Comment on Why It's OK to Block Ads (2015)
Auth@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I used ad blocker but I cannot imagine a world without ads. What does discoverablity look like in a world without ads?
I think ads have the same issue as content recommendation algo, that being that they’re bad but useful.
glog78@digitalcourage.social 5 weeks ago
@Auth @floofloof
IMHO: Advertisment is another word for recommendation. While advertisment is seen as bad a recomendation isn't.
So what advertisment never makde happen is making themself usefull to the consumer. Most consumer want maybe a !!! usefull recommendation !!! but not someone trying to force you to buy a certain product.
So what was the time before ads ... it never existet ... even before tv radio had advertisment. Even back in this day people hated the advertisment and did music recordings cutting the advertisment and talking out.
Some old people might remember press record ... press stop ... rewind a little bit ... and all of this.
The alternative was to pay alot of money for music ...
xep@discuss.online 5 weeks ago
Word of mouth existed far before advertising, and as for algorithmic discoverability retailers do a fine job of that already.
Auth@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Ads try to make useful recommendations thats why google puts so much effort into trying to figure out who you are. Companies today can suggest their products to exactly who they think would most want them. But this comes with the downsides of user privacy.
If we had no ads then companies would pretend to be real people and make product suggestions. We can never escape it.