<story><title>Advertising Is a Cancer on Society</title><url>http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blodovnik</author><text>This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works.&lt;p&gt;I bet there&amp;#x27;s any number of things this person values that simply wouldn&amp;#x27;t exist without advertising.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a childish and immature opinion really.&lt;p&gt;Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loathing advertising and at the same time depending on it for income is deeply hypocritical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>picometer</author><text>On the contrary, I think the author addresses this via the &amp;quot;cancer&amp;quot; metaphor:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s a malignant mutation of an idea that efficient markets need a way to connect goods and services with people wanting to buy them.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. It also became more effective. In the process, it grew to consume a significant amount of resources of every company on the planet.&lt;p&gt;I interpret the loose analogy as: if controlled advertising is like normal cell growth, then out-of-control resource-consuming advertising is like cancerous cell growth.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s much easier to control advertising if its deployment has more friction, e.g. in a physical newspaper or billboard. On the internet, it&amp;#x27;s different. We haven&amp;#x27;t figured out how to control advertising on the internet yet, such that it doesn&amp;#x27;t have all the harmful side effects cited by the author.&lt;p&gt;I bet that if we &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; figure it out, it will be because we&amp;#x27;ve made significant technological advancements in customer&amp;lt;=&amp;gt;product matchmaking* combined with an unrelenting focus on preserving humane values.&lt;p&gt;* This will also probably entail us, as a society, somehow reframing the way that customer&amp;lt;=&amp;gt;product matchmaking happens, putting more control into the customer&amp;#x27;s hands.&lt;p&gt;I think there is room for a bit of optimism here, but it means admitting that there are serious problems with the current system.</text></comment>
<story><title>Advertising Is a Cancer on Society</title><url>http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blodovnik</author><text>This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works.&lt;p&gt;I bet there&amp;#x27;s any number of things this person values that simply wouldn&amp;#x27;t exist without advertising.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a childish and immature opinion really.&lt;p&gt;Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loathing advertising and at the same time depending on it for income is deeply hypocritical.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kelnos</author><text>There &lt;i&gt;must&lt;/i&gt; be a way to do advertising that respects the consumer, and doesn&amp;#x27;t use some form of sketchy manipulation to achieve the desired goal.  And yet the vast majority of advertising is (to me) offensive.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;That&amp;#x27;s&lt;/i&gt; a rather childish and immature rejoinder.  The world of employment simply doesn&amp;#x27;t work that way, and people&amp;#x27;s job mobility is not infinite and frictionless.</text></comment>