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Is Advertising Morally Justifiable? The Importance of Protecting Our Attention
theodp writes: With Is Advertising Morally Justifiable?, philosopher Thomas Wells is out to change the way you think about Google and its ilk. Wells says: "Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted. Two problems result from this. The solution to both requires legal recognition of the property rights of human beings over our attention. First, advertising imposes costs on individuals without permission or compensation. It extracts our precious attention and emits toxic by-products, such as the sale of our personal information to dodgy third parties. Second, you may have noticed that the world's fisheries are not in great shape. They are a standard example for explaining the theoretical concept of a tragedy of the commons, where rational maximising behaviour by individual harvesters leads to the unsustainable overexploitation of a resource. Expensively trained human attention is the fuel of twenty-first century capitalism. We are allowing a single industry to slash and burn vast amounts of this productive resource in search of a quick buck."
So of course I had to check the advertising disable checkbox.... ;-)
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm000...
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"You do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll call forever. End of story, OK? You're another corporate shill, you're another whore at the capitalist gang bang."
- ("Artistic Roll Call," Bill Hicks Rant in E-Minor (1997)).
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Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
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"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
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"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
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"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
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George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choic
This story is pure insanity. Advertising is one of basic instincts in animal nature. Women advertise to men, men to women. Without advertising evolution and progress would stop and die.
You can't handle the truth.
It is pretty much the only way to fund "free" services of all kinds that have large reach but no direct income. Radio, TV, and most websites would not exist but for it, and it is a meritocracy as well - if the advertized product sucks, or the ad sucks, the advertiser loses their money with no reward. The opposite holds as well - a good product and a good ad can be very beneficial to customers and the advertiser.
Someone needs to cut back on the weed and spend some time in the world of reality here to even bring up the question.
They are a standard example for explaining the theoretical concept of a tragedy of the commons, where rational maximising behaviour by individual harvesters leads to the unsustainable overexploitation of a resource.
I don't get the comparison. Fisheries are a common-pool resource. A person's attention span isn't.
2. Don't pretend you don't get something for your attention. To be effective, advertising must keep you at least mildly amused for some amount of time. Take for example, GoPro or Red Bull's ads. Not familiar with them? Go ahead and google them. I'll wait. Aaah! Almost got you! See 1. Anywhoo, some guy with their logos plastered all over him doing some amazing wingsuit stunt is both reasonably effective advertising and pretty damn entertaining. Clearly those companies think it's effective enough to keep funding it. Hell, I'd say both companies are probably better media companies than they are at making their respective products.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The best thing you can say about Advertising is that it is a waste of human effort. The highest form of advertising is when you get to be completely misleading without breaking any laws. When your noblest goal is to deceive, you are probably morally bankrupt. Advertising is simply another disgusting artifact of our culture of greed, by which I mean capitalism.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hand-wringing by philosophers is something I normally consider to be a waste of time/manufactured crisis for the sake of something to write about. In this case, I find myself actually agreeing with the Philosopher in question. Services move value from party A to party B, hopefully improving market efficiency along the way.
I think the assumption is then that advertising targets(us) vs the consumers(businesses) is a mutually beneficial exchange in that the targets have purchasing decisions to make between different fungible commodities, and that we will funnel that money towards the businesses that "suck us off"(IE: in exchange for sponsoring our entertainment/productive pursuits).
Is it actually mutually beneficial? I'm not living in a cave manufacturing my own soap, so I suppose it must be as a whole. Clearly there are some economies of scale involved which leaves some profit opportunities due to the diminishing returns of analysis paralysis when seeking to be an "informed consumer". Clearly people who spend too much money for products have more money than they can afford the time to endlessly research $0.26 savings on $3.00 purchases(although "Extreme Coupon-ing" is a good example of people who have more time than money).
Where does that leave us?
"We're here at you interrupting me again, you fucking idiot. That's you. You see, we are here at the same point again where you, the fucking peon masses, can once again ruin anyone who tries to do anything because you don't know how to do it on your own! That's where we're fucking at! Once again the useless wastes of fucking flesh that has ruined everything good in this goddamn world! That's where we're at! ...[snip] Freebird. And in the beginning there was the word, Freebird. And Freebird would be yelled throughout the centuries. Freebird, the mantra of the moron."
And before someone else posts it first:
""By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke"... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!"
Source: Both Quotes are from the great/late comedian Bill Hicks
I can't remember ever encountering a Slashdot summary that had me literally shouting in agreement.
The thing is, though, we are being compensated for our attention, with exactly the thing most people are looking for, whether they'd admit to it or not -- novelty and stimulation. It's unfortunate, I think, that this "extraction process" is diverting our attention from more productive outlets. But when has it ever been different? When have the masses, the majority, ever voluntarily directed their attention to productive outlets, instead of directing it to escapism or religious ritual on the rare occasions when it's not consumed by the fight for basic survival?
Marketing is by the College Textbook definition, the act of communicating that you provide something that meets someone's wants and needs and provide utility. Government Agencies, Schools, Non-Profit institutions, also engage in Marketing. But Marketing has a few stipulations to it. One is that Marketed ideas have to be factual. Or "True". And that our society of markets, consumers are supposed to know everything about the products they buy. They don't. And Advertisers are a huge part of the problem.
Advertisers in todays world are not only misleading people, they in some cases use malicious code to deceive and steal from people by any means necessary. They are effectively burglars who attempt to break into your computer and steal any information possible by using security vulnerabilities to do that.
Hahaha. People reading tabloid quality news, chatting online, playing games, posting selfies.
No, your attention probably is not worth very much.
The false myth of the human.
The true nature of humans: 5% do most of the hardest work and another 25% do most of the moderately difficult work and the remaining 70% do things that a robot or well-trained child could do given a few days training.
Television in the U.S. gives us strong evidence that advertisers are "over-fishing" their audience.
Many years ago, shows on TV would be longer; and commercial breaks would be fewer and shorter. Some shows had only one sponsor: the "Colgate Comedy Hour", the "U.S. Steel Hour" (drama), "Milton Berl" (comedy sponsored by Texaco), "Armstrong Theater" (drama sponsored by Armstrong Floors and Carpets), "The Voice of Firestone" (both popular and classical vocal music sponsored by Firestone Tires), and "I Love Lucy" (comedy sponsored by Phillip Morris Tobacco).
Today, TV shows are shorter so that commercial breaks can be longer and more frequent. Furthermore, more commercials are packed into each break. I have counted advertisements for four different automobile manufacturers in a single break. I also notice the constant selling of health-care products -- both over-the-counter and prescription -- one right after another. And then there are the same commercials repeated during a single break. We are so saturated with TV advertising that few commercials create any lasting impression on consumers.
If I were the CEO of an automobile or pharmaceutical manufacturer, I would order my marketing department to insist that any TV commercial from my company must not appear during the same commercial break as a product from a competing company. Nor would I allow my commercials to appear within 15 minutes of another commercial break advertising products from a competing company. Yes, such restrictions would cost my company more than the current saturation placement of commercials; but the lasting impression of isolating my advertisements from my competitors would be worth the cost.
The post seems to assume that the over-exploitation of advertising is akin to the haul. The reality is more like the boat. Over advertising doesn't steal more and more of out attention, but rather we get better at ignoring it. TV has more adverts than ever which is great because I can now do dishes / clean-up during shows.
The post also assumes there's nothing to be gained. Comparing it to fishes is non-sensical as the fish don't gain anything by being fished. We on the other hand gain a multitude of services we would otherwise need to pay for which is a value increasing system, if we needed to pay for it we may not use it as our fixed income is often finite and based on time and not based on an "asset" we own like our personal information / attention.
Some people opt in to advertising.
No fish opt in to being fished.
Yes, advertising is morally justifiable as long as there is choice to not be exposed to that advertising. If there is a website that you are required to go to for say the IRS or other government services. Or you're required to go there for your school or some other "required" website, then it gets far more murky. But if you are going to a commercial or entertainment or even a news site, then it is totally morally justifiable, since there is no requirement that you visit that site. You are agreeing to the consumption of the content for "free," you are really paying with your attention, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Then when you throw in AdBlock and it's ilk into the mix, which allows you to bypass the attention sale, I think it's totally justifiable.
To take it a step further, if you could somehow mandate (haha) that advertising be easily blockable, then it goes even further into the justifiable category, since only those wish to see the advertising would be seeing it. That's the choice... We should not limit people in what they can and can't do just because we don't agree with where we "spend" out attention. Not that anyone is suggesting that. I don't think the question is whether it's morally justifiable or not, since advertising really doesn't have a moral component, so long as there is choice (and there currently is) - if and when the advertising crosses over into the forced and unavoidable advertising, then it absolutely is NOT justifiable under any circumstance.
I really think that is the ultimate crux here: If a person can avoid the advertising (either through a switch, through AdBlock et al or by not visiting the site) then it's totally justifiable. If it is forced upon the person or on a site that you are required to visit for something that is unavoidable (Government services, etc...) then no, it's not justifiable at all.
Other than that, the free market should decide. If the advertising is too much on a site, then don't visit it... that company will either change it's ways or go out of business.
Similarly to Germany's ban on billboards on the autobahn - which are proven to distract a driver's attention - there should be some reasonable limits on ads. I originally signed up for cable, then satellite, because so many of the channels were then ad-free. Today, there is virtually nothing that's ad-free, including my Camry's radio start-up message that reminds me that - yes! - I'm driving a Camry! Basically, I am sick and freaking tired of ads everywhere and have fine-tuned my life to avoid them as much as possible. But, man is it tough!!
Some advertising is OK. The type that tells you what it is, where to get it, and what it costs is OK. Naturally, they think theirs is the best.
Then there's the obnoxious commercials. The ones that throw in gratuitous doorbells and filter the audio until it sounds like you're delirious so they can push the volume up while technically (just barely) staying within guidelines.
Beyond that, there's the constant attempt to transfer your feelings for everything good to their product. They actually want to intrude on cherished childhood memories for their benefit. Make no mistake, it's no accident, they hire a bunch of psychologists to help them.
The worst is advertising to kids. A committee of grown-ups with doctorates ganging up on a child to give them the wrong impression without saying anything legally actionable in order to get them to pester their parents.
As for brands, they've got to be kidding. It's been a very long time since brands were anything but a well known name stuck on some Chinese no-name product bought from a random manufacturer.
Among the top five regrets of the dying are "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" and "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends" - not "I wish I spent more time engaging with brands on social media and reading up on the 24 hour news cycle"
Advertising appeals to the temporary, short term interest, and in doing so robs people of the time to pursue long term goals that actually make them happy and fulfilled - like spending time with family, acquiring new skills, or working to improve the lives of others. It's called hyperbolic discounting, and it's the reason most people procrastinate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
This quote strains credibility...
"Barbara Honegger
I am the source for this quote, which was indeed said by CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration.
The meeting was in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, not far from the Cabinet Room. I was present at the meeting as Assistant to the chief domestic policy adviser to the President. Casey first told Reagan that he had been astonished to discover that over 80 percent of the 'intelligence' that the analysis side of the CIA produced was based on open public sources like newspapers and magazines. As he did to all the other secretaries of their departments and agencies, Reagan asked what he saw as his goal as director for the CIA, to which he replied with this quote, which I recorded in my notes of the meeting as he said it. Shortly thereafter I told Senior White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who was a close friend and colleague, who in turn made it public. Barbara Honegger bshonegg@gmail.com"
Source: http://www.quora.com/Did-William-Casey-CIA-Director-really-say-Well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-American-public-believes-is-false
Now we have to decide:
A) Is Barbara Honegger actually the source of that quote?
and if so:
B) Is Barbara Honegger a credible source?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Barbara+Honegger
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zach-braff-facts
Kill yourselves.
Seriously, no, this isn't a joke. If you aren't advertising a truly new product or service (this is maybe 0.1% of advertising), you are filling the world with bile and garbage.
Nice that we get "free" ad-supported stuff in the meantime, but holy fuck do we (as a society) pay for it.
but it is a sensible thing to consider when people bitch about a "nanny state" when PSAs mention the ills of this or that activity, behavior or product - it is merely ever an OFFSET to the constant bombardment of propaganda filling your every orifices by commercial interests. most of the time, the nanny state argument seems to concern a world in which there are no other messages being promulgated.
but as for the critique itself - so is it rape? is that where the author is coming from? everything is rape these days....
also, our minds are indeed advanced instruments... advanced enough to filter out and ignore most ads. most are absorbed like an everpresent noise... eventually, you're not even aware of it anymore.
imo, so far, everything is working out pretty well for the consumer. we get a lot of products and services for free and the advertisers think they're getting a much better deal than they are.... or rather, the "good effect" it's having is being borne on the backs of people not myself.
Radio and TV are artificially expensive. The only reason they require ads or donor support is because the government has set up a completely unnecessary series of extremely high financial walls that must be leapt.
I could set you up a perfectly good AM or FM or television broadcast station for about $100, including a pretty good antenna sufficient for very broad local reach, say 30 miles or so. For a bit more, we can up the power and antenna significantly, and that's the end of your expenses. You can put up a pretty good tower for not much money too, if that's your inclination, and that will increase your range. I have a couple very nice towers myself, as well as one made out of 6X6 lumber that cost me all of about $100 to build (and really, since it's part of the support structure of my home's deck, half that cost would have been spent anyway. Huge antenna on top. :) No ads required to support all this, you can do it out of a cookie jar. 100 watts will get you an amazing amount of coverage, particularly if you're on a frequency no one else nearby is on (we have two stations here. The rest of the bands are completely dead during the day, AM comes alive at night, but you'd still reach the local listeners over those signals if you could set up a 100 watt station.)
But figure in the cost of FCC approved (laughable) equipment and FCC-approved towers and radiation patterns and location limitations and lawyers and licenses and so forth... ok, now you need funding. And a lot of it, too.
Or, create expensive content, again, now you need funding. But that would be a choice.
But radio and TV would be just fine without advertisers. Content would almost certainly change. Likely much for the better, IMHO. Competition would flourish: For instance, instead of the locals only having the option to listen to religious programming, there would be atheist stations (just as there are atheist websites... low cost of entry is required when there isn't a big organization pushing from behind the scenes.) Kids would have other influences other than those pushing mythology. There would be left-wing and right-wing and wingless stations. Sports stations and drama stations. Those who create their own content would flourish.
But you're not going to get that. No, you're going to get clear channel and Fox and etc. churning your ears and/or eyes with a very, very limited selection of programming that they want you to be exposed to, and very little else.
And the people who buy the argument that stations might interfere with each other, therefore we need all of the above impositions... they'll see to it that this will not change. It's a perfect situation under which to create and maintain a robust propaganda machine. And no surprise, that's precisely what we ended up with.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
To paraphrase Bobby Hill, "What was YouTube supposed to do? NOT monetize the hospitalized baby?"
And the people who run Slashdot should defend themselves.
Everything is advertising. A businesses store design and name on the front door is advertising.
Advertising is totally moral. More so passive and friendly advertising.
Without it, this site would never have existed, the internet would never have existed, every SINGLE one of the services, stores and people you rely on for food and resources would NEVER have existed. (protip, word of mouth is a form of marketing, which is also the most justifiable forms of it, behind impartial reviews)
Abusive advertising != advertising in its entirety.
People like to jack off over how they are sticking it to the man, but they don't realize their life would not even remotely be as manageable as it is WITHOUT advertising.
Let's face it, if you aren't growing your own food or powering your own house and setting your own leg in a cast after you broke it, you depend on advertising, period.
In fact, you still depend on it anyway since ADVERTISING CREATED YOUR EXISTENCE and everything around you.
You will never be able to escape that fact even if you invented time travel and somehow eliminated the human race but only left yourself, since your timeline would still have existed regardless.
You are derived of advertising businesses and services, be it farmers, doctors, police, firemen, electricians, plumbers, architects and a thousand other professions.
Good luck with that Great Escape. The only way out is death.
it was just too long a read. I have other things to look at...
I (hereafter known as "The Plaintiff") was not consulted prior to Mr. Wells (hereafter known as "The Defendant") before he advertised his ideas to the plaintiff on the internet. This breech of the plaintiff's property rights over the plaintiff's attention and time has caused the plainriff material damages amounting to 10 minutes of time in reading, considering, and responding against the plaintiff's interests. There was an additional 20 minutes time of intense cursing and throwing of objects due to the emotional distress the defendant's depravity and violation of the plaintiff's human rights. Compensatory damages of 30 minutes of average labor costs for the plaintiff and all lawyer fees are sought; as well $250,000 in punitive damages for the reckless disregard to which the defendant treats the basic rights of humanity.
The original series episodes are about 48 minutes long. By the time TNG came along a new standard of about 42 minutes had emerged. However it seems to have stabilised at that level.
If you don't want to see ads, don't use ad-supported services. They are called "ad supported" because your attention is what you use to pay with for those services. There are plenty of ad-free for-pay services if you want to. They are generally not as good because they are not as popular, but that's the choice most people make; live with it.
Is justifying behaviors using morals morally justifiable?
I know... we should find a majority... that believe in morals! Yeah, that's the ticket!
When the philosopher says "Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted" he seems to have been oblivious to the idea that he himself is also harvesting our attention for his own benefit without consulting us or compensating us for the living he makes off of us whilst he goes about philosophizing.....
In fact, I note that the page his article is presented on is covered in ads.
Now that I think about it, the entire political left, which is aligned with much of this new wave of anti-market-based-economy do-gooderism has been "harvesting" my "human attention" for a long time without consulting or compensating me....
Hey! I've just discovered a do-gooder SJW cause of my own!!!!! Thanks, philosophy dude! Who needs a real job when you have a CAUSE?
Google could make just as much money -- they set the price -- by offering a service that improved our ability to find what we want -- what we can approximately describe, what we can point to and say "like that but better in this specific way" or "like that but not made with lead paint" or "does exactly this particular thing, but left handed" --- improving the database describing the stuff that's out there to be found.
Use our search queries to improve the _description_ so others can find something a little better, each time.
Instead we got a system that helps STUFF find ME, and it's almost -- 99.99 of the time -- crap I won't buy.
That's why adblocking is moral. Because I won't buy stuff that's shoved in my face, distracting me and annoying me. So if I've never seen your crappy ads, you still have a chance -- if _I_ find _your_ product by MY search -- that I might buy it.
But likely I"ll buy something from someone who spent the money on the employees and the product design and quality control, instead.
But that sure as hell isn'twha is happening now.
Our web searches are "personalized"
The other day, I wanted to look up something on the Food Network on my wife's computer. So I googled The food network to get the right URL. The Godamned Food network site wasn't on the first page. Lots of ad, and those rotten aggregators poppesd up. DDG is her new search engine.
Adverstalkers pollute our screens with shit we've already looked at
One time I needed some tires, and went to TireRack.com. I needed to turn off scriptblock and adblock. SO far so good. I forgot to turn it back on, and the friggin' tires I looked ad were on the next ten pages I went to.
They waste bandwidth, make the web pages load a lot slower, and generally piss off people. Those bastards expect me to buy shit from them after that crap? That's like Jerry Sandusky expecting a Father's day card from those little boys he boned.
That's immoral and unethical.
So I use every means at my disposal to keep that shit away from my computer. Hosts and adblock and noscript at a bare minimum are called for.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
whether or not it works is if people consume the resource despite the advertising
there are other models to pay for a resource. if they do better than an advertising model in terms of raising cash to support the resource that's great. it is just a matter of what works
of course advertising sucks. so avoid it if you want to. and if a resource you want uses advertising, you have to go to alternative products of similar quality that don't use advertising, or you'll have to suck it up and deal with the advertising
but whining about the existence of advertising is just immature and useless. just avoid resources that advertise
no one is forcing you to see advertising. just avoid it if you don't like it. no big deal
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Tell me, if somebody sneezes in a public place, and you turn to face, temporarily distracted from your texting/blogging/tweeting/coffee appreciation, have they "stolen" your attention? Are you going to go and bill the renegade sneezer for the two seconds of "productive" time you lost, due to their selfish bodily function siphoning away your precious unobtanium-grade attentionite?
Get real.
Which is nonsense. The entire model for advertising is providing compensation which outweighs the negatives of the advertising. To pick his example of Google: search, email, web browsers, phone operating systems, mapping, video viewing, news aggregation... are all very expensive services to provide. Google provides them for free in exchange for consuming advertising. That is the compensation.
He advertises through ABC his view that advertising isn't morally justifiable.
And - "He blogs at The Philosopher's Beard." - (a link) which also reads very much like an advertisement to me.
FTA - "The solution to both requires legal recognition of the property rights of human beings over our attention."
Here we have his crux. More government to prevent what he doesn't care for.
TV is shit, and the web is far safer and nicer with AdBlock, NoScript, Flashblock, etc.
Advertising is for suckers.
Wow, you too are insane.
Wonko? Is that you?
Thanks for all the fish!
You get access to expensive content or services for free. The alternative would be to make you pay but to make money, you (usually) need to work, and work requires your attention. Either way, you are exchanging attention for a service.
Advertising as well as sales often involve shifting a person's values without their realizing that it is being done. Sometimes a salesman exploits values to force a sale. For example a vacuum cleaner salesman gets into a home and does a demonstration of how much dirt the machine can find on the flooring, Then the salesman exploits the potential customer by implication that the dirt is bad for the wife and children . In fact that dirt may be quite beneficial to the health of all in the room. The argument is converted into whether the husband loves his wife and kids or is a miser trying to hold onto the $1,000 plus it takes to buy the cleaner, If the wife is present the guy is in for a seriously bad time if he refuses to buy the vacuum. So his value of being thrifty is strong armed out of the room by yhe implication that he does not care about the health of his kids.
Sales and advertising training is all about learning tactics like this and maybe it is time we disallow all of it. Good products do not require a salesman or advertising, If a product is good enough the world will find a way to seek it out and buy it without any form of promotion.
That is why 1) noscript 2) adblock 3) two screens while watching TV, 1 for the film and 1 for browsing or doing stuff while advertising runs.
pretty much the only advertising I see are the rare panels on the side road, 99% of which are for product which I will never use. In fact I would be unable to tell you what current ad runs at the moment anywhere.
For the better or the worst, I am cut off from advertising. As for taking decision subconsciously , it is highly overrated. Sure you may influence overall people , like the infamous butt distance limit (forgot the name : in supermarket if you pack product too much each and make the alley between product not wide enough people buy less of *all* products, because our natural propension of keeping distance and feeling privately invaded when too near each others. But a wider alley and people buy on average a little more from all product in the alley). But most of the stuff is subttle - as in it only has a Limited influence and can only be checked over mass statistic. In other word you won't force people subconsciously against their will to buy a product by advertising changing color and fonts, but over the mass you may change your market share a bit.
"You've probably made thousands of decisions that have been very subtly manipulated by corporations" you amy done thousand decision which were subtely or even much less ubtely influence by everybody. When was the last time your peer, your significant other, your family, your friend did NOT influence your decision ? Saying corp influenced our decision a way or another is as bland and as empty as saying we are influenced by our peer. No shit sherlock. But the difference is that our peer are allowed to influence us directly (like the oh no so subtle reminder from my girlfriend that our 5 year anniversary is coming) whereas for some reason people get uneasy when corp do it. So they have to go for the subtle. But frankly, their influence is vastly more limited than your peer's.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I don't see how businesses find it sensible to spend on advertising really. Separately, I don't understand how politics and advertising/campaign spending work either. I'm in my 40s and have never voted for a candidate who went on to win. Yet somehow whomever has the biggest budget somehow has the best odds of winning?
First, TFA is a very poorly structured blog post. It meanders like the Mississippi river and doesn't properly support the points it tries to make. It makes assumptions that no grad student or wiki editor would get away with.
It's true, we pay in this way for much of our content. And we pay ceaselessly with distractions that have no relevance in our lives. Do we really need to see 17 ads for furniture stores, 36 ads for alcohol products and 7 ads for feminine intimate garments every day? Even if they are erotic, they are not part of our scheduled activities and they detract from our productivity. The problem is that companies believe that mass advertising will work for them. They are victims, just as we are, of the ad industry.
Now, here is the problem: All these companies are selling a commodity. None of them have a unique product or service. Their survival depends upon convincing people otherwise through advertising and SEO. They are 'me too' companies who jumped on some bandwagon. They sell cars or tacos or pest control in a market with many competitors. Apparently they never stopped to consider whether the market needed what they want to sell.
There are companies that sell commodities with a unique flair: Victoria Secret, Apple, Tesla and I hate to say it, Nike. They really have elevated a category of products above the crowd. Is it the product or is it the branding that makes it interesting?
If you are/have a company you can avoid the mass advertising circus by offering something unique. Something not obtainable elsewhere. Something that is needed or something (like an Apple watch) that people will covet. If you can't do this, please close your useless business and stop polluting the air with your advertising.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I used to think along same lines about the harm of adverts, and when Internet connection used to limited.
Advertisement is part of the ecosystem, and most fruits do have seeds they advertise in nature, so the fishery example is not that correct, IMHO. This may be attention distraction as well, but it may also be welcome one. These flashy things are actually part of the bigger system and if they disappear, life will be poorer, diversity will diminish.
It does not mean, there should be no pressure on "removing" ads. As long, as it is natural, it belongs to the same system. We are not fish, maybe cows?
philosopher Thomas Wells is out to change the way you think about Google and its ilk.
Not really, no. He's just saying what I've been thinking (and saying, but since I'm not a reknown philosopher, few listen) for many years.
If you know anything at all about the mind and the brain, you understand that attention isn't free. That even "filtering out" advertisement (and we don't really, we just consume it unconsciously) takes up valuable mind-effort. That living in a city is stressful in parts because our brains are constantly busy, busy, busy with the environment, running a million-year-old program that constantly scans the area for potential threats or mates, and advertisement intentionally triggers those subroutines all the time (why do you think "sex sells"?).
Advertisement is a massive drain of resources, and the best thing I've ever done for myself was to throw out my television and stop listening to the radio. At least the inside of my home is mostly ad-free.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
On one hand, I acknowledge that a website owner may run the site as he sees fit. Which includes ads to earn some money
On the other hand, I don't feel obliged to pay attention to the ads or even let them onto my computer. So I don't have any qualms about using software like NoScript.
In everyday use, I tend to allow non-obtrusive ads that don't bog down my computer too much. The bogging down is noticeable at times BTW. I'm sometimes on a measly 2MBit/s connection with an older PC, and then the bandwidth and CPU demands of ads can be significant.
At other times, loading websites goes slooowly because some ad server cannot keep up with the load (often ad.doubleclick.net. I've blocked that site specifically since).
C - the footgun of programming languages
If it's your right to shove advertising in my face, it's my right to punch your nose for being an obnoxious asshole. Deal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli
But most importantly:
C) Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a girl in 1990?
I choose to actively avoid brands or products that have tried to influence me with their annoying ads. When shopping for groceries, looking for e.g. detergent, I simply will not pick any brand that I recall from ads. The more annoying the ads, the more effort I will take to avoid that brand, forever. This, to me, seems a much simpler and more effective way of resistance than trying to "not be affected by ads". Don't try to ignore manipulation, that won't work. Instead, acknowledge it and then go against it.
Sure, there are situations when this method fails. Such as when I cannot recall ever having seen ads for a product whilst in reality I have. Or when a heavily advertised product is the only one that meets the spec. But it doesn't need to work 100% of the time to do good. Every single purchase counts. As a general approach and deliberate consumer behavior, I think it has a positive (if small) corrective effect.
In fact, it's so simple and so obvious, I don't see why more people are not doing it. So some company chooses to harass and annoy you with obnoxious, loud, flashy ads? Fine, you get even by never using their product again. Also, why on Earth would we pay a high price for a product when most of the money made on it goes towards the very ads that we hate? It makes no sense for us to reward the behavior we detest, to pay for it in fact.
Really, when it comes to ads, revenge is as simple as it is sweet. It actually feels good to go against all the attempted manipulation and brand-brainwashing. I recommend it to anyone for that reason alone.
Not often these days does something like this manage to offend me to the core, but that article really got my goat. It is a masterpiece sure, well written even. But it is constructed to lead you down a narrow garden path of thinking and reason you into a little corner from which you the conclude you are somehow under attack and only way through is to keep on the path. I left the path half-way, trampled a bit of shrubbery and climbed a tree to look down on this weird thing. I saw an ancient tactic for Manufacturing Consent,
1. Begin by manufacturing and presenting an "oppressor/victim scenario".
2. Attempt to convince reader that they are in this "victim" group.
3. Present a view that does not ascribe any Free Will or choice to the "victim group".
4. In this tactical reasoning the only "Free Will" is possessed by the oppressor, who is using it for "evil".
5. Further elevate this aggressor scenario by claiming some natural right not to be "victimized".
6. This gives reader an ego massage. They are no longer a "victim", merely "concerned about the Rights of Others"
7. Choose a base motive you think would be most contemptible to your audience and ascribe it to the oppressor.
8. Once the argument is under way, focus entirely on oppressor's actions. Steer away from victims' actions or choices.
9. Congratulations! You are mustering a troll army to become a self-described "Moral Majority".
10. When it distills into a Cause, it need not be morally defensible or even comprise a majority.
So you are this poor defenseless human being, right? You are foraging on the green fields of Internet, picking out the choice clover that sprouts there. You are a sheep that Will Safely Graze in the pasture of human endeavor and will thrive happily unless your most precious possession --- your attention --- is stolen from you by those with Corporate Interest in mind. You have no Free Will in the matter. The rectangle that is your Facebook Page is being infringed upon by Advertising. Your personal information and patterns of behavior, which you supply of your own free will, is being stolen by others.
If you are lucky you've been raised by parents who would Laugh Out Loud at this kind of argument, and you inherently recognize and fix on the part of the argument that is most tenuous and contrived. Like since when do people have some sort of right not to be distracted in public places?
Advertising -- and even PR and Propaganda-- is applied in the world like any business model. Winor lose. Some of the models are stupid, some are clever. If you don't like what they're selling don't give them traction. And if you some day find yourself surrounded by a true-majority of people whose opinions you are uncomfortable with, you are left with the usual options: fight or flight.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
1. Fishing is not the same as Advertising. Not even similar.
a. overfishing means there will be fewer to no fish to get.
b. overadvertising doesn't remove the existence of those to view advertising. It just means more of it gets ignored
2. Advertising is changed only by people NOT READING THE ADS.
a. ad blockers.
b. not using the media used by advertisers
This appears to be nothing but another anti-google propaganda.
So no.
First off - I worked in advertising for 12 years, I've met some of the least self-confident, bullshit-spewing people in that business I've ever had to work with, and a few legitimately clever folks, too. Like any business, I suppose, but the level of emperor's new clothes syndrome reaches incredible heights. I can't watch any "behind the scenes" of an ad campaign without my gag reflex kicking in.
Also, I am one of those people, like some in the threads here, who thinks advertising "doesn't work" on me. My eye is well trained to skip over ad space and to roll skyward when I'm forced to sit through commercials (pretty much only when I go to see a movie in a theatre, which is rare). You can tell me it's all subliminal, my subconscious is being groomed to consume all you want, but in the end when I crave a cola, I pick coke because pepsi tastes like fructose mixed with old coffee grounds, not because they'd like to teach the world to sing. I do think advertising "works", however, because there are shit tons of people out there who gobble this crap up (yes, outraged parent posting your minion toy from Macdonald's saying something vaguely like "shit" on YouTube, I'm looking at you). It's Barnum and Bailey, friend, line those rubes up and take their money.
So entire economies are based on this advertising model, enough to bring countries to their knees, like it or not, so my question is: what exactly is the alternative posed by that navel-gazing article? What shall we do to stand against this outrage against humanity, supposedly somehow different than what advertisers have been doing ever since the first snake oil salesman started barking from a corner in the early morning mists of a village that would one day become Mesopotamia? It just read like a cranky old man piece with no point whatsoever, and worse, no alternatives.
I don't agree with this premise that attention is a right we are robbed of when we see advertising. We switch our focus to any number of things several times a minute instinctively, whether we want to or not. Do I steal your attention when you notice me walking toward you on the sidewalk? Living is observing, sensing, and that means paying attention to the world around you. If somebody drives by in a sleek new model of car, I guess you could consider that a form of advertising as well. How dare they!
The internet costs money, servers don't run on permission and good will and web developers get paid. I don't know why people think it so wrong for sites to try and finance their content.
Over time most things that are only available to the wealthy, filter down into general society. Air travel, cars, cellphones etc etc.
Maybe one of the main differentiates in the future will be that the more wealthy you are, the more you will be able to avoid the advertising.
I'm not talking about the super rich but the upper middle class, who will find ways to avoid most of the time and attention stealing.
Down the scale we will find most public places, public transportation, shopping malls etc, full of 3D, moving, colourful, unavoidable advertising.
Websites etc will charge extra for advertising less content.
You'll need to be wealthy or an obsessive to avoid it all.
No better proof of Betteridge's law.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Would you like to pay for every Internet search, like the good old days of Lexus Nexus? Watching Antenna TV? Buying physical goods, because the company was not able to sell lots through advertisement and ramp up efficiencies on volume? Money in our wallets is limited resource and most of us want some choices on what to pay for and what to get for free while giving businesses a chance to sell something else to us later.
Ads can be seen as a kind of voluntary income transfer. It's possible to get lots of stuff for free or low price by accepting ads, gathering coupons or starting and canceling free trials. Poor do not have money to buy advertised products anyway. The only issues are deceptive/emotionally exploitive ads, and need for universal ability to opt out by paying fair price that the content provider would otherwise get for the impressions.
Oh, it works -- it just doesn't work on those of us who are aware of it, block it, ignore it, lack respect for it, and consider it pablum for the masses. There are plenty of people out there who approach the world in a "consumer" mode, essentially a non-critical approach that is largely guided by suggestion rather than critical thinking. That's fine. But assuming everyone is like that is incorrect.
I suggest you study the IQ Gaussian and think through the implications. It doesn't tell you everything about a person by any means, but it does tell you a lot about distribution of analytic characteristics among the population. You should also consider the distinction between people for whom superstition is convincing -- belief in a god or gods, crystallomancy, dowsing, Ouija boards, etc. -- as juxtaposed against those for whom it is not: atheists and skeptics.
Many people are gullible for one reason or another; they don't think about a proposition, they simply react on an emotional level as to whether they find a narrative to be emotionally compelling. Or if they do think about it, they do so without the data they need to come to the most correct conclusion(s) and yet draw conclusions anyway, and/or they get on board because so-and-so said so, because "popular", because peer pressure, because fear or an idea is "nice" (again, see religion) and so forth.
Perhaps you find yourself influenced significantly by advertising, and through a failure on your part to realize that everyone is not like you, think your failure is then echoed by everyone else. It's just not so.
You may rest assured that advertising that makes it past my hosts list or which I otherwise encounter in daily life does not have its intended effect upon me. Nor does government propaganda, political correctness, religious mythology, "product placement", "style", and so on for quite a long list.
And yes, just as someone mentioned above, I do live in a very low population area, and I do generally keep to my own property. I also have lots of at-home undertakings that keep me fully engaged, from playing guitar to woodworking (my SO and I are building a home-class interior into an old church), from writing political and social commentary to programming.
When it comes to purchasing a product, there is another approach than "the ad looked good." Analyze your requirements, match these to the known characteristics of the product, see if the costs - both immediate and the relevant TCO factors - fit into your plans for yourself, and so on.
The bottom line is that the world is full of nonsensical messages. Some people get past that. Others are immersed and have no idea what is real, what is factual, what is rational. The existence of people of one type does not preclude the existence of others quite unlike them. Likewise, some people "go with the flow" and let the world happen to them. Others, considerably more proactive, are better described as "happening to the world." Assuming the characteristics of the one set largely apply to the other is naive.
Cheers. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ok .. interesting thoughts. I suppose if everyone wants to pay for search engines and email and over-the-air TV and radio and higher ticket prices for NASCAR and NFL and watch most professional sporting events just go away, I'm sure they would support this. Let's just rip off all the car company logos off our cars and stop wearing Nike tshirts or Juicy pants. Sell all products in plain brown boxes and clear plastic with the name of the company stamped in military stencil on the side.
Those things are all advertising also. In for a penny, in for a pound. All or nothing if you are going to do it.
I find ignoring advertising is pretty damn easy, and well worth the free stuff I get in return. It's true, Slashdot and Facebook and Google get some of my information in exchange for selling ads to other people. But I also get to use their services in exchange.
They aren't taking anything, it's a mutually beneficial exchange of services.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
In other countries if your advertisement is misleading or false... you can be fined or otherwise penalized under "trades description" or "false advertising" laws.
For some reason we have no such laws here in the US.
That really really really needs to change.
So? Doesn't matter who they are designed for. What matters is if they work on me. They don't.
Yes, I live in a very rural area, and further, I keep to my own property as much as possible and have done so for just a little short of thirty years now.
What you have "found" about W, X and Y doesn't mean that you will find the same about Z. You're falling into the trap of assuming everyone is gullible to the degree you are arguing, based on the evidence that that a lot of people are.
Consider for a moment why we have atheists and skeptics as well as the religious. The social pressure to "be" religious, at least here in the US, is considerable. Yet atheists don't buy in. If everyone is equally affected by propaganda and the various levels of social influence, how then can atheism and skepticism exist? It is quite clear that some people tend to follow the narratives they are presented with, while others tend to not do so. Denying that -- which is essentially what you are doing -- is a bankrupt POV, and appropriately enough, I find it insufficient to your argument, which is to say I am quite skeptical that you understand the issue you're so passionately trying to describe.
I looked at your search, and it made me laugh. Yes, that's precisely what I think. That stuff is almost entirely G-rated pap; not sexy at all. with the exception of one image that came up showing a very good-looking woman in stockings and garters, the rest left me cold. And that image, or anything like it, isn't going to appear in product advertisements for those things which I am interested in buying. So yes, sex is not being used in by far the majority of all advertising -- even if it would then work on me, which I assure you, it would not. I am well aware that I am not the actor (and they are actors) in the fictional situation presented by ads. Not only does the fictional depiction not represent my life or lifestyle, the actual ad itself is constructed of illusion -- actors, scripts, etc. To me, this is wholly obvious. To you, apparently not. The error you're making here is assuming others are like you. As per the bard, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
Also: When I say sex, I mean sex. I don't mean bikinis or pretty faces. When I say "sexy", I mean, sex is used to sell the product. The amount of advertising for which that is the case is miniscule. Even when it occurs, and I am exposed, and the sex gets me to look, it won't get me to buy. I am not them; they are not me; the depiction is fiction, or in the even rarer case where it might not be, I am still not them, nor do I have any urge to be them.
Primarily, I am aware of the current state of affairs because relevant material is discussed quite often in the communities that I frequent, including this one. How many articles and associated commentary have you seen here that delve into issues like "booth babes" and "objectifying women" and the argument that physical beauty is a justifiably monetized resource just as athleticism and intelligence are -- and so on -- just
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I just don't this It's probably a difference in what we take as assumptions.
Morally - is it right for me to take someone else's attention without their permission? I guess, I think this is wacky. We are social animals. Our attention is drawn to others ALL THE TIME. Is it morally ok to (try to) manipulate others? Again, we are social animals. Instead of killing each other (well most of the time), we manipulate each other ALL THE TIME.
So, any system of morals which doesn't allow for it, it's pretty pointless, in my opinion. We automatically fail.
in the absurd case, is it morally ok for a charging bear to get my attention, in time for me to run like hell? Or should he morally remain unseen until he mauls me? So, big loud rampaging bears goto hell, but Pirate Ninja Bears goto heaven ?
ps. Whats with slashdot (or ads?) refreshing the page every 60 seconds? It makes posting really annoying when the text box loses the focus...
Fatcism-Bullied overweight kids children's book released on http://amazon.com $4.00 for printed copy.
Even in the most sustainable fishery, the fish are never consulted. They are fed, bred, and harvested with no vote whatsoever in their fate.
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---
"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend"...
APK
P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:
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Can ab+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it + hosts = already on every device natively.
APK
P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).
+
ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!
+
Ab+'s paid to not do its job http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
Ab+ adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
What's best?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
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In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
... apk
I love advertising regulation, so long as the government stays out of it. Give people the right to control for themselves the information that is presented to them. That's the heart of freedom.
When a corporation makes propaganda, it can't put more money into it than it earns in revenue.
When the government makes propaganda, it can pour a limitless supply of other people's money.
So keep propaganda out of the government, I say, and end all the advertising for the Affordable Care Act and food stamps (I've heard both!). The ACA has upside down unfavorability ratings, and the solution isn't to throw public money at it until people like it.
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. “You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. “Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. “You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.” — banksy
Christians in the U.S. feed 40,000 dogs an hour while 4000 children starve to death every hour in the world.
Can ab+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it + hosts = already on every device natively.
APK
P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).
+
ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!
+
Ab+'s paid to not do its job http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
Ab+ adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
What's best?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
&
It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
... apkb
Can ab+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it + hosts = already on every device natively.
APK
P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).
+
ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!
+
Ab+'s paid to not do its job http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
Ab+ adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
What's best?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
&
It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
... apk
Use the semi colon Thomas.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/s...
Advertising is mostly noise in my environment, against which I develop coping strategies. Hidden within some advertising are threats (malware) which encourages me to adopt even more coping strategies.
Proving that there might be some unsolicited advertisements that I'd welcome is like proving a negative. That many websites I enjoy depend for funding on unsolicited advertisements - is understandable, in the same way that the Confederate Flag represents Southern Heritage is understandable.
My attention is my possession. It is not unethical to use ad blockers, and any advertisers or websites that cry out against the use of ad blockers are damn fools. What is more, my desktop/tablet/browser is a valuable resource to me, one that it is prudent for me to use carefully. Just as I don't leave them out in foul weather, or fling them around, so too will I take steps to prevent malware - and that includes using ad blockers.
I mostly enjoy the content I find on places like SlashDot, Wired, HuffPo, etc., but I have noticed that the more the owners try to "monetize" the content, the poorer quality the content is and the less appealing it is. While some might offer advertisement free content if I subscribe and pay - my cynical expectation is that I'll eventually end up with advertisements anyway, much like Cable TV was once offered as an advertisement-free venue yet became so congested with advertisements that I no longer subscribe. Having been burned by Cable TV, I see no reason to believe any promises that paid-for content will be advertisement free.
Yes.
Everyone that disagrees is a fucking idiot.
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...
FREE & adds speed, security, + reliability, doing more with less, more efficiently vs. browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' redirect security issues - obtaining its data vs. online threats & adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!
* :)
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
&
It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
---
"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend"...
APK
P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:
PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:
"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!
(Accept NO substitutes!)
...apk
Can ab+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it + hosts = already on every device natively.
APK
P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).
+
ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!
+
Ab+'s paid to not do its job http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
Ab+ adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
What's best?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
&
It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
... apk
Can ab+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it + hosts = already on every device natively.
APK
P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).
+
ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!
+
Ab+'s paid to not do its job http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
Ab+ adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
What's best?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
&
It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
... apk
Can ab+ do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
1.) Protect vs. malicious sites/servers (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (adds reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past a dnsbl
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage
* ANSWER ="NO" to each above on ab+ doing it + hosts = already on every device natively.
APK
P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):
Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).
+
ClarityRay defeats it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods!
+
Ab+'s paid to not do its job http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
Ab+ adds complexity from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).
What's best?
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...
&
It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
+
In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
... apk