The two scenarios aren't that different. Sure, poisoning rivers is worse. But my point is that "think of the jobs it supports" is a poor argument for a practice that hurts people at large.
Unless you think that only companies that produce 0 pollution are acceptable, all you have to do is provide the cost/benefit analysis of (no advertising, less employment) vs. (advertising, more employment).
I don't think it's a poor argument, because I don't think "advertising" is hurting "people at large." I think that's a fantasy.
Of course there's some shitty, lame advertising, and there's some "manipulative" crap, and there's shady practices like ad tracking. No one is arguing those are good. Ad people are constantly mocking shitty advertising themselves. But no one is offering better solutions.
I'm always baffled that on a website that's devoted to technology, hosted by the most ambitious startup accelerator in the world, that topic comes up almost monthly, and no one has had any idea how to kill all of those ad tech startups by offering a superior solution. That's a huge opportunity to make billions and make the world a better place that I would support 100%.
Unfortunately, it seems like people are more interested in infantile hot takes and engineering vs. marketing culture war screeds. I'd rather we talked about the above.
Can someone who thinks advertising should disappear explain how they intend their new fangled startup to grow and reach its target market with no form of "advertising" or "marketing", bearing in mind things like opportunity cost and cash flow management? Feel free to include/exclude whatever you want from those labels and explain why.
> Of course there's some shitty, lame advertising, and there's some "manipulative" crap, and there's shady practices like ad tracking. No one is arguing those are good.
The argument I'm making in the article is that it's not some advertising that's manipulative and shady, but that it's almost all of it.
> I'm always baffled that on a website that's devoted to technology, hosted by the most ambitious startup accelerator in the world, that topic comes up almost monthly, and no one has had any idea how to kill all of those ad tech startups by offering a superior solution.
It comes up monthly because it's a problem, particularly on the Internet. But solutions are hard to find, because it's a hard problem. For one, it has prisonner's-dillema-like nature - if you show up with a way to do well without advertising, a competitor will take your method, add advertising to it, and proceed to do even better.
(Scott Alexander once wrote a very long essay specifically about such problems[0], and he didn't figure out anything actionable either. It's a hard problem, and arguably the root of all the big human-caused issues on this planet.)
I have no good solutions and I said that exact thing in the article. If I ever find one, I'll let the world know. Best I can think of now is individual and collective (i.e.: regulatory) ways of resisting and reducing the individual shady practices and negative consequences of those.