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What does a "free" internet look like without ads? Serious question, because right now ads pay for a lot. Ads are why we have reddit and twitter - two sites tha

What does a "free" internet look like without ads? Serious question, because right now ads pay for a lot. Ads are why we have reddit and twitter - two sites that I think a lot of people like. Ads are why I could run a wordpress blog as a young student. If you assume "the current internet is good, but we want to improve privacy" what Google is doing makes sense. Advertisers can still say "ok that person likes cars I'll show them cars" but they can't actually track that person or attribute information to them other than "likes cars".

BanazirGalbasi 3y ago
They're not talking about free as in no monetary cost, they're talking about free as in freedom. Google has enough market share that they can just make their own standards and everyone else just follows. I have repeatedly come across sites that don't even test on Firefox because Chrome is just the default now. If you don't want to be cornered into a single option that invades your privacy, now is the time to pay attention.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  I know what they're saying. I'm asking what the internet is going to look like when there's no advertising, and I'm pointing out what advertising currently allows for. > Google has enough market share that they can just make their own standards and everyone else just follows What does that have to do with privacy or advertising? > invades your privacy I'm comfortable with a company seeing "<random id> likes cars" tbh
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    You set up a false equivalence. Why is the choice between these kinds of features, which lock Google in as the sole controller of online advertising, and no advertising?
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      I don't think I'm setting that up, but maybe I'm not understanding. Because to me what Google is doing is a clear attempt at maintaining the status quo of an ad-funded internet while removing the ability for fine-grained 3rd party tracking. So when people say this is a threat to the "free internet" I'm asking what that means - because right now the status quo has a lot of upsides, a few of which I listed. I want to hear what the alternatives are. What is it people are asking for? What's the implementation of this that you think would be better?
      - lelandbatey 3y ago
        It's a threat to the "free" (as in freedom) internet in that with this as the tracking mechanism, Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests. It effectively makes "serves you ads and tracks your interests" a core part of what it means for a browser (Chrome) to be a browser. Many folks feel like this is a capitalism-flavored move on par with "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government." The point is that it hands over a lot of control. What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas? Could that be used to try to target folks seeking abortions, potentially with legal action? All of these are hypotheticals, but they're all potential destinations if we continue in this direction. Hence the EFFs warning.
        insanitybit 3y ago
        > Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests But Chrome doesn't send Google that data. The data doesn't leave Chrome. What leaves are the features. > "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government." But behavior and identity are not being conveyed in this instance. > The point is that it hands over a lot of control. But you can disable it. > What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas? That would suck, but: a) If this is done as intended it's anonymous b) That would be insane
  - spookie 3y ago
    The problem here comes from Google being the ones who monopolise on the user data, leading them to be the only credible source of truth on the user interests. This is an outstanding move from them, business wise. I agree that I prefer, privacy wise, to only deal with one company. But, this leaves them in a considerable advantage. It's ultimately, bad for consumers. And, from the beginning, bad for other businesses and market.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      But Google doesn't get the user data, right? Chrome is just conveying it to advertisers - Google gets the same experience as everyone else. It's not like it goes to Google first and then it goes to advertisers. Chrome is what decides which data leaves the browser. Or have I misunderstood?
      - agwa 3y ago
        Correct, with the caveat that if you have Chrome profile sync enabled (without a sync passphrase set) then the advertising data tracked by Chrome likely gets uploaded unencrypted to Google-operated servers. I don't know if their privacy policy permits them to look at this data, or if they would look at it in practice.
        insanitybit 3y ago
        Hm. All of my sync data is encrypted. Is that not the default?
        agwa 3y ago
        Nope. See the following page for some screenshots of the UI to turn on encryption with sync passphrases: https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-very-bad/ https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-...
        insanitybit 3y ago
sp332 3y ago
You can do ads without tracking.
- dpkirchner 3y ago
  You can even host them on your own server, and vet them for quality and security.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  True, you absolutely can. They'll potentially make much less money, and I don't know that that's sustainable but I think it's at least an alternative worth talking about. I think the other question would be "can you do tracking without violating privacy". To me, "<random user id likes cars>" is not a privacy violation.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Newspapers ran for decades without any tracking, and they had to make and distribute physical objects.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Ah yes, print media, a thriving business.
  - NewsyHacker 3y ago
    Wordpress was founded, and hosted-Wordpress services ran for years, in an era where there was only non-personalized advertising. Why do you feel it would be unsustainable? As long as you limit media storage space and plugins, simple blogs cost extremely little to host per user.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      I didn't say it's not sustainable, I'm saying it's potentially not sustainable. Sustainability of tracking-free ads would be a good conversation to have.
throwawa14223 3y ago
The internet existed without ads and big centralized sites. People ran their own sites, link rings, email and other services. The big guys have taken away so much of the ability to effectively self-host, but fundamentally we do not need them and we do not need ads.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  You're talking about the internet when it was tiny and inaccessible, and you're acting like that was good. That's a position to take, but I don't think it's a good one - again, I would not have been able to write my blog for free, the sites we take for granted today would not exist. The only way to actually publish would be to have technical skills and money, which I don't think is good.
  - suslik 3y ago
    There a plenty of non-ad-driver services that allow hosting blogs for free. Github, cloudfare’s free tier, and many others - and you can certainly find a one-click vm deployment of a blogging platform for less then 5$. I believe this implies that saying that you must have ads to have free online services is a fallacy.
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      All of those businesses subsidize their sites because they're billion dollar companies. Is that better than just... using ads? > I believe this implies that saying that you must have ads to have free online services is a fallacy. I'm saying someone has to pay for it.
      - skydhash 3y ago
        Hosting a static cheap is cheap. And even something powered by a CMS can be hosted on a cheap droplet. No one really expects you to share contents like video and music for free (and even that can be done cheaply if you’re only loking at a few TB of monthly bandwith). So yeah, someone should pay for it, but the internet itself isn’t free and everyone is paying for it.
stubish 3y ago
Even today, a Wordpress blog costs about as much as a coffee per month. And that would be less without all the crap needed to serve ads and track users and monetize everything. I can't wait to find out what an ad-free Internet looks like. Maybe more like when I was a student, and stuff got put up because people were interested rather than as a side hustle. Perhaps cheap subscriptions or microtransactions for quality, curated content such as news services, because they no longer have to compete with free crap. Or some other novel business model will emerge, making a new generation of people rich, thanks to human ingenuity. An ad-full Internet is harmful, polluting our minds to the point people consider it normal and making them afraid of what could only be positive change.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  > Even today, a Wordpress blog costs about as much as a coffee per month. I was able to do it for free because of ads. I was a teenager just getting into computer security, I had a $0 budget. That blog is why I even have a career. > and stuff got put up because people were interested rather than as a side hustle How are people who are interested going to put something up? They'll have to pay for it. Say goodbye to "I'm a random person with a random interest, oh sweet I can post about it online" and hello to "Sponsor this content on patreon". > Perhaps cheap subscriptions or microtransactions for quality, curated content such as news services All of this "I'll just pay for it" stuff ignores that the only reason you can find content creators to pay directly is because they have free platforms like Youtube that are paid for by advertising. > Or some other novel business model will emerge, making a new generation of people rich, thanks to human ingenuity So propose it. I'm all for this. Give me a new business model that doesn't involve ads and let people choose. Go for it. But maybe let's not break the entire internet before we even have an idea of what that will look like?
  - g-b-r 3y ago
    Things were already free before the advertising boom, internet was not really worse twenty years ago
  - ifz 3y ago
    Nowadays, you can get a free VM from some providers (GCP) and there are lots of sites where you can deploy a static website for free (github pages). I'd argue deploying something for free is easier than ever.
beej71 3y ago
But ads aren't going away. Maybe eventually all tracking goes away (probably in the EU first), but ads never do. And even if they did, just imagine all the sites that solely use ads vanishing. And there you have it. You can still do shopping and banking. You can still subscribe to newspapers. And you could have run your blog for free with no ads on SDF, and you could host videos there, too. Sure, it wouldn't be the same as today's Internet, but like I said, since ads aren't going away, it's just an interesting thought experiment.
ornornor 3y ago
> reddit and twitter - two sites that I think a lot of people like. I don’t know how good of an example these sites are. They’re turning into gigantic dumpster fires very fast.
Erratic6576 3y ago
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BanazirGalbasi 3y ago

They're not talking about free as in no monetary cost, they're talking about free as in freedom. Google has enough market share that they can just make their own standards and everyone else just follows. I have repeatedly come across sites that don't even test on Firefox because Chrome is just the default now. If you don't want to be cornered into a single option that invades your privacy, now is the time to pay attention.

insanitybit 3y ago
I know what they're saying. I'm asking what the internet is going to look like when there's no advertising, and I'm pointing out what advertising currently allows for. > Google has enough market share that they can just make their own standards and everyone else just follows What does that have to do with privacy or advertising? > invades your privacy I'm comfortable with a company seeing "<random id> likes cars" tbh
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  You set up a false equivalence. Why is the choice between these kinds of features, which lock Google in as the sole controller of online advertising, and no advertising?
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    I don't think I'm setting that up, but maybe I'm not understanding. Because to me what Google is doing is a clear attempt at maintaining the status quo of an ad-funded internet while removing the ability for fine-grained 3rd party tracking. So when people say this is a threat to the "free internet" I'm asking what that means - because right now the status quo has a lot of upsides, a few of which I listed. I want to hear what the alternatives are. What is it people are asking for? What's the implementation of this that you think would be better?
    - lelandbatey 3y ago
      It's a threat to the "free" (as in freedom) internet in that with this as the tracking mechanism, Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests. It effectively makes "serves you ads and tracks your interests" a core part of what it means for a browser (Chrome) to be a browser. Many folks feel like this is a capitalism-flavored move on par with "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government." The point is that it hands over a lot of control. What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas? Could that be used to try to target folks seeking abortions, potentially with legal action? All of these are hypotheticals, but they're all potential destinations if we continue in this direction. Hence the EFFs warning.
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        > Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests But Chrome doesn't send Google that data. The data doesn't leave Chrome. What leaves are the features. > "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government." But behavior and identity are not being conveyed in this instance. > The point is that it hands over a lot of control. But you can disable it. > What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas? That would suck, but: a) If this is done as intended it's anonymous b) That would be insane
- spookie 3y ago
  The problem here comes from Google being the ones who monopolise on the user data, leading them to be the only credible source of truth on the user interests. This is an outstanding move from them, business wise. I agree that I prefer, privacy wise, to only deal with one company. But, this leaves them in a considerable advantage. It's ultimately, bad for consumers. And, from the beginning, bad for other businesses and market.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    But Google doesn't get the user data, right? Chrome is just conveying it to advertisers - Google gets the same experience as everyone else. It's not like it goes to Google first and then it goes to advertisers. Chrome is what decides which data leaves the browser. Or have I misunderstood?
    - agwa 3y ago
      Correct, with the caveat that if you have Chrome profile sync enabled (without a sync passphrase set) then the advertising data tracked by Chrome likely gets uploaded unencrypted to Google-operated servers. I don't know if their privacy policy permits them to look at this data, or if they would look at it in practice.
      - insanitybit 3y ago
        Hm. All of my sync data is encrypted. Is that not the default?
        agwa 3y ago
        Nope. See the following page for some screenshots of the UI to turn on encryption with sync passphrases: https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-very-bad/ https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-...
        insanitybit 3y ago

sp332 3y ago

You can do ads without tracking.

dpkirchner 3y ago
You can even host them on your own server, and vet them for quality and security.
insanitybit 3y ago
True, you absolutely can. They'll potentially make much less money, and I don't know that that's sustainable but I think it's at least an alternative worth talking about. I think the other question would be "can you do tracking without violating privacy". To me, "<random user id likes cars>" is not a privacy violation.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Newspapers ran for decades without any tracking, and they had to make and distribute physical objects.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    Ah yes, print media, a thriving business.
- NewsyHacker 3y ago
  Wordpress was founded, and hosted-Wordpress services ran for years, in an era where there was only non-personalized advertising. Why do you feel it would be unsustainable? As long as you limit media storage space and plugins, simple blogs cost extremely little to host per user.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    I didn't say it's not sustainable, I'm saying it's potentially not sustainable. Sustainability of tracking-free ads would be a good conversation to have.

throwawa14223 3y ago

The internet existed without ads and big centralized sites. People ran their own sites, link rings, email and other services. The big guys have taken away so much of the ability to effectively self-host, but fundamentally we do not need them and we do not need ads.

insanitybit 3y ago
You're talking about the internet when it was tiny and inaccessible, and you're acting like that was good. That's a position to take, but I don't think it's a good one - again, I would not have been able to write my blog for free, the sites we take for granted today would not exist. The only way to actually publish would be to have technical skills and money, which I don't think is good.
- suslik 3y ago
  There a plenty of non-ad-driver services that allow hosting blogs for free. Github, cloudfare’s free tier, and many others - and you can certainly find a one-click vm deployment of a blogging platform for less then 5$. I believe this implies that saying that you must have ads to have free online services is a fallacy.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    All of those businesses subsidize their sites because they're billion dollar companies. Is that better than just... using ads? > I believe this implies that saying that you must have ads to have free online services is a fallacy. I'm saying someone has to pay for it.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      Hosting a static cheap is cheap. And even something powered by a CMS can be hosted on a cheap droplet. No one really expects you to share contents like video and music for free (and even that can be done cheaply if you’re only loking at a few TB of monthly bandwith). So yeah, someone should pay for it, but the internet itself isn’t free and everyone is paying for it.

stubish 3y ago

Even today, a Wordpress blog costs about as much as a coffee per month. And that would be less without all the crap needed to serve ads and track users and monetize everything. I can't wait to find out what an ad-free Internet looks like. Maybe more like when I was a student, and stuff got put up because people were interested rather than as a side hustle. Perhaps cheap subscriptions or microtransactions for quality, curated content such as news services, because they no longer have to compete with free crap. Or some other novel business model will emerge, making a new generation of people rich, thanks to human ingenuity. An ad-full Internet is harmful, polluting our minds to the point people consider it normal and making them afraid of what could only be positive change.

insanitybit 3y ago
> Even today, a Wordpress blog costs about as much as a coffee per month. I was able to do it for free because of ads. I was a teenager just getting into computer security, I had a $0 budget. That blog is why I even have a career. > and stuff got put up because people were interested rather than as a side hustle How are people who are interested going to put something up? They'll have to pay for it. Say goodbye to "I'm a random person with a random interest, oh sweet I can post about it online" and hello to "Sponsor this content on patreon". > Perhaps cheap subscriptions or microtransactions for quality, curated content such as news services All of this "I'll just pay for it" stuff ignores that the only reason you can find content creators to pay directly is because they have free platforms like Youtube that are paid for by advertising. > Or some other novel business model will emerge, making a new generation of people rich, thanks to human ingenuity So propose it. I'm all for this. Give me a new business model that doesn't involve ads and let people choose. Go for it. But maybe let's not break the entire internet before we even have an idea of what that will look like?
- g-b-r 3y ago
  Things were already free before the advertising boom, internet was not really worse twenty years ago
- ifz 3y ago
  Nowadays, you can get a free VM from some providers (GCP) and there are lots of sites where you can deploy a static website for free (github pages). I'd argue deploying something for free is easier than ever.

beej71 3y ago

But ads aren't going away. Maybe eventually all tracking goes away (probably in the EU first), but ads never do. And even if they did, just imagine all the sites that solely use ads vanishing. And there you have it. You can still do shopping and banking. You can still subscribe to newspapers. And you could have run your blog for free with no ads on SDF, and you could host videos there, too. Sure, it wouldn't be the same as today's Internet, but like I said, since ads aren't going away, it's just an interesting thought experiment.

ornornor 3y ago

> reddit and twitter - two sites that I think a lot of people like. I don’t know how good of an example these sites are. They’re turning into gigantic dumpster fires very fast.

Erratic6576 3y ago

[dead]