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That metaphor falls apart on multiple levels. Paying for a meal is a transaction that both parties explicitly agree to. Tracking in its current state is mostly

That metaphor falls apart on multiple levels. Paying for a meal is a transaction that both parties explicitly agree to. Tracking in its current state is mostly done without the consumers awareness/consent. Tracking is also not required for advertising, it only (supposedly) increases the effectiveness of it at the expense of the user. A more apt metaphor would be "restaurants are using cheap toxic chemicals to increase their revenue".

fabiospampinato 6y ago
I agree with you on the non-transactional nature of advertisement, as far as viewers are concerned, the metaphor is perhaps only effect at illustrating how given the choice most people would prefer to have free stuff at the cost of everything else (e.g. free meals or free content and services). Tracking is not strictly necessary for having ads, but for having _effective_ ads I would argue at least in some cases it makes all the difference. For example I don't care one bit about cosmetics, if a cosmetics company advertises to me it's going to waste its money, and if the company has an increased chance of wasting its money than the ad space is worth less, meaning the website owner gets paid less, meaning that eventually after some threshold is reached offering the content or services via the ads model becomes unsustainable.
- mytherin 6y ago
  Advertising has been effectively done without tracking for decades. The trick is to do filtering at the content level, rather than at the consumer level. Odds are if you don't care about cosmetics, you won't watch videos about cosmetics or visit websites talking about cosmetics. Co-locating advertisements with relevant content performs this filtering in an effective manner without requiring users to be tracked. Perhaps tracking users is more effective, perhaps it is not. Regardless, boundaries need to be set to enforce ethical behaviour if the unethical behavior is more profitable. If that means certain companies or business models won't survive: so be it. There is always a trade-off to be made between ethics and business. After all, the exact same arguments could be made against outlawing child labor or any of the past atrocities businesses committed in the name of profit. Businesses that cannot survive ethically will die to make room for businesses that can.

fabiospampinato 6y ago

I agree with you on the non-transactional nature of advertisement, as far as viewers are concerned, the metaphor is perhaps only effect at illustrating how given the choice most people would prefer to have free stuff at the cost of everything else (e.g. free meals or free content and services). Tracking is not strictly necessary for having ads, but for having _effective_ ads I would argue at least in some cases it makes all the difference. For example I don't care one bit about cosmetics, if a cosmetics company advertises to me it's going to waste its money, and if the company has an increased chance of wasting its money than the ad space is worth less, meaning the website owner gets paid less, meaning that eventually after some threshold is reached offering the content or services via the ads model becomes unsustainable.

mytherin 6y ago
Advertising has been effectively done without tracking for decades. The trick is to do filtering at the content level, rather than at the consumer level. Odds are if you don't care about cosmetics, you won't watch videos about cosmetics or visit websites talking about cosmetics. Co-locating advertisements with relevant content performs this filtering in an effective manner without requiring users to be tracked. Perhaps tracking users is more effective, perhaps it is not. Regardless, boundaries need to be set to enforce ethical behaviour if the unethical behavior is more profitable. If that means certain companies or business models won't survive: so be it. There is always a trade-off to be made between ethics and business. After all, the exact same arguments could be made against outlawing child labor or any of the past atrocities businesses committed in the name of profit. Businesses that cannot survive ethically will die to make room for businesses that can.