11 ms·

It's a shame their revenue only got cut by 1/5 and not 1/1.

ucaetano 9y ago
Yeah, that would be great, almost all free content and most free services on the web would disappear! Talk about a lose-lose situation.
- sp332 9y ago
  If you don't like a service enough to pay for it, do you really like it that much?
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hacker news readers.
    - sp332 9y ago
      Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. After all if the users don't have that much money to begin with, advertisers are already wasting their money. And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away?
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        > Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. No, it wouldn't. It would only cover a small fraction of creators, and definitely not enough with money. Your attention is worth far more than the cost of the content/service to the advertisers. And the service is worth to you far more than your attention. It is a trade where value is generated to both sides: you provide your attention, which is worth almost nothing to you, and receive a service in return. > And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away? Caring and liking are different. I hate my ISP, but it would be even worse if it went away.
        sp332 9y ago
        Your attention is only valuable to advertisers to the extent that you might buy something. If you can't afford what they're selling, your attention is not worth anything to them. The whole online advertising industry is propped up by a few % of people who click ads. That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat. No, clicking on those ads doesn't cost anything for those few people. Now they'd actually have to pay for the content, and subsidize everyone else, which wouldn't happen, they'd just move to a paywalled model. Ads generate cross-subsidization, subscriptions generate pay-walling.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      They pay for other stuff in life, why should online services be any different? It is like some devs that contrary to other professionals, don't want to pay for their tools.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        Because they aren't as rich as you and can't afford paying for everything with cash, but would be happy to pay with their attention.
        rosser 9y ago
        They aren't just paying "with their attention" — but also with having all of their behavior, across the entire web, recorded, tracked, and modeled by folks with demonstrably unclean hands, whose incentives are aligned against them. That is a categorically different bargain than merely having something that competes with the content for their attention. Just because the viewer may be ignorant of it doesn't mean they aren't (implicitly) making it.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        I am not rich and also cannot afford to pay everything I would like to have, neither everything that is free is worth my attention.
        hueving 9y ago
        Advertisers don't want the attention of people that can't pay for things. People rich enough to pay for things are essentially subsidizing everyone else in the ad model with an irritating ad middleman. Subsidizing is fine, but let's be explicit about it with a library instead and avoid these gross privacy invasions.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    The article we're currently discussing is ad supported.
    - sp332 9y ago
      This is what I see at the bottom of the page. https://imgur.com/a/xL5oC https://imgur.com/a/xL5oC Advertising revenues are falling fast.... If everyone who reads our reporting... helped fund it, our future would be much more secure.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        Yep, they're having to beg for funding already. Now imagine if ad revenues went away completely?
        sp332 9y ago
        They will have to come up with a real business model. You know, where they give people something they want in exchange for money. The horror! You know advertising is just another business model right? They have to give advertisers something they want in exchange for money. If they can't do that, they don't get money. It's a business.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > They will have to come up with a real business model. You know, where they give people something they want in exchange for money. Trading attention for content is a real business model. Just because you don't like doesn't make it any less real. Not only that, the article we're discussing is ad-funded. The reason you're reading it without paying for it is because it is ad-funded.
        sp332 9y ago
        They either make something people (readers or advertisers or sponsors) will pay for or they go out of business. That's pretty normal. I don't see why it's so important to prop up a specific failing business model. There are other models.
- retSava 9y ago
  It blocks certain tracking features, not advertising per se. Ads would and does continue to exist, it's just slightly less adjusted per-person based on tracking said person.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    Tracking improves targeting, increasing ad efficiency and increasing content revenue. Lowering it would mean less revenue for content creators.
    - tinus_hn 9y ago
      Tracking does not increase content revenue. Advertisers pay as little as they can get away with while demanding as much tracking as they can get away with. If they can get away with less tracking their ads will be less effective but revenue for the content creators will not be affected because it is ‘as low as they are willing to go’.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        > Tracking does not increase content revenue. It does, it increases marginal advertising efficiency, which makes more ads economically viable, which then increases ad spending, and creator revenue.
        tinus_hn 9y ago
        That is as weak an argument as the argument that extending copyrights for works by dead authors ‘promotes the progress of science and useful arts’ because it funnels money to people who are involved in creating works. If you accept that kind of argument you can justify just about anything.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Would it be though? Think of how much attention and focus people would regain for themselves.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > Think of how much attention and focus people would regain for themselves. Which is worth $0 (or close to it) for them. People are willing to trade their attention for free services and content.
    - ionised 9y ago
      > Which is worth $0 (or close to it) for them. You don't get to decide that for other people.
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    Ads are still there. They'll simply not be targeted now, like the punch the monkey ads of old. On balance, users would probably prefer ads to be relevant, for products and services they actually might want.
- blub 9y ago
  Free content will continue to survive, some people simply enjoy creating and helping others and quite a lot of content is in the public domain. There are also many services which are supported by paying customers and also offer a free tier. If not, there's always open source. All in all, I don't think much will be lost. We have such an abundance of content, from stories to music, graphics and movies, that we would need lifetimes to enjoy it. The advertising industry is not the benefactor that you're trying to paint them as, just a bunch of people trying to make a buck by exploiting others in a legal way. And soon, some of those ways will not be legal any more.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > Free content will continue to survive Most "free content" is paid by ads. Most hosting is paid by ads. Most online services are paid by ads. Do you ever use WhatsApp? Gone. Google Maps? Gone. Oh, that Guardian article we're discussing right now? Gone. > The advertising industry is not the benefactor that you're trying to paint them as Who talked about benefactors? They're just a business like any other. I hate ads, but I know that they fund a lot of the content and services I use.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      People will find another way to support the service, or people will just pay for it if it's valuable. If you want to be advertised to, turn off all your ad blockers, create legit accounts on every site you visit that asks for one, and support the advertising community. ...or you probably don't do that because you know in your heart that the advertising industry has largely made the Internet suck. People need to rethink how they approach Internet services. You're going to have to start paying for them in cash instead of getting them for 'free' through ads. If it's not worth paying for, then that's that.
    - p2t2p 9y ago
      > Do you ever use WhatsApp? Gone. Google Maps? Gone. Oh, that Guardian article we're discussing right now? Gone Fine! iMessage and Telegram doesn’t show any adds to me so they go nowhere. If telegram tomorrow says to me - 10$ a year or ads, I gladly pay. Google Maps? Screw this burp of evil anyway, Apple Maps and Here We Go maps are go nowhere any time soon. Guardian? Well, I have adblocker enabled anyway and donate 10$ when I happen to read something well written. I had an experience recently. One of podcasters that I’m listening to created website and started to treat his podcast more seriously. Also he created a Patreon account with clearly defined goals. I went and had my Patreon account created as soon as I had seen his and now I’m doing a monthly contribution. That guy went to 4K$ in two days. Why I’m saying this? Well, because all other subscriptions that I have doesn’t provide _that_ value for me so if they all are gone tomorrow, I won’t even notice that. So, if being free is the only reason people use something to kill time that means that th thing has no value for them ang can and should go away. I have never disabled my Adblock at Forbes and never payed for anything paywalled. I simply didn’t read those articles and I don’t feel like I’ve lost much. I think it actually for the best if many of tools/services/publishers will go away and people will have more incentive to actually pay for things if they consider th m valuable. And if people are not ready to give a way a cup of coffee for monthly subscription then well.... nobody needs that service then. I was really happy about WhatsApp at first, that it is a payed service - 30$ a year or something and then Facebook bought it...
- andrewjl 9y ago
  I would _love_ to be able to pay for all the content I read while knowing my privacy is preserved. Good riddance!
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    Oh, and others who aren't as rich as you to pay for their content in cash? Or just people with money should be allowed to have access to content?
    - diffeomorphism 9y ago
      > Or just people with money should be allowed to have access to content? That is the case for pretty much everything non-digital and schools and education as well and thus an entirely reasonable position to take. You might then argue that libraries should be expanded, but that is a separate issue. Also, just like with adblock plus none of these features forbid advertising as such. Advertisement which are "acceptable" and non-privacy invasive are completely unaffected and I am very much in favor of enforcing some reasonable consumer protection bith technologically and by law.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        Wait, are you actually defending that only rich people should have access to content?
        stinkytaco 9y ago
        > That is the case for pretty much everything non-digital and schools and education as well and thus an entirely reasonable position to take. > Wait, are you actually defending that only rich people should have access to content? I'm not sure how you got that out of the parent comment. It says "this is not a new problem, but it is a problem". A system that relentlessly tracks users and their habits is not the solution. If for no other reason than it sequesters poor people to parts of the web that track them, while rich people can afford to pay for content.
- white-flame 9y ago
  Free content & free services existed on the web before the online advertising economy did. Plus, it's stupidly cheap to host stuff now compared to back then.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    Oh, yeah, I remember how much free video was available on the internet before YT. Great times!
    - tomc1985 9y ago
      Because all this free video is just so great right? A world full of nobodies blathering on about themselves? ... There was a lots of video on the web before YT. Video was better before YT, you actually had to put some effort into it. Now YT is cheap, shitty, my-first-VFX projects as far as the eye can see.
      - ashark 9y ago
        Pre-monetized YT was even noticeably better. The my-first-VFX videos aren't even the problem, it's the mountain of outright clickbait burying everything else, and rampant padding of what ought to be 20-30s videos to several minutes for what I assume are monetization reasons, usually starting with a minute of updates about the person's other videos and how much they loved the comments on their last video and blah blah blah, then some recap of stuff you definitely already know if you've sought out this video, and so on. My wife sometimes watches a video then leaves the "next video" running in the background while she does other stuff. Often it's people talking about movies in clickbait-titled videos. Their primary skill seems to be talking for several minutes without actually saying anything, and avoiding the video title's topic for as long as possible. It's kind of impressive, but does nothing to enrich anyone's life and drowns out better content with worse SEO.
        kalleboo 9y ago
        The only thing I remember about pre-monetized YouTube was it was mostly pirated TV shows. I'm pretty happy with the content on YouTube - lots of fun tech stuff like EEVBlog, Techmoan, bigclive, the 8-bit guy etc that would never happen on regular TV. A lot of them seem to make half their living from Patreon though.
- mastax 9y ago
  You can have advertising without tracking. TV and radio ads work just fine.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    And those are far less efficient, therefore reducing ad spending, and reducing revenue to content creators and publishers.
    - philipkglass 9y ago
      This is admittedly dated now (2011), but according to it, print subscribers to the New York Times were each worth $385 annually in advertising alone (more from subscription fees, of course) while monthly online readers were worth $3.85 annually in ad revenue, two orders of magnitude less: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-print-versus-online-2011-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-print-versus-o... That resembles what I remember reading for a decade+ about the print-to-digital newspaper transition: online ads command lower rates than print ads. Which is really mysterious, if online ads backed with persistent tracking and targeting are truly more effective.
    - hueving 9y ago
      Citation? What you fail to realize is that lower efficiency can induce more spending. Do you think someone who trades their compact car in for a truck will spend less on gasoline because it's not as efficient? Advertising was massive before the Internet, it's massive now, and it will be massive even if we prevent them from inferring life threatening secrets like sexual preferences for better targeted ads.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        > Citation? What you fail to realize is that lower efficiency can induce more spending. Please explain to me how a $1 ad which generated $0.01 in marginal profit, but now generates -$0.01 in marginal profit will continue to be funded. I'd love to know.
bertil 9y ago
The thing is: with a 22% impact their employees have a clear signal that they need to brush up their CV. 100% would mean they would have to ask tough questions about how they would pay for their baby’s milk (I realise this is a little dramatic but I’ve seen that happen). I feel like that problem, like GDPR, should be read as: you have to ask permission, rather than you are not allowed to. I think retargeting, well done, is a great tool. I hate myself for forgetting to include tea towels in my last Amazon order. However, without a ‘Get out of my face’ option (and more generally better controls) those ads are incredibly hurtful and need to be gone. I personally would do shameful things to remove Taboola from my mobile browsers (embedded in social media apps).
- blub 9y ago
  It's not about some silly ads at all, it's about several companies collecting massive amounts of information about a very large numbers of individuals. There are essentially no controls imposed on that information and it will live pretty much forever. Information is power, and such a database could be used for manipulation, blackmail, fraud, etc. But if you think that's acceptable because it might help you remember to order tea towels, what can I say... thank goodness the EU GDPR is there to save your butt.
  - bertil 9y ago
    I see those databases as the key tool that I interact with most of those services and how, as the person developing services for the same services, I can improve them. If the information there is wrong, I’m happy to correct it. From experience, if the information is true, appropriate and sensical, the benefits are clear and valued by both parties. There is a problem when they are wrong and the user can’t provide feedback. > such a database could be used for manipulation, blackmail, fraud Which is why I refuse to keep private information about me accessible to a company whose security practices I don’t trust. I’m not sure your condescension hits the mark.
    - blub 9y ago
      Your private information is collected and shared no matter if you refuse or not. The biggest offenders are US companies, where there are no laws offering customers access to information about them or the possibility to delete or correct it.

Yeah, that would be great, almost all free content and most free services on the web would disappear! Talk about a lose-lose situation.

sp332 9y ago
If you don't like a service enough to pay for it, do you really like it that much?
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hacker news readers.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. After all if the users don't have that much money to begin with, advertisers are already wasting their money. And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away?
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. No, it wouldn't. It would only cover a small fraction of creators, and definitely not enough with money. Your attention is worth far more than the cost of the content/service to the advertisers. And the service is worth to you far more than your attention. It is a trade where value is generated to both sides: you provide your attention, which is worth almost nothing to you, and receive a service in return. > And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away? Caring and liking are different. I hate my ISP, but it would be even worse if it went away.
      - sp332 9y ago
        Your attention is only valuable to advertisers to the extent that you might buy something. If you can't afford what they're selling, your attention is not worth anything to them. The whole online advertising industry is propped up by a few % of people who click ads. That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > That's how I know that a relatively few people can keep it all afloat. No, clicking on those ads doesn't cost anything for those few people. Now they'd actually have to pay for the content, and subsidize everyone else, which wouldn't happen, they'd just move to a paywalled model. Ads generate cross-subsidization, subscriptions generate pay-walling.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    They pay for other stuff in life, why should online services be any different? It is like some devs that contrary to other professionals, don't want to pay for their tools.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Because they aren't as rich as you and can't afford paying for everything with cash, but would be happy to pay with their attention.
      - rosser 9y ago
        They aren't just paying "with their attention" — but also with having all of their behavior, across the entire web, recorded, tracked, and modeled by folks with demonstrably unclean hands, whose incentives are aligned against them. That is a categorically different bargain than merely having something that competes with the content for their attention. Just because the viewer may be ignorant of it doesn't mean they aren't (implicitly) making it.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        I am not rich and also cannot afford to pay everything I would like to have, neither everything that is free is worth my attention.
      - hueving 9y ago
        Advertisers don't want the attention of people that can't pay for things. People rich enough to pay for things are essentially subsidizing everyone else in the ad model with an irritating ad middleman. Subsidizing is fine, but let's be explicit about it with a library instead and avoid these gross privacy invasions.
- Spivak 9y ago
  The article we're currently discussing is ad supported.
  - sp332 9y ago
    This is what I see at the bottom of the page. https://imgur.com/a/xL5oC https://imgur.com/a/xL5oC Advertising revenues are falling fast.... If everyone who reads our reporting... helped fund it, our future would be much more secure.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Yep, they're having to beg for funding already. Now imagine if ad revenues went away completely?
      - sp332 9y ago
        They will have to come up with a real business model. You know, where they give people something they want in exchange for money. The horror! You know advertising is just another business model right? They have to give advertisers something they want in exchange for money. If they can't do that, they don't get money. It's a business.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > They will have to come up with a real business model. You know, where they give people something they want in exchange for money. Trading attention for content is a real business model. Just because you don't like doesn't make it any less real. Not only that, the article we're discussing is ad-funded. The reason you're reading it without paying for it is because it is ad-funded.
        sp332 9y ago
        They either make something people (readers or advertisers or sponsors) will pay for or they go out of business. That's pretty normal. I don't see why it's so important to prop up a specific failing business model. There are other models.
retSava 9y ago
It blocks certain tracking features, not advertising per se. Ads would and does continue to exist, it's just slightly less adjusted per-person based on tracking said person.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Tracking improves targeting, increasing ad efficiency and increasing content revenue. Lowering it would mean less revenue for content creators.
  - tinus_hn 9y ago
    Tracking does not increase content revenue. Advertisers pay as little as they can get away with while demanding as much tracking as they can get away with. If they can get away with less tracking their ads will be less effective but revenue for the content creators will not be affected because it is ‘as low as they are willing to go’.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > Tracking does not increase content revenue. It does, it increases marginal advertising efficiency, which makes more ads economically viable, which then increases ad spending, and creator revenue.
      - tinus_hn 9y ago
        That is as weak an argument as the argument that extending copyrights for works by dead authors ‘promotes the progress of science and useful arts’ because it funnels money to people who are involved in creating works. If you accept that kind of argument you can justify just about anything.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Would it be though? Think of how much attention and focus people would regain for themselves.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > Think of how much attention and focus people would regain for themselves. Which is worth $0 (or close to it) for them. People are willing to trade their attention for free services and content.
  - ionised 9y ago
    > Which is worth $0 (or close to it) for them. You don't get to decide that for other people.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Ads are still there. They'll simply not be targeted now, like the punch the monkey ads of old. On balance, users would probably prefer ads to be relevant, for products and services they actually might want.
blub 9y ago
Free content will continue to survive, some people simply enjoy creating and helping others and quite a lot of content is in the public domain. There are also many services which are supported by paying customers and also offer a free tier. If not, there's always open source. All in all, I don't think much will be lost. We have such an abundance of content, from stories to music, graphics and movies, that we would need lifetimes to enjoy it. The advertising industry is not the benefactor that you're trying to paint them as, just a bunch of people trying to make a buck by exploiting others in a legal way. And soon, some of those ways will not be legal any more.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > Free content will continue to survive Most "free content" is paid by ads. Most hosting is paid by ads. Most online services are paid by ads. Do you ever use WhatsApp? Gone. Google Maps? Gone. Oh, that Guardian article we're discussing right now? Gone. > The advertising industry is not the benefactor that you're trying to paint them as Who talked about benefactors? They're just a business like any other. I hate ads, but I know that they fund a lot of the content and services I use.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    People will find another way to support the service, or people will just pay for it if it's valuable. If you want to be advertised to, turn off all your ad blockers, create legit accounts on every site you visit that asks for one, and support the advertising community. ...or you probably don't do that because you know in your heart that the advertising industry has largely made the Internet suck. People need to rethink how they approach Internet services. You're going to have to start paying for them in cash instead of getting them for 'free' through ads. If it's not worth paying for, then that's that.
  - p2t2p 9y ago
    > Do you ever use WhatsApp? Gone. Google Maps? Gone. Oh, that Guardian article we're discussing right now? Gone Fine! iMessage and Telegram doesn’t show any adds to me so they go nowhere. If telegram tomorrow says to me - 10$ a year or ads, I gladly pay. Google Maps? Screw this burp of evil anyway, Apple Maps and Here We Go maps are go nowhere any time soon. Guardian? Well, I have adblocker enabled anyway and donate 10$ when I happen to read something well written. I had an experience recently. One of podcasters that I’m listening to created website and started to treat his podcast more seriously. Also he created a Patreon account with clearly defined goals. I went and had my Patreon account created as soon as I had seen his and now I’m doing a monthly contribution. That guy went to 4K$ in two days. Why I’m saying this? Well, because all other subscriptions that I have doesn’t provide _that_ value for me so if they all are gone tomorrow, I won’t even notice that. So, if being free is the only reason people use something to kill time that means that th thing has no value for them ang can and should go away. I have never disabled my Adblock at Forbes and never payed for anything paywalled. I simply didn’t read those articles and I don’t feel like I’ve lost much. I think it actually for the best if many of tools/services/publishers will go away and people will have more incentive to actually pay for things if they consider th m valuable. And if people are not ready to give a way a cup of coffee for monthly subscription then well.... nobody needs that service then. I was really happy about WhatsApp at first, that it is a payed service - 30$ a year or something and then Facebook bought it...
andrewjl 9y ago
I would _love_ to be able to pay for all the content I read while knowing my privacy is preserved. Good riddance!
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Oh, and others who aren't as rich as you to pay for their content in cash? Or just people with money should be allowed to have access to content?
  - diffeomorphism 9y ago
    > Or just people with money should be allowed to have access to content? That is the case for pretty much everything non-digital and schools and education as well and thus an entirely reasonable position to take. You might then argue that libraries should be expanded, but that is a separate issue. Also, just like with adblock plus none of these features forbid advertising as such. Advertisement which are "acceptable" and non-privacy invasive are completely unaffected and I am very much in favor of enforcing some reasonable consumer protection bith technologically and by law.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Wait, are you actually defending that only rich people should have access to content?
      - stinkytaco 9y ago
        > That is the case for pretty much everything non-digital and schools and education as well and thus an entirely reasonable position to take. > Wait, are you actually defending that only rich people should have access to content? I'm not sure how you got that out of the parent comment. It says "this is not a new problem, but it is a problem". A system that relentlessly tracks users and their habits is not the solution. If for no other reason than it sequesters poor people to parts of the web that track them, while rich people can afford to pay for content.
white-flame 9y ago
Free content & free services existed on the web before the online advertising economy did. Plus, it's stupidly cheap to host stuff now compared to back then.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Oh, yeah, I remember how much free video was available on the internet before YT. Great times!
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    Because all this free video is just so great right? A world full of nobodies blathering on about themselves? ... There was a lots of video on the web before YT. Video was better before YT, you actually had to put some effort into it. Now YT is cheap, shitty, my-first-VFX projects as far as the eye can see.
    - ashark 9y ago
      Pre-monetized YT was even noticeably better. The my-first-VFX videos aren't even the problem, it's the mountain of outright clickbait burying everything else, and rampant padding of what ought to be 20-30s videos to several minutes for what I assume are monetization reasons, usually starting with a minute of updates about the person's other videos and how much they loved the comments on their last video and blah blah blah, then some recap of stuff you definitely already know if you've sought out this video, and so on. My wife sometimes watches a video then leaves the "next video" running in the background while she does other stuff. Often it's people talking about movies in clickbait-titled videos. Their primary skill seems to be talking for several minutes without actually saying anything, and avoiding the video title's topic for as long as possible. It's kind of impressive, but does nothing to enrich anyone's life and drowns out better content with worse SEO.
      - kalleboo 9y ago
        The only thing I remember about pre-monetized YouTube was it was mostly pirated TV shows. I'm pretty happy with the content on YouTube - lots of fun tech stuff like EEVBlog, Techmoan, bigclive, the 8-bit guy etc that would never happen on regular TV. A lot of them seem to make half their living from Patreon though.
mastax 9y ago
You can have advertising without tracking. TV and radio ads work just fine.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  And those are far less efficient, therefore reducing ad spending, and reducing revenue to content creators and publishers.
  - philipkglass 9y ago
    This is admittedly dated now (2011), but according to it, print subscribers to the New York Times were each worth $385 annually in advertising alone (more from subscription fees, of course) while monthly online readers were worth $3.85 annually in ad revenue, two orders of magnitude less: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-print-versus-online-2011-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-print-versus-o... That resembles what I remember reading for a decade+ about the print-to-digital newspaper transition: online ads command lower rates than print ads. Which is really mysterious, if online ads backed with persistent tracking and targeting are truly more effective.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Citation? What you fail to realize is that lower efficiency can induce more spending. Do you think someone who trades their compact car in for a truck will spend less on gasoline because it's not as efficient? Advertising was massive before the Internet, it's massive now, and it will be massive even if we prevent them from inferring life threatening secrets like sexual preferences for better targeted ads.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > Citation? What you fail to realize is that lower efficiency can induce more spending. Please explain to me how a $1 ad which generated $0.01 in marginal profit, but now generates -$0.01 in marginal profit will continue to be funded. I'd love to know.

bertil 9y ago

The thing is: with a 22% impact their employees have a clear signal that they need to brush up their CV. 100% would mean they would have to ask tough questions about how they would pay for their baby’s milk (I realise this is a little dramatic but I’ve seen that happen). I feel like that problem, like GDPR, should be read as: you have to ask permission, rather than you are not allowed to. I think retargeting, well done, is a great tool. I hate myself for forgetting to include tea towels in my last Amazon order. However, without a ‘Get out of my face’ option (and more generally better controls) those ads are incredibly hurtful and need to be gone. I personally would do shameful things to remove Taboola from my mobile browsers (embedded in social media apps).

blub 9y ago
It's not about some silly ads at all, it's about several companies collecting massive amounts of information about a very large numbers of individuals. There are essentially no controls imposed on that information and it will live pretty much forever. Information is power, and such a database could be used for manipulation, blackmail, fraud, etc. But if you think that's acceptable because it might help you remember to order tea towels, what can I say... thank goodness the EU GDPR is there to save your butt.
- bertil 9y ago
  I see those databases as the key tool that I interact with most of those services and how, as the person developing services for the same services, I can improve them. If the information there is wrong, I’m happy to correct it. From experience, if the information is true, appropriate and sensical, the benefits are clear and valued by both parties. There is a problem when they are wrong and the user can’t provide feedback. > such a database could be used for manipulation, blackmail, fraud Which is why I refuse to keep private information about me accessible to a company whose security practices I don’t trust. I’m not sure your condescension hits the mark.
  - blub 9y ago
    Your private information is collected and shared no matter if you refuse or not. The biggest offenders are US companies, where there are no laws offering customers access to information about them or the possibility to delete or correct it.