Ah, but there is a very firm consensus that murder is wrong, whereas there isn’t with Ads - hence Murder is punishable by Law and advertising isn’t… surely, you’re not joining the Advertising = Murder, Spam = raping babies brigade…Nooooooo…
I’m not sure how solid the consensus is on murder, there seems to be a lot of it about me ole mate. As with most things, provided you are powerful enough to do it at scale it’s perfectly legal.
As for advertising, i’m not advocating banning it, i’m just saying it is harmful, and explaining why I think that. I’d never make a good dictator I know, but give me a tiger to wrestle and you see…!
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I agree it is harmful and insidious, I’m realising this in different ways. It raises a lot of interesting dilemmas. I used to think it wasn’t such an issue but take it more seriously now. I’ve been pushed off the fence, just thinking about different aspects as to where the harm lies and at what point honest advertising becomes harmful - where is the line between me putting a advertising board at the front of a drive I’ve paved and total attention grabbing/misleading in your face spam. Just loads of interesting side questions pop up…like I said, interesting
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I agree, and I understand various reasons why people leap to say “you can’t ban advertising”.
It is hard to ban anything! It is also unnecessary. Better to design it out, by ensuring things simply work better without it! Be good if we could achieve that with money altogether.
However, the question of where to draw the line is a good one, and thinking about it I think I have a good answer…
My principle objection is that those with money use it to buy influence, making more money, buy even more influence…which both corrupts and distorts the market, and is a dangerous feedback loop. Consumers end up with less and less ability to make rational autonomous decisions in their own interests, and increasingly used, or abused, purely to profit those with power. Sound familiar?
So, my line would be drawn to break the connection between money and influence in ads. For example, it’s OK to put a board at the end of your drive, a sign over your shop etc, but not to buy advertising space where the only criterion is: money. Another way of seeing it is: things that don’t scale well are OK.
Now I’m not proposing we instigate this, heaven forbid I’d trample on someone’s right to exploit or manipulate me because they have lots of money.
I’d like to apply similar logic to politics - why the **** do parties need tens of millions? A few thousand for each candidate to print leaflets and hold events around their constituency should be ample, and all the better if it comes from the state rather than from rich donors, and via a party, both of which will have agendas that corrupt the relationship between the electorate and their MP - but now I’m going off topic and will have to flag this post so I can have a stern word with myself. Doh!
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In regard to your last paragraph, I’m in agreement it would be great and it would also stymie the Corporate lobbyists. Unfortunately, the nub of the argument against I think would be that it impinges on an individual’s freedom of association. IE. You can’t prevent an individual from helping achieve the society they want by way of financing the means to that end - an individual is free to give his money to, or associate with whoever he likes. That’s what I’d argue anyway…lol. So you’d have to get round this obstacle I think.
There would also be those taxpayers complaining how it’s synonymous with being gang -raped, scalped and sold into slavery…
@nicklambert I don’t disagree with that as long as default is the opt in not opt out and the majority of media lacks this conflict. To me there should be an unfettered transparent connection between parties in any transaction. In America we have “the best money government can buy” over this very issue. I also feel the ad industry is not a passive entity and its influence is not benign. Its not really in the business of providing wanted product information but in the business of puffing and pitting buyer against seller to the detriment of quality, value and trust in business relationships. Its also quite willing to cram ads physical where they don’t mark physical location and distract drivers leading to injury and fatality for profit and try to say this deadly externality its just a cost of doing business. But whose business? There really is a deep core contradiction and filtering mechanism.
I think we can create very deep long term buyer-seller relationships with out this conflict where end users only get high quality product information when are looking for it. Systems that even pay the seller/producer when the end users seeks out and looks at that info are possible. As are deep search systems as above that have query where appropriate and do automatic regular buying for end users are possible in safe, private, pay free, zero friction way.
Exactly and they do work much better without the ads and fingers crossed as we will see without “money.”
But to me Marc what you wrote above is the reason for being for SAFE. Privacy at heart is an ability to be at ease, left alone, free of coercion and to feel secure. To be yourself. Even to hold on to denial and learn things at your own pace, it gives a sense of free will. That’s lost without a bit of privacy. We can’t even act against a state or resist a state without it. On the other hand, to me every attempt of a state to have secrecy is just a prelude to denying us privacy. States have no rights, all rights are vested in the people.
To me, the basic argument is about a conflict of rights similar to the arguments surrounding freedom of religion and separation of Church and State. If you replace “Religion” with “Advertising” then the answer is Secularism.
People have a right to practice/proselytise for their religion /advertising insofar as it doesn’t interfere with the workings of State/Network or impinge on another’s right to be free from religion/advertising - it is a balancing act:
:“Secularism seeks to defend the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, and protect the right to manifest religious belief insofar as it does not impinge disproportionately on the rights and freedoms of others. Secularism ensures that the right of individuals to freedom of religion is always balanced by the right to be free from religion.”
To summarise, advertising cannot be given free reign on the Network, it has to be balanced by making it a user choice as to whether ads appear “in their view”, distracting their attention annoyingly.
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In my humble opinion that is an absolutely brilliant analysis. Its like finding two variables in an equation are the same variable, resulting in a huge simplication. A unified theory of coercion useful in keeping away inquisition!
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Can’t we say that by deciding to use a service that use ads to monetize itself the user is already making that choice? No one is forcing anyone. Everyone is free to use another service that better suits their beliefs.
Yes, a meeting of minds is occurring…I recognise your advertising arguments more now, and my objections to Religion follow a similar train of thought in many ways. I’m noticing a lot of interesting correlations in what basic arguments are and joining a lot of dots, many issues are inter-related in interesting ways. I suppose I like to re-factor as much as DIrvine and enjoy un-picking knots…lol
Your “We can’t afford the rich” reasoning was very similar to my reasoning in many ways on the “Is safe a Free market” thread - I wonder what you thought of my proposal (post 162) - seems consistent with your general thinking as I was trying to create a free market with social responsibility - if you think of the consequences of such a system, it would seem to help your cause in regard to the rich.
Lol…is this a cunning contradiction trap for my tax arguments? - Just that its the same argument again as in defense of tax.
Yes, we can say all of the above. As we are creating the Network/Service though, we don’t want people to use another service. If we can provide more choice, we retain more users.
BTW, I also have absolutely no idea how users could “choose” not to see ads - I mean I personally cannot think of any feasible problem free way, nevermind the technical aspects, however desirable - then again I’m not technical.
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Lol don’t read too much into it, I’m not that subtle. All I am saying is that the choice for the user is already there. There’s no need to add anything to the safe network to assure a user will not see ads without their consent.
I think there is some confusion. Are you talking about Safe or a program running on Safe? Because the Safe network will not publish ads by itself. You won’t see ads popup whenever you access your files for example. Advertiser can’t have free reign over the network, it’s the user who makes the choice to use a program on the network, advertiser have no say on the matter.
If you choose to use a program that serves ads, that’s a choice you make. If you don’t like it then simply don’t use it. If a developer want to provide a switch to turn off ads that’s entirely their choice. More power to them if it works for their business, but there’s no sense and no way to enforce it.
Ah, got you…clever…you’re more subtle than you think…lol. Went over my head.
The honest answer is I don’t know as I’m not too technical. I was thinking the only way of doing it was app level though.
Yes, the question would be is there a way the network can encourage use/dev of ad free apps with an on/off switch. A kind of good etiquette thing and list the apps that do this maybe, then some kind of screening system? I’m just talking off top of my head - please understand I’m a noob as far as coding/tech goes but have learnt a lot on the forum.
Edit: just thinking, couldn’t the app launcher be involved and maybe dev pods?- somehow… lol
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@Al_Kafir Ok let me check it out.
@DavidMtl The default opt out for dominant monopoly gateways is part of how they got their monipoly status. Its not just a hidden cost. We need an alternative that becomes a replacement. The power and control in distributed decentralized networks needs to reside with the end users. In the end the only class that is real is the class of human or global citizen or end users. The default opt out ad model is an abuse that provides undue power, an ultimately value minus proposition relative to what we could have and cheapened adulterated and compromised services. The privacy crisis to a large degree has resulted from this conflict basic conflict of interest.
I find the idea that the SAFE development community would have a completely netral stance disingenious. To me a half ass not completley honest attempt would be something like Open Bazarr, SAFE isnt that and can’t be reduced to that as the thread on OB showed. A level playing field wont be had be being passive about what already doesnt work. Get a dominant non sponsor model going and the attacks on neutrality will be gone, Comcast and its ilk gone and gone the attempts to construe money or censorship as speech.
Well absolutely. The ability to do microscopic transaction is already a great one. For example you can build a search engine that require fraction of a Safecoin for each search request. People wouldn’t care, spending Safecoin is already part of their daily routine and individually it wouldn’t account to a lot of money but if the search engine as a lot of people using it it’s gonna add up for the developer. For the developer it’s way more easy to do this then to support an ad network.
We’ll definitely see lists of apps with reputation and comments pop everywhere. Blog post about which app to use, pros and cons, benchmarks and all that.
I don’t think ads will be a big annoyance, I’m actually quite excited to see all the new ways developer will find to monetize their app. And if they choose ads, that’s all right, ads aren’t evil, they can be useful.
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Not sure which monopoly you are talking about, Google? There are other search engines, you don’t have to use Google if you don’t like it. Sometime you make such wide claim that I find it hard to debate your point.
The alternative will become the replacement if it’s better. I don’t see the need, or even the benefit, of trying to enforce it.
With the Safe network it does resides in the end user. We have the power because we are the network.
Safe isn’t trying to build an utopian society. All it does is create a level playing field. Anything and everything will be part of it. Better alternative if deemed better will emerge from it. It’s gonna be quite a chaotic experiment. I think what is disingenuous is trying to enforce some kind of ethics or belief to it. Let the dice fall where they may. And honestly, it’s not like you really have a choice there, Safe is built to be autonomous, private and censorship resistant.
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I hope Warren doesn’t mind me making a couple of observations and maybe offering some advice. Both me and Warren tend to get “worked up” about our respective ideas concerning creating a better society. We have different ideas about what the most important issue is. My “pet hates” so to speak centre around Religion/ Pseudo-science , whereas Warren’s centre around Advertising/stealing attention.
I have learnt over time that when we discuss things “dear to our heart”, that maybe someone disagrees with, we (all I think) become more fired up and in our feverish haste to convey the message we want to, we can end up garbling the message. I’ve done it myself loads , it’s like a stream of consciousness effect upon reading back. I find it good practise to proof read my posts before posting now (not always if message not important). This way, you know people are more likely to understand your message - and more importantly be convinced by it - that’s your ultimate goal isn’t it?. There are quite a few nuggets of gold in your posts, but it’s off-putting when you have to mine for it. In a way you are ironically requiring too much “attention” and encroaching on people’s “time” asking them to “labour” for you, rather than doing the work yourself - it is a form of “slavery”…lol.
I have also noticed that though you identify problems very well, the solution aspect could do with some more work. Your solutions always seem to bring the French Revolution to mind…lol
Just observations, not meaning to criticise and I welcome criticism myself - I get loads of it anyway…lol
Should have replied as a Warren reply, sorry…oi Warren, I’m talking about you
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the social messaging app that pays you for your attention
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It’s like a genie followed the conversation and decided to satisfy @Warren’s wishes. Interesting project. Thanks for sharing it.
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“I’m a genie in the bottle, but you got to rub me the right way”
You might also like LTB’s mechanism of payment. They have a listeners reward, you listen to their show, they say a magic word and you get rewarded. But their is a flaw with this at the moment, you can skip to the part where they say the magic word. It would be better if you listen to the whole show or some other metric they set and after that you would hear, your individual magic word. This way you can’t share the listeners reward with friends who didn’t even participate. There is another disadvantage, because right now it’s time based, so you have to enter the magic word within a few days.
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Thank you, all apt.
I wonder what you’d make of Thomas Nagel new book, Mind and Cosmos. I have the same irritation with pseudo science. But for me its when the main stream writes checks in the media with approaches that dont remotely look like they can cover the bill. Ie natural selection with morphology and evo psychology with cognition. I know they need funding and interested students but we want mainstream science to act like science and not resemble religion.
Sorry, will get to the post shortly.