Advertising Is a Cancer on Society - <AUTHOR> http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html <comment><USER6> He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste.

For example, everybody on the planet is now familiar with soft drinks. If anybody has never tasted Coke, it's not by accident. But Coke's ad budget is enormous. If all soft drink companies stopped advertising tomorrow, society would not be worse off. And we'd have billions of dollars [1] to spend on something useful.

Like the author, I won't work on ad tech. I don't like manipulation and I don't like waste, and most advertising is both.

[1] e.g., [https://notesmatic.com/pepsico-advertising-and-marketing- bud...](https://notesmatic.com/pepsico-advertising-and-marketing-budget/) [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081315/look- co...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081315/look-cocacolas- advertising-expenses.asp)

<comment><USER7> I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now.

Most ads isn't about manipulation, it's just about getting your attention and reminding you that this product exists.

Ads are the only way to reach her market. You could argue that search is a good one too (which is true), but sadly people have trouble paying to watch videos online, there's no way they would pay for a search engine. We are still not really high in the search result after a year of existence either and paying for ads is a good way to get people on the website (which I'm sure will help our position in search results).

EDIT: In case it's not clear, I don't believe she deserve to be higher than other escape room in the search result, we have actually almost no competition close to us and it's pretty much why she started that business. Simply that Google have no metric to know that her website has to be higher than another one, so clicks are needed to provide some.

She always asks people what they think of the experience once they are done and recently one even said that we are not visible enough. It's a pretty great feedback, we are lucky that's our main issue, but sadly ads are the only way to become visible to others.

Ads are almost amazing by allowing investment into market that people aren't ready to pay for but yet provide great entertainment, learning experience or a great service. Without ads, I probably wouldn't be the developper that I am today because the guy that did the great tutorial that create the passion in me wouldn't have time to works full time on them.

<comment><USER8> If you have to tell people they need something then they don't need it. Escape rooms are an entertainment luxury. When there is essential work that needs to be done (infrastructure, healthcare, education, &c.), it makes sense that it takes psychological manipulation to convince people that what they really need to do with their time and effort is temporary entertainment. If you want more customers, provide something that people find more necessary, like childcare.

<comment><USER9> Your argument sounds an awful lot like "how dare you do anything escapist when there are big problems in the world."

<comment><USER10> No it's more that I'd your product fulfills a real need, people will find you. The fact that people don't without advertising says it isn't a real need.

<comment><USER9> There's just a lot of presumptions buried in statements like this that I have trouble getting past. What criteria do we use to establish a need is "real" once we get past life requirements? Do I need a better chair? A better keyboard? A more efficient car? A monthly rail pass? The criteria you and several other comments in this thread use seems to include "if you found out about it through an ad, it's not a real need," which is the original canonical definition of "begging the question."

<comment><USER8> If nothing else in your life gave you the idea to buy something but an advertisement did, it's not your idea to buy the thing. I needed a new chair because the one I used to have gave me back pain. I went on Amazon to look for a replacement chair, and because I use an ad-blocker (uBlock Origin), I didn't see any advertisements for chairs (whether there are other features of Amazon that could count as advertising, like the Amazon's Choice branding is, sure, debatable but also besides the point). Instead, I saw a list of chairs with information about them. I looked through the list and found the one I thought would best suit me and bought it. Why did I buy it? Because I felt I needed it since I was concerned that my old chair might have caused back problems if I kept using it.

Since I bought the chair on Amazon, when I don't have an ad-blocker on, like on other people's computers, I can see Amazon showing me advertisements for other chairs. Why? They are trying to convince me, because I showed a willingness to buy chairs, that I need more chairs. There are all sorts of flashy listings showing off the neat gimmicks their chairs are capable of, all to convince customers like me that what we have isn't good enough.

They can't make money if they solved people's problems, so either they design things to break (like planned obsolescence) or they psychologically manipulate people into thinking they have problems they don't have and sell them the solution (InfoWars is this taken to the extreme).

There is a difference between putting information out there for people who want to find it and blasting information at them to get in someone's head and convince them they need to do something for your own benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a dogmatic viewpoint I think often seen in very technical people who are unwilling to see the interconnectedness of how our society works.

I bet there's any number of things this person values that simply wouldn't exist without advertising.

It's a childish and immature opinion really.

Anyone who hates advertising this much should show their commitment by working at an organization that does not advertise. Loathing advertising and at the same time depending on it for income is deeply hypocritical.

<comment><USER12> What valuable things wouldn't exist without advertising?

<comment><USER11> Computers. And if you want to be pedantic, you'll say but they would exist for military etc!!!!!

But if you're not being pedantic you'll agree that most stuff relating to computing exists in its current form in lockstep with yhe ability of companies to sell and therefore advertise their products.

Not just computers but everything related to them too.

<comment><USER13> How on Earth did you come to the conclusion that computers wouldn't exist without advertising?

<comment><USER14> Home computers were initially a novelty item, sold mainly through direct- response advertisements in magazines like Popular Electronics. This early hobbyist market created the economies of scale that made a mass market home computer a possibility.

In the late 70s and early 80s, most people simply had no idea why they would want a computer; The first home computer adverts in the mainstream media didn't really sell the benefits of one computer over another, but sold the _idea_ of the computer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7_j_ABrkn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7_j_ABrkn8)

Without that kind of advertising, it's entirely plausible to believe that home computers might have been a fad, with the computer resigned to being a specialist tool for business and industry. There's a parallel universe where the home computer and video game boom never happened because nobody told consumers why they might want a computer, the 6502 and Z80 remained niche microprocessors for embedded applications, Woz went back to HP and Bill Gates finished his degree and got a job at Honeywell.

<comment><USER13> The fact that people were already reading about electronics in magazines they bought with their own money shows that people would have known what computers were regardless. Those advertisements only worked because the audience was already interested in computers. Those computers also already existed and the notion that no one would have used a computer if an ad didn't tell them to is absurd. Computers exist because they're useful and fun and they were purchased by people who wanted computers and were willing to seek out products they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wanted to mention that advertising kills the ecosystem for free and cheap stuff. People say things like "TV wouldn't exist without advertising," but TV would probably be better without it since networks would have to convince you to pay them, rather than just stop you from flipping through the channels. Certainly the news would be better because TV news tries to tease the viewer to watch past the commercial break with intentionally false and misleading statements.

Advertising isn't free, its costs are just hidden. They wouldn't spend money if it didn't relieve you of yours. People who watch TV do pay for it, it's just that the mechanism by which it happens is a magic trick of persuasion. The only question is do advertisers provide a legitimate service to society that is worth paying for and enough to support what we pay to adertisers. That's the only way advertising can be "free" \- if it is self-funded service worth value in and of itself.

IMHO, marketing is a good thing, and advertising can be when it's sufficiently targetted. Getting the word out about a new product is fine. But most traditional advertising that tries to sell an image or feeling is a blight.

<comment><USER15> So how do over the air networks convince people to pay for them? Do you want them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box? So instead of having information that anyone can access for free, people who can't afford a monthly subscription should lnt watch tv?

<comment><USER16> "Do you want them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box?"

You sound like you think this is some sort of impossibility, but that's exactly how cable provided multiple packages back in the analog days....

The reason OTA networks aren't allowed to do that is that the spectrum is considered a public resource and the government made that a term of their lease. There's nothing impossible about that idea.

<comment><USER15> I'm aware of this. But that's the point. By advocating getting rid of advertising, you're advocating DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you stop watching ads for awhile and go back to it you'll see how mind numbing it all really is.

I aggressively block ads - no exceptions.

<comment><USER18> When I moved from Europe to the US I just couldn't believe it. In my home country there is one commercial break during a 2 hour movie. It's a little longer than the breaks in the US, but there is only one. There is also one during a 45minute TV show, and none during a 20minute show.

I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't believe people were putting up with this.

<comment><USER19> I wish America would group TV ads together, it would make them much easier to skip and would remove the need for forced cutoffs (you really notice them when watching on non-cable sources)

<comment><USER20> I'd go the other direction: don't group them (a lot of shows already account for / include commercial breaks, so it ain't like they're _that_ disruptive) but make them shorter. The shorter the commercial, the less likely a viewer is to skip them or change the channel, which means more engagement. The ad's subject wins (more engagement), the viewer wins (less ads), the channel wins (more engagement + less supply = more leverage to charge higher prices for ad slots). Win-win-win.

\----

If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more commercials than actual music, with the sole exception of one station in Reno (96.1 Bob FM) that does hour-long non-stop music split up by very short (1-2 minutes at most) commercial breaks. I've also noticed that I never feel the need to switch from Bob FM to some other station because I know that the music will come back soon. Unsurprisingly, those commercials are way more impactful than the ones on other stations specifically because I'm actually listening to them instead of skipping them.

I'd like to take that to a greater extreme with 29-minute music blocks separated by single 30-second commercials (with 15-second station identification blurbs on either side of it, or perhaps combining them into a 30-second news update for e.g. traffic and weather). Companies probably wouldn't pay a premium for these ads at first, but I suspect once they see the upticks in customer engagement they'll be more willing to bid higher for those slots.

<comment><USER21> >If I had the resources and know-how, I'd start a radio station on this premise. I've noticed that most radio stations feel like they play more commercials than actual music

Of course. They're all owned by ClearChannel these days, so why should they play more music than ads? What are people going to do, switch to another (ClearChannel) radio station? You might also notice the ads are usually playing at the same time if you switch between stations.

Non-NPR radio is basically just like landlines and cable TV these days. The only people who still use/listen to/watch these things are dinosaurs who haven't moved on to streaming radio (or just buying your own music), cellphones, and streaming movies, so these companies are milking these people for all they're worth.

<comment><USER20> > The only people who still use/listen to/watch these things are dinosaurs who > haven't moved on to streaming radio (or just buying your own music), > cellphones, and streaming movies

Or people like me who drive cars that predate the widespread availability of AUX jacks (which I've worked around by using one of those cassette adapters, but I know of at least some people who drive cars in that awkward phase where cars had neither.

<comment><USER21> If you can't afford a newer car, that's understandable. If you have the means, though, cars that old are downright dangerous in a crash, and if you spend much time in your car it makes sense to upgrade to something newer that won't get you killed. People walk away from crashes in newer cars now that would have killed or severely maimed them in cars made 20 years ago.

<comment><USER20> > If you have the means, though

I don't, at least not comfortably (I probably could swing buying a newer car, but it'd definitely be painful). There are millions of Americans out there for whom that's probably out of the question entirely. And then there's the people who can't afford streaming radio (and/or a device + data plan to actually stream it) or buying music outright, or otherwise don't want to pay for those things, and at the same time don't feel like sailing the high seas for it (if your sails catch my drift).

<comment><USER21> >I don't, at least not comfortably (I probably could swing buying a newer car, but it'd definitely be painful)

Remember also, older cars cost a lot: they might not cost much to buy, but they cost a lot to keep running, because of repair costs. If you do your own work and have the time, this might not be a big issue, but for a lot of people it definitely is, and it's why they trade up to a newer car every so often: the repair costs on the old car become greater than the value of the car, so it's cheaper to just sell it and buy something newer that isn't breaking down all the time. On top of that, don't forget the cost of having a breakdown, as this can affect your job.

<comment><USER20> I feel like I'm at a dealership, lol

No, my repair costs + price of my current car ain't anywhere near what it'd cost to buy a newer car, at least not yet (if it gets to that point where it really is cheaper to buy a newer car than to fix my current one, then fine, but so far that hasn't been the case). This kind of assumption also hinges on the idea that newer cars don't break down as often (which may be true statistically, but is nowhere near guaranteed).

At best, one could argue that I'd save a lot in gas due to efficiency gains and/or electric drivetrains. That's probably true in the case of electrics, which is why I'm saving up to that effect, but those are - unfortunately - pretty expensive, especially for my needs (I routinely haul enough stuff to justify at least an SUV, if not an outright truck). In any other case, it'd take a _long_ time to get to break-even.

<comment><USER21> Depending on how much work you do on your own car, and how long you keep it, new cars may not be a great investment, since they depreciate so rapidly. Basically there's a bathtub curve: too-old cars have very high repair costs, and too-new cars have high depreciation. So if you really want to be frugal, you want a car that's between 2 and 10 years old I think, depending on your finances and what you want to drive.

>This kind of assumption also hinges on the idea that newer cars don't break down as often (which may be true statistically, but is nowhere near guaranteed).

It's absolutely true statistically. It might not be guaranteed because there are lemons out there (as well as Chryslers...), but in general it's absolutely true: machines wear out over time so of course older cars have more things breaking on them. But some are definitely better than others. I know someone with an '01 Toyota Camry with 300,000 miles on it and it's still running great, though it's needed a few minor body things fixed (like a side mirror, probably broken by getting hit by something). I wouldn't expect an '01 Chevy to be that reliable, and certainly not an '01 Chrysler.

>I routinely haul enough stuff to justify at least an SUV, if not an outright truck

My suggestion here if you want to save gas is (assuming whatever you're hauling isn't too heavy, and this is an occasional task and not everyday) to get a car, add a tow hitch, and get a 4x8 utility trailer. I had one of these for a while and it was pretty fantastic for things like hauling appliances or furniture in town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Long, long ago, someone suggested their extremely simple fix for advertising: stop letting companies declare it as a business expense.

The Law of Unintended Consequences always gets you in weird ways, and I'm not a lobbyist or a public policy person, nor do I know anyone highly placed in those fields.

But one of the ways companies slowly fail is by choosing to sell harder instead of making their product better. If we lower the rate of return on advertising dollars by 15%, won't that shift some more money into R&D, logistics and other divisions that provide something approximating value (although one unintended consequence I can see is an increased focus on strip- mining the Third World, literally and figuratively).

<comment><USER23> there's a better way. Just have consumers stop buying products that are advertised. it's so easy.

i can only imagine that consumers love the advertisements, otehrwise, why would they buy the product?

<comment><USER22> No such thing has been proven. Brand recognition is higher even for brands whose ads piss you off. Over time you forget why you were so mad.

I had a coworker who insisted you could just chose not to participate. My argument to him was the same I'll make to you: the other side is using psychological warfare. It's privatization of propaganda tactics. That requires something a bit more vigorous in response than taking your ball and going home.

<comment><USER23> There's nothing stopping anyone from not buying the product. Just because you recognize their brands doesn't mean you have to buy it. I really don't get it. For example, I used to hate the Dodge ads: they really rubbed me the wrong way. It's very easy for me to not buy Dodge products.

and as far as pyschological warfare goes. Just don't let it affect you. Only buy things you want or need and don't let yourself be manipulated so easily.

<comment><USER22> Yeah that's why it's called warfare and not conversation. You're tricking the person into doing something they don't want to do by overcoming their defenses and reasoning to work against their own interests.

You are either a zen monk or have a huge blind spot. Who else would offer this sort of advice?

<comment><USER23> I've never bought anything I don't want or need. For me, it's not difficult, that's why its so hard for me to understand why it's not he norm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Modern advertising is propaganda and agitation. While commercial entities have advertised their wares for as long as there have been commerce[0], the modern mass hallucination inducing form became the norm only after the world wars.

The essence of propaganda is to weave a story and engage the target population in an action that creates commitment to the story and creates secondary effect due to social proof as people see other people committing.

This is the essence of modern marketing as well.

Cancer is not really a well thought out way to describe it, it sounds a bit fanatical.

There is nothing conspiracy like about this. This is all well known and researched.

General public is just kept ignorant of it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the more you know about how propaganda works the less effective it is? Thus teaching people en mass how propaganda works would make even benevolent attempts at mass mind control less effective.

[0] Branding is nothing new. In the viking age particular german swords were very well thought off - and they had particular inscription on the blade. The brand was so strong that blacksmiths around baltic created "pirate" copies of the blades by writing the same inscription - or, as some were illeterate, attempted to copy the markings resulting in almost-but-not quite correct spellings. As their clients were likely illiterate as well I don't think it mattered for business.

<comment><USER25> > Maybe it's because the more you know about how propaganda works the less > effective it is

Actually propaganda is so effective exactly because it works even when you know that it's propaganda. People remember the message but not the source of the message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.

<comment><USER27> > Google has provided incalculable value to the world

I'm not convinced by this statement, and I'd be genuinely interested to hear your reasoning behind it. Is it specific products? Specific technologies? Although Google has built some interesting stuff, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that they've done that was either a) something that couldn't have been invented without them, or b) only unique due to their ability to scale it out, rather than a true innovation.

<comment><USER28> The problem with arguing your viewpoint is that no one can prove something wouldn't have been invented without Google. So, no matter what is listed, you can just say "someone else might have invented that".

And regarding your second point, what would the practical difference be to the consumer if the innovation happened because of their ability to scale out, or "true innovation"?

You don't need to like Google to admit they have added value to the world.

<comment><USER27> You may be assuming you know my viewpoint without me having presented it in full, but anyway I wasn't looking to argue in bad faith, I guess I just see a strong difference between "successful company that has made money and cool products" and "added incalculable value to the world." That's a very strong statement!

The parent comment was looking to weigh the problems of the ad-supported economy and the ills brought about by that described in the article against the value Google has brought to the world, and I just don't see how the two stack up, so I wanted to understand their weighting of the latter.

Everyone seems keen to write haigiographies of companies that in all honesty I mostly find ... okay I guess? Could do better but they make cool stuff? I don't "hate" Google, but I do think that a company the size of Google doesn't need such zealous defenders, it needs a critical society that pushes it to do better with the crazy resources it has, and one of those things is to examine the ways in which it's basic revenue model is harmful.

<comment><USER28> I didn't think you were trying to argue in bad faith, and you are correct that I had assumed you presented your full position in your initial post - <USER2> apologies.

And I agree, "incalculable" makes it quite a strong statement, and I probably wouldn't have chosen that word myself.

I think it's important to consider that Google is not the sole inventor, proponent, or user of advertisement. You probably aren't claiming that either, but the way your statement reads(" _problems of the ad-supported economy and the ills [...] against the value of Google_ ") leads one to believe that you put those two things on equal footing. Google certainly evolved advertising, and is certainly a major player, but they aren't solely responsible. So, to weigh "Googles Good" vs. "Advertisements Ills" is hard to reconcile.

"haigiographies" is a new word for me, cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would say the theft of attention and concentration is a cancer on society, but I agree overall.

To those who say there is no other model, you are not correct.

<comment><USER30> What are the other models that exist and are currently working? As someone who is looking to build a free consumer product, I don't know what else exists that can offset my costs other than advertising. I hate paywalls just as much as advertising, so I'm opposed to just charging for access.

<comment><USER31> If you expect income, you're not really looking to build a free product, are you? Seems to me, a paywall (or similar) is the honest way; those who get value from your product give value back, in the most direct and transparent way possible.

(I know I'm trivializing the question; I'm not in your situation and I don't know the perfect model for your product. But I disagree with just lumping together "paywalls" and "advertising" in the same category of "non-desirable things".)

<comment><USER32> > If you expect income, you're not really looking to build a free product, are > you?

You hit it right on the nose. I'd rather pay not to have strings attached than get something free with hidden other costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Compulsory quote

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_\(film\))

<comment><USER33> Maybe I'm misinterpreting but didn't the movie show that everything Tyler does and says is 100% wrong?

<comment><USER34> No. The movie shows a very real problem that many people experience. It goes on to show a partial solution of getting in touch with your primal emotions (beating the shit out of each other). It then turns into a cult and cults have a tendency to go off the rails.

It's a multi-layered story that resists simplistic interpretations, which is why it is so beloved by so many.

<comment><USER33> > It goes on to show a partial solution of getting in touch with your primal > emotions (beating the shit out of each other).

Should be clear that the way the characters go about this is an awful, awful solution.

The reason it is beloved by many is that the simplistic story encourages "deep" interpretations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe some of it...but without any advertising at all it would be really hard to know what products or out there or even that there is a restaurant on the other end of the block.

<comment><USER36> reducing consumption would be a benefit if you think about it from a climate change angle...

For restaurants, I usually search for them in a directory and not in ads...

<comment><USER37> In NYC, there are many pop up events including food events, which wouldn't show up in a food directory site, but they do show up on Instagram ads.

<comment><USER38> My town has a couple of stuff-happening-today directories. (Or this week or this month.) Doesn't NYC?

<comment><USER37> There's just so much going on I guess. There are times where I don't mind FB knowing what my interests are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Advertising (Which appears to be defined in your broad doc as anything that gets your attention without asking for it first) is the worst way to get people to pay attention to things, except for all the other ways. The alternative to "advertising" is the rate of people discovering new things dropping to 1% of what it is now.

1% of products have natural virality and will be found on their own. The other 99% of products and services in existence, no matter the quality, needs to be promoted so people can find them and use them.

Say you make an app that helps plumbers do their job well. If every plumber used it, plumber productivity would go up 50%, making life easier for all. It cost you years of your time and lots of money to make this great app, and you need a lot of plumbers to buy it to afford to continue working on it.

There's a big plumber app on the market already, but yours is way better.

How do you get plumbers to hear about your product?

1) The press? Uninterested. Plumber magazines or sites? Very low traffic - <USER3> way to scale.

2) Call or knock on doors of every plumber near you? If everyone did this, the spam would be unreal. Also inefficient and not scalable.

3) Referrals? You get some, but most plumbers aren't chomping at the bit to help their competitors. And because you started with so few, referrals are a snails pace and by no means exponential.

4) Organic postings and SEO? The big plumber app is way ahead of you. And 100 other worse apps clog up the listings. No one sees your posts.

See the problem? Without ads, you can't grow many many categories of genuinely valuable products. Even if no one else is advertising, you can't really grow without them.

This is barely a hypothetical by the way. I've worked with a dozen companies with similar situations.

Here's a real life example:

I was just hired to scale marketing for a particular app. This app currently has over 100 real reviews online, averaging 4.9 stars out of 5. Retention is nuts - 98% of people who ever started using the product (which has a monthly fee) are still using it. The company is three years old.

Perfect to take off, right? But few industries are actually viral. We just doubled the number of new customers per month using FB ads in the first two months of scaling it out, and we'll scale much further over the next 3.

Anyone who works in start-up growth will tell you the same things I am.

<comment><USER6> > 1% of products have [...] 99% of products and services [...] plumber > productivity would go up 50% [...]

Did know that 97% of statistics are made up on the spot?

The problem with your fictions here is that they're based in a world with a lot of advertising. In your fantasy, people just sit around dying of thirst because there's nobody to advertise water at them. But in reality, people would still find ways to get what they need.

I find great new products all the time despite living an ad-free life. I find them through friends. Through internet discussion like Hacker News. And through sites like Wirecutter and Consumer Reports. I don't find my life particularly lacking.

Would ending ads mean it would be harder for businesses to manipulate their growth numbers? Sure. So I can get why you feel panicked at the thought. But you're used to a world where everybody's burning investor money to get attention, so it's required to do the same. Maybe think about the world where nobody can do that. I promise you, it'll keep on turning.

<comment><USER39> My job is talking to start-ups and established companies that want to grow. It's not a fiction to say that most companies don't grow if they don't promote themselves.

<comment><USER40> Because they're operating in an adversarial environment where every other business engages in advertising. It's game theory.

<comment><USER39> They're operating in an adversarial environment where other businesses _exist_.

<comment><USER40> If they merely existed but didn't engage in advertising, you could advertise and, consequently, outperform them. But they all know this too. This is the game theory I'm alluding to. It's a Prisoners Dilemma except with added externalities in the cases where anyone advertises at all.

Now, how does the prisoners dilemma get solved? External enforcement. In advertising that might entail laws and regulations to curtail advertising. These laws and regulations may be net positive to the erstwhile advertisers themselves in this scenario. (The equivalent mechanism in the actual prisoners dilemma is that snitches get stitches.)

<comment><USER41> You could never remove advertising without silencing companies. Let that sink in. As long as companies exist and have tools to reach out, even if it was a free Facebook post, they're always going to do that.

<comment><USER42> It is possible to heavily reduce available advertising channels with some clear regulations. It isn't that hard to imagine. Sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but there is a wide range of "advertising pervasiveness and harmfulness" that we can dial the knob down on.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. We don't have to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And it's not like I object to companies publishing on their own channels. They can have a website, a Twitter account, a Facebook account. If people volunteer to read that, great. If we just eliminate paid manipulation, it'll be a huge step forward and we'll free up enormous sums of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This discussion always makes me think of one of my favorite NewRadio scenes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrnMbhMgmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrnMbhMgmw)

It makes a really important point, though: where do you draw the line at what is considered "advertising"? It's a pervasive part of humanity.

> Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing.

That's life, though, isn't it? Me convincing my employer I'm the best person for the job. Convincing my wife I'm the best choice for a husband. Ultimately, everything becomes a sort of "advertisement". It's a very slippery slope.

It's even more interesting that this article even says:

> When I say "advertising", I use this term somewhat loosely...

Which is a problem when you want to make bold claims like "Advertising as cancer".

<comment><USER25> > Me convincing my employer I'm the best person for the job

To do that I presume you would actually have to _believe_ that you are the best person for the job. Otherwise you would fill emotional distress, as normal people do when they lie. Professional marketers on the other hand don't have to believe in what they sell.

<comment><USER43> They don't _have_ to believe it. But I think many do (Whether they are lying to themselves is another thing). Most sales/marketing folks I've worked with actually _do_ believe their product is superior and the best.

I don't think it's really as black-and-white as your suggesting, though. In the "employee/employer" context: there are plenty of employees who do think they are the best person for a job. In most cases that's probably just not true, given the size of a candidate pool. Are they lying to themselves?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know the old Bill Hicks joke? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU) I think advertising is part of the human condition. Once people want something, they tend to change how they relate the facts to better fit their self interest. I see this as an evolution-created short cut. So, while it is valuable to recognize it, demonizing it may not turn out to be that useful. Instead, if we take that advertising is as inevitable a phenomena as language, we can try to avoid its pitfalls as consumers and producers.

</comment><comment><USER45> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

> Edward Louis Bernays ... was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of > public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father > of public relations".

> Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) > gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field > of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred > Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and his own double uncle Sigmund Freud, he > described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined > how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to > control them in desirable ways.

<comment><USER46> I highly recommend the documentary, Century of the Self, which details how Bernays' theories about advertising were put to use by Nazis. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'd like to see solutions offered, that aren't just of the "do things that are against your own self interest" variety. Anything that requires you do something that individually hurts yourself in a tangible, measurable way, while not giving you benefit in a tangible, measurable way, falls under this. For example, if you boycott, you notice the impact on yourself because it is undiluted, but almost never will you notice the impact of your actions because it will be spread among everyone.

So here's a radical suggestion. Legislation that says: any web site or app that shows ads should offer an option to view the site without ads, by paying for access, and that is priced reasonably (approximately equal revenue as ads) and with options for "a la carte" vs. bundling. Any provider of ads (adSense, etc) has to provide this service as well.

It's complex legislation, I'm sure, and tricky to get right. But it's better than tilting at windmills, as this article leaves me feeling it is doing.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's good advertising and bad advertising. Calling all advertising "cancer" is ludicrous.

My YouTube subscription feed is full of stuff that is some form of advertising - music instrument retailers demonstrating new products, advertorial content from tool manufacturers, tutorials from software companies and so on. It's all paid for out of the marketing budget, it's all intended to sell more product, but it's also a useful service to me as a consumer.

Back in the day, I bought computer and music magazines in large part _because_ of the advertising. It's how I kept up to date with the industry, it's how I learned about new products that weren't necessarily available in my town and it's how I found out the market price for products.

How do consumers find out about new products without some form of advertising? How do manufacturers find a market without some form of advertising?

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone else find the user of 'cancer' in these terms to be frustrating? Having had to experience the pain of people I care about having cancer, it immediately just makes me feel like shit. I guess maybe I'm just sensitive...

<comment><USER49> I've had cancer, and I've had people close to me die of cancer, so I can see where you're coming from. Even the mention of it would freak me out - <USER4> remember when my mom was dying of cancer, and I was being treated for it, watching an episode of Stargate to escape from it - and one of the characters in the episode was dying of cancer - so much for escape!

But, then again, somethings really are as virulent and aggressive as cancer, and I'm ok with them being compared to it. I'm fine with the (needed, imo) reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> No its not. I had to move quickly last week. Needed to find someone who could take some stuff. Remembers the 1800gotjunk commercials. They fixed my problem. I guess I could have used google but without ads google wouldn't exist so...

<comment><USER17> Phone books still exist.

<comment><USER51> I don't know what they're like these days, but when I was younger, the vast majority of the phone book was a series of advertisements for various businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I live in a small town in southeast Alaska, and we are exposed to much less advertising than people in more densely populated parts of the US. We have no billboards, we don't have any large box stores, and we don't have cable TV in our house. When we travel, my 8yo is fascinated by all the advertising around us. He finds a lot of it funny because he hasn't been overexposed to all the standard tricks that advertisers pull.

But, he is already deeply frustrated by the intrusiveness of online ads. He is old enough and informed enough to be aware that he's being manipulated, but not old enough yet to consistently spot the manipulation that online advertisers use on his own.

A little advertising is a good thing. Inundation is not a good thing, and we are far past the inundation stage.

</comment><comment><USER53> I feel this is a new trend among people.

* I don't like something. * Why do people do it? It is not even effective. * It should be outlawed.

If you and a bunch of other people like you think advertising is a waste of money, what is preventing you from starting your own company that does not use advertising? I promise you the government will not come and force you to buy commercial time or Facebook ads.

<comment><USER54> It's not a new trend. There's always people that think big, regulatory government is the answer to everything, and people just cannot be held accountable for their own actions. It just seems worse now that they can spout their nonsense to the masses, but good thing they're still a (very) vocal minority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Targeted Instagram ads have been very useful to me recently. I just moved apartments, and the ads have been showcasing products that I wouldn't have otherwise known about.

The argument can be made that maybe I didn't need these things in the first place. But I want them, it makes me happy, and these ads have saved me time.

<comment><USER12> This is a pretty rare ad experienced. They're much more commonly used to generate desire that doesn't need to exist; to manipulate public opinion in a harmful way; to sell dangerous products; to astroturf; etc.

The fact that people attempt to ignore most ads, with varying degrees of success, tells you that they're net-harmful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I really detest the general "hate" of advertising. Don't get me wrong: I'm a zealous ad blocker, largely because advertising can (and does) go over the line of being intrusive. Also I think the dirty secret of ad tech is ad personalization has pretty limited value.

But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need or want. There might be a bakery 2 miles away you'll really enjoy. How will you find out about it if they don't advertise? Being strictly reliant on word- of-mouth is woefully naive (IMHO).

Take Google search, the user is literally looking for something. Why isn't an ad an appropriate response to someone searching for a search for "ozark jetski for hire"? As long as ads and organic search results are clearly differentiated, IMHO this is totally fine.

Certain behaviours obviously need to be restricted, like I'm a big fan of outright outlawing advertising to children. But advertising in general? In what world is that reasonable?

<comment><USER56> > But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might > need or want.

That's in the article. He's arguing the exact point that advertising has a legitimate function in a market to inform about products. They've outgrown that, he continues, and now they do not inform, they convince (and often lie to do so).

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I really have a dual view on advertising: as a person I hate being on the receiving end of ads (especially when the ads follow me through my browsing....), on the other hand as an entrepreneur I'm quite happy to have means of advertising my tea subscription service [1]. "Build it and they will come" doesn't quite work. People have to hear about your product somehow.

I don't do much advertising at all for Tomotcha as our churn is low and I am quite content with the number of subscribers right now. But from time to time we send a tea to an "influencer" or run an adword campaign. It helps.

[1] When I mention my tea subscription service ([https://tomotcha.com](https://tomotcha.com)) right here on HN, does it count as advertisement? It should, because it is, thankfully HN as a community of entrepreneurs is rather forgiving about self-promotion. Other communities (some subreddits) can be very hostile towards it...

<comment><USER58> And here I go rewarding your self promotion, but when else do I get to ask directly?

I just skimmed your site. It looks like it's all greens. Is that correct?

<comment><USER57> We send very different kind of teas, but they are all Japanese teas. So for instance we only sent black tea once [1] so far because wakocha is pretty rare, though it is gaining in popularity among tea producers. I recently found a very good one produced in Tanegashima, we may send it soon. Otherwise most teas will fall in either the roasted family (hojicha), or in the non-roasted family (sencha, gyokuro, etc.), with sometimes teas that are really infusions, not actual teas (like Zaracha).

But taking just non-roasted green teas, there is a lot of variations. Depending on the way green tea is prepared, it will taste very different. Difference can come from the steaming (asamushi -> futsumushi -> fukamushi, from light and quick to deep and long), from the shading, or lack of shading (sencha -> kabusecha -> gyokuro from no shading to a lot of shading). Then there are teas prepared with different part of the tea plant: my favorite tea is actually called karigane, and is made of twigs instead of tea-leaves.

The teas are definitely all quite different, there are many to try.

[1] [https://tomotcha.com/en/blog/2018-012-wakocha- toyama/](https://tomotcha.com/en/blog/2018-012-wakocha-toyama/)

<comment><USER58> I am a pretty dedicated tea dork, even if I don't particularly love Japanese tea. I'll give it a shot.

<comment><USER57> Thank you :)

If you want a discount, you can use this coupon: REDDIT

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I prefer to simply say "marketing _today_ is immoral": it is using scientifically proven methods to manipulate us into doing something we would otherwise not be inclined to do.

I don't mind informative advertising: "hey, we are making this thing which can help with this" is ok. But that's a rare breed of ads nowadays. One of the eye-openers for me was when I noticed in my early student (and shaving :)) days how all Nivea shaving products were branded as being for sensitive skin (does your skin turn red if you pull razor over it?): I've simply stopped buying their products. They've scaled back on that, but I didn't "forgive" them their attempt to manipulate me.

As a cancer survivor myself, I don't mind the analogy and term, it just seems to not be explicit enough about what the trouble is with ads today: you have to work backwards to establish parallels from "cancer" to "advertising".

<comment><USER60> Curious to know what's so problematic about the Nivea claim that it's for sensitive skin?

<comment><USER59> As I mentioned, _all_ of their products were being marketed as being for "sensitive skin". Eg. a skin that turns red and/or itches after you shave with a very sharp razor: I would generally expect that almost everyone's skin behaves like this. So by saying "sensitive", they were attempting to manipulate me into thinking how my (and everybody else's) skin is sensitive so I need their "special" products.

<comment><USER60> If you expected that, you would most assuredly be mistaken. Skin sensitivity is a thing that people experience on a wide variety of levels. Some men can shave every day and experience no redness whatsoever. Some can't begin to think of doing that without redness/pain/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is the first I've learned about things like the "Evercookie," and now I'm wondering if there's a U.S. Attorney out there who would be interested in a CFAA prosecution.

I utterly fail to see how it could be the case that website scraping arguably violates the CFAA (though I have my doubts there), but this kind of malware deliberately designed to violate the expressed intent of people to remove data from their own machines, for the purpose of accessing identity information, doesn't.

Interestingly, if you try to download the zip file of the evercookie repo from github, Chrome detects it as malware and blocks it. That makes me rather more confident in the security model of Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER62> > "There's really nothing stopping any government from tapping into this total > surveillance infrastructure other than lack of will."

Why assume a lack of will at this point? We know they routinely approach companies about collecting the data the company collects. They've clearly demonstrated the will to collect our data regardless of legality. (Does/did this site have a warrant canary?)

At this point I treat all ads as hostile. As much as websites try to make you feel guilty for blocking their ads I feel zero obligation to allow or support their efforts to manipulate me or compromise my privacy and security.

</comment><comment><USER63> Advertising is as much of a cancer as any form of communication.

What's happening is that the barrier of entry - better yet let's use the industry terms: the cost reach of advertising campaigns is low thanks to the internet that drove the cost of distribution of information close to 0.

So you're just seeing what was once a privileged tool open to the masses - <USER5> it's bad. Anyone can have access to it with a credit card.

Now just because there's a lot of bad advertising, probably the great majority of it, doesn't mean it's a cancer. Else everything that's abused in a bad way is a cancer.

</comment><comment><USER64> I've always wondered about the hundreds of millions spent on election (mainly TV) advertising in the U.S.

Is all that money paid for airtime an indirect subsidy or transfer of wealth to those who own media companies?

</comment><comment><USER65> How much free reign does anyone have when it comes to advertisement? I feel that the biggest issue is not only the volume / spam of advertisement, but how much misinformation it projects.

If the quantity of advertisement can be curbed in such a way that corporates are more conscious of how much space they have on television with advertisements (time limiting law), as well as what message they can convey, this starts discouraging and treating in-your-face advertisement less of a prioritiezed form of pitching a product.

</comment><comment><USER66> While I understand both the purpose (cultivate desire, entice, inform) and the necessity (forward movement, economy, business) of advertising, I'd still like to get about my life without it. Unhindered by it.

The noise to signal ratio of the modern Internet is such that I, as a technical person, someone that finds it preferable to read instead of listen or watch; I still find myself on Youtube 99% of the time. Almost all of my web browsing is now Youtube. AND I HATE IT.

<comment><USER66> What I'd like to see is an HTMLx that addresses the core needs of the Web- using entities, and an ecosystem of Web extensions that expand on the capabilities of it. So, something like what smartphones with their apps and markets are doing. Basic call and message capabilities, but then there's TrueCaller and WhatsApp and the like.

"Please support our project by enabling advertising on this domain [OK] [Later] [Never]" "For Youtube Movies please install DRM/x264 package from the market [OK] [Later] [Never]" "You will need to enable storage, code, and gaming modules to use Itch [OK] [Later] [Never]"

Because browser extensions suck. Browsers suck. Mobile browsers suck. The experience of the Web sucks, for anyone that knows better. Shopping, gaming, streaming, syndication and publishing all suck big time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I remember thinking years ago that advertising would slowly disappear because we would have tools which would help us make optimal market decisions, so people would just use those and ignore the ads.

Basically, I imagined a website where you pick the type of service or good that you're interested in, fill out some sort of questionnaire and then get a list of recommendations which are optimal for your situation.

</comment><comment><USER68> There is one part of the anti-advertising rhetoric which has to do with the fact that we spend so much time online and advertising is very visible there - after all Google, an advertising company, is the largest and most important internet company. That's unfortunate of course. There is another part though that is not just fed up with advertising, but comes from a certain trends towards protecting "my safe space". It's more prominent in the latest generations and it's a knee-jerk reaction to anything that might spread speech that is not explicitly desired (not just acceptable). It's the same aversion that sometimes makes people intolerant to their neighbors who don't share their own views. I think the article similarly slid quickly from advertising to all forms of manipulation, forgetting that paid advertising (pamphlets) is what enabled a number of positive revolutions in societies, from martin luther to french revolution to the bolsheviks.

<comment><USER8> There is a difference, whose significance seems to be lost on you, between peer-to-peer, voluntary communication and centralized, forced distribution.

You are not forced to read pamphlets nor do they insert the content of the pamphlets into your newspapers and letters. Typically the only thing you are forced to do by someone distributing pamphlets is to tell them whether you'd like to take one. If advertisements had to ask whether you wanted to see them, the entire industry would collapse.

Pamphlets are also not magically distributed to everyone. People have to decide to help distribute them, which means other people have to cooperate with you to help you spread your message. It is also easier for others to interfere in your efforts, as, unlike online, people can see who and where the information is coming from, and they can also more easily and directly inhibit distribution. On the other hand, any individual can buy a Facebook ad and, with enough money, shove it in millions of people's faces with little to no oversight. Hence, it is easier to spread misinformation (like anti-vaccine propaganda) through Facebook than in real life.

<comment><USER68> > If advertisements had to ask whether you wanted to see them, the entire > industry would collapse.

Online ads - and most ads tbh - don't force you to do that either. They want to attract your attention but you re free to ignore them. I used pamphlets as the equivalent of advertising in older times, i m sure people would consider them just as pushy/spammy back then as we consider online ads now. They are not peer-to-peer by definition - there is no point preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER8> You aren't free to ignore them. To even look at them to identify whether they are advertisements takes time. Even if it took a millisecond, with a billion people looking at it that's 12 days of man-hours lost on every advertisement.

Pamphlet distribution is peer-to-peer. People have to distribute them to other people. However, Advertising is usually lopsided: typically a group of people working together, like a magazine corporation, or a machine, like with Facebook, is distributing content to people. And again, receiving ads from these places is not voluntary. You cannot engage with the activity but refuse receiving advertisements, unlike my experience of walking around on university campuses and refusing pamphlets I am offered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Advertising is not a bad thing in itself. Think of newspaper advertisements (paper edition). I think I owe a lot of my success to a newspaper ad I saw which led me to apply to join for advanced math and science classes. We have had it for centuries, and there will always be some form of advertising around. A "ban" on advertising is neither practical nor fruitful. What is bad is specific, targeted advertising based on user behavior or deep knowlege about the user. This is somewhat vague, of course - if I buy a car magazine, I expect to see car ads which the publishers have posted because they know that the people who buy the magazine are car enthusiasts. It is a question of precision - I am ok with ads targeted at IPs from, say Queens area in New York, but not ads that use my precise location or street. Age should be completely out of bounds except for general statistics like - readers of this newspaper tend to be 20-30 year olds.

</comment><comment><USER70> He could ad : ads kill information.

As an example, google "cbd oil vs cbd isolate" or "why is cbd isolate in powder form...", in order to understand the difference and the relation betweens the 2 components (knowing Canabidiol should already be an oil, as its name suggest) and why cbd isolate is under the form of powder and not liquid as CBD oil.

Everything that come in the first results pages are fake blog posts from commercial sites or commercial offers. We quickly understand one contains the other after reading the first 3 pages from the result. But we never find an article explaining the actual chimical nature of cbd isolate (or pure form of cbd) or even an actual scientific study about cbd.

It's only the same and repeated argument, "article" after "article" about one pure form contained in another... and that for the first several result pages from a meta-search engine like searx (searx.be in this example with setting settle to include in general results Bing, Google, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo and StartPage).

The good information has been covered under a thick layer of low density infomertial bullshit.

It's like trying to watch a movie in the middle of car traffic : You can't hear anything from the movie original soundtrack.

It take to further research, like "why is cannabidiol a powder", to have access in the first result page to actual independant articles for cbd, but under the form of its less "commercial" name, "cannabidiol"... to learn that lot of claims about cbd are not founded on actual scientific researches.

In short, the word CBD have been hijacked by commercial entities for profit and lost the biggest chunk of its actual meaning.

Information is lost in the process.

And I still don't know why cbd isolate is in powder form.

</comment><comment><USER71> How old is your daughter?

> This is why my kid isn't going to watch YouTube. If and when we decide to > show her any children's show, it'll be from a manually curated set of videos > downloaded and streamed from a NAS.

Until what age? I doubt this resolve will last until 18, particularly when they become old enough to know what their friends are watching. The vast majority of video content isn't legally downloadable, and even illegal downloading is a bit difficult because children's shows aren't as widely shared as content aimed at adults. (Even really popular shows like Paw Patrol have surprisingly limited availability.)

If you want to limit ad exposure, using subscription services like Netflix is more practical, as does purchasing shows on a per show basis on YouTube (which granted gets very expensive). Public broadcasting is also typically ad free; in the UK we have iplayer which has ad-free children's programming available for streaming.

</comment><comment><USER72> At the risk of much hate and downvotes, this is I feel the prototypical example of one of the issues with HN. Disagreeing is fine, but this is a pretty long, detailed article yet half the comments here are "the author is wrong, there's nothing wrong with advertising"

</comment><comment><USER23> Advertising never works on me unless it's for a product I already wanted in the first place in which case i would've gotten it anyways. But other than that, I'm completely immune. I've calculated, less than 0.25% of my earnings go towards a product that was advertised to me.

I have no idea what brand my clothes/shoes are, if any. None of the food I buy has any branding whatsoever. ever seen a branded cucumber? nope, neither have I. I only buy new eletronics when the old one breaks, and I almost always get the cheapest one. Other than that, almost all of the rest of my spending goes to housing and savings/assets.

If everyone was like me, the advertising industry might not exist, or at least be much smaller.

<comment><USER73> the thing is that maybe you are smarter than average. Maybe most people buy impulsiely, who knows..

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I'd rather be worried about whether advertising is (cost-)effective. Couldn't there be an advertising industry bubble? I block all ads online nowadays, but when I didn't, I found it hard to believe that they could be worth the money.

<comment><USER75> The bubble theory on ads is interesting.

Around 2009 I saw it as "unprofitable venture backed companies advertising on unprofitable venture backed platforms" as if it's some kind of matryoshka doll system that works as a baton passing from one generation of bad investments to the next - no revenue is trading hands, just poorly placed investor money:

A kafkaesque anarchy of people siloed at companies named after adjectives spelled without vowels passing pixels for sale among each other hoping that some unicorn will fall out of their back pocket.

<comment><USER76> I see how invasion of privacy fits into this self-reinforcing kafkaesque matryoshka bubble: massive collection and statistics of people's personal data are being used as _advertisement for the advertisers_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson I wonder why we don't see any kind of tax on advertising (or maybe we do?). It seems to me like a way to recoup some of the social cost of advertising. It also seems like it could be popular with eg some European governments as a way to get companies like google and Facebook to pay some tax on the profits they make. If the tax were per estimated impression then it would encourage more accurate estimates of volume (or at least it could curb the inflation of the estimates) as companies offering advertising would be incentivised by taxation to keep estimates low, and by competition to keep estimates high. Perhaps instead there would be some kind of gdpr inspired tax on collecting unneeded information to cover the societal cost of breaches and leaks and tracking in general.

A few reasons that we don't see this:

1\. It seems a slightly weird thing to tax. On the other hand, sugar taxes are becoming a thing in some places.

2\. Elected governments may not want to piss off the media companies who they feel elected them.

3\. Maybe people don't care about advertising and so would feel like such a tax was for some hidden purpose. São Paulo (iirc) banned almost all public advertising. I wonder how the people there feel about it.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'd say silver lining of advertising as it's done today is that the budgets are so high, I know many artists that would not survive without it.

My behance feed is full of artists doing amazing things, being supporded by ad company budgets. GMUNK actually has a great talk on this, I think it's 'pearl 5' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CP8UjRxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CP8UjRxk)

There would have to be a fundamental shift in our economic system, not just 'advertising', for artists to be able to have a support system outside of corporate sponsorship and gigs.

</comment><comment><USER78> I agree with many of the ideas with the comparison, however to call "advertising" as a whole is cancer is out of touch. I believe what should be said is "modern-day digital advertising". I speak with advertisers all the time and they choose us because we display ethical ads (website is codefund.io). We do not track, profile, or collect information. All of our ads are chosen and displayed solely based on the context of the site.

We all need advertising in order to enjoy the free services we all use. Cancer is something that nobody should have to live with. Advertising is something we can all live with if done ethically and responsibly.

</comment><comment><USER79> "You Promised Me Mars Colonies. Instead, I Got Facebook." Buzz Aldrin

</comment><comment><USER80> "Businesses are made of people, and people have ethics. If you're running one, consider the way you advertise. Are you aiming at making mutually beneficial transactions, or are you just trying to milk you users out of their hard- earned cash? Not all advertising is inherently harmful to individuals or society. "

So, some kinds of cancers are OK. It's hard to take this sort of article too seriously when it undermines it's own point so effectively.

<comment><USER81> I think you're reading "is" in a particular (and reasonable) way, but there are other ways of reading it. For example "is" can mean "is _essentially_ " or _fundamentally_ , or it could mean "is _currently_ ".

The fact that advertising doesn't have to be a cancer is compatible with the claim that it is one at this point in history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> "What can be done about it? I honestly have no good ideas"

One possibility would be setting up some sort of cloud/container solution that isn't really trying to TOR is up, but does manage to obscure and filter traffic enough to harden us mortal targets.

Up from there, perhaps there is some tarted up proxy as a business model that supports doing social media and searching in a low-fingerprint way.

These ideas must have been explored already, so tell me who has some good products, HN.

</comment><comment><USER83> Most comments are referring to a claim that the author did not make: that all advertising and the practice of business marketing should be abolished unconditionally.

<comment><USER60> That's probably because the author uses loaded language, and bases the whole article on an analogy with cancer, which has a slight tendency to evoke the worst kind of crap people can think of and want to entirely get rid of at all costs.

<comment><USER83> What loaded language? Loaded language appeals to a stereotype, this is just a provocative analogy. The use of an attention-grabbing title does not mean that one should be excused for creating a straw man instead of debating the actual content.

<comment><USER60> If you're going to bit nit-picky about words:

"In rhetoric, loaded language (also known as loaded terms or emotive language) is wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes."

Provocative analogies can use loaded language, for example when they appeal to emotions. Riddling your text with things like how advertising "infects", "destroys", "corrupts", is "industrial scale abuse" and so on, is loaded language that's not conducive to debate.

Regardless, I've debated the actual content elsewhere in this thread, and many times in the past directly with the author over Hacker News. I'm familiar with his position — it's hardly uncommon — and his arguments. They're not uninteresting, but I'm not sure they're helping push things forward much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the critique. I'll consider how to discharge some of the unnecessarily loaded parts - it wasn't my intention to push emotional buttons here, though it's hard to avoid doing that by accident given that I have strongly negative emotions to the topic I've covered.

However:

> _Riddling your text with things like how advertising "infects", "destroys", > "corrupts", is "industrial scale abuse" and so on, is loaded language that's > not conducive to debate._

I used those terms not because of their emotional implications, but because I believe they are accurate in terms of actual mechanics. When some aspect of our daily lives, which used to work perfectly well without ads, start to accumulate them until the point they no longer can exist without them, I feel the terms "infection" and "corruption" are apt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It doesn't seem that impossible to implement clear regulations that would significantly mitigate the overwhelming amount of aggressive advertising that we are surrounded by today.

Obviously, it wouldn't be perfect. But we don't need perfection here.

It also seems fairly obvious that there are plenty of alternative ways -- both existing currently and those that could be developed -- for informing people about various products or solutions to problems.

</comment><comment><USER84> There is certainly too much advertising, and a large portion of it is the worst kind: distracting, privacy-invading, or both.

However some advertising is very good. I go to work to make money and I want to spend it ... how do I know what to buy? I like video games, an ad that tells me there's a new game coming out for a console I own is really useful to me! I'm not embarrassed to be a consumer and to be open to influence.

</comment><comment><USER85> I recall watching, some years ago, a documentary about the making of Tetris in which one of the contributors noted how much less colourful public spaces were in the advertising-free Soviet Union compared to the West.

Which isn't to say that a better balance couldn't be struck (in the West and elsewhere) now, but 'cancer' is the sort of thing you want to eradicate rather than moderate.

<comment><USER86> So you think the reason the Soviet union was less colourful was because there wasn't ads?

You realize that advertising isn't what created coloured paints or what allows us to plant flowers right?

<comment><USER85> > So you think the reason the Soviet union was less colourful was because > there wasn't ads?

I think it can have been a contributory but not a determinative factor. Mainly, I was just relaying an interesting observation, about the impact of advertising on public spaces, that I hadn't heard elsewhere, or previously, which prompted me to think that eradicating advertising probably isn't an optimum solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article, that came out today, shows to what degree advertising is a cancer: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a- phon...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3naek/how-to-make-a-phone-farm)

</comment><comment><USER87> I honestly wish I could get a data only phone without a dedicated phone number. I get an average of 10 calls a day from random spammers claiming I'm owed $5,000 to IRS etc...

Only thing stopping me is a lot of companies have moved to 2FA via my call phone number as opposed to an authenticator app.

</comment><comment><USER88> What if advertising spend was taxed at an incredibly high rate?

Would this reduce the overall amount of advertising and cause the remaining advertising to be smarter and more effective? Could this even be implemented? Could it be subverted?

</comment><comment><USER89> I would be okay with advertising if they were at least truthful. There are too many false claims and statistics. Business should not be based on misleading people but somehow that's where we are today.

</comment><comment><USER90> author mentions AdNauseum but also that there's significant fake click detection: anyone have any idea as to how effective defeating AdNauseum by advertisers is?

</comment><comment><USER91> My site [https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) doesn't really fit into the box the author writes about here.

Our ads are self-hosted, static images that basically just show pictures of office design products. We also have an area that is literally just a listing of office design products which works kind of like a catalog.

We also sell the ads ourselves and do not participate in ad networks. The only 3rd party scripts we use are a google font and google analytics and the site still works if you block them.

While we are an exception, I'd like to see more people take the approach we do.

</comment><comment><USER37> Thoughts on NYC Subway ads? They are sort of entertaining sometimes, when there isn't cell signal underground.

<comment><USER92> Strong dislike. I'm already paying $2.75 per ride - how much are the ads subsidizing my ride by? I couldn't find anything on it with a cursory search but my guess is not much - far less than the psychological cost of getting toothbrushes, mattresses, food delivery services, and who knows what other ads shoved into my face any direction I look. I think the worst ones are the TV show/movie ones lining the subway walkways where I feel like I'm walking through some sort of physical channel directory.

I do think the space should be reserved and used for advertising city services such as 311 information, elderly housing services, housing rights etc. It's a great way of educating the city residents about benefits and rights they might not otherwise be aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> We're just piggybacking on the Adnet for content and a smidgen of productivity, aren't we ?

</comment><comment><USER94> Advertising is good [for all]; making stuff hard to evaluate and compare isn't [for consumers]

</comment><comment><USER95> I guess, the next step now should be declaring "Sales Is a Cancer on Society". I believe one could draft a similar list of downsides for sales and sales tactics.

Jokes aside, advertisement itself maybe not a "cancer on society", but click- based advertisement is definitely ruining the internet and damaging the society. Can't wait until its era is over.

</comment><comment><USER96> We need to decouple advertisement from money.

Why should someone with more money get to show off more?

More money doesn't mean a better product.

But what is the alternative?

A nationalized ad network? Like public healthcare, you pay X% of ... IDK ... your sales or something... but the amount of money doesn't determine what you get.

In public healthcare, your medical needs determine what you get, what would be an equivalent in business?

</comment><comment><USER97> Without ads we wouldn't have a way to incentive free content creation. Simple as that.

<comment><USER98> The only reason we call it _content_ is because it's just filler for the spaces between ads. I understand why ad tech and platform people call it that, but it kind of bugs me when people call themselves content creators.

<comment><USER97> No, literally all free content, videos, media, blog posts, whatever you want to call it, has to rely on advertising if they want to make a profit.

<comment><USER98> How do you explain Wikipedia?

<comment><USER97> _if they want to make a profit._

Wikipedia is a non-profit.

<comment><USER98> That's true, but it's still a successful corporation that is supported by users and donors (to the tune of $100 million each year).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is an eye opening book related to this subject. The ads are only a first and small step.

</comment><comment><USER100> On most content websites I strongly prefer advertising over paywall.

Occasionally I make an exception and signup for premium services (e.g. Netflix and YouTube Premium).

</comment><comment><USER101> I prefer to say: Advertising is the heart of Capitalism. Ads pump the blood (comsumption) to keep Capitalism alive.

</comment><comment><USER102> The real cancer on society are religions. Not only they are totally useless, but they have been obstructing critical thinking and the progress of sciencific development for thousands of years.

<comment><USER103> We don't want religious flamewars on HN, so could you please not post like this here?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER102> Sorry, understood.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN:Quicknotes – simple notes differently (quicknot.es) - <AUTHOR> http://quicknot.es <comment><AUTHOR> I just started a public beta of my - yet another notes app. I wrote it for myself as the existing solutions like Evernote or OneNote seemed overcomplicated for this job. My goal was to make note creation as simple as possible, but at the same time having the flexibility to organize the notes. That's why a note is what it is - just a note, no "name/subject" field, only one text. To keep it simple. But it's possible to use the concept of #hierarchic.hashtags to keep the notes organized. Plenty of notes are displayed on one screen to be able to see them at a glance, about 90% of the UI is for the notes, nothing more.

Would be more than happy to receive some feedback :)

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the launch! Positive: I like the UI, like the organization of notes, and love the inline and real time markdown editing.

Negative: I felt a little confused when first starting a note. I understand the concept of hashtag to organize notes, but didn't understand your notation - separating words by a dot. I also wasn't sure what the difference between the two buttons on the right hand of the note were. I tried one and it saved the note.

I clicked on the "?" button to get answers to both these questions - and I just got a guide to markdown formatting.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are comments blocked on job postings? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> occasionally, a yc company will post a job ad with comments enabled. i bet most of them regret it, because it is almost always unproductive. a thread will sprout up about how this company's industry is doomed. if the company is in stealth mode, most of the comments will be from busybodies trying to locate the company name or website. someone with a grievance with one of the founders will take this opportunity to dredge up old arguments. and so on.

this is why we can't have nice things.</comment>


My First Open Source Project: A Two Week Chrome Extension - <AUTHOR> http://joshholat.com/blog/my-first-open-source-project-and-a-two-week-chrome-extension/

<comment><USER2> Kudos for "shipping" something. That is the hardest part sometimes. As per your request for feedback (though I wouldn't say I'm smarter than you), some thoughts:

1) The link to your github repo is broken on your blog post.

2) In your manifest.json, you're setting permissions to "tabs", "www.google.com", "<http://*/*> and "<https://*/*>. If I'm not mistaken, the urls listed in the permissions field are for urls you'd like your extension to be able to call out to when doing AJAX requests, posts, etc. Enabling your app to make cross-site request to every domain, when you really only need google.com for the calendar, might throw up a red flag to more security- conscious users.

3) You're injecting a blank css document into every url the user visits. I would remove this unless you're planning on adding some styles into the css file.

4) The only other thing I see is more preference: You're doing a lot of work with the browser's dom api to create elements in your content script. Since you're already including jQuery in your extension, it would be trivial to inject the jQuery.js file into the page via your content script and use the power of jQuery to create your dom elements in far less code. Of course, there is nothing wrong with doing it in using raw JavaScript since it's targeted at a single browser and you don't need to worry about being cross browser compatible.

Thanks for posting, I'm always curious to see how other extensions are put together and might take away some ideas on interacting with google services.

<comment><AUTHOR> WesleyJohnson,

Thanks for the feedback!

1) The link should be fixed now. Thanks for informing me about that. I think I had a return character in it accidentally.

2) Okay, that makes sense. I think you are correct because when the user installs the extension it says something along the lines of needing access to basically any data. Obviously, my extension wouldn't need all that data. That must be the issue then.

3) Ahh, right. I had some stuff in there at one point but then decided to not use it. Must've forgot to delete it.

4) I had thought during the process that there was probably a better way to do it. However, for sake of just getting something out there I've left this code as is. Believe it or not, it was worse at one point. I'll look into other ways of doing it, though.

Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed that you didn't put any open-source license with your code, which is understandable since it's your first. :)

So my question (likely to others) is this: when you do that kind of week-end projects, do you put a license with it and if so, which one?

The reason I'm asking is I also put some code on GitHub from little projects, but without any license for now, mostly because I didn't really care either way. But I imagine it'd make sense to know about a few good ones to go with and use that for most cases. (for example, it seems to me that the MIT license has got some popularity over the GPL, but I'm not sure why)

<comment><USER4> MIT vs GPL in a nutshell:

MIT: here's my code, you can do what you want, just don't be a dick.

GPL: here's my code. If you use it to build something on top of, your code must be open source two. And here's a long list of ways of bypassing that that aren't allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice, this is quite helpful. Thank you!

I just noticed this on last.fm, you may want to add z-index: 9999; to your "popOver" styles to fix problems where sites give their logos a z-index. Also, I'm missing a close/cancel button. Lastly, adding support for last.fm's format ("Saturday 22 January 2011") would be sweet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips. If you look in the README on the code, you'll see that two of those actually fall under stuff I'm currently working on. Also, I'll add that date format shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> random code comments on content_script.js:

The indentation is crazy (subjective). Use spaces not tabs, choose 2 or 4 spaces. I prefer two, but don't really care.

there's a lot of repetition: All of the textboxes could be initialized with a function that took key/value pairs for attributes. They are all set to float right.

don't write stuff like document.getElementById("popOver") over and over, it's ugly. Do it once and assign it to a local variable. This is for style, not efficiency.

I didn't read the getTextSelection() function thoroughly, but in my experience, stuff that looks like that never works quite right. Attacking date inputs is tough, and will probably require a separate, tested library.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sayrer,

"The indentation is crazy (subjective)." - I tend to like to use tabs just because it's easier on the eyes to see how code blocks differentiate and I've grown accustomed to hitting tab rather than space. Perhaps I'll try that out, though.

"there's a lot of repetition" - Right, I did that as kind of the quick and dirty way to get it up. I will most likely end up changing that as per your suggestion. Thanks.

"Attacking date inputs is tough, and will probably require a separate, tested library." - You're right, it's not very fun. Thanks for the suggestion, I think this should work a lot better for me: <http://www.datejs.com/>

<comment><USER7> Your editor should have a "soft tabs" option, which allows you to edit as normal, but two spaces are inserted instead of a tab ('\t').

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into that, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Secret Life of Chaos (BBC documentary) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=664F2AE1160FF884

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent program, but I dislike that the presenter and one of the interviewees both say that chaotic systems are "inherently unpredictable". Chaotic (classical) systems are deterministic, so the same initial conditions will always give you the same result.

What makes them chaotic is that they are exponentially sensitive to initial conditions (i.e. "the butterfly effect"). This means that a difference that might go undetected in the initial condition can cause a potentially large change to the final result.

<comment><USER3> True, but if it's impossible to measure the initial conditions to the necessary degree of accuracy, then it is quite legitimate to describe the system's behavior as "unpredictable."

<comment><USER2> Yes, but describing it as "inherently unpredictable" gives the impression that you could take one of the simple equations that are chaotic and do things like produce truly random numbers on your computer. This is not the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Chaos is one of the most unwelcome discoveries of science." (the video, Part 3/6, cca 7:10)

Why are the still saying that? When I first read about deterministic chaos in the James Gleick book [1], I almost wept with joy and awe. It opened my eyes and made complete sense.

[1] Chaos: Making a New Science (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos:_Making_a_New_Science>)

<comment><USER5> It makes sense in the background of a clockwork universe that the video was going on about - it was a kick in the pants to a whole lot of rigid thinking. A bit of hyperbole, but it apparently rocked the scientific boat.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was OSS like before Github? - <AUTHOR>

Just a question I thought of this morning.
I was introduced to open-source through Github (I know, I'm young and green), I have no context about what it was like beforehand, I thought pull-requests were a core git feature and Github just put a nice wrapper on them :)
So, when you found a bug in OSS pre-Github/Bitbucket et-al, how would you fix it? Where would you discuss it, on mailing lists? And when it was fixed/merged, how would you inform people what had happened, why, and how the changes might affect them? <comment><USER2> Guys, Git and Github are just tools. Even if Git nerds would like you to think that software can't be developed without github, it worked before.

We had sourceforge, berlios, tigris.org etc. for years if you like your project hosted. Then there's Trac, Redmine etc. Otherwise you'd set up a Mailman for mailing lists and subversion as source code repository. If someone attaches good patches to mails and/or gives valuable input to the project, he usually got write access to the svn repository.

I'm not even sure that the Github way of developing OSS is that much of an improvement. Too often people rather fork than contribute. You'll find a dozen forks of the same software where different people fixed various things, half of them abandoned a long time ago and none of them usable.

</comment><comment><USER3> The bar to entry was much higher, both for a project and a potential contributor. But that's not just because of no github

Projects had to find a home (sourceforge ended up a major player here) and for most, fill out some large form to be accepted. Then they had to get noticed - slashdot or similar, since there was very little "social" effect on the project host.

When a project did try to get noticed, it had to already be "good" enough to get people interested. Practically nobody would stumble on a half-implemented tool, because there was nowhere to stumble there from. And it wouldn't get the push and discussion on newsgroups or websites if it was half-implemented.

Contributors had to first find the active developers. Many times, that was not on the issues list or a newsgroup, but on an irc channel mentioned in passing in a readme file or on a newsgroup ("I was talking to bud on #ourproj about the thread scheduler..."). Once you found them, you could try to "break in".

Since 95% of the OSS projects you'd actually find were already "good enough", that meant there were already a good number of active contributors that had formed a clique and were understandably protective. In many cases, you had to work hard to get them to accept that you might help rather than be a burden. That meant hanging out on irc or newsgroups and trying to impress.

Once a project was abandoned, there was nearly no way to contribute, you'd have to fork it. Unfortunately, your fork would have to beat the searchability of the original project with even more buzz, or people would find the abandoned one and have no inkling that your fork existed.

Obviously this is an over-generalization... there's no way to really encompass how all OSS was, even if I knew -and many major OSS projects were not at all like this, since each had it's own ecosystem and quirks.

In general the discovery of projects, and the ability to contribute, has grown in leaps and bounds around the time of github. But that is due also (to a very large extent) to other tools such as blogs, social sites, news sites (eg hacker news), and better search with google. Really, github is just a part of a huge increase in online interaction between people.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was using OSS only briefly before github, so at that point at least tools existed: sourceforge, google code, etc. But it was hell. Seriously.

The use:contribution ratio was totally skewed. Few people left commentary or filed bug reports when an issue arose, mostly because every project had its own way of handling feedback, and oftentimes you had to separately register or join a mailing list to use it. Pull requests didn't exist, so instead if you were feeling really ambitious you might attach a patch file to the ticket you opened.

And then there was the act of creating a project. Google code improved this significantly, but I remember having to file an application to get approved for an OSS project on sourceforge back in 2004. And it was a seriously long application too!

</comment><comment><USER5> > Over the last decade, free software developers have been repeatedly tempted > by development tools that offer the ability to build free software more > efficiently or powerfully.

[http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html](http://mako.cc/writing/hill- free_tools.html) is worth a read.

</comment><comment><USER6> For an example you can look at [http://www.xmlsoft.org/downloads.html](http://www.xmlsoft.org/downloads.html) That's a website for a highly used libxml2 library. I believe you would still just send your patch to the mailing list, or possibly the main person in charge.

So big or non trivial projects had their own websites, and mailing lists. I don't really know what a small project would have. For example yesterday I made a page that converts any time in human readable format into local time. (useful for when you get email for a meeting in some awkward timezone) Since now we have what we have, I put it in bitbucket, few years ago, I would just have the source on my PC until it gets lost.

</comment><comment><USER7> While there was of course great variety... the most common would have been an email mailing list.

Maintainers of a piece of software would run some kind of VC repository usually, although not usually a distributed one like GIT - they were networked. Some people had commit access. You'd keep a changelog, just like today, and the group would tag and release, just like today.

What Git/Github brings to the table is really the combination of a distributed version-control system that gained large traction (GIT) and a system to leverage that to make common collaboration tasks easier (fork, pull request, tracking meta-data, etc).

</comment><comment><USER8> Before github, we had sourceforge, berlios, savannah, and before that, I used freshmeat to keep track of a lot of opensource projects I was interested on. Each of them having their own repo / ftp.

</comment><comment><USER9> It may have been just the time or the community but I felt like IRC was way more involved in open source development. It probably still is - but I can remember learning and asking questions and helping answer some on #gtk and #mozilla IRC was where it all happened... I'm sure this is still the case and it's mostly my lack of involvement now as compared to then, but it was pretty fun...

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, before GitHub there were things like Google Code or SourceForge, which I think worked pretty much the same (albeit probably not as noob-friendly). Before those it was probably self-hosted servers for the bigger organizations or something like that, although I'm only speculating.

<comment><USER11> Isn't Google Code sort of in the same "generation* as Github versus much older Sourceforge? I dont think Google Code was around during the first year of Google going public back in 2004/2005\. Anyway not actually sure just how I've always thought of social version control sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Guys, don't forget www.freshmeat.net I still get a good chuckle when I recall the day our admin called me with this voice of concern about my surfing habits. He obviously hadn't clicked on the link but thought I was surfing porn in the office.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well I can't say that I was paying attention a lot until the past few years but I think would could use Debian as an example of it. obviously a very mature project with funding of sorts.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sourceforge. Patches and communication over mail lists, or over usenet. Gopher.

And you used to get your unix on tape, with included tools and apps.

</comment><comment><USER15> We used to send patch files over email to the inner sanctum of approved project maintainers.

Or, at the very least, I did.

</comment><comment><USER16> SourceForge & mail lists. Little bit of freenode also.

Google code never really hit mainstream IMO.</comment>


Trapped and need advice. - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=LYSKPJTM

<comment><USER2> I don't quite see the trap: if you want to leave, why don't you leave? Seems there are plenty of opportunities out there.

Having a raise is an incentive to stay, not an obligation.

The question is, does your family really _need_ your current salary or is a lower salary + happy dad better for your family?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to make it easy for them to replace you, automate and document as much as you can? That way, if you want to leave, you can just hand over the job with only a few days guiding the new person around.

</comment><comment><USER4> mining boom won't last forever, in fact, I'm not even sure if it's not over already. Many mining companies went bankrupt recently. So squeeze as much as you can while the opportunity lasts and when you lose your job, start your own business. you should have enough saved up by then.</comment>


The thieves whose story got stolen - <AUTHOR> http://www.bangkokpost.com/print/1156857/ <comment><AUTHOR> Woman visits temple, loses watch, accuses two children of theft, posts to Reddit accusing them of theft, and international newspapers pick up the story. The woman then finds her watch which hadn't been stolen after all, but these two children were still being affected by the accusation.

[http://unpo.org/article/19970](http://unpo.org/article/19970)

> In September last year, four major British media outlets - The Sun, Daily > Mail Australia, The Telegraph and Daily Express - ran news stories accusing > the two tribal girls of stealing a watch from a British woman. The story was > picked up by Thai media.

> The allegation was based on a single photo posted on Reddit.com, which > showed the grinning woman tourist holding hands with two children in Hmong > dress. The seven-year-old girl pictured on the right appeared to be fiddling > with the tourist's watch. The caption said, "Girlfriend in the progress of > having her watch stolen".

> The story of the "tiny thieves", as the girls were later labelled, was > picked up and sensationalised by several media outlets.

> The girls and their parents were hurt by the reports. As a sad aftermath, > the girls were asked not to go back to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, where they > usually earned their parents extra income by posing with tourists.</comment>


Barnes–Hut simulation: Algorithm for performing an n-body simulation - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes%E2%80%93Hut_simulation

<comment><USER2> I'm happy it's Gravity Simulation Week on HackerNews right now!

BTW, here's another HTML5 BH simulator: [https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/sameera/demos/BNtree/](https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/sameera/demos/BNtree/)</comment>