4 ms·

It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.

by TomMarius 9y ago

xxs 9y ago
...or the site dies if ads are non-compliant. If there is some vacuum, it'd be filled by other monetization schemes.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  What other monetization schemes? Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures, the site will cease to exist. Everything else will be behind a paywall and you call that an improvement? Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. Those who didn't like being tracked had numerous options to avoid it. They also had the option to stop using these tracking sites. How is 13 year old poor kid going to read the news after everything is behind a paywall? How about a poor adult?
  - xxs 9y ago
    >Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. I really don't like your definition of 'free'. wikipedia has been relying on donations for quite some time. guardian.co.uk is one of the recent examples asking for donations and working out for them. >science articles Ok that has to be a joke, the paywall journals subscriptions are nothing like ads. Please, don't conflate any pay method with pay wall (which is a pretty good one). If business cannot retain itself w/o breaking the law and has to shove unwanted images/videos/etc. straight in the face, it may as well not exist. The ads have degraded user experience in so bad ways that having a page with little content and 'next' button just to show more ads is pretty much the norm now.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      You overgeneralize. There are many sites with normal ads than don't disturb the users much. And again - no user experience (on a non-existent site) is better than degraded user experience? Why don't you just stop visiting the site when it doesn't matter to you if the site ceases to exist and let us others do what we want to do? > breaking the law No one is breaking the law yet. The law has been changed, and has been changed in a way that destroys businesses and people.
      - gsich 9y ago
        So be it. Either make proper ads or don't. Nobody needs that tracking stuff, except shady advertisers. Or: just make it opt-in.
  - gsich 9y ago
    Well then the site dies. Sites die all the time, why should Facebook be any different (on the long run of course)? If users want your service, they will pay for it. If they don't, well then your services is not needed.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      Because that destroys a whole industry of sites that are not good enough for people to pay for them, but thanks to the economy of scale, they can create quality content (and a living out of it) anyways. Your claim that it is not needed is proven not true by the very existence of these sites. There are many blogs that are sole income of many people, this will now cease to exist. How is that a good thing? This argument works on a free market; the free market that we had no longer exists and your argument is thus invalid, the state of market no longer represents the needs of people, it represents the will of the government and nothing else.
      - gsich 9y ago
        This assumes that because it was viable in the past, it must be viable today. Maybe ads had more revenue then, but times and people change, and now ads aren't that lucrative anymore. One needs to factor this in the decision to continue hosting a blog or whatever else. This trend was forseeable. On a personal note, this is good. Ads are either annyoing or outright dangerous. So the less, the better. If you want to host your blog, then just pay for it. I do the same. Not because I want to earn money with it, but because I want to. I can see why this is a problem for commercial entities, but not for personal stuff.
      - Firadeoclus 9y ago
        A free market only ideally represents the needs of people if people in fact express their needs. Aggregating user data and using it without consent does not fit that model. There is no obvious reason to believe tracking users "represents the needs of people".
        TomMarius 9y ago
  - ionised 9y ago
    > Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures So the site will die, because nobody thought it had any value. What's the problem?
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      Eh, what's the problem? That a business (someone's living) was pointlessly destroyed, maybe? How do you know that people thought it had no value? It had enough value that they didn't care about all the ads, at least.
      - callalex 9y ago
        Many businesses were destroyed by abolishing slavery as well. Just because a business exists currently doesn’t mean it should always deserve to continue existing.
      - ionised 9y ago
        Nobody owes you a living. Nobody owes artists a living, a vocation that traditionally was engaged in alongside traditional paying work. Nobody owes advertisers living, or their eyes and attention. Nobody owes a living to the person who makes their money from ads all over their blog. I'm sorry, but if your business model boils down to using your unknown blog and barely visited web site as a vehicle to bombard people with ads for money then you don't have a business model at all.
        TomMarius 9y ago
        Nobody said that anybody owes anything. Please read properly.
gsich 9y ago
Yes, on their site. Not on any other site. A somewhat related note: Relying solely on ads is a bad idea. Personally, I'll install an adblocker on every PC I get access to (family and friends stuff).
paulie_a 9y ago
The internet existed before ads, people created content and hosted websites without invasive tracking. And let's be honest, most ads are total garbage.
- EggsOnToast 9y ago
  I remember the 90s internet. It was a neat place but I wouldn't call it very useful by modern standards.
  - gsich 9y ago
    usefulness today is not because of ads.
    - emiliobumachar 9y ago
      A lot of the usefulness today is bankrolled by ads.
      - gsich 9y ago
        Even if, what does that have to do with the parent posting about "modern standards"?
      - lotu 9y ago
        I don't get why you are being downvoted so many huge things are literally funded by ads. Google Maps is funded by ads, so is all of Google X. The money that started the development of self driving cars and made people believe it was something we could be done soon was funded by ads. Where did Facebook get 2 billion dollars to by Oclous to provide funding for VR? Ads. Perhaps in a future we will have a good model for micropayments and you can pay .1 cents for every webpage you visit be in the meantime ads provide the revenue streams that make this work.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
You don't need to track users up and down the internet to be able to serve a damn ad.

It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.

xxs 9y ago

...or the site dies if ads are non-compliant. If there is some vacuum, it'd be filled by other monetization schemes.

TomMarius 9y ago
What other monetization schemes? Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures, the site will cease to exist. Everything else will be behind a paywall and you call that an improvement? Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. Those who didn't like being tracked had numerous options to avoid it. They also had the option to stop using these tracking sites. How is 13 year old poor kid going to read the news after everything is behind a paywall? How about a poor adult?
- xxs 9y ago
  >Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. I really don't like your definition of 'free'. wikipedia has been relying on donations for quite some time. guardian.co.uk is one of the recent examples asking for donations and working out for them. >science articles Ok that has to be a joke, the paywall journals subscriptions are nothing like ads. Please, don't conflate any pay method with pay wall (which is a pretty good one). If business cannot retain itself w/o breaking the law and has to shove unwanted images/videos/etc. straight in the face, it may as well not exist. The ads have degraded user experience in so bad ways that having a page with little content and 'next' button just to show more ads is pretty much the norm now.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    You overgeneralize. There are many sites with normal ads than don't disturb the users much. And again - no user experience (on a non-existent site) is better than degraded user experience? Why don't you just stop visiting the site when it doesn't matter to you if the site ceases to exist and let us others do what we want to do? > breaking the law No one is breaking the law yet. The law has been changed, and has been changed in a way that destroys businesses and people.
    - gsich 9y ago
      So be it. Either make proper ads or don't. Nobody needs that tracking stuff, except shady advertisers. Or: just make it opt-in.
- gsich 9y ago
  Well then the site dies. Sites die all the time, why should Facebook be any different (on the long run of course)? If users want your service, they will pay for it. If they don't, well then your services is not needed.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Because that destroys a whole industry of sites that are not good enough for people to pay for them, but thanks to the economy of scale, they can create quality content (and a living out of it) anyways. Your claim that it is not needed is proven not true by the very existence of these sites. There are many blogs that are sole income of many people, this will now cease to exist. How is that a good thing? This argument works on a free market; the free market that we had no longer exists and your argument is thus invalid, the state of market no longer represents the needs of people, it represents the will of the government and nothing else.
    - gsich 9y ago
      This assumes that because it was viable in the past, it must be viable today. Maybe ads had more revenue then, but times and people change, and now ads aren't that lucrative anymore. One needs to factor this in the decision to continue hosting a blog or whatever else. This trend was forseeable. On a personal note, this is good. Ads are either annyoing or outright dangerous. So the less, the better. If you want to host your blog, then just pay for it. I do the same. Not because I want to earn money with it, but because I want to. I can see why this is a problem for commercial entities, but not for personal stuff.
    - Firadeoclus 9y ago
      A free market only ideally represents the needs of people if people in fact express their needs. Aggregating user data and using it without consent does not fit that model. There is no obvious reason to believe tracking users "represents the needs of people".
      - TomMarius 9y ago
- ionised 9y ago
  > Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures So the site will die, because nobody thought it had any value. What's the problem?
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Eh, what's the problem? That a business (someone's living) was pointlessly destroyed, maybe? How do you know that people thought it had no value? It had enough value that they didn't care about all the ads, at least.
    - callalex 9y ago
      Many businesses were destroyed by abolishing slavery as well. Just because a business exists currently doesn’t mean it should always deserve to continue existing.
    - ionised 9y ago
      Nobody owes you a living. Nobody owes artists a living, a vocation that traditionally was engaged in alongside traditional paying work. Nobody owes advertisers living, or their eyes and attention. Nobody owes a living to the person who makes their money from ads all over their blog. I'm sorry, but if your business model boils down to using your unknown blog and barely visited web site as a vehicle to bombard people with ads for money then you don't have a business model at all.
      - TomMarius 9y ago
        Nobody said that anybody owes anything. Please read properly.

gsich 9y ago

Yes, on their site. Not on any other site. A somewhat related note: Relying solely on ads is a bad idea. Personally, I'll install an adblocker on every PC I get access to (family and friends stuff).

paulie_a 9y ago

The internet existed before ads, people created content and hosted websites without invasive tracking. And let's be honest, most ads are total garbage.

EggsOnToast 9y ago
I remember the 90s internet. It was a neat place but I wouldn't call it very useful by modern standards.
- gsich 9y ago
  usefulness today is not because of ads.
  - emiliobumachar 9y ago
    A lot of the usefulness today is bankrolled by ads.
    - gsich 9y ago
      Even if, what does that have to do with the parent posting about "modern standards"?
    - lotu 9y ago
      I don't get why you are being downvoted so many huge things are literally funded by ads. Google Maps is funded by ads, so is all of Google X. The money that started the development of self driving cars and made people believe it was something we could be done soon was funded by ads. Where did Facebook get 2 billion dollars to by Oclous to provide funding for VR? Ads. Perhaps in a future we will have a good model for micropayments and you can pay .1 cents for every webpage you visit be in the meantime ads provide the revenue streams that make this work.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

You don't need to track users up and down the internet to be able to serve a damn ad.