[dfrankow]

This is prisonner's dilemma / tragedy of the commons. The best-performing ads made more money, anyone who didn't grab attention enough would be strongly pushed towards grabbing more attention by industry norms. It was rational for every individual to grab more attention, but it was bad for the group.

Prisoner's dilemma problems are hard to solve.

[r00fus]

It's solved by banning that group/activity. When the value proposition is net-negative, there should be curbs on such activity.

[presentation]

Who's gonna ban? I'm cynical but if it's the ad network, then other ad networks will not ban that behavior and in turn outcompete the one that did. If it's the government (somewhere), there's a high probability the implementation of it will either be unenforceable (slap on the wrist for players making crazy money) or poorly implemented to the point of being counterproductive (can even happen if different governments have contradictory frameworks).

[IX-103]

The coalition for better ads? https://www.betterads.org/standards/

Google is now blocking ads for all Chrome users for sites that have shown ads that are considered bad. Of course there's a bunch of companies doing rules lawyering to squeak by and they haven't been adding new bad experiences like they should. It does seem like something an online petition would help with though, as the non-CMA members of the coalition would then have more data to throw around about how users view these annoying ad experiences.

[r00fus]

Perhaps some governmental oversight of how these data flows are harvested, and where they come from would be a good start.

Examine the toxic business models, then defang them.