This is my personal opinion, and you don’t have to agree.
As an IT enthusiast, I have swum in the waters of the internet, PCs, and gadgets for over 20 years. Recently, I have had to explain my concern.
As business grows and more and more areas of information technology are introduced, I really doubt there is any healthy target that computing is aiming for (apart from making more money, but I’ll get to that later). It’s really like a fleet without a general, just independent captains of each ship.
In this era, we spend more and more time online, consuming what has been served. From that consumption, the provider earns, advertisers too, and consumers spend their money (from which some fraction goes to the first ones). I know it’s each person’s responsibility to spend their money wisely, but in the current era of generated content, the ability to create frauds and fakes makes it really not easy to orient oneself.
And here is my first concern: how is it possible that even Google, Meta, and Microsoft are clearly displaying fraudulent ads? I mean, look at the landing page of Edge! Full of ads and AI-generated content, mainly. I’m not saying it’s on purpose, but it often displays fraudulent commercials on investing money (promising hundreds of % interest per month, abusing celebrities), using EU grants to force people to click something and other OBVIOUSLY MALICIOUS content.
Where is the responsibility of these companies offering illegal services? If I report that commercial, I usually receive a note that it’s not against anything, that it does not violate terms of use. Besides that, ads targeting, for example, the Czech Republic are ordered by companies abroad from “tax havens” like Cyprus, Malta, and the Cayman Islands, and these advertisers have the “green tick” as they are validated!
A mockery of all honest people, I say!
If I report them, it’s not possible to sue them, because they are companies abroad.
This is vicious.
And I say big players are earning money from these frauds, thus they are participating in illegal activities. Why would the landing page of Edge look like a screen from the famous “Idiocracy” movie? Why can’t you defend users? Whats the point of 100 articles on Edge landing page? Click-through thus earning money, thats why..
How is it possible that we don’t apply tools we already have to stop these frauds? Because it’s about money. Because big players need more, and they won’t stop. They don’t truly care about users; they say they do and will follow every latest possible trend to show how awesome they are, but that is hypocrisy.
The ad industry inflates the world economy. It devalues people’s wealth because it generates one person’s yearly income in a matter of seconds globally. At least if all ads were regular ads, not trying to steal from people, but I still disagree with the amount of ads displayed to regular users. Hide every platform behind a paywall, that’s okay, just don’t flood us with ads.
I don’t say frauds will disappear and never come back; of course, they will exist. I just don’t understand the sluggishness in dealing with them. We have the tools; it’s easily recognizable. There are ways to get rid of them!
Lastly, something to think about: if there is a guaranteed right to freedom of speech, freedom of movement, education, the right to work, and more… would it be appropriate to have the freedom “not to be targeted by ads/psychology”? Should we protect humanity more than we do currently? I think we should. Marketing is applied psychology, and not everybody can defend against it.
I apologize for my rant, but this is how I feel it.
Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
PRUSA i3 MK3S+
