While I agree that the world would be better without ads in their current form, we should think why are ads required and what are the benefits.

The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main downside to society could be unhappy people that consume crap.

I think smart people should think about alternative solutions, not just think "ads are the problem".

I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I look for example for open source libraries/programs for a task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and complex that it is never easy.

My personal preference would be a network recommendation system. I would like to know what people I know (and in my extended network) are using and like - being it restaurants, clothes or open source software. I have 90% of friends (or friends of friends) satisfied with something - maybe I should try. Of course it is not a perfect system, but seems much better than what we currently have...

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iso1631 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I look for example for open source libraries/programs for a task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and complex that it is never easy.

And adverts don't help determine what the best tool for your problem is. They determine which product spent the most on adverts.

So yes, adverts do not help you with decision making at all.

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layer8 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Open source software (mostly) don’t have ads, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem in practice. Good projects become known by word of mouth, people blogging about it, etc. If anything, it exemplifies that ads aren’t required.

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Imustaskforhelp 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> My personal preference would be a network recommendation system. I would like to know what people I know (and in my extended network) are using and like - being it restaurants, clothes or open source software. I have 90% of friends (or friends of friends) satisfied with something - maybe I should try. Of course it is not a perfect system, but seems much better than what we currently have...

I can think of a hacky solution where your friends can share their (trustpilot?) or alternative accounts username and then you can review what they are reviewing/what they are using etc.

The problem to me feels like nobody I know writes a trustpilot review unless its really bad or really good (I dont know too much about reviewing business)

I feel like someone must have built this though

Another part is how would you get your friends list? If its an open protocol like fediverse, this might have genuine value but you would still need to bootstrap your friends connecting you in fediverse and the whole process.

And oh, insta and other large big tech where your friends already are wont do this because they precisely make money from selling you to ads. It would be harmful to their literal core.

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manuelmoreale 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> My personal preference would be a network recommendation system.

Random question: do you have a personal site where you write about things you recommend? Because that's the solution IMO. And that's the network you're talking about: it's the web. You find enough people you trust and you see what they recommend. The issue is that in modern society 99% of the people consume and 1% are fucking influencers getting paid to promote crap.

	▲	vladms 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I was thinking (theoretically) we should strive for a more efficient system that could include more people. There are plenty of simpler and less efficient to achieve the same goal. For example I have for example a list of restaurants that I share with people that visit my city (plenty of tourist traps around), but it is cumbersome to manage/share. Does not feel like a solution.

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owisd 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> how you discover a new product

Buying magazines for trusted 3rd party reviews used to be way more common, far better experience than trying to sift through SEO slop these days.

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amelius 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The main issue is how you discover a new product.

We live in the information age.

How did you learn about your programming languages? Ads?

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vladms 2 days ago | parent [-]

I learnt Basic, C++ in that order because at the time there were the only options (Basic because of a computer like Sinclair that only had basic, C++ because there was the only thing offered as a course at a computer club around).

Programming languages are easier to discover because they are a reasonable number (tens) you can asses, they are very important (if you are in the field), so you can invest a lot of time in choosing and following the trends.

I will not spend the same amount of time deciding about everything...

One thing that I prefer something like ads/reviews (and in fact works well enough in my case): cultural events in the city I live.

	▲	amelius 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ok, but do you agree that we should put ads in designated places (and out of sight, generally) where people can look them up whenever they find it convenient rather than the other way around where companies just shove them in your face at random times?

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ryandrake 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it is largely a Marketer's fantasy that people get up in the morning with a goal of "discovering new products." I don't want to discover new products. I especially don't want to while I'm trying to do something else that I actually WANT to do. If I need a new product, I will deliberately go out and look for it. I don't need marketers doing drive-by product announcements while I'm just trying to live my life.

The question of "how do people spontaneously discover products" is invalid. It's just not something people want in their lives.

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oneeyedpigeon 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's a great idea for a dystopian sci-fi story: you can opt out of ads, but your product choices are publicly broadcast instead.

	▲	Imustaskforhelp 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oh man this is a nice idea, I will try to add on somethings which I can think about from the top of my mind To be really honest, even if things were publicly broadcasted, The amount of choices of products we make in each day would be huge. So no random stranger would go and look for your product choices. What would matter are the close friends and family or perhaps when one becomes really famous? Would the fundamental idea of anonymity go away from all internet? Like if someone posts a youtube video or even a yt comment, would I get to know what they ate for dinner? Can ads still be blocked? If my product choice is an LLM lets say, would my prompts be choices as well that will get leaked with the conversation to everyone? To be really honest, Govt.'s (snowden showed us) already can know about your product choices pretty good enough and the internet/infrastructure behind it is pretty centralized nowadays as well Sure there are alternatives but how many people do you see using beyond the tri-fecta of cloud and how those choices come downstream to us consumers if services run there I feel like this is gonna be a classic example of Hawthorne effect (Had to look the term for that) meaning that people will behave differently now that they are being observed. Also do you know that its not any technical limitation which limits it but financial incentives. There is no incentive to having your product choices be publicly broadcasted but for the services, there is an incentive of money if they show you ads and which they end up showing to ya. If there was an financial incentive for the servers to create this choice itself of opting out / public broadcasts option, they probably would be reality.