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I think the biggest assumption you're making here is that most people care about ads - and they don't. Fundamentally, when I'm scrolling through Facebook or Ins

I think the biggest assumption you're making here is that most people care about ads - and they don't. Fundamentally, when I'm scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or Reddit or whatever, I just don't care that I see ads while I'm scrolling. I'm not going to pay $1/2/3/4/5 a month to avoid something I don't care about, and that's really only the value add of a subscription-based service. I'd also say most folks don't find Facebook's data policies as egregious as the tech community does.

freediver 6y ago
I'd really like to understand how does one not care about ads. To me it's like potholes on road. It would require terrific willpower to ignore them.
- TwelveNights 6y ago
  Although it's getting harder and harder since many platforms try to blend their ads in with the actual site content, I can avoid them reliably well by checking metadata such as the poster, some indication that it's an ad, or if the content is clearly different from what I was expecting. I wouldn't say it's as bad as potholes on the road, since ads are more predictable.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I'm not interested in the ads, so I don't notice them if they're not shoved in front of what I am interested in. I can see that if you consider ads to be inherently offensive, you would notice them wherever they appear, and be annoyed. But that's not where most people are.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  People do. My dad doesn't install an adblocker because he simply doesn't care. I wouldn't either if it wasn't for the serious performance impact.
Dotnaught 6y ago
Being unwilling to pay for the service suggests to me that the entire experience has no meaningful value.
- smadge 6y ago
  Economists have done studies where they tried to determine how much someone would need to be paid to stop using Facebook for a year. Maybe people are not willing to pay for the service, but they would rather have the service than $X.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jawns 6y ago
I don't think it's just about the ads themselves. It's about the fact that when a site is free, its users become the product, and there are all sorts of user-hostile design decisions made, which leads to all sorts of unnecessary bloat. Think of it as the difference between a for-profit bank and a credit union. The bank exists to maximize returns for its shareholders. The credit union exists solely for benefit of its members. So the credit union isn't going to try to employ sneaky fine-print fees, because that's not what the members want. In a similar vein, you might not care about ads and may have trained yourself to ignore them, but you might care about performance, which is sluggish because of all the cruft, or you might care about privacy, or you might care about being marketed to in more subtle ways than display ads.

freediver 6y ago

I'd really like to understand how does one not care about ads. To me it's like potholes on road. It would require terrific willpower to ignore them.

TwelveNights 6y ago
Although it's getting harder and harder since many platforms try to blend their ads in with the actual site content, I can avoid them reliably well by checking metadata such as the poster, some indication that it's an ad, or if the content is clearly different from what I was expecting. I wouldn't say it's as bad as potholes on the road, since ads are more predictable.
BurningFrog 6y ago
I'm not interested in the ads, so I don't notice them if they're not shoved in front of what I am interested in. I can see that if you consider ads to be inherently offensive, you would notice them wherever they appear, and be annoyed. But that's not where most people are.
cameronbrown 6y ago
People do. My dad doesn't install an adblocker because he simply doesn't care. I wouldn't either if it wasn't for the serious performance impact.

Dotnaught 6y ago

Being unwilling to pay for the service suggests to me that the entire experience has no meaningful value.

smadge 6y ago
Economists have done studies where they tried to determine how much someone would need to be paid to stop using Facebook for a year. Maybe people are not willing to pay for the service, but they would rather have the service than $X.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jawns 6y ago

I don't think it's just about the ads themselves. It's about the fact that when a site is free, its users become the product, and there are all sorts of user-hostile design decisions made, which leads to all sorts of unnecessary bloat. Think of it as the difference between a for-profit bank and a credit union. The bank exists to maximize returns for its shareholders. The credit union exists solely for benefit of its members. So the credit union isn't going to try to employ sneaky fine-print fees, because that's not what the members want. In a similar vein, you might not care about ads and may have trained yourself to ignore them, but you might care about performance, which is sluggish because of all the cruft, or you might care about privacy, or you might care about being marketed to in more subtle ways than display ads.