4 ms·

The generator of that reality distortion field is "stuff you get without money changing hands". That is an extremely powerful energy source. It's incredibly har

The generator of that reality distortion field is "stuff you get without money changing hands". That is an extremely powerful energy source. It's incredibly hard to find an alternative that people like anywhere near as much -- despite much effort. As Churchill said of democracy, advertising is the worst system except for all of the others. It would be great if they can come up with a good alternative that will scale to the billions of people who want stuff and dislike exchanging money. That leaves attention and ... ?

openrisk 2y ago
> "stuff you get without money changing hands". That is an extremely powerful energy source Indeed, and this is something we didn't know before the "move fast and break things" phase but now we do, also the side-effects. But my argument is that the stuff we get with money changing hands dwarfs the novelty of "freebies-for-data" by orders or magnitude. And for that broader economy to properly integrate into the digital age its just not possible to keep basing the internet infrastructure on adtech.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Well, I don’t have the option of walking into a store, watching some ads, and walking out of the store with whatever I want. I totally get it and some people are happy to produce online stuff without direct compensation—and a handful can attract enough cash to live on from fans. But you can bet there would be plenty of screaming on here if most content went behind hard paywalls. And people here probably on average make a lot more money than the average member of society.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    If you're correct, and I fear that you are, then that means there's no room on the web for people like me. Which, I guess, has already been made really clear over the last couple of years. I'm not arguing against your statements here, just crying in my beer over the loss.
pyrale 2y ago
Adtech dominance goes beyond "stuff you don't pay". Plenty of non-commercial entities did and published stuff for free on the internet before ad money became dominant. For instance, the first forums I socialized on were all individual-owned or association-owned, and so were the webgames I played. However, these entities became marginalized quickly through the creation of walled gardens, Google search discrimination pushing non-commercial websites out of the internet, and ad companies sabotaging open standards (e.g. RSS) and comitees (anyone hears about W3C these days?). > As Churchill said of democracy, advertising is the worst system except for all of the others. The analogy doesn't really work, because ad-tech is the reason other systems get stiffled. Democracies wouldn't look so good if their politicians got assassinated by neighbouring dictators whenever they feel like it.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > For instance, the first forums I socialized on were all individual-owned or association-owned, and so were the webgames I played. You can still make these. Why do people choose platforms with ads on over these things you remember, do you think?
  - pyrale 2y ago
    The crux of the question is "how people find internet resources". And the answer is that, generally, ad-driven companies have no interest in showing their users this kind of stuff, and have taken over pretty much every entrypoint. For instance, if I was to build a webgame, there is zero chance it could be found through Google nowadays. If I made an app, I would have to plead with Google's or Apple's store. I could share it on e.g. Reddit, Twitter or FB, but that would be a tiny trickle of users, and the odds of them staying on my platform and its associated forums would be extrelemy low, because the users aren't actually looking for it when they see it. Also it wouldn't be large enough to be their daily doomscrolling experience (and there is zero chance it could be integrated to it using e.g. RSS feeds). On top of that, any site not algorithmically optimizing content shown for maximum addiction would not capture users in the long run. Guess what option I have left to show my thing to people? Pay the ad-tech business. That's not something easy for an association or an individual who aren't looking to create revenue streams.

openrisk 2y ago

> "stuff you get without money changing hands". That is an extremely powerful energy source Indeed, and this is something we didn't know before the "move fast and break things" phase but now we do, also the side-effects. But my argument is that the stuff we get with money changing hands dwarfs the novelty of "freebies-for-data" by orders or magnitude. And for that broader economy to properly integrate into the digital age its just not possible to keep basing the internet infrastructure on adtech.

ghaff 2y ago
Well, I don’t have the option of walking into a store, watching some ads, and walking out of the store with whatever I want. I totally get it and some people are happy to produce online stuff without direct compensation—and a handful can attract enough cash to live on from fans. But you can bet there would be plenty of screaming on here if most content went behind hard paywalls. And people here probably on average make a lot more money than the average member of society.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  If you're correct, and I fear that you are, then that means there's no room on the web for people like me. Which, I guess, has already been made really clear over the last couple of years. I'm not arguing against your statements here, just crying in my beer over the loss.

pyrale 2y ago

Adtech dominance goes beyond "stuff you don't pay". Plenty of non-commercial entities did and published stuff for free on the internet before ad money became dominant. For instance, the first forums I socialized on were all individual-owned or association-owned, and so were the webgames I played. However, these entities became marginalized quickly through the creation of walled gardens, Google search discrimination pushing non-commercial websites out of the internet, and ad companies sabotaging open standards (e.g. RSS) and comitees (anyone hears about W3C these days?). > As Churchill said of democracy, advertising is the worst system except for all of the others. The analogy doesn't really work, because ad-tech is the reason other systems get stiffled. Democracies wouldn't look so good if their politicians got assassinated by neighbouring dictators whenever they feel like it.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> For instance, the first forums I socialized on were all individual-owned or association-owned, and so were the webgames I played. You can still make these. Why do people choose platforms with ads on over these things you remember, do you think?
- pyrale 2y ago
  The crux of the question is "how people find internet resources". And the answer is that, generally, ad-driven companies have no interest in showing their users this kind of stuff, and have taken over pretty much every entrypoint. For instance, if I was to build a webgame, there is zero chance it could be found through Google nowadays. If I made an app, I would have to plead with Google's or Apple's store. I could share it on e.g. Reddit, Twitter or FB, but that would be a tiny trickle of users, and the odds of them staying on my platform and its associated forums would be extrelemy low, because the users aren't actually looking for it when they see it. Also it wouldn't be large enough to be their daily doomscrolling experience (and there is zero chance it could be integrated to it using e.g. RSS feeds). On top of that, any site not algorithmically optimizing content shown for maximum addiction would not capture users in the long run. Guess what option I have left to show my thing to people? Pay the ad-tech business. That's not something easy for an association or an individual who aren't looking to create revenue streams.