advertising money is necessarily being siphoned away from victims. Not gonna say there aren't scummy class action suits, but with class action you HAVE to go out looking for members of your class to be remotely successful.
Most of the attorneys that really advertised heavily where I was back in the States were personal injury attorneys -- sometimes those are class action but usually they aren't. The term "ambulance chasers" is sometimes apt but at the same time, those types of lawsuits are often the only way people get compensated after being utterly shafted by a large corporation.
When was the internet not ad-infested? It has always been a cat-and-mouse game between advertising companies and users.
The only solution I see is a cultural change. We simply need to pay for services and make them non-profit. It doesn't have to cost much since websites make fractions of pennies per impression, and if we remove the multi-billion dollar ad industry from the equation, we can save a lot of money. But since everyone thinks ads are a good way to pay for services, we don't have good micropayment solutions to make that happen.
This situation won't change until users realize that paying via ads is more expensive than paying services directly, and I don't see any trend in that direction. Maybe the system needs to crash dramatically first, like it usually does.
There actually was a period, before 1993ish, up to about maybe 1995, where ads were super rare online. I mean really rare. And when ads started showing up, there were years of upheaval and questions and media pieces about the whole thing. But the marketing folks persisted, kept waving money, and everyone just ... kind of ... let it happen. And now ads are everything unless you run an ad blocker.
And some marketers and even some tech companies (Google, which has turned itself into a giant marketing firm) are looking for ways to ban or eliminate ad block because it's not fair they can't earn every possible cent off your eyeballs, back, and balls.
I dont think ads used to be quite as bad. There were popups for a while but blockers came quickly. But nowadays if I try to search for something I will come to some AI written article with an ad inserted between literally every sentence.
Of course it all depends on where you look.
I really miss the old single ad that used to be dropped on a page, pre massive banner ads that shortly followed.
After Chrome stops the ability to block ads, people will go to Firefox. Edge has some half decent adblocking still, and allows for the older ad blockers. However, as YT and others work on ways to block sharing their content unless you allow ads, we're heading downhill fast.
At some point we're going to be left with smaller websites which are the ones people will start visiting to get away from the ads. It's one of the reasons I enjoy Tildes, it's clean!
I wish. My mom just refuses to use any non-Chrome browser because of the integration. Gonna have to hope Lite mitigates the damage from ads enough, last thing I need to see on her computer is just the sheer amount of malware I used to before I installed an ad-blocker.
It's really disgusting to see once organic spaces that persued profit only to a minimal amount to cover their overhead turned into horrible characatures of themselves via pure, blatant greed. Reddits only goal for the last few years seems to have been making as much money as humanly possible at all costs.
It used to provide a real service to its users, but now it's just an engine to give its shareholders as much profit as possible by extracting as much residual goodwill as possible from the work of hundreds of millions of users posting useful information for free.
There's nothing unique about reddit as a platform that makes its userbase any more lucrative to advertisers, save for the fact that it didn't used to be a place designed to appeal to advertisers. Once more people realize that it is, just like every other large online platform, all of that goodwill will dry up, and reddit will no longer feel like a trusted place to get information for most people. At that point it will cease being a lucrative place for advertisers, and they'll leave. Then what will the site have left? We're just watching slow motion website suicide.
I hate how virtually the entire Internet has become this. It makes me really sad and diminishes my faith in the average human.
I think it may actually be possible to trace all of the decline of basic internet usability, accuracy, verifiability and discovery to ad business model and by extension to data business model.
There are some truly smart people whose main job is to get as many people as possible to buy things that they do not need or actually want since the amount of money involved is tremendous.
It is a shame that a rival business model with comparable reach never developed. Personally I would take borrowing cpu time.
"Fun" fact, we have Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays (AKA "the father of public relations") to thank for that:
See also: Adam Curtis' excellent BBC documentary, The Century of the Self, which shows just how deep the PR/Ad industry rabbit hole goes, and how devoid of ethics it is at its core.
I've often thought that just including an extra surcharge onto internet service that then gets distributed to website owners via some metrics that are somewhat resistant to being gamed (page views is the obvious, but really really bad one that comes to mind) would be a much better way of handling the problem.
I really can't stand advertising and the incentives it causes, but the internet being free really causes a lot of free rider problems for websites who operate as a business and post content that's expensive to produce.
It's one of the quirks of how internet culture came into being that the vast majority of people are not at all willing to directly pay for content of any kind on the internet, while at the same time being completely fine with paying for a book, movie, or video game. I don't think there's a really great way to change that culture; sites that operate on a subscription model generally don't do well, no matter how good their content is.
A toll to get into the Internet that then gets distributed based on how useful the sites are to people is the best way I can think of solving it.
My guess is that it has a lot to do with monetization offered. Subscriptions are a commitment as they almost almost auto-renew and are vastly overpriced for casual use.
For me personally when usually simply use a site like this usually once or twice a month subscribing for a month for something like 10$ and with the added risk that I forget to cancel is not something I am willing to do. If on other hand I could give them even an order more than what they would get from the ad impression, I would. I have no idea of course about broader trends but that is my take.
Especially for news sites I wish there was some good option for micropayments for single articles. But it will likely require some sort of corporation between all the news sites with a single entity that handles payment since fees will make small amount payments worthless. A service called Blendle did something like this but it only lasted a few years.
I’ve been thinking about this too — I don’t have the skills or experience to know if it would actually work but I’ve been toying with an idea for a while where rather than pay some price and get unlimited access for a month (the current model) you could have it like pay for unlimited access to XYZ articles.
Maybe instead of $10 for a month, I pay $12 for 12 articles — way too high a price for a single article, really, but if the two options were side-by-side when I tried to access something paywalled, I’d definitely be tempted to grab the once-off, don’t-keep-harvesting-from-my-bank-account, more expensive option. Plus, they’d get more of my dollars right now, which I feel like is a win for the business too.
I was looking at kagi a while ago. I think after this continuation of enshittification I might be going harder in that direction.
Aside from that I need a change in how I do things anyway so some focus is needed. My phone and the internet in general need to become more tools rather than entertainment and a social space and I need to go outside and walk on the grass more.
Late reply here, but I just went over to Kagi and I'm pretty happy with the results.
I tore through their free 100 searches in a few days and the experience convinced me to take out a subscription.
It's pretty expensive here in local dollars, and it hurts to pay almost $200 for a service google provides 'for free', but for my purposes as a fact-focused private individual kagi does a pretty good job of cutting through the dross.
Google - which I once loved - has become almost unusable.
A significant thing about this whole experience though is that I now see subscriptions as kind of inevitable; I reaaaaally didn't want to pay for this service, yet here I am.
But the truely horrible thing is that I know, deep in my heart, that it's only a matter of time until these paid subscription services start advertising to me, too...
Dead Internet theory seems more and more plausible these days.
Somewhat coincidentally, AdBlock on iOS blocks this page, presumably because of the way it interprets the title put into the URL.
I’ve been using AdGuard (paid from the AppStore) and while not as good as uBlock Origin it’s pretty decent without any weird hiccups like this… so far. While you’re in there, Dark Reader is well worth throwing in your cart.
I don’t think this is about AI bots writing comments… I don’t think Reddit would shoot themselves in the head with an idea like that…
I’m interested to see how this looks and if Reddit decides to “break reddit” with comments, there should be a way for automod to remove those.
Reddit doesn't have to allow it. It's already full of spam and bot accounts. Usually bots now, just repost old comments to appear as if they have a legit history. Once they're using AI to respond pretty organically, it will be much harder to detect them.
It's going to get to a ridiculous point where every discussion will have a ton of bots posting normal comments, so that when they eventually post their advertising or political comments, they'll look like legit users. It will be pretty easy for a company or a political party to run hundreds or thousands of these bots across various social media just to make it look like regular people like their thing.