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Totally. Advertising is fundamentally about distracting someone so you can put money in your pocket without regard to the impact on that someone.

I have a lot of complaints about, say, McDonald's, but they make their money through giving people something of value to them. Advertising legitimizes the making of money in a way unrelated to value delivery. (The same is true about a lot of finance.)

When you combine that with up-and-to-the-right numerical goals and standard executive incentives, over time you pretty much guarantee what Doctorow calls "enshittification". Delivering value becomes at best a side effect of the system.




Aren't McDonald's one of the biggest advertisers in the world? They sell poor quality food on the basis of brand recognition.


That's unrelated to the point GP is making. The point is that they are not incentivized to put poison into burgers to get money from the poison industry.


Well put. Ads are the poison of information.




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