Here’s another version of your example: Some people aren’t watching nearly enough snuff and torture videos. There are people who would like to watch them, but don’t know it exists. If I place ads for torture and snuff videos and some people decide to click on them while other people don’t, is that a problem?
As I mentioned earlier, advertising is like weaponry. Your example also reads to me like a classic justification for ‘everyone having guns’: “but what if I’m attacked by a rabid dog? If I have my gun I can protect myself! See, guns are ok to have!” Just because it’s possible to point out a positive use case, doesn’t mean that the remainder of the field is also positive.
And to be clear, I consider your example to be about as likely as the rabid dog example. Sure, in a world with perfect targeting it could be done, but we’re not in that perfect world, and consumers have a vested interest in keeping it that way. The new privacy initiatives are a big part of that.
If I place ads for torture and snuff videos and some people decide to click on them while other people don’t, is that a problem?
In that case I expect users to find viewing these ads incredibly unpleasant, on average, much more so than either the example I gave, or advertising in general?
(And almost all publishers would not be willing to work with an ad network that placed this kind of ad on their page)
You might find it unpleasant, but it’s it the job of Simurgh Followers to spread the Truth Of The Endbringers to everyone! Surely if people just watch enough of it, they will be converted.
The point is that the target gets to decide what’s acceptable and what isn’t, not the advertiser. The current system makes the advertiser the judge, and that’s not ok, even if we have managed to construct a sorta functional system that mostly takes care of the worst abuses.
There are a lot of decisions I can make to influence the ads I see. On facebook I can give quite detailed feedback. In the Google ecoystem I can tell google the interests for which I want to see ads. In many cases I can decide whether an app gets access to an identifier to give me customized ads or random ads.
Here’s another version of your example: Some people aren’t watching nearly enough snuff and torture videos. There are people who would like to watch them, but don’t know it exists. If I place ads for torture and snuff videos and some people decide to click on them while other people don’t, is that a problem?
As I mentioned earlier, advertising is like weaponry. Your example also reads to me like a classic justification for ‘everyone having guns’: “but what if I’m attacked by a rabid dog? If I have my gun I can protect myself! See, guns are ok to have!” Just because it’s possible to point out a positive use case, doesn’t mean that the remainder of the field is also positive.
And to be clear, I consider your example to be about as likely as the rabid dog example. Sure, in a world with perfect targeting it could be done, but we’re not in that perfect world, and consumers have a vested interest in keeping it that way. The new privacy initiatives are a big part of that.
In that case I expect users to find viewing these ads incredibly unpleasant, on average, much more so than either the example I gave, or advertising in general?
(And almost all publishers would not be willing to work with an ad network that placed this kind of ad on their page)
You might find it unpleasant, but it’s it the job of Simurgh Followers to spread the Truth Of The Endbringers to everyone! Surely if people just watch enough of it, they will be converted.
The point is that the target gets to decide what’s acceptable and what isn’t, not the advertiser. The current system makes the advertiser the judge, and that’s not ok, even if we have managed to construct a sorta functional system that mostly takes care of the worst abuses.
You mean the publisher, right?
Publisher, advertiser, the distinction does not matter. The point is that the target does not get to decide.
There are a lot of decisions I can make to influence the ads I see. On facebook I can give quite detailed feedback. In the Google ecoystem I can tell google the interests for which I want to see ads. In many cases I can decide whether an app gets access to an identifier to give me customized ads or random ads.