[Nextgrid]

It’s kind of sad that all this engineering effort was spent to essentially make the internet a worse place for everyone and waste users’ time and attention.

Imagine if a crime syndicate would brag about their efforts to make their worldwide criminal activities more efficient.

[_cs2017_]

I can totally see where you're coming from. But major engineering achievements require efforts of many skilled people, who often like to be paid really well for their work. And the way the world works today is that a lot of big money is in the fields that are of questionable value to the society: advertising, finance, military, etc. And even in the fields that seem at first glance to be socially valuable, like health care, most of money comes not from healing people but from playing the game of "rip off public or private coverage providers".

Therefore I think the best we can hope for is that engineering breakthroughs achieved in profit driven fields will gradually leak into other fields where they can actually be used to improve people's lives.

[paulkon]

This is why federal research and development agencies should pay higher salaries to attract said engineers.

Breakthroughs achieved would be funded by taxpayers and customers of these agencies and the patents for technology produced would be more likely enter the public domain.

[_cs2017_]

It is very hard to get a large group of people to work efficiently towards some goal; very few organizations manage to do that. As far as I know such success stories are even more rare in the public sector than in the private sector. This means diverting resources away from private enterprise towards government agencies is not guaranteed to improve the situation.

[badfrog]

Yeah I'd gladly switch to government work hours, retirement benefits, etc if they paid anywhere near what I make in finance.

[mochomocha]

... So when it's Google or FB blogging about technology originally developed to serve ads, it's hype and cool... But when the authors are more honest about the motivation behind developing a certain piece of tech, it's "kind of sad"?

[Nextgrid]

I’ve never said anything Facebook or Google have done is ever cool, however I do understand your point of view as my opinion is not representative of what the majority of HN feels. But I’d like to set the record straight, I never think anything FB or Google is doing is cool.

[Negitivefrags]

Your opinion is exactly what the majority of HN feels.

As I read this article I was thinking "I bet the first comment on the article will just be complaining about the effort going into ads", and I wasn't wrong.

Honestly, it's becoming tiresome. Low latency computing is a great area to talk about, and instead it's derailed by this essentially off-topic discussion.

[packetslave]

Do you legitimately think the world would be a better place if gmail, youtube, flickr, reddit, EVERY search engine, and basically every web content site disappeared?

Because that's what happens if you don't have web advertising. Free things disappear without revenue.

Or maybe you'd prefer to go back to the days of randomly-targeted or "PUNCH THE MONKEY" ads. Because THAT'S what happens without ad auctions and targeting.

The reality is: advertisers and ad-supported sites WANT to show you a relevant ad that you're likely to click (modulo obvious bad actors). That's how they get paid. Anything else is, by definition, "[wasting] users' time and attention."

[wongarsu]

A decade ago Amazon ads were for books and other products related to the page I was on. Today I get Amazon ads for whatever I had open on Amazon. I far prefer the old content-targeted ads to modern user-targeted ads.

[strken]

No idea what the GP wants, but I want to go forward to a world where Westinghouse runs tasteful washing machine ads with no javascript on articles about buying a new home, instead of being able to microtarget me based on my income range and my regular visits to the laundromat to run washing machine ads next to articles about Syria.

[hombre_fatal]

Ultimately I ended up being convinced by Sam Harris' argument: that advertising convoluted our relationship with reality and we started expecting everything for free.

I run some services that are paid for by advertising and I see this myself: the second I start trying to charge money, I'm now the one service that people see as costing them money when all my competitors are "free." And the associated entitlement is toxic.

To answer your first question, imagine a world where advertising doesn't exist and we simply pay for those things.

I was reluctant to admit this since ads paid my way through university. But as ads make less and less money, it's harder and harder to ignore the truth. And while ads are viable, they impede the necessary cultural transformation we'll need to form a healthier relationship with the goods and services we want.

[DoreenMichele]

I decry this a lot. Ad blocker use is rampant. People don't want to pay for subscriptions. Etc.

It actually boils down to an expectation of slave labor for a lot of things, which people don't want to hear.

[ilikehurdles]

> Do you legitimately think the world would be a better place if gmail, youtube, flickr, reddit, EVERY search engine, and basically every web content site disappeared?

They might disappear, but not without replacements. Hosted email, videos, photos, discussion boards, and search are all services that would exist with or without a business model built on ad money. I don't care if they are free or paid. But the fact is that the privacy-depraved model wins because it's provided for free to the eyeballs.

And yes, I'd rather have punch-the-monkey ads. I'd even go so far as to say that I'd prefer my search results and most content-provider's offerings not ordered and filtered based on my previous behaviors.

[wolco]

I miss punch the monkey ads. Life seemed more carefree.

The web doesn't work without free services. For everyone who has extra money they would gladly use to pay for everysite they visit the majority won't and you will end up buying overpriced bundles from your phone company and your privacy will be worse. Free allows users a chance not to be tracked. Once you start involving money you can easily be traced.

[dooglius]

Everything you describe could exist as a paid service, and I suspect would be much higher quality that way.

[wolco]

A paid youtube? Not sure they would be worth it without the endless amounts of free content by free users.

Facebook? There are plenty of sites like facebook without users. Charge for an account.. reduce the userbase, the platform loses value without the free users.

[badfrog]

> A paid youtube? Not sure they would be worth it without the endless amounts of free content by free users.

Even if it were possible to convert these to paid services now, there's no way they could have started out paid with no existing content/user base.

[Nextgrid]

A paid Facebook means it would be designed to actually serve you (instead of wasting your time) and people would use it to connect with friends instead of liking endless shitposts.

[wolco]

All your friends or anyone you want to contact would need to be paying customer.

If it is just friends why waste money on facebook just to talk. Most would rather spend that money on a more focused community/hobby like gaming and connect ingame.

[mikeash]

I’d much rather go back to randomly targeted “punch the monkey” ads. Far better than the current crop of ads which are usually one of fraudulent, malware, or borderline pornographic.

Was I supposed to respond “oh no, current ads are so much better”?

[bearmcbearsly]

> current crop of ads which are usually one of fraudulent, malware, or borderline pornographic.

That doesn't match my experience at all, but maybe you can chalk it up to targeting?

[dylz]

My own experience is that from running adblock all the time, aggressive blocking measures, and disabling targetting/personalisation, I get the absolute worst ads/ad networks when I do get them (for example when Firefox broke all addons a bit ago). Borderline malware, redirecting popup driveby Flash Player installers, it just feels like without enough of an ad profile built up you get whatever trash is left, no major brands or companies

[legohead]

I'd love to read what a crime syndicate does to improve their activities. Doesn't mean I agree with them... but no doubt it's really interesting and I might learn something from it.

[pas]

Drug smuggling submarines. There was the court case of El Chapo and his IT guy testified about how he requested everyone's phones to be bugged. Also a secure comm network built for his organization, that then ended up bringing him down, because the IT guy folded (the FBI made a deal with him), etc.

Also you could learn a lot about tunnel building, and tunnel detection.

[Nextgrid]

The crime syndicate scenario would be actually better because unlike advertisers, they actually provide (illegal) products such as drugs that have demand. I can give you examples of people happily buying drugs, but I’m not sure I could ever find someone who’d be willing to look at ads/spam voluntarily, let alone pay to do so.

[teej]

Ads aren’t crime and ads aren’t universally net negative.

[atomical]

Depends. Google's real-time bidding is being investigated under GDPR.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/irish-data-privacy-watchdog-...