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I’m against advertisement, in my opinion it’s the worst thing to happen to the internet. However, I have a problem with Google adverts specifically and that is

I’m against advertisement, in my opinion it’s the worst thing to happen to the internet. However, I have a problem with Google adverts specifically and that is that they’re absolute hot garbage. Google has advertised to me: outright scams, malware, gambling, mobile games with extremely exploitative monetisation. And they are working to take away any privacy I might have to keep showing me this shit. In my opinion, Google is basically evil these days. I personally have a very low opinion of anyone who works for a company that does that and even lower of anyone who actually works on serving those adverts.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago
When I was a impoverished kid, how else was I supposed to get internet and email accept for with Juno, then NetZero or stealing internet? Yeah I used gophernet through a local library dialup and it was not the internet. I mean, my brother once bought a "personal fan" for $1 and that was the most coveted possession we had for about 6 months. As someone who grew up extremely poor and effectively dumpster dived for my first computer what pragmatic alternative is there? I don't want to be uncharitable but this seems like a very middle class and annoyed wealthy problem to have, I haven't seen any non regressive approaches accept for MAYBE from crypto browsers. Maybe the wealthy and middle class are just tired of subsidizing the internet and the content on it. As a broke child ads got me to a place where I could download html, learn to program and code and break out of an insane degree of poverty. The borland turbo c books at the library never seemed to have code that would compile. It may just be my personal experience but all of this feel like pulling up the ladder behind me and I haven't seen anyone articulate practical alternatives that address this issue. edit: Even mass surveillance and government control seems like an orthogonal near strawman issue to me, as far as I'm aware the most restricted countries on earth like China and NK don't need or use ad networks for their lockdowns. Frankly if you can't scrape data off my hard drive, don't have the power of incarceration (or feed data to those who do), and don't tie it to my credit score or ability to bank (I think we should pass legislation explicitly banning that on the banking side) and don't make it illegal to use ad blockers, I don't see the problem.
- testific8 5y ago
  From my experience, every educational website I visit (encyclopedias, scholarly articles, college coursework/notes, personal how-to blogs, ebooks) is hosted for free without advertisements, bitcoin miners, or tolls whatsoever. But perhaps I have not noticed very much because I mostly use an ad-blocker. When I don't use an ad-blocker, I notice ads are mostly on crappy click-baity sources and social media (youtube, forums, etc.). educational information is usually just text, so it's easy to host I suppose. wikipedia, for example is only a couple hundred gigabytes. But the stuff most people want to spend their time on is video and image forums, which are expensive to host.
  - fellowniusmonk 5y ago
    There are definitely good free resources once you get on the internet, stack overflow (vc funded & only recently profitable?), github, wikipedia, early on.. ruby on rails (and it's comparatively very friendly and prolific teaching community), etc... these are wonderful examples of accessing high quality data for free. Scholarly articles and research have been behind paywalls (jstore, etc.) if you don't have access through a university (which I never have.) Alternatively, everything is free if you pirate the content, I just don't think the numbers add up to having that be a lasting funding model. The most helpful "free" content for doing home electrical work, car repair, etc. which make a big difference for people on near $0 budgets is media on youtube. I think the argument could be made for publicly subsidized video, media hosting and other "utility" style services, but the mass adoption and accessibility of the internet for the poor wasn't built on that (as far as memory serves from my experience of being on BBSs and then online in the 90s.) and I think killing ads without an alternative feels like a regressive cart before horse approach.
- hcs 5y ago
  Juno and NetZero were magic for me growing up when we couldn't afford dialup (and could only rarely make it to the library). And my current job is almost entirely, if indirectly, funded by the ad industry, doing work which I hope has some intrinsic value. But I think the advertising industry as currently constituted is a misuse of attention, money, and other resources. I haven't solved this dilemma for myself, but I don't ignore the conflict just because of the positives. Hopefully I'll find the courage to do more than gripe.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago

When I was a impoverished kid, how else was I supposed to get internet and email accept for with Juno, then NetZero or stealing internet? Yeah I used gophernet through a local library dialup and it was not the internet. I mean, my brother once bought a "personal fan" for $1 and that was the most coveted possession we had for about 6 months. As someone who grew up extremely poor and effectively dumpster dived for my first computer what pragmatic alternative is there? I don't want to be uncharitable but this seems like a very middle class and annoyed wealthy problem to have, I haven't seen any non regressive approaches accept for MAYBE from crypto browsers. Maybe the wealthy and middle class are just tired of subsidizing the internet and the content on it. As a broke child ads got me to a place where I could download html, learn to program and code and break out of an insane degree of poverty. The borland turbo c books at the library never seemed to have code that would compile. It may just be my personal experience but all of this feel like pulling up the ladder behind me and I haven't seen anyone articulate practical alternatives that address this issue. edit: Even mass surveillance and government control seems like an orthogonal near strawman issue to me, as far as I'm aware the most restricted countries on earth like China and NK don't need or use ad networks for their lockdowns. Frankly if you can't scrape data off my hard drive, don't have the power of incarceration (or feed data to those who do), and don't tie it to my credit score or ability to bank (I think we should pass legislation explicitly banning that on the banking side) and don't make it illegal to use ad blockers, I don't see the problem.

testific8 5y ago
From my experience, every educational website I visit (encyclopedias, scholarly articles, college coursework/notes, personal how-to blogs, ebooks) is hosted for free without advertisements, bitcoin miners, or tolls whatsoever. But perhaps I have not noticed very much because I mostly use an ad-blocker. When I don't use an ad-blocker, I notice ads are mostly on crappy click-baity sources and social media (youtube, forums, etc.). educational information is usually just text, so it's easy to host I suppose. wikipedia, for example is only a couple hundred gigabytes. But the stuff most people want to spend their time on is video and image forums, which are expensive to host.
- fellowniusmonk 5y ago
  There are definitely good free resources once you get on the internet, stack overflow (vc funded & only recently profitable?), github, wikipedia, early on.. ruby on rails (and it's comparatively very friendly and prolific teaching community), etc... these are wonderful examples of accessing high quality data for free. Scholarly articles and research have been behind paywalls (jstore, etc.) if you don't have access through a university (which I never have.) Alternatively, everything is free if you pirate the content, I just don't think the numbers add up to having that be a lasting funding model. The most helpful "free" content for doing home electrical work, car repair, etc. which make a big difference for people on near $0 budgets is media on youtube. I think the argument could be made for publicly subsidized video, media hosting and other "utility" style services, but the mass adoption and accessibility of the internet for the poor wasn't built on that (as far as memory serves from my experience of being on BBSs and then online in the 90s.) and I think killing ads without an alternative feels like a regressive cart before horse approach.
hcs 5y ago
Juno and NetZero were magic for me growing up when we couldn't afford dialup (and could only rarely make it to the library). And my current job is almost entirely, if indirectly, funded by the ad industry, doing work which I hope has some intrinsic value. But I think the advertising industry as currently constituted is a misuse of attention, money, and other resources. I haven't solved this dilemma for myself, but I don't ignore the conflict just because of the positives. Hopefully I'll find the courage to do more than gripe.