This whole thread is classic overthinking. Advertising isn’t a binary good/bad morality thing. It is in many ways subjective. There have been times an ad helped me learn about something that solved a problem or need I have. There have been times where an ad was pushing something that I personally (subjectively) consider to be useless junk.
It depends. Ads aren’t inherently good or evil. Step back from dogma for a second.
Many people think any form of advertising is evil. Though incorrect, it's perhaps a predictable reaction to the pervasive and genuinely morally bankrupt advertising we're inundated with on a regular basis.
To me ads are fundamentally about misleading you, manipulating you, or in short: making you do something that you wouldn't do otherwise. This to me is morally wrong on a base level. Advertisement is an attempt to attack/manipulate your vulnerable mammal brain to make you do something against your interest (be it buying a product, voting on someone, etc). In other words, to do something that you wouldn't do rationally, or wouldn't do without this prodding.
Imo all ads are ethically questionable. Their main objective is to make us want things we didn't want before. Unfulfilled desires make people unhappy; unnecessary consumerism uses up limited resources on a finite planet.
Why? I hate advertising, and believe it's gotten way way way too pervasive in all aspects of modern life, but I still wouldn't even say it's inherently evil.
Mmm.. I disagree with the assertion (both yours and the link to the other comment) that advertising is evil.
There are types of advertising that are evil (that which is extremely manipulative or false/misleading), but suggesting that showing me a picture of a specific brand of hamburger, telling me why it's awesome, and suggesting that I buy one, is somehow morally wrong, doesn't even pass the laugh test.
I don't think advertising is moral. I don't feel even the slightest ounce of responsibility to consume advertisements. Do you really feel this way or just trying to have a debate?
Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all. To me, that's evil.
Sure, there are varying degrees of this evil, but IMO even the least-objectionable advertising out there still can't be called "good".
In my experience, the case where advertising gets you to buy something that ends up being materially useful, that you would not have bought (or found a substitute for) without that advertising, is the exception, not the rule.
Oh, and to address your specific example: if you search "best diapers", and get shown ads for diapers, that absolutely is evil, because some ad-presentation algorithm is pushing you toward whatever diapers will generate the most money for the ad network, likely not toward which diapers are best. Not to mention that "best" often means different things to different people, and the ad networks only care about that insofar it increases their profit.
So its immoral for a math tutor to post a flyer about his services in a local coffee shop?
Advertising is a very wide spectrum and I think its way too heavy handed to say it is all intrinsically immoral. Some is, maybe even most of it, but surely not all is immoral.
I'd argue that advertising in general is a good thing, but that there are a few parts that are bad. One bad part is the vast surveillance and privacy intrusion of modern digital advertising is what is bad. Another are the advertising tactics used to manipulate people into buying things they shouldn't.
Advertising is the art of manipulating people into spending money. When they are made to spend in a way that is harmful to themselves or society, you could argue that it's evil, and I would.
I'd go farther and say the economic system we have which elevates people to demigod status pretty arbitrarily and is ravaging the Earth is by extension evil. No one with any sense has control sufficient to stop us from spiraling into cataclysm or at least an unnecessary dystopia. Malicious advertisements don't have any right to exist, they just happen to be allowed because of our prevailing principles.
Of course ads are not inherently evil in a black-and-white manner. Like knifes. Or guns. Still need to be regulated though, as left unchecked can cause great harm. And currently we see more harm than good from this model.
I think the author is simply vieweing this as a binary issue due to cognitive dissonance / moral disengagement.
"Evil" is a ridiculous word to use in the first place; but for what it's worth, in my opinion, a platitude like "[ads are] not perfect, nor evil," glosses over the fact that ads often are vectors for attacks that rely on deception, ignorance, and unwitting surveillance, which definitely has an ugly moral flavor. The business model may not be inherently evil (what is?), but it sure seems to be a convenient technology for deliberate abuse via fraud and malware.
I mean, advertising can also just be about brand awareness, or talking about a product. How many psychological tricks are ads in the sidebar of Stack Overflow? The concept of advertising isn't inherently evil.
To be clear, I agree 10000% with the action taken here. I would like for us to start applying this strict standard more often.
My wife is genuinely happy to see ads. My parents are happy, that their small business can advertise, that allow them to sell product, pay their employees and support themselves.
Imo it's not that all advertisement is evil, just the ones that stoop to manipulation by taking pages from psychological research, turning our primal instincts against our own self interests to spend more of our limited money on dumb things or vote for a dumb thing to make someone else money.
Unfortunately for the majors in advertisement these days, that's their bread and butter.
I think they are missing the biggest issue with advertising, which is it incentivizes businesses to create things for the sole purpose of drawing their attention to the advertising. Truth is less important than shock value. Utility less important than appearance of utility. Extremist rhetoric gathers more eyeballs than moderate views. Advertising's biggest negative effects are in how it manipulates people into manipulating people's attention.
I think that's the point of disagreement. Advertising is often inane and wasteful, but in my opinion it's not fundamentally evil.
If we serve more relevant ads resulting in clicks/sales/etc, we get more revenue. We get happier advertisers, and give users access to things they demonstrably want. There is a clear alignment of incentives to have good standards and to try to square that circle. There are other "crosswinds" which make this task hard, but also (to me) a very interesting optimization problem.
People can (and should) complain when we fail to do it right. But to assume the worst, or to write off the entire industry because we make money from advertising, leaves no room for a meaningful discussion.
It depends. Ads aren’t inherently good or evil. Step back from dogma for a second.
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