I agree with your post, and agree that things need to change. I do not, however, believe we should be trying to censor anyone in any way to try and change the ad (or any) industry. I think we need to come up with a way to make it less desirable to do so. I haven’t come up with it yet, but that doesn’t make the other proposed solutions right. “do something even if its wrong” does not apply here.
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I am in agreement. That’s the point. But there is no limit to it. Wait until they are interrupting your phone calls with ads mid stream. When we are driving down the road we are not suppressing useful freedom of speech when we stop ads from distracting drivers. Plenty of cities did just that. Those kill a certain number of people possibly every day but we don’t talk about it. Its not sacrosanct to me. I saw a billboard the other day that wrote in upside down lettering “if you can read this you probably just had an accident,” then in right side up lettering: buy our auto insurance. Maybe some drivers ended up dead or turned someone’s kid into a quadriplegic or gave them TBI. With society, spam in mediums leads to medium capture- part of the reason for the pay wall it to force you to watch ads or worse condition you to pay to watch them and watch content that is just a prelude to ads with sponsor veto power. We wouldn’t be having these idiotic fights with the cable industry if that weren’t the case, they are literally trying to destroy the internet over trying to push spam and rig elections. Spam is one aspect of trying to force top down speech. To me if all the top down speech in the world were cut we’d start to regain our sanity. Be it state or the corporate state, I want it to stop. Hard wiring a preference for horizontal speech vice vertical speech (censorship) into the system makes sense.
That would only be the beginning. For me it would have to be opt in, set up in a way so that it would never become the norm, and a transaction system where almost all of the money in the ad traction was paid to the end user. I’d prefer if it generated an enforced tort like a trespass each time and got the advertiser into fight with a state. What they do now its a trespass and a theft of time, attention, opportunity cost, and an extortion and market destroyer that creates monopoly and enclosure as it drives up prices- its never value added.
This is the exact opposite of censorship. But if you have any self respect your attention is not for sale in an involuntary way. You attention over time will practically define you in ordinary human terms. This is privacy in the truest sense. Its a solid extension of people not having any right to break into you home and rouse you from sleep at will because they want your attention. If anything is self determinative its your attention, its a precious limited commodity and it doesn’t matter if capitalism or enclosure models think they have to have more say over it than you do. In many ways its all you have. You evaporate if you let people pimp it. Its also like saying you time is valuable and all that capitalist prattle about time is money- it applies hear. They are taking something that does not belong to them.
Think of Lanier talking about how the free internet (not ad based but truly free) was a nice idea now it should be a total artificial scarcity pay way wall and time for a place where you pay to be exploited. Don’t want to trade the net for cable then get rid of the ads, we have search and honest search & trending with word of mouth makes ads obsolete.
There is a difference between an advertisement and tracking to GET INFO for targetted advertisement. Tracking and info gathering is something you do in preperation of creating an ad and incidently you can get the same info by voluntary means. All an ad does is somehow communicate to a client that you have something for sale or service. There are many ways of doing this. You people really should look at advertising from a couple decades back, they were downright entertaining and inventive. Just because ads these days are pathetic and annoying doesn’t mean they have to be that way.
I pay my phone bill up front, they better not pull this or there will be hell to pay but even if it got to that point why are we still using phones in the first place? Why not develop a voip phone system that’s free and encrypted? All we need is slightly modified hardware. We’ve got pretty much all the software we need already.
Considering people drive around with their stereos so loud you can hear them from the outside of the car and there are plenty of ways to create a visual distration I wouldn’t call this a major challenge. If I paid a girl to paint my ad on her body and walk around half naked that would be a major distraction don’t you think? But it wouldn’t be breaking the no billboard sign now would it and it wouldn’t be exclusive to drivers lol. And quite frankly if drivers are stupid enough to lose their focus on the ROAD because of some advertising billboard then they deserve to end up in a ditch, if you want to read a billboard slow the **** down or stop your car.
You are suggesting using force to stop someone else from engaging in a voluntary action. If I am understanding your definition correctly “top down” speech is when someone with money pays someone else to advertise and deceminate their message and in some way get someone’s attention to view that message. To you this seeking of attention is “coercion” and should not be allowed. God help you if you ever have to deal with small children, or quite frankly attention seeking people in general. This is a use of power by voluntary means but you suggest stopping this through involuntary means to suit your will. Do you realize what you are saying here? Warren trying to get someone’s attention is not coercion, be it a billboard or a two year old tugging at your sleeve and screaming his head off.
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Just wondered what your thoughts about Spam were?..lol
BTW…interesting dinosaur fight developing between Amazon and Google…
cheers
A solid extension? If you honestly believe that load of absurdity then there is absolutely no hope of you coming around so some semblance of sense on this topic. There is no extension here. None. If someone broke into my house and woke me up with anything but warrant papers in my face, I would be perfectly within my rights (where I live) to shoot them on the spot. Castle doctrine.
There is also a reason I can’t shoot someone (nor should I be allowed to at any time in the future) for putting up a billboard. Nor should I be allowed to shoot a land owner for renting out his land to a billboard owner. Nor should I be allowed to shoot McDonalds for paying to have their banner shown on the billboard. These are rights of the people to do as they wish with their property. Property being land, webspace, TV show, house, anything they own. Stop trying to take away my rights.
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Oh I couldn’t agree more about needing to have network and software under the total control or even made up or owed by end users. The toll roads need to go. They would stop you on your way to work in the morning to force feed you ads. There was a casino not far from me that had a laser led video board turned up so high at night it was blinding. As it is the moving video attracts people. They think a certain amount of accidents and deaths are a fair price to enable their commerce. I don’t I think its homicide and would end it in a heart beat. Plenty of cities consider it property devaluation and don’t allow it. A sign that de-marks the spot of an actual business location is a somewhat different matter because it gets people off the freeway.
I am not coming at this from the shallow end. That Buddhist idea about never ignoring anything because its all life its all energy so that even an itch becomes a god, that thought weighs on me. But where it becomes coercive is you’re at dinner trying to talk to your wife on your anniversary and you’ve paid for dinner and its coming but for some reason in this fine restaurant Fox news is somehow present and too loud for you to talk. You are silenced for some unnecessary BS. As for top down speech, its like when the Soviet Union chose one-way loud speakers instead of a national telephone system. That decision cost them hugely. I don’t think we need one-way top down anymore. I want to shut it. I also don’t think we need mass media anymore, its only message is sponsored bullshit designed to miss inform. We will get emergency messages regardless.
@Wes, I know you started with the pretentious **** approach but when you started to connect being abruptly roused from sleep in a home invasion to a battery and assault I started to warm up. You see the prostitution of your attention over a life time is worse. Your time matters and you have a right of association. Your interactions to be meaningful generally have to be voluntary. This is about a lot less coercion not more but its starts with your right not to be ****** with. You even put ads and shotguns in the same sentence. Excellent.
There is also a practical issue that keeps getting over looked. Prior to search tech I could see the case for ads more clearly. But we have search now, we don’t need the demand creation ad industry. We just need honest search. We will still need people do high quality product information, but we don’t need the coercion. It will mean better value higher quality products. Its just that my attention is not for sale. The price would be too high. Also I tend to like ads themselves better than the content which on a captured medium is just a wrapper for an ad. To me the ads are often high art. But I see the huge cost too. And its a cost that goes beyond the impoverishing impulse buy and the opportunity cost. I remember hearing that we are expending 3x the energy we did in 1970 but we aren’t any happier. We have less time. And we are still doing 14 trucks of waste per truck of product.
First off, chill out. Be respectful of the rest of the community and watch your language.
Second, I’ll make sure to remember that making a logical argument makes me pretentious.
Last of all, I didn’t mention anything about assault. Did you read what I wrote or just start typing? Merely being in my house illegally is reason enough for me to forcibly remove you by any means. Why? It’s my property. You being in my field of vision in a public place, whether I like you or not, is your right. I don’t have any right to remove you.
Again, for the community as a whole, please watch your language.
I will accept your argument as soon as you show me, aside from your opinion, where it says you have a right not to see something you don’t want to. I contend it is a want, not a right. I also never said shotguns… Reinforcing my position that you don’t actually read read the logical arguments put forth by others in the community, but rather just try to spew as much of your spam (your definition, not mine) as possible throughout the forum.
Here’s my idea:
Make an app that does everything you dream it to do. What you are suggesting simply won’t make it into the core as it is censorship. Once you’ve made the app, you can use it to see no ads, not be coerced, and finally maybe be happy. You also can’t talk about it on here anymore because that would be advertising. Everyone wins.
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I’m generally not one to post any kinds of comics online, but I feel like this one applies to @Warren’s arguments. Just replace “would you like to work for me” with “would you like to place an ad on your site for $100”:
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Don’t overestimate yourself, assume you’re logical or are making sense.
Try computing this: I don’t need a right to not be interrupted because you don’t have a right to interrupt me. If you don’t understand that you might think a little more about why shot guns were invented.
I hope you get that because I don’t know how to make it any simpler for you. But I sympathize with you we you read profanity and you don’t feel like it. Kind of resonates doesn’t it? Do you feel it helps with the communication or is it getting in the way?
But you’re wrong. I DO have the right to interrupt you. Freedom of speech. We can yell over each other all day and the cops wont say a thing… That is the crux of the issue here. You want to take away freedom of speech under the guise of " removing spam."
Wikepedia says: “Shotguns were modified for and used in the trench warfare of WWI” Not so sure what that has to do with being interrupted. It does sound like either a threat or a wish of suicide, both of which you want people to be banned for.
One, that doesn’t make any sense. Two, if I’m understanding what you’re attempting to say, who’s being pretentious now?
Finally back to the point. Can you explain to me how you are NOT taking away freedom of speech with your proposal?
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Nope its called breach of the peace. In most workable societies that’s called disturbing the peace and if you get in someones face at least in the US and invoke in them a sense imminent harm, especially if this gesture does harm (they feint and hit their head) you will end up in most systems related to common law with civil and criminal charges. But just the gesture is enough for the charge of assault. Rip a plate out of someone’s hand and it might be a battery and an assault.
If you think you can run your loud mouth in a theater spewing falsities and it causes a stampede and people get hurt its the same. If you think you can tell someone their loved one died when its not true and they suffer harm or even the obvious and expected severe emotional distress its actionable. If you’re talking about the courts in the US for most of the nation’s history they recognized the commercial speech doctrine or some variant that made apparent the real danger commercial speech posed to actual vital political speech and rejected arguments that commercial speech could not be curtained as it could lead to a dilution of the speech that matters most. Cities routinely vote to disallow advertising. The whole nation blocked tobacco advertising to children.
If you think you can slip a dollar bill an inch over onto you’re neighbor’s lawn cause you’re just screwing with him and money is literally speech, it may well be a trespass. You’re exercising you sign language and momentarily stumble across or flail across you neighbors unmarked land- probably trespass. You come on to someone’s property where it says not solicitors to push wares or ads, its probably a tress pass.
No sign and you come back after they told you not to once, and its probably a trespass.
Your firm or you think its ok to cold call people and they are on the do not call registry, it may be fines and maybe depending on the level of offense and scale could well have a criminal component.
If you think its cool to interrupt airline pilots or drivers by shining a laser pointer into their eyes, well see where that gets you.
So once again let me break things down for you. You do not have a right to interrupt people and abscond with their attention and cause them to behave in ways they do not wish to as they for-instance try to avoid you anymore than you have a right to put a rufinol in a woman’s drink because you want her attention or her behavior to change.
If you think you can just say what every you want about private citizens or even celebrities in your free speech ad, it might be slander or libel.
If you are opening up a competitor to your employer and you fell like invalidating employers competitive advantage by including the secret sauce from your employer’s trade secrets- see where that gets you.
If you decide to puff things up in your ad, just a little misrepresentation, so as to break up a particular business relationship- see where that goes. You’re ad might be interfering in or even interrupting someone’s business relationship. See where that can lead.
As things have corrupted try even interjecting even a legitimate question in political shill’s speech, or trying interrupting an air wave ad with your own ad. What’s wrong with that right you were just re-routing their attention according to your will, their is nothing wrong with that right? Why not just jam all of that stuff?
Now back to the argument. What is changing, what has to change is the situation where A pays B to exploit C for attention or otherwise. Now if C is a fully willing participant and its not a matter of C having no options or choices and if C gets just value out of the situation and it is voluntary from the start- that’s better but not sufficient. I would argue that media systems that take money from anybody but C lead quickly enough to C not having options or choices to the point of losing the ability to assert rights or have a quality life. Its not just a stacked deck its an unplayable game because the conflict of interest is so deep, aggregate and cumulative.
Seriously? You just spouted a bunch of garbage that has absolutely nothing to do with ANYTHING I just said. I’m not talking about inciting a riot (illegal) or shining a lazer in their eye (illegal) or getting in someone’s face and screaming at them (potentially illegal) or cold calling people on a do not call list (illegal). You took my my statement and are trying to make it something it absolutely is not. Either respond to my argument or don’t, but don’t try to take my statement 50x more absurd and argue against that… You’re arguing against something that doesn’t exist. In most workable societies that’s grounds for being committed.
You still didn’t answer my question. I have a new one as well: is the only thing that makes what you are does right now (lobbying for this change) and advertising the exchange of money? Because you are advertising harder than budwiser.
You are saying a paying b to show something to c is bad. What if a just asked nicely and b obliged? Is that bad? What if b really likes something about a and decides to show c without a knowing? Is that okay?
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What if I have a really big house or a barn and decide to paint a mural on it dedicated to some cool book or movie I love? That’s advertising but I’m not getting paid for it. And it’s bound to catch someones attention. Oh my it might cause an accident because my skills as a spraypainter artist are so good so in Warrenverse we’ve gotta make that shit illegal.
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I hate to quote @warren but you both saw the voluntary part. If its all voluntary there is no issue but that is the point.
@Blindsite2k, reminds me of the anti Koch brother’s people shining a giant runco type projection of an anti Koch brothers movies on the side of their head quarters with sound. They aren’t interrupting anyone, necessarily. I am not sure photons are a trespass. Part of the ability to take satellite and de- scramble or at least lurking in the background was them keeping their waves off people’s property.
The argument seems to be that commerce is good and it requires a certain amount of tolerable interruption. But I am suggesting that the tech has changed and we don’t need the interruption any more for commerce. But also that the interruption if it was ever about anything was just more corn syrup and cancer drug sales. Scrapping the demand would never have been terminal for the functional part of the economy, on the contrary.
But much more than that is the idea of neutrality. It is the sponsorship industry that is trying to convert the net into cable. If that isn’t a crime against humanity what is? More than is already the case it means that money, sponsor money and ad companies will put politicians in office overriding any notion of voting. It means that ad companies and their sponsors will write the laws. It means that ad companies on behalf of their sponsor will determine who you can talk to and for how long and for how much and also determine how much interruption they deem you should be subject to. It means that ad companies and their sponsors will sponsor your kids off to wars you may not agree with. It may mean that your kid wont have a school to go to because it would mean your kid could compete with their kid for avoiding drafts, for mates or opportunities. It means that in-place big money, not your money will completely determine your life.
It means no matter how hard most people try their standard of living will be lower than their parents as to have it otherwise would be less money-power for big money. That is what money as speech and money as law means and it starts with their ability to interrupt you at will and reinforce that thousands of time each and every day for the rest of your life. Because even when you’re not at work you’re at work, they can interrupt you at will, just like a boss (even if you don’t think you have one) because they own you, you work for them whether you like or it or not.
Ok @Warren let me just start by saying I think you’re riding way off the rails here but let me just a address a few points here.
Your objection here seems not to be to advertising itself but to advertising that is designed to grab the customer’s attention and interrupt whatever they are doing. What about ads that convey their message in a more passive artistic approach? What if the ad was designed so that it was more like a skit or a play or what if it was just part of a larger novel or movie? Largely the point of advertising is to get the customer’s attention and convey a message but there are many many ways of doing that some more subtle and artistic than others.
This is the danger of having any centralized media provider and why we need mesh networks.
The moment you allow lobbying of any kind democracy ends and plutocracy begins. This isn’t to be blamed on advertising, this is political corruption pure and simple. This is also one of the many reasons I do not believe in democracy.
This is just stupid. School = social engineering not education. If you want to be educated then self educate. If you feel your kid isn’t getting a proper education at school pull them out of the system and teach them yourself. Better yet unschool them from the start and let their education be self directed and interest led.
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In England there was a period of time where it was a felony to expose ordinary people to literature. It was inciting them.
Sought out high quality product info is one thing but anywhere a supplier can coerce attention in a media or virtual environment, especially post search, that medium has been captured and enclosed and has become a conflit of interest. To me markets and mediums exist to serve people as end users and world citizens period. Supply side arguments are always at base appeals to elitism and ever increasing top down oppression. Better not to dismiss the wisdom of crowds so quickly, nor democracy. While still violent, publics may well evolve into their responsibilites
Tell me @Warren how would you construct a business? You talk a lot about this from the end user perspective but not from the business perspective. As a business owner how would you do marketing in this world of yours? How would you get your message and alert consumers about your products and services?
Making information available is not coercion. Even making a very attention getting sign is not coersion. That’s PERSUASION not COERCION. There’s a difference. Coercion is what you are suggesting: to restrict their freedom to express themselves via force, be it the force of a gun point or force of programming code.
“Persuasion is an umbrella term of influence. Persuasion can attempt to influence a person’s beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors.[1]
In business, persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person’s (or a
group’s) attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or other
person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information,
feelings, or reasoning, or a combination thereof.[2] Persuasion is also an often used tool in the pursuit of personal gain, such as election campaigning, giving a sales pitch,[3] or in trial advocacy.
Persuasion can also be interpreted as using one’s personal or
positional resources to change people’s behaviors or attitudes.
Systematic persuasion is the process through which attitudes or beliefs
are changed by appeals to logic and reason. Heuristic persuasion on the
other hand is the process through which attitudes or beliefs are changed
because of appeals to habit or emotion.[4]”
“Coercion /koʊˈɜrʃən/ is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of intimidation or threats or some other form of pressure or force. It involves a set of various types of forceful actions that violate the free will
of an individual to induce a desired response, usually having a strict
choice or option against a person in such a way a victim cannot escape,
for example: a bully demanding lunch money to a student or the student
gets beaten. These actions can include, but are not limited to, extortion, blackmail, torture, and threats to induce favors. In law, coercion is codified as a duress
crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in
a way contrary to their own interests. Coercion may involve the actual
infliction of physical pain/injury or psychological harm in order to
enhance the credibility of a threat. The threat of further harm may lead to the cooperation or obedience of the person being coerced. All forms of government are based upon and function off of coercion.[citation needed]”
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You simply use conflict of interest free sponsorship free ad free honest search and trending and word of mouth and where people are down for it free samples. Community and software filtering of spam and spam sites. When someone wants to buy something they get easy access to the product info through search. This leans on honest search optimiztion. But it doesnt allow placement and attempts to buy mindshare to corrupt mediums. You fund such systems through a mechanism like Project SAFE or with or in addition to something like micro contributions for future works offered to the search entity. More efficient search software means massive hardware and power google style is less needed and Project SAFE makes it even more possible. Such a system would align the interests of buyers and sellers leading to better quality and value. Present ad industry is based off creating a missalignment of those interests. Allow for deeper buyer seller direct relationships
Who pays for that @Warren? Who pays for your ad free, sponsorship free, “honest” search engine? Granted with maidsafe coming out you might be able to engineer something like that what with crowdfunding and hosting it on the safe network but even so it would need to be PAID FOR and therefore SPONSORED by someone. There’s no such thing as SPONSOR FREE because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Everything needs to be paid for. Servers need to be paid for. Electricity bills need to be paid for. People’s time needs to be paid for. Food needs to be paid for. Even if people are willing to volunteer and donate code and do all that nice humanitarian stuff they still need to eat and pay the rent and the hardware needs to be kept up. There is no such thing as sponsor free.
Moreover I’d really like to see you put your money where your mouth is. Seriously. Warren go out and build this mythical business you’re talking about and compete in the real world. Show us how it’s done. Go get yourself a product and then market with no advertising that you don’t approve of. Use just word of mouth and your sponsor free search engines and just go and do it. Lead by example. Show us how it’s done. Don’t run your mouth and tell us how it shouldn’t be or how people’s freedoms should be restricted. If your method is so good then it should be able to compete and you shouldn’t have to hobble others. Seriously if you can pull this shit off and be successful I’ll COPY YOU and suggest to my friends and collegues and recommend you as an example of how the old system is ****** up beyond all belief and how your new system is the way of the future. If you can earn more money than conventional business models other people will too. But until then as far as I’m concerned you’re just running your mouth and trying to restrict people’s freedoms. Warren you might be the next billionare in the making but you won’t get there by insisting on statist ideals of telling people what they shouldn’t or can’t do. You’ll get there by leading by example and showing people there’s a better way. So show me. Write me a business model, write me a proposal. Write up a detailed business plan. Project SAFE isn’t even launched yet and you expect businesses to model themselves based on it? Sorry that’s a bit of an extreme expectation. Maybe in a few years but not just yet.
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Very good. I like the tone there. I thought of those points. I noticed that someone did Verbase which is really the model I like. I suspect it could work as a distributed automated corporation. Or the end users would have to some how own it- better if they didn’t and it was not owned by anyone. To restrict conflict of interest it would only take influence from the end users based on the merits of arguments and an end user’s numerical share of a vote. It would be constantly working to refine this bottom up input. Relative to business it would be a level playing field tool. Allow them to build products that weren’t based on marketing or over priced because of marketing but rather based on their best efforts.
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