4 ms·

Disagree. Would I like zero ads? Yes, do I think a company should be required to offer a zero ad service for money? No. If you don't like that they have ads eve

• oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  > People still subscribe to newspaper even though they are full of ads. Those ads are far less egregious than the kinds of online ads we're discussing. If online ads were the equivalent—static, hosted on the same site, free of data collection—then not only would the experience be much more pleasant, we wouldn't even be able to block them.
  • quectophoton 2y ago
    Like those 88x31 ads^Waffiliate links. I have never been bothered by them. If anything, I actually stop to look at them and maybe click one or two. The funny gifs get a click just for being funny. Nowadays they are rare outside places like Neocities, but it is true that I don't know of anyone who has gone out of their way to add an adblock rule to block those.
• akoboldfrying 2y ago
  Hard agree (with you, that is). It's just another case of people confusing "What I personally want" with "What actually leads to a sustainable business/ecosystem". I honestly think people get confused about this because we are so accustomed to getting what we want.
  • manuelmoreale 2y ago
    I honestly do not understand this point. If they offer me a 50/year sub that is not sustainable without extra ads then adjust the fucking price. Set a price to make it sustainable. Offer a 50/year plan with limited ads and a 200/year with no ads and be upfront about why those are the costs. It’s not rocket science.
  • int_19h 2y ago
    There's no "right to have a sustainable business", sorry.
  • teh_infallible 2y ago
    The customer is always right.
    • Mindwipe 2y ago
      "The customer" as a broad concept is perfectly fine with advertising, which would make you wrong.
  • alkonaut 2y ago
    What I want is incompatible with a lot of businesses sustaining themselves. That doesn't change anything in how I think regulation or technology should work here. I think we should have both technological change and regulatory change in the online ad industry that would wipe out a large chunk of the ecosystem.
  • gosub100 2y ago
    In economics, the phrase "what the market will bear " often comes up. Consumers will block obnoxious ads up to what companies will bear.
• otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  > People still subscribe to cable TV even though it's full of ads. Back in the day (yes, I'm that old) the selling point of cable was "TV without any ads". It was marketed as expensive and upscale TV, though. And people don't really want to pay for content, so this business model didn't work out in the end.
  • dhosek 2y ago
    You must be really old because the selling point was always more channels/better quality picture. No ads was reserved for the premium channels (HBO and Showtime) which were an added fee. There were a small number of basic cable channels which were ad-free (AMC and TCM, if I recall correctly were originally both ad-free), but most basic cable channels had ads (and some were just re-feeds of independent broadcast “super stations” like WTBS and WOR.
    • godshatter 2y ago
      I do remember back when MTV started they showed videos on rotation without ads, along with some other content. Ads only came later. I also remember being greatly annoyed by ads appearing everywhere on a service we were paying for. I wasn't alone in this, it was a big topic at the time.
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      That's why I keep saying[0] advertising is a cancer on society. TV and news are one of the first media it consumed so thoroughly people don't remember there was a time where ads weren't expected, or default, or integral part of anything. -- [0] - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
    • lazyasciiart 2y ago
      Or they could be foreign :) When cable TV launched in Australia, for the first couple of years ads during shows were banned.
• add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  Commercials on cable are fully skippable, since the first DVR in 1999. It's streaming that takes that freedom away.
  • thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Cable is an example of streaming; that particular freedom hasn't gone anywhere.
    • kmeisthax 2y ago
      On the other hand, streaming (usually) isn't actually streaming, it's progressive download. The thing that stops you skipping the ads is just the fact that they turn off the fast-forward button and enforce that with DRM. Otherwise skipping ads would be trivial. Cable DVRs have to actually capture and record the signal into a ring buffer, and if it isn't integrated into a cable box[0], it has to come out of one, with a complicated setup of IR blasters to have your DVR tune the cable box to a specific channel. And of course you have to actually pause the video or record it in advance in order to get commercial-skipping capability. Cable ad skipping is entirely a technical problem, streaming ad skipping is entirely a legal one. [0] You were supposed to be able to just get a CableCARD, but the cable companies fought tooth and nail to force you to
    • dambi0 2y ago
      While I suppose you could describe cable as streaming it doesn’t really refute the point about the ability to skip adverts
      • thaumasiotes 2y ago
        What do you mean? What can you do to a cable broadcast that you can't do to an internet broadcast? The comment I responded to suggested that it's impossible to record video delivered over the internet, which is obviously insane. Were you thinking of something different?
        • 2y ago
• b3lvedere 2y ago
  I totally agree with your statement. A company should not be required to offer it, but I am not obliged to consume/purchase/read it. If i can legally block/skip/cirvumvent it, i still will. When reading a magazine, i will try and skip the ads. I block as much ads on my internet connection as possible, because i get to say what comes in and goes out. And companies may complain about my totally legal actions. Not that i am going to to anything about their complaints, for i do not care and never will, but they may totally complain. Comanies may also try and circumvent my actions to force the ads as long as their actions are legal. I also understand that people do not want to play this cat and mouse game. However. When products tend to be a certain necessity and in reality you cannot choose but to consume or purchase a specific thing (Microsoft Office for instance. Yes i know there alternatives, but do you really have a choice?), things get a bit weird or shady. Companies may still legally stuff ads in those 'necessary' products, but it's not something you really want. You don't 'need' a streaming service or a Verge subscrition and can perfectly survice without having one, but when you are paying for one and you're still getting a bunch of ads, it does not feel right. It feels you're getting screwed because of that weird fine print in a contract. Companies stopped caring about their customers need as much as possible. They only think about making money. I stopped caring about companies and their products as much as possible. I only think about spending as less as possible of my money. You reap what you sow.
  • shinycode 2y ago
    I completely share your point of view. And if I may add, I think most people completely overlook the fact that AI for tech companies is the next golden age of ad. They will have AI that can convinces you to buy a product or service over an other one on a prompt you ask. Even generating a small video clip of it tailored on the spot for you to convince you is the future of AI. Ads made google rich, they stole content through Google and won’t make money out of it with their new superpower ? It cost a lot of money and their goal is to be rich. There is no other way, people won’t pay the full price of what it cost for this not to happen.
• imiric 2y ago
  Defending this practice because it's the status quo is ludicrous. All of these things happen not because people approve of them, but because they have no choice. Every company in those industries is doing this because they want more profits. Companies do have the choice, but they would flood your eyeballs with ads 24/7 if it was socially acceptable. So they push that line as far as they can take it before people start complaining. And that's how we got to where we are now. The thing most people don't consciously think about is that advertising is brainwashing and psychological manipulation. It's designed to embed products and ideas into your psyche to get you to do something or think a certain way. Separating me from my money is extortion, though fairly benign. What I find truly insidious is putting thoughts into my head. Political ads and propaganda are weapons of war since they manipulate how societies think and behave. They have the ability to influence how people vote, to topple governments, to cause civil unrest and deep distrust in societies. How most of the world isn't seeing the sociopolitical instability we've been seeing in the past decade as a direct consequence of ad-fueled social manipulation is beyond me. To speak nothing of the multi-billion dark industry of data brokers, and companies hoovering up and profiting off of our data in perpetuity. Advertising is evil to its core and is the most harmful yet normalized industry we've ever invented.
  • jamespo 2y ago
    You have plenty of choice to not visit a website
    • aniviacat 2y ago
      > Just go live in a shed in the woods Websites that do not use ads cannot survive (on a large scale) if their competition uses ads. Large consumer-facing websites are forced to use ads. As long as ads are legal, consumers will not have the choice to use ad-free websites. (The only exceptions being startups operating at a loss.) This is not even solved by websites allowing for paid, ad-free plans. Who pays for Google? You, when you by a can of Coke. Coca Cola increases the price of the drink, then gives that extra money to Google. If you are using a paid, ad-free plan, you are not only paying for the plan, you are also still paying the increased price of Coca Cola. As long as ads are legal, people who use paid plans have to pay more* than twice of what the service is actually worth. *Don't forget the effort that is being put into designing ads, building tracking technology, managing tracking data centers, which again, are paid by you, every time you buy anything.
• zelphirkalt 2y ago
  For companies, whose main service is not the website/app itself, no one forces them to run a website. They are doing it for publicity reasons in one way or another. Putting extra ads or tracking there is trying to make more money from something that should in itself make them money already, by making them more widely known, possibly motivating people to use their actual services. It is unacceptable behavior. I do check how much uBlock Origin has to block for a website of a business and that does inform my opinion of them quite severely. Biggest detractor: Google analytics. It will always be blocked, and not be loaded, but if I see it on their website, expect my opinion of them to fall quite a few levels. Combine that with some JS only website, then they are already lost. I then know they neither care about user experience nor accessibility, and if that was a potential enployer, they would have dropped out of that category, because I don't want to work in a dystopia shop.
• tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >No. If you don't like that they have ads even if you pay then don't use the service. I'd prefer a world where we pay for services we are receiving.
• alkonaut 2y ago
  > If you don't like that they have ads even if you pay then don't use the service. The assumption is that you always pay. Either with your information, or with your money. But the key word there is Either.
• diffeomorphism 2y ago
  > do I think a company should be required to offer a zero ad service for money? No. Not the question. It was "if the company already offers a less ads for money service" then should "less" mean "zero"? > People still subscribe to newspaper even though they are full of ads. Is this supposed to prove anything? They don't have a choice. If they offered a) Lots of ads for $X b) Many ads for $Y c) No ads for $Z How do you see that working out? I would expect (a) and (c) to be massively more popular than (b).