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Are the "please donate" notices on Wikipedia not ads?
by robbrown451 7y ago
Are the "please donate" notices on Wikipedia not ads?
- kakwa_ 7y agoAs the article itself mentions, ads are not inherently bad. When justified, it's a way for a company X to say "hey, I've this product Y that does Z", informing the market. However, things go south very rapidly in our world, and is far from this simple honest task of informing the market. Wikipedia banner falls more or less in the honest category. It's even slightly better as the population "paying" for the product (through gifts) are already using it, and know its quality and its flaws.
- yellowapple 7y agoSure, but last I checked Wikipedia doesn't advertise itself outside of its own domains, nor does it actively spy on you with those ads wherever you go throughout the World Wide Web.
- robbrown451 7y agoRight, so some ads are different than others. Still, I'm trying to imagine what the web would be like if every site that currently does the "bad kind of advertising" put up guilt boxes instead. For one thing, Wikipedia would probably disappear, because all the other sites are competing for people's limited altruism.