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by __MatrixMan__ 1113 days ago
It only surprises me a little. After all, I'm a software engineer and I have lots of criticisms about software engineering.

I like where you're trying to go re: independent entrepreneurs. If that were the norm I'd likely have no bone to pick with marketing.

I'm skeptical, though, because I think that having 2x as much money doesn't just make you 2x better at shaping the narrative as the other guy, it makes you 4x better. So power concentrates in the hands of the few, and it's their misbehavior that I take issue with.

> By blaming marketing, we excuse ourselves from taking responsibility of our role in shaping the world around us.

If all we do is blame, then yes. But I don't really blame marketing. As you say, something like it has been going on forever. I blame technologists like myself for building the web in a way that that is so easily abused by marketers and propagandists.

I want to see a world where it's considered rude to share a link data that contains ads, or malicious javascript, or anything else with ulterior motives. Instead, you should strip the malware and share the cleaned version.

That's an unreasonable ask in today's web. Ain't nobody got time to re-host cleaned copies of everything they want to talk about. But in a content-addressed world, it's a little different, users have a bit more control over which version gets circulated.

So I'm trying to build a web where it's easier for users keep it clean and harder for outsiders to corrupt. It's slow going, practically everything root-of-trust is off limits (dns, ssl, ...), but at least it feels like meaningful work.
1 comments
nickelcitymario 1113 days ago
I fully agree with you! Although I think it’s possible to market without violating data privacy. There’s a small but growing movement among marketers and advertisers to ditch all of that, to the best of our abilities.

I can’t help that Google and Facebook track everything, but I CAN avoid using those aspects of their tools.

I like to target based on content, not user profiles. Google Search ads, for example. Yes, Google is absolutely building profiles on everything you click, but we don’t have to use their remarketing tools and the like. We can simply say “show my ads on related content” or “show my ads on related searches”.

Do most marketers do that? Absolutely not. But I’d like to think the tide is turning, if only because of the public backlash.

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