Same with bogus results in Google search. It would be a mistake to fixate on a fail case at the expense of seeing what it gets right.
One thing that can be said about Amazon is how data-driven it is. Even an obvious "improvement" to a system would require analysis to back it up as an improvement. For example, it might seem obvious to filter out lower quality user-created answers in the product FAQ, but answers with poor grammar might actually boost sales because shoppers trust the answer more.
Also, as we descend deeper into ML/AI and black boxes, the deeper we get into effects from afar. There's no real place to write if (user.sex == M) then weigh('tampons', -1) as it was a constellation of factors that cascaded into a man seeing tampons like that time he purchased something related for his girlfriend. The next rung in line is the business of mind-reading.
Not that that justifies the practice.
And, yes, I do think Facebook should take responsibility for the content of their ads and products sold through them. If the New York Times only sold ads for scams, and all their articles were lies, we would no longer trust the New York Times
Facebook is like Vegas strip junk ads. It may look nice, but you’re going to have a bad time
Facebook and Google would have to innovate instead of rent seek.
Ads/marketing budgets create employment that would otherwise not be there.
Ads provide monetization for apps you use on your phone. Without monetization you wouldn't have the proliferation of the ads, and not everyone is willing to pay directly.
It creates jobs, supports businesses, helps otherwise unsustainable content. It helps the small businesses grow their market. It supports economy.
You are also sort of missing the point. We are trying to make ads relavant for everyone, but even if it's relavant, you don't click on everything you see. This is true because of how you as a person do things. You don't buy the first car you see on the street, you do research, you spend days etc. Just think of that, and you'll see why why 1% ctr is actually not a terrible thing as you made it sound like. if you clicked on everything you see, you wouldn't be able to do _anything_.
Disclaimer: Current FB and ex-Google employee working on ads for 8 years. And no, my pay doesn't depend on me saying these, i could just work _anywhere_ i wanted, literally.
Actual money.
In the absence of ads, we'd have people paying money to honest app makers for the utility of the app. And along with that, the accountability, honesty, and incentive alignment that comes from a straightforward exchange. Instead, we have app makers selling users, their data, and their attention to the various companies/intermediaries/entities involved -- without ever telling the user how the bread is buttered.
Yeah, when I'm buying a toaster, I do research. But that has nothing to do with modern ad-tech and its various tentacles whatsoever. Actually, nowadays, I find this whole ecosystem actively prevents me from being proactive about my consumer choice, because every single thing I see when I google "best toaster 2020" is some type of eldritch symbiosis of Fb Goog Az (choose any; none are good), a 1 cent-paid-per-letter 3rd world content farmer, instant click bidding based on my browser, age, gender, location, prior 2 week consumption pattern, political view.
It's really tough to compete with free, and I understand that there are significant barriers to paying directly for content/utility/etc. I know, the system we have set up is ambiguous and complicated and subtle. But maybe those ads/marketing budget dollars could be used to actually like, I don't know: improve people's lives? fix these systems? reverse course? Convince people to consume less so that we don't collapse the biosphere?
It's so tiring to see the most intelligent people alive say, well, this is quite clearly a massive problem that might literally destabilize the order of our entire society on one hand, but on the other, people just have to know how bad they want the Newest Garbage On Sale This Upcoming Black Friday...
Yes, it is a lie and a scam. One of the most epic of recent years.
How do you think you'd get to know your neighborhood burger joint without some form of advertising (either word of mouth, or through real paid advertising). how would you know the burger joint somewhere else?
Short of a micropayment solution that pays out proportional to the value you get (flattr? maybe), ads is the only viable option. But that only solves the content creator pov. It doesn't help the advertiser - the business that need your money to survive.
I don’t think so; and the counter example is gaming. We would see free to download products with upsells catered to whales. I’m not sure if that would be a better product but I don’t think that business model is honest either
[Replying to parent because I can't reply directly to poster]
It looks like you have no idea that there are games worth paying for. Not on mobile phones though. And definitely not free to play games. They are designed to take your money, not entertain you.
That, and the seemingly utter stupidity of ad engines. Like, yes I bought that new power tool last week. Stop showing me the ad for the tool from the same store I already bought it from.
I'm pretty much convinced that apart from the people working in the ad business, nobody actually profits off ads. Certainly it's close to impossible to prove that ads are effective, and people who sell ads to companies are good at cherry picking and suggestive correlations. Then in the end everyone tries to buy the same eyeballs by paying the same ad companies, and it all averages out to nothing except you spent a bunch of money.
Yes. I hate this too, but think of it as a bug, not the actual intention. We would love to know when you wouldn't buy a product as much as we would love to know when you actually would. But we don't, always, and end up having to make approximations. We don't always know what you actually bought, we just know you bought something. Advertisers don't even always tell the value of stuff you bought, something tht'd have benefited them to share from ROI pov etc.
Whether something creates jobs or not doesn't make it a net good. Would you suggest Ransomware is good? Because it also creates jobs. As do Nigerian email scams and Ponzi schemes. "Creating Jobs" doesn't mean something is good for society.
> You are also sort of missing the point. We are trying to make ads relavant for everyone, but even if it's relavant, you don't click on everything you see.
Apparently you are missing the point here. Whether you see it or not, Facebook and google's marketplaces by nature serve advertisers, not me. Advertisers don't give a damn what advertising is "most relevant" to me. What they care about is which demographics are most profitable to their brands.
> We are trying to make ads relavant for everyone
So long as Google and Facebook put the advertisers in control of who sees their advertising, any assertion that the system is designed to serve us is bullshit. People don't see advertising that is relevant, they see advertisements from the people who pay google/ Facebook to see their message. Those two things are not equivalent and never will be.
But think of it this way. You are getting a service, you are paying either directly or indirectly through ads.
Facebook wouldn't be a thing if it were a paid product from get go. It'd probably even lose a major part of its user base if it became a paid product overnight.
Like i said, i would love if i can pay for a product i am benefiting from, but it's not always possible.
But they don't put advertisers in control of who sees their ads.
If you look at audience sizes on FB, and then run some direct response ads on that audience, you'll notice that you only ever reach maybe 10% of that audience.
This is because what FB/Goog are good at is figuring out which ads are likely to get someone to click and/or convert, and show only those ads.
The dirty secret is that those people might have converted anyway.
One can measure this with an attribution model, but the trouble is that the two biggest players Google and Facebook have very little incentive to co-operate, so all attribution models are extremely biased.
tl;dr the advertisers set boundaries on who should see the ad, but they don't control who the ads get served to.
