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The ad-networks will always try to take extra value regardless of dependence. Ads exist on paid services. My Economist subscription requires me to swipe away Or
by peteey 8y ago
The ad-networks will always try to take extra value regardless of dependence. Ads exist on paid services. My Economist subscription requires me to swipe away Oracle ads. The last flight I was on tried to sign me up for a credit card. No matter what a customer pays, there will always be a temptation to make a bit more money by showing an ad.
Ads will exist until people are empowered to block them.
- zwkrt 8y agoI think this is the same concept as how people will gravitate in a city to have the worst possible commute they can bear because most people value having a nice home and a nice job over a nice commute. In a similar way services will inevitably be crammed with ads until it starts to negatively affect profits, because people value the content and publishers value money more than either value an ad-free experience. To stretch the analogy, ad blockers are people who drive in the HOV lane without paying. It isn't so bad that you do it, but if everyone did it the system would break. I personally block ads out of principle because I believe we can transition to a micropayment model and blocking ads forces the issue. That being said, can anything really ever save us from ads? From my logic in the first paragraph, Patreon et al will eventually be as ad-infested as anything else. Maybe the fundamental answer is to consume less content.
- jrnichols 8y agoThey will also continue to exist because we have been conditioned that the whole internet will cease to exist without them and that ad blocking is "stealing" which is immoral and wrong.
- gameshot911 8y agoAd blocking is immoral and wrong. Loading a website with ads has an implicit agreement: I will give you my product (website content) if, in exchange, you agree load these ads. If you don't want to see ads on a given site, your moral option is to stop visiting the site. Glad we finally resolved that once and for all. /s
- flyinfungi 8y agoNo it is not. It is my browser, coming into my house. Prove to me you are not doing something creepy with the data, being annoying, and providing value back in your ads and I will decide to quit blocking you.
- tombert 8y agoWhat about setting my hostfile to block sites that are known to track me? I'm not explicitly "blocking ads", just "blocking tracking", but a side-effect of this will invariably be that ads are blocked? Is it immoral?
- Green_man 8y agoAn implicit agreement isn't an agreement at all. there were no terms, was no negotiation, just an expectation projected by the website creator.