{"items": [{"author": "ChristianKl", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#zqPJ3ejEr5wSzmdfB", "anchor": "lw-zqPJ3ejEr5wSzmdfB", "service": "lw", "text": "I find it unlikely that you couldn't capture reviewers in a system where advertising was banned. Inviting a reviewer to an all-experience paid trade show in the Maldives isn't advertising.

If you want a trustworthy review that isn't paid for by affiliate commissions you currently have the choice to go to ConsumerReports and pay for their subscription.", "timestamp": 1574781823}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#d4pwNEzt7NizHKBqR", "anchor": "lw-d4pwNEzt7NizHKBqR", "service": "lw", "text": "→ \n

Inviting a reviewer to an all-experience paid trade show in the Maldives isn't advertising.\n\n

I'm not so sure; that seems like a kind of sponsored review. Inviting a government regulator to a similar thing would be bribery, for example.\n\n

If you want a trustworthy review that isn't paid for by affiliate commissions you currently have the choice to go to ConsumerReports and pay for their subscription.\n\n

I really like that ConsumerReports works this way, and I respect them a lot for it. Unfortunately their main demographic is so different from mine that their reviews are generally not useful to me.\n", "timestamp": 1574783952}, {"author": "ChristianKl", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#CFc77Q9FaSve49A6w", "anchor": "lw-CFc77Q9FaSve49A6w", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → It would be a form of bribery but it seems that bribery always exists. It might take less direct ways but when there's money looking to influence behavior that money generally finds a way to be spend. ", "timestamp": 1574791449}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123851906622", "anchor": "fb-10100123851906622", "service": "fb", "text": "* People would be able to more directly assess the value of products without the unrelated associations that branding brings
* Energy and time that goes into social manipulation would be spent making better products
* Running for political office would be a lot more appealing and affordable", "timestamp": "1574784309"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123851906622&reply_comment_id=10100123865070242", "anchor": "fb-10100123851906622_10100123865070242", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm not so sure more energy and time would go into making better products. A better product is only worth something if you can convince people it's better.

My guess is that more markets would look like the PC parts market, where the pace of change has made advertising less effective.", "timestamp": "1574790099"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123851906622&reply_comment_id=10100123876257822", "anchor": "fb-10100123851906622_10100123876257822", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ben \"People would be able to more directly assess the value of products without the unrelated associations that branding brings\"

Maybe? Products would still have associations, including ones that brands intentionally built, just not ones built through advertising. And some advertising exists to inform people about aspects of products they might not otherwise know about.

\"Energy and time that goes into social manipulation would be spent making better products\"

If you're not spending time/money on ads you do have more resources available, but as Andrew says I don't see why to expect them to spend it on better products as opposed to just taking profits and exploiting people's higher switching costs.

\"Running for political office would be a lot more appealing and affordable\"

Political office is one of the cases that's very hard to figure out handle under a \"no advertising\" rule. Can I tell my friends I support a candidate and why -- presumably. Can I write an op-ed -- maybe? Can a newspaper endorse a candidate -- maybe? Can I pay a TV station to run a 30s slot about why I support a candidate -- probably not? Most advertising/sponsorship can be classified by \"is their a financial link between the alleged advertiser and the thing that's allegedly being advertised\" but political advertisements aren't like that. Advertisements for charity are also hard this way.", "timestamp": "1574793522"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123851906622&reply_comment_id=10100123904920382", "anchor": "fb-10100123851906622_10100123904920382", "service": "fb", "text": "→ In terms of assessing the effects of removing advertising on productivity, we can\u2019t just assume it would be redirected. It is entirely possible for a market economy to let productive capacity sit unused\u2014recessions are a real thing. So it might be transferred into higher unemployment.

We also have to consider the effect of eliminating the revenue streams of advertising-supported industries. The business models of broadcast TV, radio, Google, Facebook, news websites, and other free websites and apps would all collapse. All of these things would have to be supported by some other funding source.

Plus requiring users to pay for everything would lead to higher consumer switching costs and thus even more monopoly power than we see now.

I guess what I\u2019m saying is that this is very complicated and I don\u2019t think we will make a lot of progress with armchair theorizing.", "timestamp": "1574800921"}, {"author": "Richard_Kennaway", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#6zpxeBRvpf6Dtxked", "anchor": "lw-6zpxeBRvpf6Dtxked", "service": "lw", "text": "It's not clear to me what counts as advertising for the purpose of this scenario. It seems to me that without all the things I would call advertising, I would never discover many of the things I would want to buy.

A nicely presented shop window (or, for that matter, badly presented) is advertising. A book listing on Amazon is advertising. The web site for a business is advertising.", "timestamp": 1574787096}, {"author": "Alexander", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123881098122", "anchor": "fb-10100123881098122", "service": "fb", "text": "There seems to be a broad assumption prevailing that adverts mostly exist to make people buy/try new things, rather than continue using their current things. I could believe this is true but it doesn't match my (very uninformed) impression of where the largest advertising spends actually go. When I think of big advertisers, coca cola is top of my list, and a quick google suggests they do spend 15-20% of revenue on advertising. I don't think it's credible that their adverts* are about e.g. telling people something new about their product. More generally, to the extent advertising is used by large companies in oligopolistic markets out of necessity to keep up with their rivals, it seems pretty zero-sum/socially wasteful.

A possible way to dig into this would be to try and work out whether large companies (particularly market leaders) or small companies spend more of their revenue on advertising.

*Examples
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJSt4wP2ME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6liVLkW-U8", "timestamp": "1574795246"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123881098122&reply_comment_id=10100123900908422", "anchor": "fb-10100123881098122_10100123900908422", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Alexander yeah, in emerging industries, ads exist to tell people the product exists. In mature industries with saturated markets, ads are mostly about taking and preserving market share. A Honda ad might get people to buy a Honda instead of another brand but it will convince virtually nobody to switch from not buying a car to buying a Honda.", "timestamp": "1574799781"}, {"author": "sil ver", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#kSALnX5YknMeJsDXh", "anchor": "lw-kSALnX5YknMeJsDXh", "service": "lw", "text": "Advertisement is a component of the cost of a product, right? Some percentage of the total cost associated with producing and selling a product is ads. If they're no longer allowed, that component disappears.

I'm not saying this leads to a net decrease in cost, but it is a factor which leads to some decrease in cost, so if you want to argue that a net increase in cost takes place, you have to argue why the decreased competition matters more than the direct savings.", "timestamp": 1574795467}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#tkv2TMye2bW7xmik2", "anchor": "lw-tkv2TMye2bW7xmik2", "service": "lw", "text": "→ Have a look at https://www.jefftk.com/benham2013.pdf for a discussion around this with eyeglasses advertising\n", "timestamp": 1574803007}, {"author": "Micah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123885753792", "anchor": "fb-10100123885753792", "service": "fb", "text": "Of course, there's the example of Cuba, which may or may not align with this hypothetical scenario.

https://www.forbes.com/.../fantasize-about-a-world.../

https://www.theatlantic.com/.../how-do-cubans-do.../474507/", "timestamp": "1574796151"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123889616052", "anchor": "fb-10100123889616052", "service": "fb", "text": "I continue to like the model of advertising as establishing common knowledge https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/ If you didn't have this mechanism, I'd expect you'd see some alternative institutions emerge (ex. more power to religious institutions or governments, traditional providers of common knowledge)", "timestamp": "1574796793"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123889616052&reply_comment_id=10100123889735812", "anchor": "fb-10100123889616052_10100123889735812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I agree that's a good article; I link it in the \"A major way ads work is by building brand associations\" paragraph", "timestamp": "1574796867"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123889616052&reply_comment_id=10100123890389502", "anchor": "fb-10100123889616052_10100123890389502", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman cool I just read the facebook version.", "timestamp": "1574797144"}, {"author": "Leah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342", "service": "fb", "text": "Wait, reviewers would be *more* trustworthy? I feel like if above-board advertising became illegal, the easiest way to accomplish the same goals would be to curry favor with reviewers in hard-to-track ways -- something that already happens, but would happen a lot more in this scenario.", "timestamp": "1574798352"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123902270692", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123902270692", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Leah I think my \"assume enforcement is perfect\" was kind of silly, but my reviews comment was predicated on that", "timestamp": "1574800432"}, {"author": "Leah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123902495242", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123902495242", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ah, fair", "timestamp": "1574800476"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123906696822", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123906696822", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think \u201cif enforcement was perfect\u201d is hard to even define here.

Reviews are a very big deal in the video game industry, where a lot of emphasis gets placed on numerical scores. But the publications that do the reviews are highly dependent on the companies they review for content\u2014company-provided review copies of games, ability to play demos of early builds, tolerance for corporate \u201cleaks\u201d, access to developers for interviews, and so on.

Obviously, this creates an enormous set of conflicts of interest. But for purposes of this no-advertising rule, where in this web of corporate dependence do we shift from \u201cconflicts of interest that create sources of bias\u201d to outright \u201cadvertising\u201d?", "timestamp": "1574801668"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123909685832", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123909685832", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Elliot I was imagining that all of those perks would be disallowed.

ConsumerReports is an example of how you can do reviews without allowing paths which could lead to capture. (Though I'm enough not their demographic that their reviews are pretty useless to me)", "timestamp": "1574802463"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123910354492", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123910354492", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman is all political reporting now banned? Political reporting has exactly the same problems (except that the news division tends to be more tightly insulated from the opinion division than is true in video games journalism), and if you banned reporting based on interviews and leaks and allowed only reporting based on official public statements, it would be a massive restriction.", "timestamp": "1574802749"}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123916801572", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123916801572", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman I don't follow. We banned advertising. I don't see where you banned bribery. That seems like not a very interesting assumption; if you can imagine a world without bribery and back-scratching, why not just imagine a world where consumers already know what they want?", "timestamp": "1574805318"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123917709752", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123917709752", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ari yeah, maybe this aspect of the hypothetical isn't helping", "timestamp": "1574805711"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123918014142", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123918014142", "service": "fb", "text": "→ In which case instead of \"reviews become more trustworthy\" we get \"lots of pushing at the edge of whatever we define advertising to be\"", "timestamp": "1574805804"}, {"author": "Ari", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123919241682", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123919241682", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman it matters since a major purpose of advertising is to go around reviewers and other gatekeepers. And having an overt way around reduces the pressure to subvert them.

If you ban advertising, companies will invest the money in trying to curry favor with reviewers and journalists. This might be a lot more subtle than bribes. Think lavish catering at product announcements, and giving them white-glove customer support, not envelopes of cash.", "timestamp": "1574806287"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100123963967052", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100123963967052", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Aside from Consumer Reports, do you have other sources that you either find useful/reliable, or would find useful except they've been \"captured\"?", "timestamp": "1574822897"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123898453342&reply_comment_id=10100125018927902", "anchor": "fb-10100123898453342_10100125018927902", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Todd Wirecutter is where I go for product recommendations.", "timestamp": "1575380226"}, {"author": "Sarah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123901312612", "anchor": "fb-10100123901312612", "service": "fb", "text": "From a broader social lens, I wonder how much identity-building would be different (and then, important to the companies behind the ads, how people's behaviors and consumption would be affected). E.g. without countless fashion ads featuring one body female type, how many young women would develop eating disorders? This is several steps removed causally and therefore tenuous and hard to prove -- but, intuitively it feels very related.", "timestamp": "1574800030"}, {"author": "Viliam", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#AgK4SvoZih7c3JToy", "anchor": "lw-AgK4SvoZih7c3JToy", "service": "lw", "text": "Maybe I am too negative about advertising, but it seems like its major strategy is to annoy me. Like that advertisement I won't mention that I have recently seen (the first five seconds of) perhaps several hundred times, because YouTube plays it at the beginning of almost every video I see.

I feel quite helpless, because even if as a policy I would never buy a product I associate with such annoying campaign, it doesn't matter at a larger scale. If only 1% of targets would buy the product, it may still be profitable to annoy the remaining 99%. My suffering is an acceptable negative externality for people who cooperate on making sure I hear about the product several times a day.

Yeah, one could argue that my suffering is not an externality; it is how I pay for having access to YouTube. Anyway, the explanations how "the advertising provides me useful information about a product" feel completely alien to me. Telling me the name of the product several hundred times, whenever I want to listen to a song, I don't call that "useful information". Yes, I know already, it's a fucking spellchecker, you already told me. (Or should it be "more than a spellchecker"? Because in ads, every X is "more than X" in an unspecified way.)

I would probably be quite happy if some artificial intelligence would provide me relevant information about the products I might actually want. Well, not at the beginning of every song, of course. But the current state of advertising feels more like spamming everyone with random stuff. Despite all the information that Google et al. collect about me, the products they are trying to sell me are very generic. After having read all my e-mails, the only information they seem to actually use is my sex and age group.

So... my guess is that the world without "targeted advertising" would be almost exactly the same as the world we have now; except you wouldn't suddenly get dozens of ads for a product you have already bought (because apparently the strongest evidence for "being the kind of person who buys X" is having bought X recently).", "timestamp": 1574800938}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#foYtdQQp6rHv7J8px", "anchor": "lw-foYtdQQp6rHv7J8px", "service": "lw", "text": "→ \n

After having read all my e-mails...\n\n

This is a minor quibble, but Google doesn't use emails to target ads anymore: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/\n", "timestamp": 1574802948}, {"author": "artifex", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#oNSjhgvmezhRs7ims", "anchor": "lw-oNSjhgvmezhRs7ims", "service": "lw", "text": "→ because apparently the strongest evidence for "being the kind of person who buys X" is having bought X recently


In general, that you’ve bought something is evidence that you’re the kind of person who buys that thing. Furthermore, if you’ve bought certain items recently, you are far more likely to buy a similar product (for example, you regret the purchase and want to replace it) than someone who hasn’t.", "timestamp": 1574809465}, {"author": "Gurkenglas", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#KfZ4Eup2Wvz5879bZ", "anchor": "lw-KfZ4Eup2Wvz5879bZ", "service": "lw", "text": "→ Perhaps those 99% could somehow come together to pay consumers of the product to stop buying it, in order to make their suffering matter to that advertiser?\n", "timestamp": 1574811703}, {"author": "Douglas_Knight", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#No2T4Jg7pTJewQ66T", "anchor": "lw-No2T4Jg7pTJewQ66T", "service": "lw", "text": "→ You could pay youtube to buy out the ads. Have you considered doing so?

When youtube launched their subscription service, they now have two customers and thus divided loyalties. They adjusted their policies to be more annoying, to put more pressure on the user to subscribe. So this is not quite the pure advertising example.", "timestamp": 1574868286}, {"author": "Lanrian", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#fiP9KmrvsCbxeS4rh", "anchor": "lw-fiP9KmrvsCbxeS4rh", "service": "lw", "text": "→ Maybe I am too negative about advertising, but it seems like its major strategy is to annoy me. Like that advertisement I won't mention that I have recently seen (the first five seconds of) perhaps several hundred times, because YouTube plays it at the beginning of almost every video I see.

FYI, adblockers (like ublock origin) work fine to prevent all of youtube's ads, including the video ones.", "timestamp": 1574889933}, {"author": "mr-hire", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#k3abgQS2RuZoMaBuT", "anchor": "lw-k3abgQS2RuZoMaBuT", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → Yes, but this also involves using a service without paying for it (one framing of this is stealing)\n", "timestamp": 1575040658}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123906607002", "anchor": "fb-10100123906607002", "service": "fb", "text": "I wonder about how this would relate to services, not just goods. Can I tell you that I like my therapist? Can I tell you that our house painter did a good job?", "timestamp": "1574801631"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123906607002&reply_comment_id=10100123909930342", "anchor": "fb-10100123906607002_10100123909930342", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Hollis I think so, as long as no benefit from your report gets back to you?", "timestamp": "1574802524"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123906607002&reply_comment_id=10100123910005192", "anchor": "fb-10100123906607002_10100123910005192", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Except \"I recommended someone good, my friend went with them, my friend likes me\" is kind of this", "timestamp": "1574802554"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123906607002&reply_comment_id=10100123910090022", "anchor": "fb-10100123906607002_10100123910090022", "service": "fb", "text": "→ As is \"my plumber keeps getting referrals via me and so now gives me extra good service\"", "timestamp": "1574802587"}, {"author": "clone of saturn", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#zAWeCRtvtJrYMzMSy", "anchor": "lw-zAWeCRtvtJrYMzMSy", "service": "lw", "text": "If reviewers would indeed be more trustworthy, I don't see why they couldn't take over the function of letting interested people know about new products etc. that you say would go away.\n", "timestamp": 1574803450}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#dNoSqrnmxFW2oBB36", "anchor": "lw-dNoSqrnmxFW2oBB36", "service": "lw", "text": "→ The discussion on the FB version of the post convinced me this part isn't right. Yes, if you assume perfect enforcement then the reviewers become trustworthy, but in practice reviewing would be so lucrative and there would be so many ways to disguise compensation that reviews would probably be even more captured.\n", "timestamp": 1574822478}, {"author": "Neela", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123912545102", "anchor": "fb-10100123912545102", "service": "fb", "text": "People would just advertise but in different ways. Word of mouth, testimonials, gossip, it's all advertising. Only the channels have changed.", "timestamp": "1574803577"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123912545102&reply_comment_id=10100123928962202", "anchor": "fb-10100123912545102_10100123928962202", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think only the part that\u2019s under the control of the entity being marketed is advertising. If the Elizabeth Warren campaign buys an ad on Facebook, that\u2019s advertising. So is their Facebook page, and the campaign website itself. But if I tell my friend I support Warren because [reason], that\u2019s not advertising unless the Warren campaign paid me or otherwise compensated me.", "timestamp": "1574809488"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123912545102&reply_comment_id=10100123932799512", "anchor": "fb-10100123912545102_10100123932799512", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Elliot and if an Americans For Warren PAC buys the ads?", "timestamp": "1574810940"}, {"author": "Elliot", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123912545102&reply_comment_id=10100123938039012", "anchor": "fb-10100123912545102_10100123938039012", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman yes, good point.", "timestamp": "1574813408"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100123835903692?comment_id=10100123937145802", "anchor": "fb-10100123937145802", "service": "fb", "text": "The review business would flourish since this would then become the major source of information on products.", "timestamp": "1574813085"}, {"author": "cousin_it", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#wDN8MGoLpqeTubFmS", "anchor": "lw-wDN8MGoLpqeTubFmS", "service": "lw", "text": "Whenever I use adblock, or visit a place that bans roadside billboards, I'm dipping a toe in your imagined world. By your argument, that should make me worse off. But to me it feels better.\n", "timestamp": 1574813537}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#TyE9gEaa2tC7AzLJZ", "anchor": "lw-TyE9gEaa2tC7AzLJZ", "service": "lw", "text": "→ The effects I'm describing are mostly about how advertising changes market-wide dynamics. One person not seeing any ads, or all the people not seeing one kind of ad, would have disproportionately smaller effects.\n

\"Ads are annoying and we should have fewer\" is a very different sort of claim than \"ads are fundamentally illegitimate because they operate by corrupting your desires\".\n", "timestamp": 1574817325}, {"author": "cousin_it", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#dWwsQE9AfWagEHnPR", "anchor": "lw-dWwsQE9AfWagEHnPR", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → The wording \"disproportionately smaller effects\" seems like assuming the conclusion. To me, using adblock has a positive effect. You say if everyone does that, another effect will arise and the sum of two effects will be net negative. But in econ, when everyone chooses what's good for them, the result is usually net positive. There's an exception in case of tragedy of the commons, but many people refusing to look at ads isn't a tragedy of the commons, because all goods involved are private and excludable.\n", "timestamp": 1574848083}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#Msjkb332JrHsattis", "anchor": "lw-Msjkb332JrHsattis", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → I think this is simpler to talk about with the case of publisher funding than purchasing decisions, and your arguments still apply. If you start using adblock you observe your experience on news sites is better, with no visible deterioration in the quality of reporting available to you. But each adblock user slightly decreases the publisher's income, and a world where adblock usage was, say, 98%, would mean you really couldn't run sites supported by advertising.\n

Applying \"if everyone does what's good for them\" here is tricky. The publisher would like to say \"you're welcome to read my articles for free, as long as you don't bypass the ads\", and then adblockers let users take one half of the offer without the other. Which I guess violates the \"excludable\" premise you have above?\n

A rough analogy (and I'm just talking about the economics and explicitly not trying to say adblocking is morally similar to shoplifting) is that you could save money by shoplifting, and it would be good for you individually. But the more people shoplift the less a business model of \"put products on shelves, users will pay for them when they leave\" stops working.\n", "timestamp": 1574857049}, {"author": "cousin_it", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#YLqbeRFv3qTbzdw8X", "anchor": "lw-YLqbeRFv3qTbzdw8X", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → → Yeah, \"excludable\" is the key part. Privatizing the commons is supposed to prevent tragedy of the commons and lead to an efficient outcome. Since privately owned websites can choose anytime to use an adblock detector (these exist and work fine) or start charging viewers, we should expect an efficient outcome.\n", "timestamp": 1574859556}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#k4Jg2N8SNeamqY5zG", "anchor": "lw-k4Jg2N8SNeamqY5zG", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → → → Why would you say adblock detectors work fine? My understanding is any time a popular site starts using one, adblockers work around the detector: https://medium.com/@BugReplay/f-kadblock-how-publishers-are-defeating-ad-blockers-how-ad-blockers-are-fighting-back-678392e03ac1\n

EDIT: another example (https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/883) and a long list of issues (https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=anti-adblock)\n", "timestamp": 1574861489}, {"author": "cousin_it", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#6T2zMAuB3WQRsRY4j", "anchor": "lw-6T2zMAuB3WQRsRY4j", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → → → → → You're probably better informed than me, but I thought it was relatively easy to deny service in case of adblock (without trying to show a content teaser, nag message, or ad). Or at least that's easier than getting an ad through.\n", "timestamp": 1574875244}, {"author": "Pattern", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#92E3xEXA8LsTjAuXL", "anchor": "lw-92E3xEXA8LsTjAuXL", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → Ads are annoying. How can we have fewer?", "timestamp": 1574961502}, {"author": "Douglas_Knight", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y374EGeNhKYnBFNhC#MGPMhfgcxWvYdTZzq", "anchor": "lw-MGPMhfgcxWvYdTZzq", "service": "lw", "text": "I don't disagree with any of the object-level claims, but I think the framing is confused and could be greatly improved.One way to think about this is, what would the world would be like if we didn’t al­low ad­ver­tis­ing?

I don't think that is what you are doing in this essay. Instead you are proposing other methods by way which advertising could work. That's what Kevin does and I think his essay is better because he is explicit that this is what he is doing. Once you have explicitly said that ads contain information, maybe then it is good to talk about the hypothetical to explain how important information is. But asserting your hypothetical using your model of the world seems to me rhetorically poor. If you don't understand how you disagree with other people, perhaps there is no other approach, but in this case you do know.

Asking people to make open-ended investment in hypotheticals could be useful, but how? If people have coherent theories, then they should find it easy to think about hypotheticals without changing their minds. If people have incoherent theories, maybe it is useful to get them to notice that by having them consider hypotheticals. But I don't think that you're doing that. Also, this seems very difficult, probably only viable in an interactive way. If the writer of a static essay knows exactly how the audience theories are incoherent, eg, because they hold two contradictory theories, then it is probably better to write down the contradiction explicitly. For an example of this logical structure, Kevin does this with tricking vs Homo economicus. But that's not the same rhetorical structure, because his audience doesn't actually believe that. (I dub this rhetorical move the Robin Hanson.)I’ve re­cently had sev­eral con­ver­sa­tions around whether ad­ver­tis­ing is harm­ful, and speci­fi­cally whether ads pri­mar­ily work by trick­ing peo­ple into pur­chas­ing things they don’t need.

It would probably be better to expand on this. There are several separate questions. Ads have two obvious costs, the cash to the advertiser and the attention to the audience. Why do advertisers buy ads? Is it to trick the audience, or to inform? That is the topic of the essay, explicitly bracketing off of the attention cost. But, reading the responses, not explicit enough.", "timestamp": 1574867720}]}