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Ad-free tiers, in the rare cases they are offered at all, are never surveillance free tiers. While I’m personally opposed to all advertisement, the surveillance

Ad-free tiers, in the rare cases they are offered at all, are never surveillance free tiers. While I’m personally opposed to all advertisement, the surveillance is really the massive problem with modern ad-tech and there’s just no sense at throwing money at offerings that continue to do all the surveillance and just don’t show the ad.

endisneigh 5y ago
Ads have been the only proven way for many people on the web to monetize sustainably. If you have another way that works there’s a lot of money out there ripe for the taking.
- rebeccaskinner 5y ago
  A lot of what’s funded through ads on the web is garbage the world would be better off without anyway. For the rest, I don’t think there’s a single silver bullet answer. We can’t take the world as it exists today and swap out ads for something less harmful without other changes in the landscape. A world without a surveillance driven internet would look very different to the one we have today in far more ways than just the lack of ads. Unfortunately momentum is hard to overcome, and even with a good monetization strategy for a single product it’s impossible to shift the market without also trying to more broadly shift consumer behavior to make the current state less profitable and to push the industry to more collectively and broadly searching for alternatives.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Ads have been the only proven way for many people on the web to monetize sustainably. That's as may be, but it's not my responsibility to view ads or accept tracking/surveillance on my private property. If you (as a website or other resource) want to monetize the content on your private property/hosted resource, I have no issue with that. At all. However, I choose to limit tracking/ads on my private property. That doesn't force you to do anything. If you want to require viewing of ads/allowing tracking (which some sites do) in order to access content, that's fine with me too. But I'm under no obligation to allow ads/tracking on my private property. It's not about circumvention or wanting to "deprive" someone of compensation for their hard work. Rather, it's about limiting the amount of tracking/surveillance about me and my private property. I don't agree to be tracked or advertised to. Full stop. If folks don't want to share their content with me because I don't agree to be tracked/shown ads, then those folks need to take action. I have nothing to do or say about that. But I do have the right to control what is displayed/executed on my private property, which includes my browser. That's not "stealing," that's protecting my own interests.

endisneigh 5y ago

Ads have been the only proven way for many people on the web to monetize sustainably. If you have another way that works there’s a lot of money out there ripe for the taking.

rebeccaskinner 5y ago
A lot of what’s funded through ads on the web is garbage the world would be better off without anyway. For the rest, I don’t think there’s a single silver bullet answer. We can’t take the world as it exists today and swap out ads for something less harmful without other changes in the landscape. A world without a surveillance driven internet would look very different to the one we have today in far more ways than just the lack of ads. Unfortunately momentum is hard to overcome, and even with a good monetization strategy for a single product it’s impossible to shift the market without also trying to more broadly shift consumer behavior to make the current state less profitable and to push the industry to more collectively and broadly searching for alternatives.
nobody9999 5y ago
>Ads have been the only proven way for many people on the web to monetize sustainably. That's as may be, but it's not my responsibility to view ads or accept tracking/surveillance on my private property. If you (as a website or other resource) want to monetize the content on your private property/hosted resource, I have no issue with that. At all. However, I choose to limit tracking/ads on my private property. That doesn't force you to do anything. If you want to require viewing of ads/allowing tracking (which some sites do) in order to access content, that's fine with me too. But I'm under no obligation to allow ads/tracking on my private property. It's not about circumvention or wanting to "deprive" someone of compensation for their hard work. Rather, it's about limiting the amount of tracking/surveillance about me and my private property. I don't agree to be tracked or advertised to. Full stop. If folks don't want to share their content with me because I don't agree to be tracked/shown ads, then those folks need to take action. I have nothing to do or say about that. But I do have the right to control what is displayed/executed on my private property, which includes my browser. That's not "stealing," that's protecting my own interests.