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[-] bignose@awful.systems 3 points 13 hours ago

For decades, when the horrors of advertising surface in the news, I've been dipping into the articles that commercial advertising people write for each other.

It's such a weird alternate world these people have constructed. One where the concept of consent simply doesn't exist; where the general public do absolutely nothing with their lives except exist within one “channel” or another; where the right to blast advertising at everyone is so fundamental it can't even be seen, let alone questioned.

Not really a surprise. But my word, the edifices of thinking that have been piled atop these assumptions are mind-boggling in their fantasy.

[-] nfultz@awful.systems 3 points 9 hours ago

AdExchanger deserves its own kind of sneer club and it isn't even the worst of them.

[-] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 2 points 13 hours ago

@bignose @dgerard Bill Hicks was right

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 21 hours ago

Arent like the margin increases on targeted ads already pretty bad? I don't think running expensive chatbots (which then can be messed with by the people you are trying to reach, driving up the costs even more) are going to really provide value for the advertisement world.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 5 points 21 hours ago

OpenAI were originally selling the ads at premium prices, this is the ad guys saying "these perform like trash mate"

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah im just wondering why they tried it at all. Feels like the lidl branching into selling luxury cars to make an extreme example.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 1 points 17 hours ago

Some LWer wanted OpenAI to spam a warning about AI killing us all to every user of their app

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gJJ9YHzuBvwAXrthW/there-is-a-channel-to-900m-weekly-users-what-goes-in-it

this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
17 points (94.7% liked)

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