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Comment by cramsession | Hacker News Reader

That’s not a problem for the customers though. Capitalism twists our incentives toward prioritizing return on investment over quality of life. Especially now with the internet, I literally never need ads. I just search for the solution to the problem I’m having. No push needed (or wanted).

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> I literally never need ads. I just search for the solution to the problem I’m having. No push needed (or wanted).

I want to agree with you, but you only think you're not seeing ads. Obviously, the SEO corruption has made everything you search for distorted by irresistible economic incentives of tilting the search results and search engine in favor of promoters.

Oh I agree. I don’t want or need to see ads, I currently do though.

Yes, and if you ban ads then you can expect a lot more underhand marketing as the companies peddling their goods will try and find another way to reach you.

How do you search? Google? That's typically part of marketing spend. It may not be pure ads as in I pay google, they display my ad. But it's still a company spending money to get their result to the top so you are more likely to see it.

Ads solve the discovery problem. Without ads, people still try to solve the discovery problem and try to get your attention. Are those methods still ads?

> Without ads, people still try to solve the discovery problem and try to get your attention. Are those methods still ads?

examples?

- Paying for product placement on store shelves and movies

- SEO optimization to get to the top of the search result page

- Paying influencers to use their product

- Paying people to post on forums about the product

- Sending / sponsoring reviewers

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