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Online ads benefit the little guy. Nike and others can afford billboard and TV ads. If you've ever tried starting up a small Shopify business, online ads are al

Online ads benefit the little guy. Nike and others can afford billboard and TV ads. If you've ever tried starting up a small Shopify business, online ads are all you're going to get. The problems are the power Facebook and Google have over the ad market, that increases ad costs for businesses by a lot (I've read, one third, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's more). But online ads are a lifeline for small businesses. Regulate the big players, and keep the ads flowing. Some people here want ads to be abolished, but you'd just strengthen existing brands, i.e. huge multinationals. That's all it would achieve. That's why real issue with Brave, frankly. I still use Brave as my default browser because it's the only one that allows me to allow all ads by default, and only turn on Brave Shields for specific websites. Even uBlock Origin deprecated their default-allow, and it now breaks many websites completely if you try it. But I don't like "anti-ad" sentiment. Sad state of affairs. But people who oppose Big Tech domination, and also want ads abolished, don't realize that doing so would prevent millions of small businesses from getting off the ground. Chrome's killing the open web, but might be saving the "open economy" by trying to disincentivize adblocking (by blocking "annoying ads" by default, and implementing ManifestV3). It's a mess.

freediver 5y ago
I think noone argues against ads being useful, when dosed properly. Same like sleeping pills for example. The problem is that ad-based business can not resist the temptation to "overdose" the user. This is how we got in the situation that infuriates so many people (almost a billion devices use an ad-blocker). People just do not want to see so many ads everywhere. Let's take Brave for example. Open home page of brave.com and you get: "The best privacy online Browse privately. Search privately. And ditch Big Tech." And a nice screenshot. The problem is this is not what Brave works/looks like when you open it the first time. By their own research [1], on your first run Brave will immediately "phone home" 80(!) times. The original post discussed here talks about mundane features like installing an extension not working without contacting their servers about it. Then, the user is immediately welcomed by ads for several crypto services right there in the browser on the right hand side (curiously hidden on their home page screenshot). I guess that: "Browser that shares your private information with us and shows you ads you do not really want" would not fly well as a tagline. Having this behavior turned on by default is where user frustration begins and is later then just amplified by even worse behavior, again incentivized by the fact that the business model is simply dependent on ads, like the other big tech. [1] https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/

freediver 5y ago

I think noone argues against ads being useful, when dosed properly. Same like sleeping pills for example. The problem is that ad-based business can not resist the temptation to "overdose" the user. This is how we got in the situation that infuriates so many people (almost a billion devices use an ad-blocker). People just do not want to see so many ads everywhere. Let's take Brave for example. Open home page of brave.com and you get: "The best privacy online Browse privately. Search privately. And ditch Big Tech." And a nice screenshot. The problem is this is not what Brave works/looks like when you open it the first time. By their own research [1], on your first run Brave will immediately "phone home" 80(!) times. The original post discussed here talks about mundane features like installing an extension not working without contacting their servers about it. Then, the user is immediately welcomed by ads for several crypto services right there in the browser on the right hand side (curiously hidden on their home page screenshot). I guess that: "Browser that shares your private information with us and shows you ads you do not really want" would not fly well as a tagline. Having this behavior turned on by default is where user frustration begins and is later then just amplified by even worse behavior, again incentivized by the fact that the business model is simply dependent on ads, like the other big tech. [1] https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/