6 ms·

People don't care about a lot of things. Mainly because they don't understand them, or don't know about them: climate change, cancerous substances, plastic wast

by 9dev 5y ago

People don't care about a lot of things. Mainly because they don't understand them, or don't know about them: climate change, cancerous substances, plastic waste, homeless people, illegal whaling, domestic cats killing singing birds, sewing winter clothing or properly managing their savings. That is why we have subject matter experts providing guidance for people in a world too complex to grasp or even care about everything they have to deal with. People _shouldn't have to care_, as long as they can trust on those experts to do the right things. We're the experts. Advertising companies are ruining the internet for everyone, some people are just too unaware to realise it.

endisneigh 5y ago
> Advertising companies are ruining the internet for everyone, some people are just too unaware to realise it. Sounds like projection. Though I'd agree that most internet users don't like ads, what's true is that most internet users don't like paying for things. Using YouTube as an example, the most popular site on the internet, the vast majority of people do not pay for YouTube premium even though it's available. At the end of the day no one is stopping you from going back to circa-2000s internet, using IRC, going on plain text websites, using BBS, etc.
- 9dev 5y ago
  I think the point is that megacorps' business structure is way too complex for anyone to actually understand. Why is Gmail free? It makes money for Google, that part is clear, but I have no idea how exactly. I'm not even sure they can measure it exactly. Those companies have transformed the internet, and its users, by offering services for free, in exchange for user data. We have raised an entire generation (two, maybe?) of people taking that model for granted, nicely illustrated by completely ad-dependent YouTube superstars. Of course, we cannot simply ban all advertising and start charging for everything. But I'm of the firm opinion that, in order to go forward, we have to leave this business model behind, as humanity. The only way to achieve this is by making it unattractive via legislation.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    > Of course, we cannot simply ban all advertising and start charging for everything. But I'm of the firm opinion that, in order to go forward, we have to leave this business model behind, as humanity. The only way to achieve this is by making it unattractive via legislation. What exactly are you proposing? Anyone who wants to pay for email can do so already. It's very trivial to not use any of Google's services or be tracked. Install uBlock, and don't go to any Google or subsidiary service. Done. What exactly is the issue?
    - 9dev 5y ago
      The issue isn't that I'm personally inconvenienced, this is not about me. It's that the internet is dominated by ad-based companies, and that is not a good thing? I propose that we try to move humanity past this way of generating revenue, because it's wasting productivity and resources, encouraging shady behaviour, and leads to less freedom overall. We have social networks manipulating users into staying on the platforms as long as possible, scrolling down infinite feeds, to expose them to as much advertising as possible, thus wasting productivity. We have big players such as the IAB and its members tracking and spying on users to obtain more data to sell, as an alternative revenue stream to charging for their services. We have quality journalism disappear in favour of whatever generates the most clicks, in order to expose more readers to advertisements. YouTube stars pushing hidden ads on children. Advertisers crossing ever more boundaries of privacy, by aggregating data from thousands of companies, with basically no oversight by anyone. That is the issue. I think we should do something against that, and I think "something" may be to nudge the market into another direction, from ad-based to transaction-based revenue sources.
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      Here's a job. You need a job. It pays in company scrip [1]. People took those jobs despite the negative consequences. The government eventually made such schemes illegal. Your argument is "People have free choice, so anything that they do is legal." The excuse of the perpetrators is "I'm not the one (directly) responsible for your poor economic situation, or your lack of education, so it's fair and moral for me to offer you a terrible proposition that you absolutely would not make if you were in a better economic situation." This is just where extreme capitalism gets you. The list of examples is endless. Scrip. Children working in mines or cleaning chimneys. Click-through TOS. "Free" email. Indentured servitude. At the end of the day it's no different than "You need to get on this boat to america, or this gentleman here is going to cut your wife's throat. Hey, it's not me doing the cutting. I'm the good guy. I'm trying to keep you safe. But its your choice." It really depends on what we mean by "choice". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  A lot of content on the internet isn't worth paying for. Taking your YT Premium example, I'd say over half the content on there is garbage clickbait that is only viable because of ads - it doesn't actually provide enough value to the viewer (and often completely wastes their time) but the current system rewards that because by the time the viewer realizes that it's already too late and they've been paid for their ad impression. The problem with YT Premium specifically is that it still requires a Google account, agreeing to their "privacy" policy and provides no guarantee that Google isn't still going to stalk you.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I highly doubt you've personally watched even 1% of what's on YouTube, so you can hardly determine what's clickbait. That being said, who are we to say what's valuable?
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      I'm extrapolating based on what I see on the front page and in suggestions as well as other social networks. Most of this content is only there to solicit an ad impression, not enough people would pay money for it. > That being said, who are we to say what's valuable? We can infer this based on whether enough people pay for the content. There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        > Most of this content is only there to solicit an ad impression, not enough people would pay money for it. Exactly. There’s no issue. > There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content. The vast majority of content, clickbait or not doesn’t have a patreon to begin with. Most patreon have social media presence which includes ads. Sounds like the worst of both worlds.
        9dev 5y ago
- Helmut10001 5y ago
  There is not much that would be lost if Youtube ceased to exist, either. People are wasting hours on this platform that could be spend better in many ways.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    That's only your opinion. There are billions who disagree. At the end of the day no one is forcing you to use YouTube.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      There should be enough people in those billions to sustain a paid alternative.
      - endisneigh 5y ago
        There are paid alternatives.
- parkingrift 5y ago
  >Though I'd agree that most internet users don't like ads, what's true is that most internet users don't like paying for things. Using YouTube as an example, the most popular site on the internet, the vast majority of people do not pay for YouTube premium even though it's available. This is a bit circular. People would rather use a free service than a paid service. So long as free services exist it will be hard or impossible for paid services to exist or thrive. >At the end of the day no one is stopping you from going back to circa-2000s internet, using IRC, going on plain text websites, using BBS, etc. There's no reason that we should have to make this choice. We don't have to live in a spyware dystopia so that we can have cheaper internet services. This spyware economy is less than 20 years old, and we should throw it out.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    > This is a bit circular. People would rather use a free service than a paid service. So long as free services exist it will be hard or impossible for paid services to exist or thrive. Of course. If a paid product wants to thrive it needs to be better. People do use paid search engines, email, maps, etc. most people don’t because most people don’t value it that much. > There's no reason that we should have to make this choice. We don't have to live in a spyware dystopia so that we can have cheaper internet services. This spyware economy is less than 20 years old, and we should throw it out. I don’t think there’s a dystopia. If you want to regress you can do so alone. We have irc and bbs that won’t track you. I’m sure there are also some plain text sites you can peruse. Not really understanding why you want to change things for others. Just change it for yourself and then you’re good.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      > paid search engines, [...], maps Can you find me one? The only one I know about is Kagi which is in beta and invite-only. The problem with the current status-quo is that as long as advertising powered by illicit data collection is possible in practice, it's not viable for a paid service to compete. > Just change it for yourself and then you’re good. It doesn't matter what you do if ad-tech scum will track you anyway and create a shadow profile by tricking your friends into giving out information about you such as how Facebook infers social graphs (including non-users) by sneaking into people's contacts lists.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  If a site offers the choice between either funding via "good" (Non tracking, no malware etc) ads, and a fee, then I'm completely happy with their business model. A lot of sites however, don't do this. Of course, the reality is that if they _did_ use "good" ads, then the free version wouldn't make enough money (at least not in today's ad market). So either the free version couldn't exist, OR it would need to be subsidized by the paid version being even more expensive. But this problem could go away if "bad" ads weren't allowed or possible. Because then the price sites get per impression on those ads could go up, as advertisers can't simply pay more for precisely targeted ads. Now, there are a few risks with this: 1) There is every risk that money on the regular web dries up, as targeting is more effective in apps and other siloed environments. We have already seen this to some extent 2) If online advertising is less efficient because of worse targeting, then traditional advertising will again be relatively more attractive, so some of the money would leave the internet economy that way, returning to traditional advertising. 1 and 2 taken together might mean that a lot of "free" content (and I use scare quotes) will simply disappear. And I think that's a risk we should be willing to take. And not only that: I'd go so far as saying that even if 90% of internet users answered in a survey that "I don't care about tracking ads, I just want free content", that's not something regulators should care about at all.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I disagree with what you’re saying. Basically your point is that most content on the internet should go away because you don’t like ads. Good luck with that. Instead, you should treat all the sites that have ads as inaccessible and personally use the small percentage that fit your needs. Everyone wins.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      > Basically your point is that most content on the internet should go away because you don’t like ads. No. I'm conpletely fine with ads. This isn't about ads vs.no ads. This is about "bad" ads. The wholeseale trading in people's information. It's a transaction where the price (Being their PII sold somewhere) isn't visible to the buyer. The reason we ended up where we are now where a site MUST use horrible adtech, is this: Because there exists ways of displaying pinpoint targeted tracking ads through unscrupulous adtech companies then that's what sets the baseline revenue for ads. Show ads that are 1/10th as efficient? You'll get just 1/10th the revenue. It's what a website has to do. So if I'm a site that wants to show "ethical" ads, I can't. Because the ad market is such that ethical ads don't make money. If, however, bad ads don't exist - then ethical advertising could be able to make more money again. The endgame of all this isn't forcing all sites to either die or become paid services. To me the important outcome is to level the playing field between those that display (or want to display) "better" ads.
- belorn 5y ago
  Why stop at circa-2000s internet when we got a whole past to go back to. We don't need to go far before much of current day market regulations didn't exist and people could freely choose to do things and not do things as much they wanted. Coal mines that used indebted servitude out competed mines that did not, and if people didn't want to go into indebted servitude they could always choose to not sign the contract. The market spoke and the customers choose of their own free will to go to the company store, paying more than they earned, and increased their debt year after year.

by 9dev 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago

> Advertising companies are ruining the internet for everyone, some people are just too unaware to realise it. Sounds like projection. Though I'd agree that most internet users don't like ads, what's true is that most internet users don't like paying for things. Using YouTube as an example, the most popular site on the internet, the vast majority of people do not pay for YouTube premium even though it's available. At the end of the day no one is stopping you from going back to circa-2000s internet, using IRC, going on plain text websites, using BBS, etc.

9dev 5y ago
I think the point is that megacorps' business structure is way too complex for anyone to actually understand. Why is Gmail free? It makes money for Google, that part is clear, but I have no idea how exactly. I'm not even sure they can measure it exactly. Those companies have transformed the internet, and its users, by offering services for free, in exchange for user data. We have raised an entire generation (two, maybe?) of people taking that model for granted, nicely illustrated by completely ad-dependent YouTube superstars. Of course, we cannot simply ban all advertising and start charging for everything. But I'm of the firm opinion that, in order to go forward, we have to leave this business model behind, as humanity. The only way to achieve this is by making it unattractive via legislation.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  > Of course, we cannot simply ban all advertising and start charging for everything. But I'm of the firm opinion that, in order to go forward, we have to leave this business model behind, as humanity. The only way to achieve this is by making it unattractive via legislation. What exactly are you proposing? Anyone who wants to pay for email can do so already. It's very trivial to not use any of Google's services or be tracked. Install uBlock, and don't go to any Google or subsidiary service. Done. What exactly is the issue?
  - 9dev 5y ago
    The issue isn't that I'm personally inconvenienced, this is not about me. It's that the internet is dominated by ad-based companies, and that is not a good thing? I propose that we try to move humanity past this way of generating revenue, because it's wasting productivity and resources, encouraging shady behaviour, and leads to less freedom overall. We have social networks manipulating users into staying on the platforms as long as possible, scrolling down infinite feeds, to expose them to as much advertising as possible, thus wasting productivity. We have big players such as the IAB and its members tracking and spying on users to obtain more data to sell, as an alternative revenue stream to charging for their services. We have quality journalism disappear in favour of whatever generates the most clicks, in order to expose more readers to advertisements. YouTube stars pushing hidden ads on children. Advertisers crossing ever more boundaries of privacy, by aggregating data from thousands of companies, with basically no oversight by anyone. That is the issue. I think we should do something against that, and I think "something" may be to nudge the market into another direction, from ad-based to transaction-based revenue sources.
  - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    Here's a job. You need a job. It pays in company scrip [1]. People took those jobs despite the negative consequences. The government eventually made such schemes illegal. Your argument is "People have free choice, so anything that they do is legal." The excuse of the perpetrators is "I'm not the one (directly) responsible for your poor economic situation, or your lack of education, so it's fair and moral for me to offer you a terrible proposition that you absolutely would not make if you were in a better economic situation." This is just where extreme capitalism gets you. The list of examples is endless. Scrip. Children working in mines or cleaning chimneys. Click-through TOS. "Free" email. Indentured servitude. At the end of the day it's no different than "You need to get on this boat to america, or this gentleman here is going to cut your wife's throat. Hey, it's not me doing the cutting. I'm the good guy. I'm trying to keep you safe. But its your choice." It really depends on what we mean by "choice". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
Nextgrid 5y ago
A lot of content on the internet isn't worth paying for. Taking your YT Premium example, I'd say over half the content on there is garbage clickbait that is only viable because of ads - it doesn't actually provide enough value to the viewer (and often completely wastes their time) but the current system rewards that because by the time the viewer realizes that it's already too late and they've been paid for their ad impression. The problem with YT Premium specifically is that it still requires a Google account, agreeing to their "privacy" policy and provides no guarantee that Google isn't still going to stalk you.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I highly doubt you've personally watched even 1% of what's on YouTube, so you can hardly determine what's clickbait. That being said, who are we to say what's valuable?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I'm extrapolating based on what I see on the front page and in suggestions as well as other social networks. Most of this content is only there to solicit an ad impression, not enough people would pay money for it. > That being said, who are we to say what's valuable? We can infer this based on whether enough people pay for the content. There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      > Most of this content is only there to solicit an ad impression, not enough people would pay money for it. Exactly. There’s no issue. > There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content. The vast majority of content, clickbait or not doesn’t have a patreon to begin with. Most patreon have social media presence which includes ads. Sounds like the worst of both worlds.
      - 9dev 5y ago
Helmut10001 5y ago
There is not much that would be lost if Youtube ceased to exist, either. People are wasting hours on this platform that could be spend better in many ways.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  That's only your opinion. There are billions who disagree. At the end of the day no one is forcing you to use YouTube.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    There should be enough people in those billions to sustain a paid alternative.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      There are paid alternatives.
parkingrift 5y ago
>Though I'd agree that most internet users don't like ads, what's true is that most internet users don't like paying for things. Using YouTube as an example, the most popular site on the internet, the vast majority of people do not pay for YouTube premium even though it's available. This is a bit circular. People would rather use a free service than a paid service. So long as free services exist it will be hard or impossible for paid services to exist or thrive. >At the end of the day no one is stopping you from going back to circa-2000s internet, using IRC, going on plain text websites, using BBS, etc. There's no reason that we should have to make this choice. We don't have to live in a spyware dystopia so that we can have cheaper internet services. This spyware economy is less than 20 years old, and we should throw it out.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  > This is a bit circular. People would rather use a free service than a paid service. So long as free services exist it will be hard or impossible for paid services to exist or thrive. Of course. If a paid product wants to thrive it needs to be better. People do use paid search engines, email, maps, etc. most people don’t because most people don’t value it that much. > There's no reason that we should have to make this choice. We don't have to live in a spyware dystopia so that we can have cheaper internet services. This spyware economy is less than 20 years old, and we should throw it out. I don’t think there’s a dystopia. If you want to regress you can do so alone. We have irc and bbs that won’t track you. I’m sure there are also some plain text sites you can peruse. Not really understanding why you want to change things for others. Just change it for yourself and then you’re good.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > paid search engines, [...], maps Can you find me one? The only one I know about is Kagi which is in beta and invite-only. The problem with the current status-quo is that as long as advertising powered by illicit data collection is possible in practice, it's not viable for a paid service to compete. > Just change it for yourself and then you’re good. It doesn't matter what you do if ad-tech scum will track you anyway and create a shadow profile by tricking your friends into giving out information about you such as how Facebook infers social graphs (including non-users) by sneaking into people's contacts lists.
alkonaut 5y ago
If a site offers the choice between either funding via "good" (Non tracking, no malware etc) ads, and a fee, then I'm completely happy with their business model. A lot of sites however, don't do this. Of course, the reality is that if they _did_ use "good" ads, then the free version wouldn't make enough money (at least not in today's ad market). So either the free version couldn't exist, OR it would need to be subsidized by the paid version being even more expensive. But this problem could go away if "bad" ads weren't allowed or possible. Because then the price sites get per impression on those ads could go up, as advertisers can't simply pay more for precisely targeted ads. Now, there are a few risks with this: 1) There is every risk that money on the regular web dries up, as targeting is more effective in apps and other siloed environments. We have already seen this to some extent 2) If online advertising is less efficient because of worse targeting, then traditional advertising will again be relatively more attractive, so some of the money would leave the internet economy that way, returning to traditional advertising. 1 and 2 taken together might mean that a lot of "free" content (and I use scare quotes) will simply disappear. And I think that's a risk we should be willing to take. And not only that: I'd go so far as saying that even if 90% of internet users answered in a survey that "I don't care about tracking ads, I just want free content", that's not something regulators should care about at all.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I disagree with what you’re saying. Basically your point is that most content on the internet should go away because you don’t like ads. Good luck with that. Instead, you should treat all the sites that have ads as inaccessible and personally use the small percentage that fit your needs. Everyone wins.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    > Basically your point is that most content on the internet should go away because you don’t like ads. No. I'm conpletely fine with ads. This isn't about ads vs.no ads. This is about "bad" ads. The wholeseale trading in people's information. It's a transaction where the price (Being their PII sold somewhere) isn't visible to the buyer. The reason we ended up where we are now where a site MUST use horrible adtech, is this: Because there exists ways of displaying pinpoint targeted tracking ads through unscrupulous adtech companies then that's what sets the baseline revenue for ads. Show ads that are 1/10th as efficient? You'll get just 1/10th the revenue. It's what a website has to do. So if I'm a site that wants to show "ethical" ads, I can't. Because the ad market is such that ethical ads don't make money. If, however, bad ads don't exist - then ethical advertising could be able to make more money again. The endgame of all this isn't forcing all sites to either die or become paid services. To me the important outcome is to level the playing field between those that display (or want to display) "better" ads.
belorn 5y ago
Why stop at circa-2000s internet when we got a whole past to go back to. We don't need to go far before much of current day market regulations didn't exist and people could freely choose to do things and not do things as much they wanted. Coal mines that used indebted servitude out competed mines that did not, and if people didn't want to go into indebted servitude they could always choose to not sign the contract. The market spoke and the customers choose of their own free will to go to the company store, paying more than they earned, and increased their debt year after year.