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"So you're offering to pay far less than they make off you right now." I block ads on Facebook web and don't have any of their mobile apps installed, so I can'

"So you're offering to pay far less than they make off you right now." I block ads on Facebook web and don't have any of their mobile apps installed, so I can't imagine they're making more money from me than if I paid them to not have any ads.

dspillett 8y ago
They don't just make money from you by directly showing your ads, so don't make zero $ if you as an individual manage to block all their ads. They make money by being able to target ads, not just from simply showing them, so all the data they have about you, and your links to other people, and correlations that can be derived from all that, and so forth, all feed in to that earning potential. You might not be seeing the resulting adverts, but can you say that about all your direct contacts, and all the people in groups you are linked to, and all the other people who interact with posts & events you comment on or otherwise interact with, and all the people that...? You are still very much part of their income model by being part of the data graph - you are not breaking the system remotely as much as you think by arranging not to see adverts. Letting people pay to not see ads would require both initial and on-going development & testing effort so you have to include that in any cost/benefit analysis of the situation too. And that design & development could be pretty complex: by making a legitimate ad skipping option available they risk creating a hacking opportunity that makes it easier for people to skip them without paying. It might also send a bad signal to the advertisers: people with more disposable income are more likely to pay to skip the adverts, because the cost will feel less to them, and people with more disposable income are usually those that the advertisers usually most want to reach.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  I expect any model where fb allowed payment for an ad-free experience would still involve them doing all that targeting for others with my data anyway. That advertisers might want to reach me isn't especially relevant, because there's no situation under which that is a possible outcome for fb.
  - dspillett 8y ago
    But where would be the benefit for them? How many people would pay to block adverts but not tracking & data linking forensics when they can already do that for free? Probably some would, but I suspect not enough to offset the extra development & maintenance time and potential sense of bad faith from the advertisers. Further more, as mentioned in my previous post, making an official ad-free route is likely to make unofficial blocking easier. Who the advertisers might want to reach is relevant because FB can currently promise to do whatever is practically possible to block ad blocking. This doesn't amount to much (tricks like the extra divs littered through the word "sponsored" and so forth, to obfuscate the advert related code & markup from blocking scripts, for instance) but is better from the advertisers point of view than them admitting it is going to happen and they've given up stopping it. And again, the official ad blocking method is likely to make unofficial blocking easier - they would have to defend that to their advertising customers. The other issue that could come up is effectively creating a two tier system, with those that can afford to pay and those that can't. Equality and privacy defenders might be all over that, and however right or wrong people think each side would be there FB are not going to want that on top of all the public scrutiny they are already getting.
snovv_crash 8y ago
Just because you don't view the ads doesn't mean they don't charge people for them.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  Sure, but that would be fraudulent, and generates no economic value, so I've got no sympathy for that.

dspillett 8y ago

They don't just make money from you by directly showing your ads, so don't make zero $ if you as an individual manage to block all their ads. They make money by being able to target ads, not just from simply showing them, so all the data they have about you, and your links to other people, and correlations that can be derived from all that, and so forth, all feed in to that earning potential. You might not be seeing the resulting adverts, but can you say that about all your direct contacts, and all the people in groups you are linked to, and all the other people who interact with posts & events you comment on or otherwise interact with, and all the people that...? You are still very much part of their income model by being part of the data graph - you are not breaking the system remotely as much as you think by arranging not to see adverts. Letting people pay to not see ads would require both initial and on-going development & testing effort so you have to include that in any cost/benefit analysis of the situation too. And that design & development could be pretty complex: by making a legitimate ad skipping option available they risk creating a hacking opportunity that makes it easier for people to skip them without paying. It might also send a bad signal to the advertisers: people with more disposable income are more likely to pay to skip the adverts, because the cost will feel less to them, and people with more disposable income are usually those that the advertisers usually most want to reach.

Marsymars 8y ago
I expect any model where fb allowed payment for an ad-free experience would still involve them doing all that targeting for others with my data anyway. That advertisers might want to reach me isn't especially relevant, because there's no situation under which that is a possible outcome for fb.
- dspillett 8y ago
  But where would be the benefit for them? How many people would pay to block adverts but not tracking & data linking forensics when they can already do that for free? Probably some would, but I suspect not enough to offset the extra development & maintenance time and potential sense of bad faith from the advertisers. Further more, as mentioned in my previous post, making an official ad-free route is likely to make unofficial blocking easier. Who the advertisers might want to reach is relevant because FB can currently promise to do whatever is practically possible to block ad blocking. This doesn't amount to much (tricks like the extra divs littered through the word "sponsored" and so forth, to obfuscate the advert related code & markup from blocking scripts, for instance) but is better from the advertisers point of view than them admitting it is going to happen and they've given up stopping it. And again, the official ad blocking method is likely to make unofficial blocking easier - they would have to defend that to their advertising customers. The other issue that could come up is effectively creating a two tier system, with those that can afford to pay and those that can't. Equality and privacy defenders might be all over that, and however right or wrong people think each side would be there FB are not going to want that on top of all the public scrutiny they are already getting.

snovv_crash 8y ago

Just because you don't view the ads doesn't mean they don't charge people for them.

Marsymars 8y ago
Sure, but that would be fraudulent, and generates no economic value, so I've got no sympathy for that.