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Comment by Goronmon | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'm as big of a fan of advertising firms as the author, and some quotes stood out.

“People on Reddit want to be anonymous, and at some point these brands want to have a real relationship with their customers"

I find it hard to take an article seriously when it includes quotes like this in a non-critical context. Advertisement is about bullshit, not about "relationships with customers". The job of advertisers is to trick you into think you need whatever they are being paid to sell. They and the companies they work only care about their customers in regards to how much money they can wring out of them.

And the parallel is that advertisers don't give a shit about Reddit as well. They are just looking for a way to maximize their ability to wring every cent out of Reddit's userbase regardless of whether the advertising completely destroyed the community.

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>>I find it hard to take an article seriously when it includes quotes like this in a non-critical context. Advertisement is about bullshit, not about "relationships with customers".

The problem is that advertisers think of their job as "relationships with customers." It's the lie they willingly swallow in order to be able to continue looking at themselves in the mirror. I mean, let's face it, no advertiser thinks, "sweet, I suckered ten thousand people to click my ad!" Rather, they think, "I built relationships with ten thousand customers today!"

I think that is a rather cynical view of advertisers. The type of advertisers that think of their jobs as "relationships with customers." are not the ones currently advertising online (and by online, I mean anywhere other than Google Search).

They type of advertisers that would buy ad-space on a site like Reddit today are definitely thinking "sweet, I suckered ten thousand people to click my ad!" even if not in that language, but they are the ones pouring over CTRs and impressions.

The advertisers who actually care about "relationships with customers" are life style brands like, Nike, Coke, Apple, Budweiser, Louis Vuitton, and others, who don't actually care if you click through (what does a click mean to Budweiser? Its not like the market of people who want a bud light via. online is particularly large). They are more concerned with the "relationships with customers" and take a great deal of care on how the product received and how the message is delivered.

The goal of these advertisers is to deliver a message, with the confidence that their message won't be warped by content around it. You just can't get that with Reddit. Therefore you are left with these other "unsavory" type of advertisers whose only goal is to convert and will do that until they can wring out every cent out of Reddit's user base.

I think that is a rather cynical view of advertisers.

Their behavior would be unacceptable in any social relationship. They exist in a space were we largely have to put up with them just because money.

I don't see how you can't not take a cynical view of the people who's primary goal is to manipulate you towards their own ends, just because those ends might once in a while be mutually beneficial.

Yes, when testing at ad companies, at least devs typically have to remember to turn off (multiple?) ad-blockers and enable flash. Some don't even tell their families they're in ads; rather say, "I'm in IT" hoping it's a boring enough answer that no one asks deeper. They think in abstract numbers like requests/sec, so they can go weeks without thinking about the actual results. (http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

(Though I think it's rare to be explicitly aware of ads as corporate propaganda. Some are.)

> The goal of these advertisers is to deliver a message, with the confidence that their message won't be warped by content around it. You just can't get that with Reddit.

Maybe not: https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/2bswrv/user_...

Not all ads are for products you don't objectively need. You do likely need life insurance.

I would want to be informed if/when somebody made a cheap razor that actually works for me. I would want to know if somebody made a better vaccum robot, or made it cheaper. I don't objectively need a new smart phone, but I would want to know about it so that I could anticipate what my users would want to get.

Advertisers want you to think of their work as information. It'd be more accurate to describe it as unsolicited information using gross exaggerations to build up a product and appealing to emotions not reason.

I too care about cheap razors, vacuum robots or newer smartphones. But I find it intrusive when a program I'm watching is interrupted with a fast paced 30 seconds clip of sexy naked people telling me to go buy their new product right now.

If I want information, a subscription model to some sort of info periodical is almost always available. But this is much closer to what we consider "journalism" than "advertisement". (I realize the limit between the 2 is sometimes difficult to define).

> I would want to be informed if/when somebody made a cheap razor that actually works for me.

Arguably, the whole reason the big name companies get away with 5-blade nonsense is marketing. Meanwhile, on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/wicked_edge

(I'm speaking as someone who has switched to a double-edge razor and couldn't be happier)

As is discussed elsewhere in this thread, the whole concept of specialist sub-reddits makes it easy for enthusiasts to share information on their own. Mods with an iron fist, combined with comments and upvotes can be quite a decent makeshift version of democratic peer review among hobbyists. Of course, this has lots of issues of its own, but the point is that it subverts (the in my opinion ethically icky) aspects of marketing - the only thing you can really do against that is either genuinely make a good product, or be evil and subvert a community from the inside somehow.

I tried that, they aren't nearly good enough to remove my stubble and they take quite a long time to use.

For now I do electric and then finish up with a Gilette battery powered something.

The best solution really varies from person to person - how hard/soft you hair and skin is and such. There's also a somewhat different technique to it, but I'm if you've tried a DE razor you've looked that up.

In my case, I guess I'm pretty lucky - the morning shower is enough to soften the hairs and stubble, and if I shave immediately after leaving the shower it only takes only a few minutes.

But that only goes to show how ridiculously expensive and wasteful a 5-blade cassette would be in my situation.

" You do likely need life insurance." why on earth would i need life insurance?

Because you might want to leave some money behind for your family if you happen to die too soon.

Regardless, advertisers won't "inform" you about the best life insurance for you, they'll lie to make you stop thinking and trick you into buying their life insurance, which most likely will be subpar. Good products tend to advertise themselves.

Because you likely would leave some family behind that depended on your income.

I, ironically enough, don't have a need for life insurance as I have nobody who depends on me.

I think from advertisers' point of view, a "real relationship" is one that involves a financial exchange.

If only advertisers were honest partners who don't try to trick you into buying subpar products (i.e. crap) you don't want... What they call "real relationship" should be called "abusive relationship".

Relationship is a euphemism for demographic data, and it's a fact that this is the direction that most online advertising is going. Advertisers want access to as many axes of demographic data as possible, and to target narrowly across them. What the article author doesn't realize is that the subreddit system already does that, without giving up any demographic data. You can target any interest, no matter how narrow.

This comment is totally unbiased and objective, of course.

It's an opinion. There's no such thing as an "objective" opinion.

Of course there is.

Any design decision, be that of a software system, an engineering project, of a product, etc., etc. is nothing more, than an opinion of the designer. And since there are literally infinite possibilities, how something can be designed, the skill of the designer is to chose the one objectively correct solution.

What you are talking about, is that there are no absolutely objective opinions, which is true, although any application of this statement would lead to trivial conclusions.

And saying, that any opinion is valid, since there are no absolutely objective opinions is wrong. Especially if the opinion is just prejudiced bashing unworthy of HN.

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