2 ms·

I'm glad see that the EU has created a potent reason for US internet services to take a hard look at their tracking/privacy feeding-frenzy. When my ad-blocker

I'm glad see that the EU has created a potent reason for US internet services to take a hard look at their tracking/privacy feeding-frenzy. When my ad-blocker tells me that 50 to 200 trackers are interested in me reading some innocuous, unparsable word-blob, or watching some throwaway video, I see that as a symptom of thoughtless hoarding and unreasonable prying. This is not gathering intelligence: quite the opposite. Were there some demonstrable, substantial benefit to all this for the end-user it might make a bit more sense. But there are no upsides to seeing shark fins at the beach. When I guesstimate the costs -- just those of energy usage, bandwidth and man-hours, not to mention the rest -- and compare that to the supposed results (only imaginary to me, the end-user)? Sorry, it looks like madness.

manigandham 8y ago
> I see that as a symptom of thoughtless hoarding and unreasonable prying It's a symptom of people not paying for content and news. Also the fact that publishers want to provide equal and easy access to everyone regardless of affordability. > demonstrable, substantial benefit to all this for the end-user it might make a bit more sense. The content you're consuming.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  Guess what sir/madam? when I started using the net, there was plenty of great content on bulletin boards and on usenet. And when the WWW started up, there was plenty more great content. SHARED. Eminently affordable. And very, very social. People talking to people, with no overseer/exploiter in between. > publishers want to provide equal and easy access What they want is money. 'Content' is what they've got to sell. And they hire pros to jazz it up and fluff it up, never mind reality or reason. You're never going to convince me that the commercialization and infiltration of interpersonal communications is an improvement. (Except for snoopers and exploiters.) And I'm very sure that I'm in the majority on that one. If it were up to me I'd limit all the advertisers to one TLD: .stripmall . And then avoiding all the B.S. would be REAL easy. All the 'news' websites that scrape their content would be there.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    > ou're never going to convince me that the commercialization ... is an improvement. Ok, then live in the past I guess? Both content quality and quantity has vastly increased over the past 2 decades to meet the modern demands of billions of people who are now online. This is fact, the world has moved on. Either way you are not the arbiter of what is valuable content or not for someone else. People choose for themselves. Yes, publishers are businesses. They must make money to create commercial content. This doesn't mean there isn't free content available, and in fact there's more of it than ever before due to the trivial costs of publishing media, but the rest of the stuff has to be paid for somehow. As stated, consumers do not like to pay (often due to bad value assessment and inability). Ads are much more granular, passive, and equally accessible whether you're a billionaire or a 3rd-world farmer. This also doesn't mean subscriptions and other patronage options don't exist, there are millions examples of those as well. Does the implementation of advertising online suck? Yes. It's slow, frustrating, privacy invasive and filled with fraud, but you're talking to one of the few people who has pushed for regulation for the last 5 years. It's not a new complaint and it'll take time to change a 12-figure global industry. However if you think the world hasn't benefited from the commercialization of the internet, with education, entertainment, and information creating progress in every corner of the world, than you are most definitely not in the majority. You're actually in such a minority that it's basically considered the same as any other conspiracy group and largely irrelevant in any serious economic, societal, political or business discussion. I recommend revising your perspective and acknowledging the differences between advertising as a concept vs the implementation, and especially the progress that it has brought that has led to the world that you seem to take for granted today.

manigandham 8y ago

> I see that as a symptom of thoughtless hoarding and unreasonable prying It's a symptom of people not paying for content and news. Also the fact that publishers want to provide equal and easy access to everyone regardless of affordability. > demonstrable, substantial benefit to all this for the end-user it might make a bit more sense. The content you're consuming.

8bitsrule 8y ago
Guess what sir/madam? when I started using the net, there was plenty of great content on bulletin boards and on usenet. And when the WWW started up, there was plenty more great content. SHARED. Eminently affordable. And very, very social. People talking to people, with no overseer/exploiter in between. > publishers want to provide equal and easy access What they want is money. 'Content' is what they've got to sell. And they hire pros to jazz it up and fluff it up, never mind reality or reason. You're never going to convince me that the commercialization and infiltration of interpersonal communications is an improvement. (Except for snoopers and exploiters.) And I'm very sure that I'm in the majority on that one. If it were up to me I'd limit all the advertisers to one TLD: .stripmall . And then avoiding all the B.S. would be REAL easy. All the 'news' websites that scrape their content would be there.
- manigandham 8y ago
  > ou're never going to convince me that the commercialization ... is an improvement. Ok, then live in the past I guess? Both content quality and quantity has vastly increased over the past 2 decades to meet the modern demands of billions of people who are now online. This is fact, the world has moved on. Either way you are not the arbiter of what is valuable content or not for someone else. People choose for themselves. Yes, publishers are businesses. They must make money to create commercial content. This doesn't mean there isn't free content available, and in fact there's more of it than ever before due to the trivial costs of publishing media, but the rest of the stuff has to be paid for somehow. As stated, consumers do not like to pay (often due to bad value assessment and inability). Ads are much more granular, passive, and equally accessible whether you're a billionaire or a 3rd-world farmer. This also doesn't mean subscriptions and other patronage options don't exist, there are millions examples of those as well. Does the implementation of advertising online suck? Yes. It's slow, frustrating, privacy invasive and filled with fraud, but you're talking to one of the few people who has pushed for regulation for the last 5 years. It's not a new complaint and it'll take time to change a 12-figure global industry. However if you think the world hasn't benefited from the commercialization of the internet, with education, entertainment, and information creating progress in every corner of the world, than you are most definitely not in the majority. You're actually in such a minority that it's basically considered the same as any other conspiracy group and largely irrelevant in any serious economic, societal, political or business discussion. I recommend revising your perspective and acknowledging the differences between advertising as a concept vs the implementation, and especially the progress that it has brought that has led to the world that you seem to take for granted today.