Comment by shortformblog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shortformblog | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has worked in marketing … I think adtech created stances like this.

If advertising worked like it did before about 1994 or so, I think we’d see fewer complaints of this nature. Adtech overplayed its hand for a quarter-century.

The thing that sucks about this, IMHO, is that it makes no room for above-board players. Doesn’t matter that it supports millions of jobs. Doesn’t matter that there are lots of well-intentioned people out there who just happen to work in advertising.

This guy is 100% within his right. And honestly, the sector deserves it. Bad actors destroyed a lot of goodwill in the name of performance and better numbers.

But I wish it didn’t.

For me, specifically, Forbes destroyed the line between bad actors and above board players.

Back when sites started to detect ad-blockers, Forbes asked users to disable their blockers, for the usual reasons. Trusting them, beings respectable breed source, I and others whitelisted Forbes, and promptly got hit by malware distributed by ads on their site.

Because Forbes could not be bothered to screen the ads on their site, I now relentlessly block ads just like the author of the article.

I should note that Forbes is probably the traditional media outlet that has been most willing to mix advertising and editorial in questionable ways. It has gotten better about its approach in recent years, but it is certainly not perfect.

Product placement and native advertising is rampant across all media.

And I said Forbes was one of the worst examples of it. They pioneered a lot of the darker patterns among major media outlets.

I received material from Adbusters[0] in the early 90s, and they started-up in '89. Anti-advertisement sentiment isn't new, though it may be growing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

I remember Adbusters well. I do think that it was a (useful) minority point of view back then. Now, it is increasingly common.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com