[ThrowawayR2]

The attention economy is powered by payments from maximizing ad impressions but the public is increasingly recognizing that the attention economy is mentally and culturally toxic. To break free of the attention economy death spiral that we're in, internet advertising has to undergo a pretty drastic dieback. In other words, the whole thing has to fall apart and the sooner the better.

[lazide]

That would mean the death of at a minimum Meta (market cap $1.5 trln), most of Google (market cap $2.1 trln, lets say half would die). So what, a couple trillion haircut on the US stock market, and more of a GDP hit than if the entire US military suddenly stopped getting funded.

Not to mention the secondary effects - a LOT of businesses are built based on online ads. A LOT.

[ben_w]

> That would mean the death of at a minimum Meta (market cap $1.5 trln), most of Google (market cap $2.1 trln, lets say half would die).

And nothing of value was lost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSGVk2KVokQ

> So what, a couple trillion haircut on the US stock market, and more of a GDP hit than if the entire US military suddenly stopped getting funded.

Not even.

Market Cap is more like net worth than like GDP, GDP is more like annual revenue (both are still somewhat different, hence "more like") — Meta's global revenue is $164.5 billion, Alphabet's is $350.02 billion, so even if that's entirely in the USA (it isn't), and the money spent was purely positive-sum (it isn't), even combined that's less than the US military budget of $849.8 billion.

[lazide]

I guarantee you if Meta all the sudden couldn’t sell any ads tomorrow, it would be a lot more than a 1 trln GDP hit we’d experience.

[wizzwizz4]

If we'd lose so much GDP, without losing anything of value, perhaps GDP is not a useful measure of the economy.

[lazide]

Easy to say when you don’t have bills to pay.

[wizzwizz4]

GDP does not pay my bills.

[ThrowawayR2]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair

[relaxing]

I think there are other advertising channels that could pick up the slack.

[tsimionescu]

Both Google and Meta could just charge for using their services. I already pay meta to see no ads. So there is no reason that they would entirely die.

[ThrowawayR2]

CDOs, the financial instrument behind the 2008 financial collapse, had a tremendous amount of market value too. A "LOT"(sic) of businesses were built on selling tobacco products, lead based gasoline, and high sugar ultra-processed foods too. Perhaps you should rethink your argument?

Creating economic activity doesn't justify harming people and it has become thunderingly obvious that titillating and outraging viewers constantly to maximize ad impressions is harming the public.

[lazide]

I’m saying it’s easy to say until the consequences arrive. And with something this big, the consequences will be big.

But then I’ve lived through 3-4 major downturns so far - and seen the ‘oh shit’s land.

[ThrowawayR2]

I've lived through 3-4 major downturns too and, yeah, it's hard. Like discontinuing leaded gasoline, we either pay the price now or pay much worse later.

[lazide]

I don’t disagree, I just cringe when I see (presumably young/haven’t been through it before) folks cheer for destruction.

We had alternatives to those things, when we banned them, after all. Or didn’t ban them at all, just taxed them more.

[pixl97]

The best day to stop smoking was yesterday, but stopping today is the second best.

The consequences of addiction are huge, and the longer you stay addicted the worse it gets.

[lproven]

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

[UltraSane]

no pain no gain

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Google and Meta collectively employ how many software people in the United States? The jobs hit would be unimaginable. High octane nightmare fuel, that idea.

[michaelt]

Doesn’t seem like a nightmare to me - a trillion dollars spent on ads that get blocked is a trillion dollars wasted.

The real nightmare is hundreds of thousands of people on six figure salaries wasting their lives producing ads everyone hates.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You're right. What was I thinking? Instead, they should be unemployed and starving, and all the services they bought from other Americans with their $200k/year salaries, those Americans should also be unemployed and starving too. All because you don't want to see an ad on whatever ridiculous social media it is that people are visiting now days. That will make the world right.

[relaxing]

Get a grip, mate.

[ThrowawayR2]

"...total advertising has averaged about 1.3% to 2% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) over the past 20 years. ... In 2015, digital advertising corresponded to about 50% of total advertising spending and more recent estimates point to a share closer to 65% of total advertising spending. That represents about 0.6% to 1.1% of GDP. ..." from https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/oct/rise-digi...

So, nah. It's significant but not "nightmare fuel" even if online advertising entirely went away. (Which nobody is proposing, by the way.)

[relaxing]

Google AI summary says:

> As of December 2024, Meta Platforms had 74,067 full-time employees. This is down from 67,317 in 2023

lol. At least Gemini doesn’t make the same mistake for its makers:

> As of 2024, Alphabet, Google's parent company, has 183,323 full-time employees

Of course that’s total headcount, I couldn’t find figures for just US based SWEs.

And in the US alone there are something like 200-400k SWE+IT job openings and 7M openings across all sectors.

Verdict: after the dust settles, it would be a net benefit for everyone to get those bright minds working on real problems.