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Ads seem to be a modern virus that infects everything. Everyone who claims "no ads", eventually turns their back on that once they get big enough, even companie

Ads seem to be a modern virus that infects everything. Everyone who claims "no ads", eventually turns their back on that once they get big enough, even companies with more than enough money from their own products (e.g. Apple, Netflix). I've never seen anything so powerful. I guess it comes down to "no business would say no to free money", but it really is incredible.

t0bia_s 4y ago
But you need money. Without money, whole businesses is pointless. With financial crisis and ridiculous inflation, who cares about ads? Well... If they try sell you a product, it is harmless. But with selling an ideas and manipulation of masses, that is diferent story. I guess propaganda is a right definition.
paulcole 4y ago
Did Apple or Brave ever say “no ads”? In the case of Brave (and every business), somebody’s got to hand money to someone in order to keep the lights on.
- derefr 4y ago
  Brave (the browser) has a built-in ad-blocker, the existence of which could be taken as an implicit stance by its creators on how they feel about ads.
  - smt88 4y ago
    > an implicit stance by its creators on how they feel about ads Like Apple and AdBlock, the stance is that they want to sell their own ads in the spaces where they're blocking other people's
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    The browser also has a built-in ad-replacer which tells you even more about how they feel about ads.
    - hunterb123 4y ago
      No they don't. They don't replace ads, that's a lie, stop repeating it here please. The Brave rewards are system OS text notifications that you can OPT IN to. In no way do they replace banner ads on websites.
      - skinnymuch 4y ago
        They could have meant when Brave swapped affiliate links before the backlash had them backtrack. Which was a wild thing to do. Blocking ads in your browser while charging to not show ads is also pretty wild. Why doesn’t their ad blocker block their ads?
        hunterb123 4y ago
        I doubt that. They said replace ads, not add affiliates, those are different words entirely. The "ad replacing" is a common lie. Just don't use Brave search, the separate product. Or you know, add the blocking rules yourself to the ad blocker, that works. Or you know, pay the $3 dollars to support the thing you use. Most of the people complaining here don't actually care about this. This is all just a proxy war to go against Eich for his beliefs. It happens every Brave thread, pretty transparent and pathetic.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        > This is all just a proxy war to go against Eich for his beliefs. Of course. Just like I war against your beliefs, whatever they may be. I war against all the beliefs.
        soundnote 4y ago
        They didn't replace affiliate links. They had a feature similar to Firefox Suggest or whatever's in Chrome/Edge nowadays I think. They had a deal with eg. Binance, and if you typed Binance in the address bar, their Binance promo would show up as one of the results. They had a bug in it where if you typed a valid URL (eg. binance.us) it'd still give the sponsored link as an autocomplete which it shouldn't have. That bug stood for one day, if memory serves, and the feature was turned off by default.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    I’m not asking how you think the creators feel about ads. Did Brave as a company ever say that their product would be free of ads? If so, what was their plan for not going out of business?
  - soundnote 4y ago
    They've been in the ad serving business for ages and have been upfront about funding or intending to fund their services with privacy respecting ads. The blocking system is a stance against privacy invasions, not advertising itself.
kleer001 4y ago
And, from what I understand, Ads don't really "work" inasmuch as they're very high output to very low return. Small motile cells in many species are used in a reproductive strategy very much like ads. Tee-hee.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
spaniard89277 4y ago
They have a paid option. It's paying or ads. Running a search engine is not free. Somebody has to pay for it.
- rabuse 4y ago
  That's not the problem. The problem is they sold their service as one thing, and then completely switch on the users down the line, instead of being honest upfront.
  - trs8080 4y ago
    It was free, so they never sold it and nobody ever bought it. Companies often times need to pivot or introduce pricing to their products to survive. Would rather pay a modest fee to ensure that Brave continues as an alternative to the major browsers vs them running out of money and shutting down.
    - jjulius 4y ago
      >It was free, so they never sold it and nobody ever bought it. I mean, OP's not wrong. The phrase doesn't have to specifically mean an exchange of goods for money - can sell you on an idea, for instance. They "sold you" on the idea of using Brave by being very anti-ad. Now that you "bought it" and are hooked, they'd like some money.
  - soundnote 4y ago
    They've been very upfront that Brave Search will have ads one day in my experience.
  - puchatek 4y ago
    And what was the thing you thought you were buying?
squarefoot 4y ago
The market eventually became saturated with products and services; today there are a lot more of them than pockets that can or will purchase them, therefore they fight to occupy the spots where people can notice them first, knowing that whoever comes after won't sell. This is a train wreck waiting to happen since there are no signs that it could self-limit in the immediate future; products and services sellers will eventually fight for every possible still free space to put ads into and win potential users attention; it will simply become worse and worse, unless someone invents consumerism with some limits built in, which in today's culture is deeply frowned upon.
Apocryphon 4y ago
What 15 years of ZIRP does to a mfer
glitchc 4y ago
Companies throw a lot of money at ads. Far more than individual consumers can muster. It's the difference between grass-roots donations and institutional funding.
twhb 4y ago
I felt this way for a while, but I’d like to offer another angle: maybe it’s like saying “Every company eventually hires tall people. Some have no tall people, but it’s just a matter of time. Tall people are really an unstoppable force.” The missing piece is also observing short people (ad-free offerings), which you’d notice are not being eliminated, are also prevalent, and also “infect” everything. I think the unstoppable force being felt here is just statistics: ads are often an option, companies make a lot of decisions, it’s statistically inevitable that some of those will be ads, unless the company has some strong aversion to ads, which most don’t.
zagrebian 4y ago
Modern? When I grew up in the ’90s, ads were everywhere: in the magazines I was reading, on TV, on billboards, in the mail. How can you call ads a modern virus?
- autoexec 4y ago
  Ads aren't a new thing, but the it's been allowed to spread unchecked and unregulated in ways that were simply not possible in the 90s causing new problems.
ramesh31 4y ago
>Ads seem to be a modern virus that infects everything. Everyone who claims "no ads", eventually turns their back on that once they get big enough, even companies with more than enough money from their own products (e.g. Apple, Netflix). TBF at least it's better than the status quo of the late 90's to early 2000s, when the revenue model was malware and actual viruses rather than ad supported.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > TBF at least it's better than the status quo of the late 90's to early 2000s, when the revenue model was malware and actual viruses rather than ad supported. Back then we called software that phoned home to check for updates spyware and it was to be avoided. The very idea that a random offline program on my system would know when I was connected to the internet, and would be collecting my IP address was unacceptable. Now it's standard practice. The revenue model back then was shareware. You get the software, it mostly works, and you send a check to some PO box to get a full version. It wasn't terrible. I don't remember too many companies outright shipping malware and when they did people were rightly pissed off (Sony's rootkit, or BonziBuddy for example) What we had were lots of ad filled websites hosting shareware and it was often the ads that were infecting people, although some sites did inject malware into the downloads.

t0bia_s 4y ago

But you need money. Without money, whole businesses is pointless. With financial crisis and ridiculous inflation, who cares about ads? Well... If they try sell you a product, it is harmless. But with selling an ideas and manipulation of masses, that is diferent story. I guess propaganda is a right definition.

paulcole 4y ago

Did Apple or Brave ever say “no ads”? In the case of Brave (and every business), somebody’s got to hand money to someone in order to keep the lights on.

derefr 4y ago
Brave (the browser) has a built-in ad-blocker, the existence of which could be taken as an implicit stance by its creators on how they feel about ads.
- smt88 4y ago
  > an implicit stance by its creators on how they feel about ads Like Apple and AdBlock, the stance is that they want to sell their own ads in the spaces where they're blocking other people's
- Semaphor 4y ago
  The browser also has a built-in ad-replacer which tells you even more about how they feel about ads.
  - hunterb123 4y ago
    No they don't. They don't replace ads, that's a lie, stop repeating it here please. The Brave rewards are system OS text notifications that you can OPT IN to. In no way do they replace banner ads on websites.
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      They could have meant when Brave swapped affiliate links before the backlash had them backtrack. Which was a wild thing to do. Blocking ads in your browser while charging to not show ads is also pretty wild. Why doesn’t their ad blocker block their ads?
      - hunterb123 4y ago
        I doubt that. They said replace ads, not add affiliates, those are different words entirely. The "ad replacing" is a common lie. Just don't use Brave search, the separate product. Or you know, add the blocking rules yourself to the ad blocker, that works. Or you know, pay the $3 dollars to support the thing you use. Most of the people complaining here don't actually care about this. This is all just a proxy war to go against Eich for his beliefs. It happens every Brave thread, pretty transparent and pathetic.
        Semaphor 4y ago
        > This is all just a proxy war to go against Eich for his beliefs. Of course. Just like I war against your beliefs, whatever they may be. I war against all the beliefs.
      - soundnote 4y ago
        They didn't replace affiliate links. They had a feature similar to Firefox Suggest or whatever's in Chrome/Edge nowadays I think. They had a deal with eg. Binance, and if you typed Binance in the address bar, their Binance promo would show up as one of the results. They had a bug in it where if you typed a valid URL (eg. binance.us) it'd still give the sponsored link as an autocomplete which it shouldn't have. That bug stood for one day, if memory serves, and the feature was turned off by default.
- paulcole 4y ago
  I’m not asking how you think the creators feel about ads. Did Brave as a company ever say that their product would be free of ads? If so, what was their plan for not going out of business?
- soundnote 4y ago
  They've been in the ad serving business for ages and have been upfront about funding or intending to fund their services with privacy respecting ads. The blocking system is a stance against privacy invasions, not advertising itself.

kleer001 4y ago

And, from what I understand, Ads don't really "work" inasmuch as they're very high output to very low return. Small motile cells in many species are used in a reproductive strategy very much like ads. Tee-hee.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

spaniard89277 4y ago

They have a paid option. It's paying or ads. Running a search engine is not free. Somebody has to pay for it.

rabuse 4y ago
That's not the problem. The problem is they sold their service as one thing, and then completely switch on the users down the line, instead of being honest upfront.
- trs8080 4y ago
  It was free, so they never sold it and nobody ever bought it. Companies often times need to pivot or introduce pricing to their products to survive. Would rather pay a modest fee to ensure that Brave continues as an alternative to the major browsers vs them running out of money and shutting down.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >It was free, so they never sold it and nobody ever bought it. I mean, OP's not wrong. The phrase doesn't have to specifically mean an exchange of goods for money - can sell you on an idea, for instance. They "sold you" on the idea of using Brave by being very anti-ad. Now that you "bought it" and are hooked, they'd like some money.
- soundnote 4y ago
  They've been very upfront that Brave Search will have ads one day in my experience.
- puchatek 4y ago
  And what was the thing you thought you were buying?

squarefoot 4y ago

The market eventually became saturated with products and services; today there are a lot more of them than pockets that can or will purchase them, therefore they fight to occupy the spots where people can notice them first, knowing that whoever comes after won't sell. This is a train wreck waiting to happen since there are no signs that it could self-limit in the immediate future; products and services sellers will eventually fight for every possible still free space to put ads into and win potential users attention; it will simply become worse and worse, unless someone invents consumerism with some limits built in, which in today's culture is deeply frowned upon.

Apocryphon 4y ago

What 15 years of ZIRP does to a mfer

glitchc 4y ago

Companies throw a lot of money at ads. Far more than individual consumers can muster. It's the difference between grass-roots donations and institutional funding.

twhb 4y ago

I felt this way for a while, but I’d like to offer another angle: maybe it’s like saying “Every company eventually hires tall people. Some have no tall people, but it’s just a matter of time. Tall people are really an unstoppable force.” The missing piece is also observing short people (ad-free offerings), which you’d notice are not being eliminated, are also prevalent, and also “infect” everything. I think the unstoppable force being felt here is just statistics: ads are often an option, companies make a lot of decisions, it’s statistically inevitable that some of those will be ads, unless the company has some strong aversion to ads, which most don’t.

zagrebian 4y ago

Modern? When I grew up in the ’90s, ads were everywhere: in the magazines I was reading, on TV, on billboards, in the mail. How can you call ads a modern virus?

autoexec 4y ago
Ads aren't a new thing, but the it's been allowed to spread unchecked and unregulated in ways that were simply not possible in the 90s causing new problems.

ramesh31 4y ago

>Ads seem to be a modern virus that infects everything. Everyone who claims "no ads", eventually turns their back on that once they get big enough, even companies with more than enough money from their own products (e.g. Apple, Netflix). TBF at least it's better than the status quo of the late 90's to early 2000s, when the revenue model was malware and actual viruses rather than ad supported.

autoexec 4y ago
> TBF at least it's better than the status quo of the late 90's to early 2000s, when the revenue model was malware and actual viruses rather than ad supported. Back then we called software that phoned home to check for updates spyware and it was to be avoided. The very idea that a random offline program on my system would know when I was connected to the internet, and would be collecting my IP address was unacceptable. Now it's standard practice. The revenue model back then was shareware. You get the software, it mostly works, and you send a check to some PO box to get a full version. It wasn't terrible. I don't remember too many companies outright shipping malware and when they did people were rightly pissed off (Sony's rootkit, or BonziBuddy for example) What we had were lots of ad filled websites hosting shareware and it was often the ads that were infecting people, although some sites did inject malware into the downloads.