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Indeed. A paradox inherent to the notion of paying to avoid ads is that it identifies you as someone who has disposable income and is willing to spend it, i.e.

Indeed. A paradox inherent to the notion of paying to avoid ads is that it identifies you as someone who has disposable income and is willing to spend it, i.e. someone who advertisers really want to target.

tehjoker 6y ago
Pretty much the only way to make it happen is a foundation that has it written into their incorporation documents that they will never take ads or government bans. The incentives are too strong, so the large corporations get to manipulate the development of technologies by dangling ad money. Ad money isn't innocuous. It's about control, because if the recipient were to do something an advertiser doesn't like, they pull the money... for example strong privacy/anti-advertising technologies. This desire to please the interests of large corporations leads to large scale conformity.
- jopsen 6y ago
  If you feel that way, perhaps advertising should be prohibited by law. But having absolutely no ads might not be ideal (or realistic).
  - kovac 6y ago
    I don't think the problem is with ads. It's with personalised ads (or more specifically how they go about showing us personalised ads). A model where a site shows you a notice asking to opt in for personalised ads (otherwise show generic ads anyway) would be fine. But this means no site, no third party service should be allowed to track the user or collect data unless opted in.
  - indigochill 6y ago
    Fundamentally, advertisers just want good ad<->user alignment and the zeitgeist is to accomplish this with invasive tracking. However, it needn't (I think) necessarily be this way. What if, instead, we looked at the material on the page and said, "This is a blog post about Linux. Let's put our advertisements about sysadmin books/seminars here." Or provide the content creator with a library of ads that they can choose from (they will typically be incentivized to select the most effective ads by performance-based compensation). Maybe prioritize the sorting of those ads against keywords in the content. Essentially, as opposed to profiling the user, profile the content. And give content creators more control over the user experience to discourage sleazy ads and encourage ads creators actually want on their site. There's some optimism wrapped into this, so I look forward to someone popping my optimism bubble.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    You can't run a capitalist economy like that because everything is decentralized, requires growth, and advertising is an accelerant of consumer spending. However, if production is publicly owned and planned, advertising is mostly unnecessary. No market economy = no adverts. Within capitalism, some regulations can make it slightly less invasive but the imperatives of the system will over time break down those regulations.
mattkevan 6y ago
I used to work at a largely ad-supported community site. Users requested an ad-free paid membership, but when we ran the numbers, we found that those people willing to pay made the site much more in advertising than a reasonable subscription could. However a while after I left they launched the service, so maybe they’ve managed to make it worthwhile.

tehjoker 6y ago

Pretty much the only way to make it happen is a foundation that has it written into their incorporation documents that they will never take ads or government bans. The incentives are too strong, so the large corporations get to manipulate the development of technologies by dangling ad money. Ad money isn't innocuous. It's about control, because if the recipient were to do something an advertiser doesn't like, they pull the money... for example strong privacy/anti-advertising technologies. This desire to please the interests of large corporations leads to large scale conformity.

jopsen 6y ago
If you feel that way, perhaps advertising should be prohibited by law. But having absolutely no ads might not be ideal (or realistic).
- kovac 6y ago
  I don't think the problem is with ads. It's with personalised ads (or more specifically how they go about showing us personalised ads). A model where a site shows you a notice asking to opt in for personalised ads (otherwise show generic ads anyway) would be fine. But this means no site, no third party service should be allowed to track the user or collect data unless opted in.
- indigochill 6y ago
  Fundamentally, advertisers just want good ad<->user alignment and the zeitgeist is to accomplish this with invasive tracking. However, it needn't (I think) necessarily be this way. What if, instead, we looked at the material on the page and said, "This is a blog post about Linux. Let's put our advertisements about sysadmin books/seminars here." Or provide the content creator with a library of ads that they can choose from (they will typically be incentivized to select the most effective ads by performance-based compensation). Maybe prioritize the sorting of those ads against keywords in the content. Essentially, as opposed to profiling the user, profile the content. And give content creators more control over the user experience to discourage sleazy ads and encourage ads creators actually want on their site. There's some optimism wrapped into this, so I look forward to someone popping my optimism bubble.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  You can't run a capitalist economy like that because everything is decentralized, requires growth, and advertising is an accelerant of consumer spending. However, if production is publicly owned and planned, advertising is mostly unnecessary. No market economy = no adverts. Within capitalism, some regulations can make it slightly less invasive but the imperatives of the system will over time break down those regulations.

mattkevan 6y ago

I used to work at a largely ad-supported community site. Users requested an ad-free paid membership, but when we ran the numbers, we found that those people willing to pay made the site much more in advertising than a reasonable subscription could. However a while after I left they launched the service, so maybe they’ve managed to make it worthwhile.