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.

  • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    531 day ago

    Advertising doesn’t have to exist.

    Like, we could just pass laws restricting or outright banning certain kinds.

    I think people just forget that we can tell corporations they can’t do whatever the fuck they want.

    • @PunkRockSportsFan
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      3224 hours ago

      Think about how much waste in bandwidth and electricity happens just to make a webpage unreadable.

      Marketers are the opposite of accomplishment.

      It’s a job that only exists in capitalism

      If you’re a marketer and you read this, fuck you personally.

      • TheTechnician27
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        22 hours ago

        It’s a job that only exists in capitalism

        Not true. Government-sponsored propaganda campaigns need advertisers (“ads” are just corporate propaganda), public works projects need to be advertised for awareness, politicians will need people to advertise their candidacy, political movements will advertise their positions, and unless this is a command-control economy where one thing is delegated to exactly one entity, you’ll probably be advertising some service or product you do or make.

        • @PunkRockSportsFan
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          221 hours ago

          lol capitalism AND propaganda.

          I stand corrected.

          Is advertising just capitalist propaganda?

          • @blarghly@lemmy.world
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            718 hours ago

            Your name is Punk Rock Sports Fan.

            Suppose a local punk band wants to inform people that they will be playing a show. So they print out some posters and hang them around town.

            That’s advertising.

    • The Quuuuuill
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      824 hours ago

      they forget because the corporations pay for propaganda to tell them it’s impossible

      • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        They could just make media that people actually enjoy with that advertising budget…

        Like, you get that’s an option, right? I don’t think anyone wants their creative visions to be used to sell beer to college kids with burping frogs.

        We don’t all have to like the same 10 movies a year the big studios decide we have to like either.

        Those resources could be spread around to more people making a much higher quantity of media that doesn’t have to try to appeal to everyone.

        Prioritizing profits over everything doesn’t lead to a better life except for a very very small percentage of us, so why do we all go along with it?

        We can literally just stop putting profits over everything and 99.99% of our lives would improve immediately