how inappropriate advertising wrecks things

[miriam_e]

A lot of people think it was overinvestment and bad finance that caused the dot com crash. I think that was part of it, but I feel a lot of the problem was bad and inappropriate advertising.

A lot of stuff on the net could only be supported by advertising. There was no sensible way to restrict access to content, so direct support from the customer never seemed to be an option (LiveJournal is an interesting exception). Advertising looked like the best way to get financial support for pages. Unfortunately gold fever took hold and people were displaying ads that were scams or tricks to get the user to click. You have all seen them; ads that say misleading things or that are outright lies. The problem is that people get stung once and never click an ad again. A small number of cynical con artists ruin it for all the other genuine advertisers... and people wonder why earnings for internet advertising are so low. If the people who featured advertising on their pages had been a bit more discerning, turning away immoral or trickster ads, then advertising on the net would be a much more viable prospect.

I notice now companies like double-click are loading web pages down with trickery that crashes or severely delays page loading in Netscape. I have a feeling that this is an unintended side-effect of a response to the proliferation of products that block ads from pages. They try to detect programs that block them and so block the content? I am not sure, but that is how it looks. It would be simpler if instead of fighting their customers they just made their ads something that people like, or at least don't mind.

Email is now being subjected to the same kind of forces as ruined web page advertising. There always was a lot of spam, but I have noticed the volume increasing lately. Now it seems to make up a third of my incoming mail! They might think they don't hurt anybody, after all it only takes a touch of the delete key to get rid of it, but they are wrong. I have been speaking to parents who are upset at the amout of porn spam going into their kids' mail boxes. They have a good point. Also there is another ramification that nobody seems to think of: spammers get their addresses from people registering to sites, email lists, product updates, etc -- anywhere that might be asking for someone's email address. People have become so fed up with the flood of spam that they simply don't sign onto anything that asks for their email address anymore. Another effect I have noticed is that people will drop their old email address after it becomes too clogged with spam and start up another. This hinders communication and makes reliable contact with people that much more difficult.

All this because a bunch of losers don't realise, or care, what they do to others or how they are damaging the net.

I am really surprised the ISPs haven't jumped on spammers and stamped these parasites out more effectively. They must cost them tremendous amounts, besides making life difficult for their honest customers. You would think it would be a fairly simple matter to detect addresses that steadily send millions of emails over hours or days.

Comments

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

I believe the cost to business from spam is something like $1.5 billion a year, and as such moves are being taken to stamp it out, or curb it. Cant recall where I saw that either....