Here’s a window into our future – which is already our present.
The image attached with this article was received by me the other day from Google. More finely, from Google’s algorithm or AI or whatever non-human agency it is that generates and sends these things out. It is a “report” – or so it is styled – that informs me of “violations” related to things (no specific things) that Google regards as “violations” that, in turn, trigger “enforcement,” which means Google “disables” ads formerly displayed on the pages in “violation.”
There is, of course, no way to find out what exactly the “violations” are. They are just . . . “violations.”
I don’t give a damn about this because I don’t give a damn about Google ads and have been meaning to excise the ones that remain on EPautos because I figured out a long time ago that Google and the “click” model is a giant gyp that benefits Google and not me or any other publisher.
In the pre-Internet, print-era past, a business that wanted to advertise its service or products bought space for an ad. Put another way, the business paid for the visibility it got by having its ad published. This space was bought on the basis of the publication’s readership; if a publication had a circulation of say 50,000 readers it was assumed that 50,000 pairs of eyes would see the ad. Then along came the Internet, Google and the “click” model. The publisher publishes the ad – and thus everyone who viewed the page on which the ad was published saw the ad – but the publisher only gets paid (a pittance) for “clicks” on the ad. Basically, it’s like Ford paying nothing for a billboard ad touting a vehicle unless someone shows up at a Ford dealer and tells the dealer he’s there because he “clicked” on the ad.
This “model” – as it is styled – has destroyed advertising revenue for all but the largest sites online, that have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of readers. The rest get to publish ads for free, basically.
This is incredibly insidious because most big-name advertisers have offloaded their advertising to Google, which now controls most online advertising. Put another way, it is essentially futile to try to get a business that uses Adsense to buy space for an ad – because why would they? That would be paying for the space. Much better to advertise for free – basically.
I stopped worrying about Google a long time ago, insofar as their ads. But the model is alarming because it is going to metastasize. It already has. Have you tried dealing with a “customer service” phone tree recently? Dealing with a warranty-related issue online – as you’re increasingly forced to, because there’s no other (human) option?
And that’s exactly it. They are driving human-to-human interaction off the stage. There is no human I can speak with at Google – assuming I wanted to. Just generic “pages” I can refer to. There is no one to appeal to, in other words. No human being to even try to connect with. Just a wall of implacable ones and zeroes that don’t care because machines do not care. Aren’t capable of caring.
There will be no appeal. There will be no way to reason with the other party – because the other party is not human. Try to imagine what life will be like when everything runs this way – down to your being allowed (or not) to buy a soda out of a vending machine, depending upon whether you have committed any “violations” – such as posting something mean on Xcrement. It is likely to be the case that you will have to post uplifting things on Xcrement, as silence will be taken as sullen disagreement with uplifting things.
Frank Herbert foresaw all of this coming 60 years ago and wrote about it in his Dune novels. The story is set in the distant future, after a devastating war between human beings and “thinking machines.” When the humans finally won that war, at great cost, it was agreed that never again could “thinking machines” be permitted to exist.
Humans would do the thinking instead.
Herbert saw our future and tried to warn us. But such warnings are often futile as humans appear to have to learn things the hard way. Sometimes, repeatedly (viz, the depressingly recurrent attraction of Communism among people who have no idea what it will mean for them as well as everyone else except those who run the Communism).
It is not a question of stupidity. Elon Musk is not stupid. But he may be dumb, in the way smart people sometime are. That goes for many of us, too.
Uh oh. I probably just committed another “violation.”
. . .
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When I was a kid back in the 1980’s (I’m 51 now), I was a paperboy for a weekly marketing “newspaper”. It was 98% ads. They offered free 20 word classified ads for private sales for individual people selling mostly used things. It could be just about anything from cars to collectables, furniture etc. It was their hook of course that little freebie.
If you were a business it wasn’t free of course, and they had classified to full page ads for things like auto dealers, grocery stores and real estate listings etc. So that was where their money was made. It was a good sized paper, typically 50-100 pages, most of the time in two sections (due to the limitations of their printing press).
They had a couple part time writers doing special interest pieces to fill it out. But yeah, not really a “newspaper”, a community marketing thing. Everywhere at least in the US and Canada had at least one (they had several competitors at the time). They were actually also a regular printing company, doing typical printing work (that is what they do in entirely now).
It was a viable business model from after World War Two to the late 1990’s. I think at its highest point it employed 50-75 people, maybe 25 of them full time (not including the paperboys, and yes until the 1960’s it was a job for only boys). It didn’t make the owners rich, but they were well to do at least.
Fast forward to the early 2000’s, I join the staff as a graphic artist, but did mostly production type work. At that point the paper had downsized to about half the size, and was dying fast. All their competitors had already gone out of business. The internet and google in particular had did in their business model. I was not employed there very long………
They hung on until covid hit, and they were forced (by the government, crook county in Illinois) to stop printing it on paper (they had managed to get at least somewhat of an online presence).
They ended up “selling” it (for nothing) to a couple of employees. Who to their credit actually managed to start printing it again for about three more years at a very diminished state. But it succumbed for good last year.
Google sucked all the advertising dollars out of nearly every community in the world.
Have to update this: They managed to start publishing it again! I will have to see when it started again, but it looks like it’s been going a bit now. It’s only 8 pages, but it is coming out weekly again! Didn’t think they would manage to get it going again!
This is for Eric and his readers, especially any with “autoimmune”:
https://ggenereux.blog/my-ebooks/
It helped me and I hope it can help others. Cheers!
Starting October 12th the following countries will be collecting biometric data (facial recognition and fingerprints) for all Americans who enter the continent.
Stay away from the following:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Ireland and Cyprus are exempt from this requirement.
https://www.foxnews.com/travel/fingerprint-scans-coming-american-travelers-most-europe-new-policy
May your continent crater, Europe.
It’s already happening in the US via the TSA and Customs. I hold my hand in front of the camera and “opt-out,” but the other ten thousand cameras pointed at me everywhere else probably do it.
I also noticed Home Depot, Walmart, et al also do it as well with their self check-out machines. Shit has gotten out of control.
I refuse to use “self checkout”. If I am gonna have to be a cashier, I want a paycheck…….
Hi ML,
The cameras are everywhere although I do my best to stay out of their line of sight when I see them, but I am not scanning my fingerprints or my eyeballs. At that point I find a 100 acres and build a small log cabin in the midst of nowhere or I buy a boat and sail the Caribbean.
I hope these new European requirements kill their travel industry. I will fight this tooth and nail. Others believe we have “something to hide.” No, we don’t. We value our privacy, our security, and our sanity and do not believe every conversation or transaction should be used to track our buying habits, what we listen to, or we congregate with.
These companies and people exploiting others are truly sick and disturbed. There is something mentally off with one who gets their kicks out of surveilling and stalking another human being.
Amen, RG!
I almost feel as if the wheel has turned – that there are lots of us who see what’s coming and have already decided we will not comply. This makes me feel good! I have no wish to die a martyr. I want to live and enjoy life – which I think most of us also want. I am willing to fight for this if it becomes necessary. First by resistance; more if needed. If enough of us agree, we can beat this!
Well said, “Others believe we have “something to hide.” No, we don’t. We value our privacy, our security, and our sanity and do not believe every conversation or transaction should be used to track our buying habits, what we listen to, or we congregate with.”
Read an article once along the lines of, ~ “those who say they have nothing to hide, have nothing to protect.”
Nothing worth protecting?
Won’t protect?
It’s as if they were A-ok with a mother abandoning a child on the side of a busy Interstate highway. …With coyotes, wolves & bears on both sides. Same sheet.
Every human being who has actively lived and loved has secrets he’d rather were forgiven and forgotten. Everybody has something to hide unless they’re slavishly obedient slaves.
No doubt about that, Ernie. What I failed to express, which the article detailed & I’ve forgotten, is that matter of protection,… as in, what’s legal today, might not be next week?
Or, guilt by association? …
Or, the system pigeon holes your child at age 6 – & tracks it – forever?
Again, perhaps, I fail to express it well. It irritates me.
Creation of a Caste System?
A feudalism?
…Doesn’t matter, anyway. “Full Speed Ahead!”
In the last 5 years, every house near me, front, back, left, right, and three of four catty corners changed hands. Some two or three times. Every one of these went from no cameras to obvious, persistent surveillance cameras like they’re guarding Tony Montana’s crib. One guy explained all of his system’s features and it is chilling. Thousand yard crystal clear, 270 degree, motion activated, night vision, recording on demand to cloud, facial recognition, and god knows what else, all accessible via their sail fawns. There has never been much crime here at all. The surveillance is just de rigueur among this new set of owners. They love it.
Interesting. Creepy. Disturbing. And, not surprising. All rolled into one.
Flies in the face of Eric’s hope of, “If enough of us agree, we can beat this!”
… I. Do. Not. Miss. The City. At. All.
“Listen. And Understand.
The Googlenator is out there.
It cannot be bargained with, it cannot be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop!… ever… until you are dead!”
That’s at least one thing Aaahnold’s Terminator got right!
Another example of the opacity:
‘Taking a page from the insurance industry’s playbook, the Trump administration will launch an AI algorithm next year to save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients.
‘The pilot program, WISeR — short for “Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction” — will test an AI algorithm to make prior authorizations for some Medicare services, including skin and tissue substitutes, electrical nerve stimulator implants, and knee arthroscopy.
‘It will affect Medicare patients in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, starting Jan. 1 and running through 2031.
‘Public displeasure with insurance denials dominated the news in December, when the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson led many to anoint his alleged killer Luigi Mangione as a folk hero.’
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/ai-medicare-prior-authorization-trump-pilot-program-wiser/
Here’s how it works, comrades:
“The more expensive it is, the more likely it is to be denied,” said Jennifer Oliva, a professor at Indiana University.
‘When a patient is expected to die within a few years, health insurers are “motivated to rely on the algorithm.” As time passes and the patient is forced to appeal a denial, the chance of the patient dying during that process increases. The longer an appeal, the less likely the health insurer is to ever pay the claim, Oliva said.
“The No. 1 thing to do is make it very, very difficult for people to get high-cost services,” she said.’
Rather brilliant, isn’t it, from a sociopathic point of view? You needed knee arthroscopy. But AI determined that if it stalls your claim for three years, there’s a 50 percent chance you’ll kick the bucket, rendering your claim moot. ‘Hobble on, loser.’ — US fedgov
Morning, Jim!
Another despicability from “our” government (and the Orange Man). People are forced to pay all their working lives into these programs and then – when they are old and sick and need them – they are “denied.” Best to focus on staying healthy and hopefully living out life without needing government “help.”
First thing I did upon retreadment was clean that bullshit medicaid premium offa my gubmint play money stipend.
If one is in far better condition at 68 than 18 this is a no brainer. Get the psychopathic parasite outa my wallet offa my body and off our grandkids planet NOW!
Anyone who spent 50 years ruining good health:
More of the same.
Here is an example of our future if we don’t get our shit together and destroy it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1nsuter/larry_ellison_owner_of_oracle_cbs_cnn_and_now/
A guy that has been married six times wants the rest of us “to be on our best behavior.” I hate the oligarchy.
Makes me seethe, RG.
Reminds me of all the obsequious cock-asses who used to say “You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide.” I’ve strangely heard much less of that lately. It might have something to do with entire generations living in a world that is close to total surveillance already.
How about him first! Put a camera and mic on that guy 24/7 for a while. Then we’ll see about “best behavior”.
Hi BaDnOn,
Totally agree. These people usually have the most to hide and because they suffer from lack of morals the rest of us are deemed guilty.
I wouldn’t even bother, AdSense hasn’t been a good gig for the average site. Back in the Wild West days of the interwebs (as The Chimp refererred to it I believe), it was easy to keyword stuff a site, throw on some AdSense ads and make some dough. These days, it’s only profitable for high traffic sites that adhere to the whiny shit the lamestream media supports, ie; liberal nonsense.
Several years ago, a hacker using stolen credentials opened an Adsense account, using my personal gmail account as the contact.
I paid no attention to periodic messages from Adsense — which had nothing to do with me — until they emailed a bill for $20 or so … with a threat that if it wasn’t paid, my gmail account would be wiped.
It took probably 6 to 8 months of back and forth with faceless drudges to resolve the matter. At least 4 or 5 times, I had to repeat that I did not open the Adsense account, never placed any ads, never authorized my gmail as the contact.
Finally Evil Google quietly slunk away, probably because the amount due was too small to interest them. No definitive, written resolution was ever issued. Dealing with Google was like trying to punch water that just keeps flowing at you.
AI overview:
‘Google is currently involved in two major federal antitrust cases: one concerning its illegal monopoly in the search engine market, where a judge ruled it violated the Sherman Act, and another, more recent case, focused on its illegal monopoly in the digital advertising technology (adtech) market. The search case is awaiting a final judgment on remedies after a trial, while the adtech case is in a remedies hearing phase, with potential outcomes including forced divestitures of Google’s ad business.’
Google delenda est.
I can live with ads as long as they are easy to ignore unfortunately I listen to shows on Podbean with lots of ads, strangely they are all ads for other Podbean shows. The Car Doctor podcast features ads about junkie athletes, DIE athletes who whine, millennials who whine, etc.
You would think if you listened to a show they would offer an actual ad for products relating to the show, but no they don’t. Weird.
I do read the odd print ads in 75 year old magazines to marvel at such bargains like war surplus micrometers for only $2.25!
And if you DO manage to get an actual human on a customer service line, it’s some fucking Subcontinental in Bangalore with an accent so thick you can’t understand him. Naturally he is paid a fraction of the American minimum wage so the shareholders can get richer than they already are.
Verizon… I’m talking to YOU.
“Dune: Prophecy”? A sisterhood of Girl Bosses will save us from the machines?
I’ll take my chances with the machines.
So Adsense doesn’t work for the publisher, but does it work for the advertiser?
According to This site, maybe not so much.
The average Click-Through Rate (CTR) for Google search ads is 3.17%.
The average CTR for display ads is 0.47%.
Specifically for the automobile sector: Search CTR: 4.00% Display: 0.60%
Sure, this is just one page and the first pre-caffeinated search, but it seems pretty much in line with what one might expect. Google is still a search engine and there’s very little evidence that generic display ads are worth the bandwidth.
That said, I would think there would be a much more meaningful and effective campaign if the advertising agency placing buys would actually go out and approach the site, much like the old school model. That puts a burden on the publisher to establish an ad sales department but a lot of that can be automated these days. The tradeoff might make sense if there’s a good steady audience and motivated staff.