There are many news sites that make it extremely hard to share their content on sites like HN or reddit because of these tricks. I wonder if they are actually losing traffic from it, or if their tactics work? I'm referring when you copy the text in the title of an article to try to paste it into the Title box on HN or reddit. But what you 'paste' is actually a huge paragraph about how great the news website is and how you should download their apps and read more on their website. At that point, I can't be bothered to clean it up and I refuse to type out some text that I should have been able to copy.
Does it really work? Do sites actually get more traffic by hijacking your keyboard's basic functions to insert advertisements? I guess it probably does. :(
I had to implement this kinda code when I worked for Demand Media and it certainly worked. Whats funny is you don't need any fancy new apis to make it work. We were doing some pretty basic tactics actually. Only real way to prevent it is disable javascript.
Demand Media makes money by monitoring ad networks and then paying people to churn out worthless content that pollutes search results. They watch metrics very carefully.
I'm sure that those involved have very interesting rationalizations, but I don't think that it should be viewed from an ethics perspective. Expecting people to behave against their own self interest in the short term, for the good of strangers in the long term, will always end in disappointment. This is actually a pretty simple case of poorly stated objectives being cleverly met by people who are completely self interested. LOC metrics, rat tail bounties, click-through rates. I know this sounds kind of "well what did you expect wearing something like that", but if advertisers establish metrics that are more closely aligned with their objectives then we'd all be better off.
But yeah, Demand Media is terrible and their employees are not on my Christmas card list.
> I know this sounds kind of "well what did you expect wearing something like that"
Which is a perfectly rational question/argument.
> Expecting people to behave against their own self interest in the short term, for the good of strangers in the long term, will always end in disappointment.
I agree. This is a systemic problem, and appeals to ethics won't work (and the advertisers won't change their metrics because of them) - one needs to attack the economic incentives underlying their current strategies.
> (and the advertisers won't change their metrics because of them)
uh. That isn't what I was doing - one party's act in self interest can benefit third parties (even if accidentally)... like electing to not set yourself on fire in a crowded Museum of Yarn and Flammables.
> ...attack the economic incentives underlying their current strategies.
That has been going on since the first ad click payment. I'm guessing that the ideal solution is one that would require a scale of economy that is outside the capabilities of the majority of the market participants, and that is why we still have catch the monkey ads.
How is that rational at all? That question is referencing the common practice of blaming rape victims rather than the rapists, by questioning what the victim was wearing.
It is a perfectly rational question. You're layering a bunch of unnecessary stuff about blame on top of it. Rape is always the fault of the rapist. Full stop. Now, given that there probably always will be rapists in the world, can we be allowed to ask questions that help prevent rape?
No, because rapists are given cover and can more easily rationalize their behavior when society implies that rape is a natural or expected consequence of the failure to take precautions against it.
Rape is a natural or expected consequence of the failure to take precautions against it.
It doesn't matter what society implies.
Note that I can say that while unequivocally condemning rape and providing zero cover to rapists. I am describing what is, not what I think ought to be.
>> Rape is a natural or expected consequence of the failure to take precautions against it.
I don't understand - how is that not victim blaming, and going against your last line? And how exactly do you take precautions against rape, especially when you factor in the fact that the perpetrators are far more likely to be people who wield some kind of authority over the victim, including family members, bosses at work, police and security forces, etc. which is true at least where I come from (West Africa), and leads to chronic under reporting / decisions by families to either blame the victim or sweep the whole thing under the rug. Or am I somehow misunderstanding your meaning?
Kind of odd to even bring ethics up when discussing how websites make money. It doesn't matter at all. Ethics is normally used to discuss other people getting harmed by actions, but when all that harm can be removed simply by closing the browser and doing something else it's barely worth talking about. Is it ethical for a shop to advertise its products in the shop windows when the people running the shop know that there are higher quality products available in a competitors store? Who gives a shit?
I do. That's probably why I won't be running an effective business any time soon. Being nice and not fucking people over doesn't get you far in highly competitive markets.
I strongly second what 'nitrogen wrote[0]. This is very much about ethics.
> Is it ethical for a shop to advertise its products in the shop windows when the people running the shop know that there are higher quality products available in a competitors store?
In my opinion, no. Basically, if you know your product is shit, you are morally obliged to make it better or find something else to sell; lying to people to make them buy your stuff instead of something objectively better is fucking them over for your own gain.
Think about it the next time you find yourself on the receiving end of such businessmen.
That argument would lead you to the conclusion that if your peers are objectively better than you, then it's immoral for you to seek employment; you must improve yourself or choose a different industry. So do you think you are among the world's best in your area of expertise, or are you voluntarily unemployed? ;)
That said, most of my peers who are objectively better than me are already employed, and it's up to employers to select from the available pool of employees. My responsibility is to truthfully present my skills during interview.
If it is on the employer to make a value judgement on your skills, then isn't it also up to the window shopper to make a value judgement on the merchandise?
Well, yes - but in my original comment I didn't say that if you get half a feature behind your competitor, you should trash your merchandise and go do something else. I complained about people willingly making and selling shit, covering the deficiencies up with marketing.
In hiring analogy, it would be as if I couldn't code at all, but could talk my way through the interviews - and so instead of actually learning to code, I'd earn money by getting employed at companies and trying to extract as many paychecks and benefits as I can and then quitting before they figure out I'm a fraud.
Me investing my time to get a job through pure charisma, without bringing any merit to the table, is like selling products on pure marketing. Pretty dishonest, and also poisons the ecosystem for everyone.
... but a warning sign that an argument is probably too broad, too absolute, too confidently stated, and has ten thousand exceptions that you didn't consider.
> I do. That's probably why I won't be running an effective business any time soon. Being nice and not fucking people over doesn't get you far in highly competitive markets.
> lying to people to make them buy your stuff instead of something objectively better is fucking them over for your own gain
Thanks, this needed to be said. I'm in the same position. I will probably never be able to run a business either because I hold these same views.
Kind of odd to even bring ethics up when discussing how websites make money. It doesn't matter at all.
This is why we can't have nice things. Because people adopt a FYGM attitude. Because they piss in the pool we all have to swim in.
...all that harm can be removed simply by...
...quitting smoking? Throwing away the prescription pain meds? Giving up junk food?
How about not robbing people of their valuable time and money? How about moving past negative-sum business models where the distributed costs far outweigh the concentrated gains?
If I'm actively searching for some information I need, I cannot "simply close the browser and do something else". Search results are polluted with junk and time it takes to find useful information has increased a lot. Finding in-depth information is getting harder and harder because of flood of low quality pages that only hit the keywords and skim the topic on the surface.
Very sad welcome because somehow working in advertisement industry is considered a respectable occupation in 2016. The cognitive dissonance of the society is sometimes mind-boggling.
"You know, you smell, and look ugly, and certainly are wearing yesteryears fashions. Buy our shit and you can be almost a human again!"
(hey it works in the advertising industry. I attack your humanity on multiple levels and then show you garbage that... kind of, almost, but not really restores your humanity. Of course, you really need next months update, or you're just subhuman again! )
Which is a show about how cool it is to be an asshole and ruin your own and other people's lives by making extremely selfish decisions. This is also why I won't watch House of Cards.
HoC makes it seem down right cool to screw everyone you know over to attemt to dig yourself out of the massive hole you've dug yourself in to. The sad thing is that much of the American public watching this garbage believes the underlying premise, "do unto others before they do unto you."
Sure, if you've got a concept of morality based on primarily being motivated to help others rather than pursuing self interest. If that's the case though then the vast majority of people would fall under the category and make it a pretty meaningless description.
> if you've got a concept of morality based on primarily being motivated to help others
Ethically, self-interest is fine. Failing to help others isn't a huge deal either. It's the part where you're actively and deliberately harming others (by polluting search results - impairing both search engines, as a company, and their users) that we're objecting to.
I think the idea of "polluting search results" requires too much of a subjective concept of what good content is to say whether producing one kind or not is unethical. They aren't producing what they are because people aren't looking at it and I'm very sceptical of any notion that people don't generally do what they want. It has a very centrally planned feel to say "people want think pieces" or "people want to read about X" when reality shows that people want easily consumed clickbait and listicles.
What you wrote is a very twisted rationalization of screwing people on purpose. Sure, if you create several things and watch which ones people like more, you can say that those people do what they want. But when you start purposefully designing tricks to e.g. advertise you have information, and then sell them ads and bullshit, you're doing active harm to people. It's not subjective at all.
I assure you I don't need to rationalise. I'm under no delusion that I'm a terrific person and do the assorted immoral things I do with full understanding and acceptance.
Demand Media has strong brands. They aren't anonymous/fly by night operators. If they were promising content and not delivering with any sort of regularity they'd lose viewers. They're not doing that though. The content when you click on an ehow or livestrong article is exactly what you'd expect from an ehow or livestrong article. That you find this content undesirable is very much subjective. Plenty of people seem to enjoy it.
People generally do what they want to do, but they base their decisions on incomplete information on what they are going to get. Lots of crap wouldn't get its clicks if it didn't appear to be something it isn't.
Their crap is what it appears to be though. If they weren't delivering on their clickbaity titles then people would soon learn. It's not like they're anonymous publishers, sites like ehow and livestrong are strong brands. They're not counting on unaware users.
Humans are social animals and the "self" at least partially includes your community. There's no need to make such a fine distinction when discussing human morality.
I don't personally have any supporting data but the business people were not ones to do things unless it worked. Just look how high in the rankings ehow was able to get before panda hit.
I like most of the ACM code. I think it could use an update with more direct prohibitions on modern forms of user harm, such as trading in private information and manipulating search results to promote low quality sites.
The proof of concept didn't work for me. I highlighted the text, right-clicked and clicked "copy". I thought it was just broken or not hooking the on-copy properly.
Then I realized that the reason I was doing that instead of ctrl-c is all the times that web sites break ctrl-c. I literally have gotten used to highlighting, right-clicking, and clicking copy, for a "clean" copy :) I wasn't even aware I was doing this.
Of course, web sites can hook right-clicks. It would be funny if they threw up a fake context menu matching the default context menu of the browser and operating you're using, but with evil versions of commands :)
I don't disable or modify javascript, so with that addition it would have tricked me.
Right-click hooking could be defeated by inserting a sequence number in the right-click menu and displaying the same sequence number somewhere in the browser window.
I will say that the people who generate event hooks in browsers need to pull their heads out of their asses before this kind of thing becomes necessary.
But then, I've seen sites that break highlighting. Either intentionally, or accidentally, thinking people will share their every highlight on Twitter (I am looking at you, Medium).
I don't have data on this, but it's a significant turnoff for me. Unless I really have to share the quote, I never bother cleaning it. It doesn't bug me to the extent that I won't share it altogether (I'll just type it out or copy from Chrome devtools); yet I'll be more hesitant to share from that website from thereon.
Many pages in the New York Times are impossible to select text in. But I just select the text from the page source. After reading this article, I'm thinking that might be a good idea in general.
In Firefox use CTRL-SHIFT-I or use Firebug to inspect the code on the page after it's generated. I guess many times it's a transparent div covering the text, not javascript tricks like this, but I might be wrong. You can remove the div using Firebug. Selecting the text in Firebug will work, but may be a lot more work. How about printing to PDF, then selecting the text there?
Does it really work? Do sites actually get more traffic by hijacking your keyboard's basic functions to insert advertisements? I guess it probably does. :(