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Troubling? The quality of nearly all television in the 80's and 90's was troubling. The outrageous amount of unskippable commercials was troubling. The fact tha

Troubling? The quality of nearly all television in the 80's and 90's was troubling. The outrageous amount of unskippable commercials was troubling. The fact that people would have to be home at a certain time on certain days to watch a show they liked was troubling. And the fact that all of this was tightly controlled by a small number of gatekeepers was particularly troubling. Media today is better in every way. The delivery methods, the diversity of perspectives, the reduction of advertising, even just the overall quality of content is far beyond what most of us grew up with. There's of course nothing wrong with critiquing the many ways content has changed over the last couple decades. But let's not pretend for a moment that television before the internet was anything other than anti-consumer garbage.

emptybottle 7y ago
This is a grandiose statement to say the least. In the old days advertisers paid to insert ads before, during, and after the content. Now advertisers pay to know your consumption habits and demographic and push their content to the top of your recommendations, radio, next-up, and whatever else. My personal feeling is that I'd rather pay with my time by watching ads anonymously than pay with my personal data. Also, nowadays there are numerous ways to virtually purchase content. This is super convenient, but at the same time access to this content can be revoked with no notice, no reasoning and no refund. Content can also be changed without warning or continued access to the previous version. Things are not unquestionably better today than yesterday. There have been tradeoffs, particularly in the areas of privacy, ownership and convenience.
- lisper 7y ago
  What's wrong with CDs and DVDs? You can still buy these for cash in many places.
- gdulli 7y ago
  > My personal feeling is that I'd rather pay with my time by watching ads anonymously than pay with my personal data. And with cable type commercials being trivially skippable with fast forward, that's another reason it's the best programming format as far as being advertised to is concerned. Because ultimately, you're never going to get away from being advertised to.
- jackcodes 7y ago
  I still don’t fully understand the mechanism behind it, but it blew my mind when I found out that you now get personalised advertising through live satellite TV in the UK. https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tailored-advertising-with-sky-adsmart https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tailored-advertising-with-...

emptybottle 7y ago

This is a grandiose statement to say the least. In the old days advertisers paid to insert ads before, during, and after the content. Now advertisers pay to know your consumption habits and demographic and push their content to the top of your recommendations, radio, next-up, and whatever else. My personal feeling is that I'd rather pay with my time by watching ads anonymously than pay with my personal data. Also, nowadays there are numerous ways to virtually purchase content. This is super convenient, but at the same time access to this content can be revoked with no notice, no reasoning and no refund. Content can also be changed without warning or continued access to the previous version. Things are not unquestionably better today than yesterday. There have been tradeoffs, particularly in the areas of privacy, ownership and convenience.

lisper 7y ago
What's wrong with CDs and DVDs? You can still buy these for cash in many places.
gdulli 7y ago
> My personal feeling is that I'd rather pay with my time by watching ads anonymously than pay with my personal data. And with cable type commercials being trivially skippable with fast forward, that's another reason it's the best programming format as far as being advertised to is concerned. Because ultimately, you're never going to get away from being advertised to.
jackcodes 7y ago
I still don’t fully understand the mechanism behind it, but it blew my mind when I found out that you now get personalised advertising through live satellite TV in the UK. https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tailored-advertising-with-sky-adsmart https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tailored-advertising-with-...