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mhhf1ve
mhhf1ve
8/15/2016 5:17:57 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: Hockey helmets, real SPAM, and Ad Blocking: a thought
> "Officially no site supported by ads likes it, and advertisers hate it."

I'd argue that is not true. There are plenty of sites that love their sponsors -- as long as the sponsors aren't terrible. Charlie Rose started with sponorship from Coca-Cola, and his show ran for many years with that sole sponsor -- and happily without distraction. 

The problem isn't the advertisements, but how the advertisements are executed. Obviously, you can't sell used cars with a "branding campaign" ads like Apple, Dove or Coca-Cola, but some of the best ads are works of art in themselves. Superbowl ads are ads that people actually enjoy watching (sometimes). If only more ads were entertaining or informative, and not distracting and annoying!

Soap operas used to be sponsored by.. soap makers -- and the shows were popular and not THAT annoyingly filled with soap ads. Somehow advertisers have gotten into the "race to the bottom" ads that you describe. It's sad, but it didn't necessarily have to be this way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what can turn it around now -- besides adblockers and the like.

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mhhf1ve
mhhf1ve
8/15/2016 5:06:23 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: An update
> "Perhaps Adblock's fee was a lot higher than Facebook was willing to pay."

I doubt it. I think Facebook simply wanted to avoid the scrutiny of having to make sure its ads were "acceptable" by some arbitrary set of 3rd party rules. Facebook could easily pay, but it sets a bad precedent if they pay for a service that restricts how they might be able to introduce new ads in the future. 

I also assume that someone at Facebook did the PR math and decided that it looks worse in the court of public opinion if Facebook pays to get whitelisted on adblockers than it does if it tries to circumvent adblockers with technology. I think people expect facebook to try to use technology to "hack" everything -- and that's acceptable to most users.

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mhhf1ve
mhhf1ve
8/15/2016 5:01:38 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: The problem is easily solved, if we stop worshipping the private sector
> "Fraud and abuse is negligible in US social programs.."

Just to clarify -- I wasn't talking about US social programs, but tontines. Tontines of the early 1900s were abused and often fraudulent, which is why tontines are illegal even today.

However, if there were a trustworthy way to get tontines back into fashion (using DAOs or cryptocurrency schemes that aren't as prone to abuse), then maybe a tontine system could be implemented for some of our social security woes?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/opinion/09baker.html?_r=0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/28/this-sleazy-and-totally-illegal-savings-scheme-may-be-the-future-of-retirement/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization

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Michelle
Michelle
8/15/2016 2:12:06 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: An update
@mhhf1ve Maybe they are having a fued. Perhaps Adblock's fee was a lot higher than Facebook was willing to pay.

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Michelle
Michelle
8/15/2016 2:10:23 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: An update
@mhhf1v thanks for sharing that bit of disappointing news. I really had no idea and I can't say I'm not surprised. 

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Ariella
Ariella
8/15/2016 11:00:48 AM
User Rank
Author
Re: this is it
@JohnBarnes Never cared for Charmin myself, though I do recall the commercials. I must be dating myself here.

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JohnBarnes
JohnBarnes
8/15/2016 8:11:51 AM
User Rank
Platinum
Hockey helmets, real SPAM, and Ad Blocking: a thought
The Nobel-prizewinning economist Thomas Schelling, whose book Micromotives and Macrobehavior I can't recommend enough, analyzed problems of Tragedy of the Commons (or multiplayer repeated prisoner's dilemmas) and noted that many times the best possible position is to be the only cheater in a world of honest people. (I would argue this is part of why local democratic control is so bad for schools, and have at other times...)  For example, when the NHL started requiring helmets, in a secret poll, the great majority of pro hockey players wanted them, but they didn't want to be that dorky guy that wears a helmet when no one else does. The player's union even put on a show of opposing the helmet rule and then "graciously" accepted defeat so everyone got to wear helmets.

Similarly the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed with a great deal of covert support from big canned food packers who had more to gain from canned food having a reputation for safety and cleanliness than they had to lose from having to spend a penny per can not to use formaldehyde to preserve green vegetables or to keep the waste chute away from the salvage chute. They couldn't afford to be the most expensive brand out there but the dirty and dangerous cheap brands were hurting everyone's business. Still, while slipping a fair bit of money to Congress to pass the PFDA, they went on publicly ranting about socialism and our inalienable right to formaldehyde and poop in our food.

Now consider Ad Block. Officially no site supported by ads likes it, and advertisers hate it. But the truth is that distracting videos in the margins, autoplay audio ads, trick ads that open pages when you click "Close," floating boxes that block what you're trying to read, etc. etc. etc. do make people hate advertising and cause them to ignore all ads if at all possible.

Furthermore unrestricted advertising triggers a race to the bottom: if your ad has a floating dancing girl in a bikini in front of the news report the reader clicked there for, my ad needs to be bigger, faster, louder (and probably with smaller bikinis), and the next advertiser's ad needs to add flashing lights and non-metaphorical sirens. 

Further-furthermore, processing time and space get taken up by these enormous distractions, and crashes become more likely, and the whole experience is severely degraded.

So just maybe, like hockey helmets and spam, ad blocking is something that enhances the value and gives people what they actually want, but everyone needs to complain in public that they're not allowed to cheat. (Other examples: school dress codes (every kid says they hate them in public but in private surveys many students are relieved not to have to status-compete); the beaning rule in baseball (players need to talk tough but they are reasonably terrified of 100 mph fastballs aimed at their heads); talk-off rules in sales (in many fields the FTC says that if you determine that a possible buyer cannot benefit from your product/service you must tell them this and try to help them decide not to buy; every salesperson I've worked with in those fields  has complained about that, but nobody wants to have to compete for sales numbers with con-men who bilk the gullible and the foolish).

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JohnBarnes
JohnBarnes
8/15/2016 7:48:04 AM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: An update
mhhf1ve,

AdBlock users adopt AdBlock because they control ads at the page level, screening for things like ads that jump in front of the content, animations that move around in the margins, easily findable close buttons that work right away (and are not purposely mis-labeled links to more advertising) and other things that detract from the reading experience (plus, of course, places that have not paid to be whitelisted).  The advertisers pay to get their own ads whitelisted, and Ad Blocker will only let them do that if the ads meet the criteria. Enabling/ creating a "bribe-in" system for third-party ads (which is what a blanket whitelist for Facebook would do) would destroy the value of the service to the users, and wipe out any incentive for all the now-paying customers to buy whitelisting at all; and anyway, Ad Blocker scans in the reverse order for that (first they throw out the obnoxious ones according to the specified criteria, and only then do they check to see which of the remaining ads are whitelisted). 

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JohnBarnes
JohnBarnes
8/15/2016 7:35:26 AM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: this is it
Ariella, vnewman,

Absolutely true to the individual experience -- there are several products I won't buy because of their advertising -- but unfortunately, all but completely false to what the statistics show. Name recognition is so powerful in buying decisions, and branding is now so trained into the culture, that obnoxious advertising does better because all that really matters for many products is the association between Name X and Product Y.  For several years Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin was the most-hated commercial on TV; during those years Charmin sales grew explosively, because no matter how much people disliked an exhibition of the strange fetishes of a depraved store manager, they by-gum remembered that Charmin was a name for toilet paper.

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mpouraryan
mpouraryan
8/15/2016 4:58:19 AM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: An update
Welcome to the New Week You all :)

As I assessed the discourse here, my view it:  Not surprising at all--because Facebook is dependent on it.  As for Facebook itself, it depends on what you use it for--some are not "comfortable".   But the engagement @ Facebook is frankly too enticing not to pass up--and if Facebook is taking steps to makes things even more seamless--kudos to them!!!



 

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