Ads are a corrupting influence on the web - the issue with framing this as more open access compared to for-pay services is that it sidesteps how the model corr

Ads are a corrupting influence on the web - the issue with framing this as more open access compared to for-pay services is that it sidesteps how the model corrupts the content of the services itself. There are the data collection and privacy issues as well, but it's the corruption of the content that's a really serious destructive force. In the end you can't even pay for the original non-ad supported content anymore because the content itself is an ad created entirely for the purpose of driving engagement. (There are some exceptions to this e.g. Substack). It also corrupts what products get built because the incentives between the users of the software and the funders of the software are not aligned (even though ad devs pretend they are by pretending users like relevant ads). To test if users truly find 'relevant ads' as value-add: make two products, one with ads and one without and charge for the one with ads - see how many people buy it. Why doesn't Hulu charge more many for their streaming service with ads instead of their service without? The behavior of these companies suggests they know on some level this value-add nonsense is a rationalization. Even if you say it's only value-add when compared to un-targeted ads - let users choose to have un-targeted ads without giving up their data privacy. I'd bet money on what choice they'd make. The truth is targeted ads work and make enormous amounts of money for the ad companies - that's why they do them. The twisted narratives of why this is actually good for people or society are just another example that there is no limit to humanity's ability to rationalize anything when it's in their interest to do so. -- "“In the beginning not everyone tended to their free data farms. Many did not know what to do with them, some only planted one or two tweets and then abandoned them entirely. This disappointed the earls of our kingdom. If they don’t encourage growth, their share of the data harvest is smaller, there’s no one to hear their pronouncements, and all of the land they spent time cultivating is wasted. They realized that not only do they need to make the land easy to cultivate, but they need to make the serfs want to cultivate it. They experimented for a while and learned that new types of controversial, viciously competitive crops are great for encouraging data farming - they call this type of encouragement ‘engagement’.”" https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...