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by lostlogin 3661 days ago
I perceive the industry to be a waste of very talented people's time and skill sets. The brains doing this stuff could solve some huge problems yet they are just working on ways of serving up more adverts in more distracting ways. Somewhat in conflict with this view of mine is my interest in the stories that come out of the industry and the clever ways hard problems are solved.
2 comments
manigandham 3660 days ago
It takes all kinds of people and jobs to make this world work. There's no such thing as just realigning effort to "solve some huge problems".

Advertising is a massive industry and while it does have some plenty of annoying outputs, it has also powered the commercialization and expansion of the internet to what we have today. The world has definitely benefited from all the rich content, services and companies like Google that are available because of it.

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lostlogin 3660 days ago
> There's no such thing as just realigning effort to "solve some huge problems".

There is, it's just very hard to do and usually requires some potential catastrophe and a lot of money to do. Yes, advertising has funded some great things, but many of them I avoid. I want my data to stay where I put it and don't want to be tracked and sold. Pretty sure I'm losing though.

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mercer 3660 days ago
Hah, I agree. That's why I developed some degree of depression and vowed never to do this kind of thing again. Not that I'm likely to solve some huge problems, but at the very least I don't want to make the world a worse place.

I don't know if your view and interest are in conflict though. Valuable knowledge can come from bad sources, no?

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lostlogin 3660 days ago
Thanks for the reply - I was trying to avoid sounding insulting. There are ethical dilemmas with my job so it would be a little rich to go there. Regarding good data, bad source (adding to Godwin's law), Nazi medical experiments and the more recent use of their data. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
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mercer 3660 days ago
Hehe, that was exactly what I was thinking of, but I wanted to avoid Godwinning. So I Godlost.
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