<story><title>Why I Work on Ads</title><url>https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drcongo</author><text>As the person who originally asked &amp;quot;why&amp;quot; I feel like I ought to respond, though much of it is covered by other comments. I used to work in more trad advertising, so my question wasn&amp;#x27;t so much an objection to working in advertising itself, but specifically Google&amp;#x27;s version of advertising, which I see as gross overreach into people&amp;#x27;s personal lives.&lt;p&gt;In other comments people have mentioned YouTube subscriptions as being an alternative, it really isn&amp;#x27;t - OK, you don&amp;#x27;t see any adverts, but they&amp;#x27;re still harvesting and selling you. That a privately owned corporation is allowed to read your messages and sell what they find to the highest bidder is vile and honestly makes me wonder how we got here.&lt;p&gt;I quit advertising after only a couple of years because it blackened my soul. If I was helping to harvest people&amp;#x27;s personal lives for private profit I can only imagine it would have been worse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>notJim</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure why traditional advertising should get a pass here. Traditional advertising finds whatever fears and insecurities you have and exploits them to sell you stuff. If you&amp;#x27;re worried you&amp;#x27;re not manly enough, better buy an $80k truck with at least a V-6. If you&amp;#x27;re worried you&amp;#x27;re not a good enough parent, better give your kids some sugary crap. Exploiting people&amp;#x27;s psychology like this is also an overreach.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I Work on Ads</title><url>https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drcongo</author><text>As the person who originally asked &amp;quot;why&amp;quot; I feel like I ought to respond, though much of it is covered by other comments. I used to work in more trad advertising, so my question wasn&amp;#x27;t so much an objection to working in advertising itself, but specifically Google&amp;#x27;s version of advertising, which I see as gross overreach into people&amp;#x27;s personal lives.&lt;p&gt;In other comments people have mentioned YouTube subscriptions as being an alternative, it really isn&amp;#x27;t - OK, you don&amp;#x27;t see any adverts, but they&amp;#x27;re still harvesting and selling you. That a privately owned corporation is allowed to read your messages and sell what they find to the highest bidder is vile and honestly makes me wonder how we got here.&lt;p&gt;I quit advertising after only a couple of years because it blackened my soul. If I was helping to harvest people&amp;#x27;s personal lives for private profit I can only imagine it would have been worse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tomComb</author><text>Only a couple of years to quit something that blackened your soul?  A couple of years is a pretty common amount of time to remain in a job these days.&lt;p&gt;If I sound judgy there, note that you are condemning a lot of people.  Not me, actually, but I still take issue because the basis of your condemnation doesn&amp;#x27;t even make sense to me...&lt;p&gt;I think ads are a decent way to pay for a service and I prefer targeted ads to generic ads, especially since they are more effective (and if the idea is to pay for the service you are using, that is relevant).&lt;p&gt;So the issue is the data, and so the fact that Google has never sold or lost their user&amp;#x27;s data - you seem to imply otherwise - is extremely relevant, and is why I&amp;#x27;m OK with them storing my data.  In this industry that is very rare, and yet you consider Google the worst - I&amp;#x27;m having a hard time squaring that.</text></comment>