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To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, and I think that's a very goo

To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, and I think that's a very good thing, and many people underappreciate the extend to which it happens. On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets, even though it's basically the same thing and a very similar business model.

prmoustache 2y ago
First: you are totally out of topic because the article mentionned tackle the practice of serving ads to paying users accessing a paywall. > The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, and I think that's a very good thing, and many people underappreciate the extend to which it happens. Ads are an aggression on the mind of the people with real psychological consequences. Imagine a public libraries where you should either pay a ticket or be targeted every few minutes by an advertizing team to interrupt your lecture, slap a flyer on top of your book, holding your arm to prevent your from removing it all this while shouting at you offers for a service. And that would be the rich subsidizing the service for the poor and would be a good thing. This is bonkers. > On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets, even though it's basically the same thing and a very similar business model. Not really. Paywall is similar business model, You pay the price, you get the service. Ads are just Ads. I am perfectly free to decide to use whatever technology exist to remove ads from my sights when walking in the streets, or close my eyes. Same has to be for the internet. Also, online medias lost any right to pretend we should see ads when they decided to go the unethical way and act like criminals that redirect our traffic to external parties without our consent. I was perfectly fine when ads were few and far between, not covering half the screen, served locally and only a click on the ad would send me to the advertiser.
account42 2y ago
You make it sound like poor people wouldn't have those services without those oh so generous ad-supported businesses. It's all about extracting money from those communities rather than helping them.
carlosjobim 2y ago
In theory maybe, but in practice no, since ad free is usually extremely cheap. If you can't afford to pay the ad free subscription you're not poor, you're desperate.
Kon5ole 2y ago
>I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets, even though it's basically the same thing and a very similar business model. That's clearly wrong. The equivalent of not buying a ticket would be to use a paywall bypass service to read content that's not free. Using an ad blocker is instead equivalent to reading a book on the subway instead of looking at the ad posters. Which I hope you will agree is entirely acceptable.
janalsncm 2y ago
The author isn’t arguing that no ads should ever be shown. They are arguing that there should always be a subscription tier where you can remove all ads.
amaurose 2y ago
Who defines what is culturally OK? I ask because in my book, using an ad blocker regularily is worse then skipping the occasional public transport ticket. I don't even know why. But I definitely dont give ad blcoker people that much slack. If you want the ads gone, PAY or stop using the service. Hiring a virtual bodyguard to bully your way through cyberspace is somehow weird to me.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  > If you want the ads gone, PAY or stop using the service. Paying is not always an option and, when it is, it's often ridiculously overpriced. Websites send me their ads, I choose not to look at them. Should I somehow be forced to consume adverts on television, prevented from leaving the room or muting the sound? I would have more sympathy if there were no alternative, but there's a very easy one where everyone wins: static ads. I won't block those and I can't block them!
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Ads are aggressions, not an entry ticket. The proof is that even paywalled service still serve ads. And the whole point of that blog post was to talk about ads served to paying users. Apparently some people just want to comment without actually knowing what they are talking about. Hiring a bodyguard seems like the right solution if you are regularly at risk of aggression.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Society collectively decides what is culturally okay. If ad blocker use is widespread and most people don't see a problem with it even if they don't use one themselves, it is culturally okay.
- k__ 2y ago
  Because privacy
- Timwi 2y ago
  > Who defines what is culturally OK? I define what's OK to me. I am able (and legally allowed) to choose what my browser displays to me, so I use browser extensions to control my (and only my) experience of the web. I do not hurt anybody and I do not impinge on anyone's rights. I resent attempts at moral preaching aimed to make me feel guilty, especially when it's in defense of powerful entities that I find reprehensible and who do impinge on my life in ways that I object to. My local bus company does not do that.
Timwi 2y ago
> The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor This is technically true, but it leaves out the entire flipside of the coin. The rich wouldn't do that at the scale that they do if it didn't benefit them more than it does the poor. The services you speak of are offered at a high, but invisible, price (in the form of lost privacy, hijacked attention, manipulated will, etc.). If you really want to help the poor, UBI does it better. It doesn't require charity from self-centered rich psychopaths. We should tax them whether they want to or not.
nektro 2y ago
OP is not anti-ads. OP is anti-ads after becoming a direct paying customer.
LaGrange 2y ago
> To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. That's silly. > The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, [Citation needed]. > On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit Actually I know exactly zero people who are not ok with either. The only reason I pay for public transport is that I'm afraid of being caught, but just like the correct amount of ads is zero, the correct public transport fare is also zero. > a very similar business model. Public transport is not a business, and it's not my concern that your business model sucks.
skummetmaelk 2y ago
This is such a hilariously bad take given how much advertising is targeted towards "the poor" to extract what little they have. Gambling ads, exploitative financial services, unhealthy "cheap" foods etc. Also, why don't we just support the poor directly instead of requiring the construction of a consumer sentiment shaping global surveillance network?
closewith 2y ago
> and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets I don't accept that it's an analogous situation, but many people have no problem with fare dodging. Public transport is for the public good and if someone can't afford the fare, dodging it the moral option.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  Luxembourg has taken this to the logical moral conclusion: public transport is actually free at the point of use, as the name suggests. Several cities in Europe have also introduced free public transport.
ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
No, because you can believe that the poor needs to be subsidized but disagree that ad-tech is the right approach. The poor also does not have the money to buy expensive books, but that is why we have libraries funded by tax money - placing banner ads in the middle of textbooks would be a dystopia, but somehow we are more okay with it if the content is digital.
- miki123211 2y ago
  > placing banner ads in the middle of textbooks would be a dystopia The far-less capitalist, far more revered society that is Germany actually did this, far before the age of surveillance capitalism. Not sure about textbooks speficically, but it was definitely a thing with fiction, to the point of editing foreign books so that the ad would form part of the plot. See e.g. https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and-the-maggi-soup-adverts/ https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and...
closewith 2y ago
> To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. Resolving that the poor must endure advertising to be subsidised by the wealthy is anti-poor and anti-person. A more reasonable take is that all humans should have reasonable access to services through the fruits of their labour, and a situation where wealth inequality makes this infeasible should be rectified.
- fastball 2y ago
  How exactly are you planning to adjust the situation so that someone in Liberia making $2.50/day can afford a YouTube subscription?
  - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
    This is just a general point about globalisation and selling to different markets. Obviously, a YouTube subscription should cost a Liberian a proportional amount, not the same as a wealthy US citizen. Do YouTube advertisers make as much money from the average Liberian as they do from the average American?
    - fastball 2y ago
      YouTube is a US company with US costs. It might not be worth it to provide the service at a rate that Liberians can afford. The reason they do so now is because the ad-driven model allows them to extract a lot more value out of the US (or other more affluent) customers than those people would reasonably be willing to pay for.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        One wonders if there's be a lot more local competitors to services like YouTube in an ad-free world, then. Where the revenues would boost the local economy rather than US.
  - closewith 2y ago
    Well, the moral and true answer is that invest into the developing world until everyone has the ability to earn a living wage and can afford small fees like this should they choose. Anything else is anti-poor.
grishka 2y ago
It's all about implicit vs explicit contracts. Blocking ads on your own device is a breach of an "implicit contract" that the website owner thinks you have with them, but that you've never entered into or even seen, because it's not written out anywhere, it's "assumed". Riding public transit without a ticket is breaching an explicit contract with the transit agency that you entered into when you physically entered their property, and that is usually printed out and posted somewhere. In some places it's a municipal law as well.
- fastball 2y ago
  Using adblocker on YouTube (for example) is a violation of the ToS, which is not an "implicit contract".
  - grishka 2y ago
    It's still kinda implicit because ToS is not legally binding and not enforceable ("by continuing use, you agree blah blah blah" is just someone covering their asses), and because everything you do happens on your own device, not someone else's property. It's more of a suggestion than a law. The most an online service can do for a ToS violation is to ban your account, if you even have one to begin with.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
angrox 2y ago
Yep, and if the ad industry would hold on to certain standards I would agree: No collection of personal data, no real-time brokering on ad content, no permanent tracking cookies. Further should the site which shows the ad take responsibility if something inappropriate is shown. The ad industry needs users so ad-free content is unlikely to happen even if you pay.
bobbruno 2y ago
I don't necessarily agree. Blocking ads on a private site is more like going into a bookstore, reading the magazines and books and not buying anything. At some point the store clerk will approach you and suggest that you either pay or leave. Poor people should have the option to go to the public library and read things for free. In the public transportation metaphor, poor people should get fair public transportation at an affordable price, and not need to ride without tickets. Saying ads sustain poor people is, in my view, saying there is no expectation that the State/society will give a decent base level of service to anyone, and we're left to what private companies are willing to do and the mercy of the ones who can pay - coupled with their willingness to go along with whatever conditions the companies enforce for their "benevolence" (i.e., making you and your data the product). So, what's wrong is that there's a gap here, and the poor people are not getting any support to bridge that gap and eventually get better off and add more value to society. Private philanthropy is not a valid welfare policy. We need a new model like we had with libraries, one that handles the fact that most new content is now online. Unfortunately, most discussions I've seen around that were more about IP rights and protecting paywalls than enabling a 21st century lending model. And the traditional libraries are dying. Solving that would do more for the poor than subjecting yourself to intrusive ads ever will.

prmoustache 2y ago

First: you are totally out of topic because the article mentionned tackle the practice of serving ads to paying users accessing a paywall. > The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, and I think that's a very good thing, and many people underappreciate the extend to which it happens. Ads are an aggression on the mind of the people with real psychological consequences. Imagine a public libraries where you should either pay a ticket or be targeted every few minutes by an advertizing team to interrupt your lecture, slap a flyer on top of your book, holding your arm to prevent your from removing it all this while shouting at you offers for a service. And that would be the rich subsidizing the service for the poor and would be a good thing. This is bonkers. > On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets, even though it's basically the same thing and a very similar business model. Not really. Paywall is similar business model, You pay the price, you get the service. Ads are just Ads. I am perfectly free to decide to use whatever technology exist to remove ads from my sights when walking in the streets, or close my eyes. Same has to be for the internet. Also, online medias lost any right to pretend we should see ads when they decided to go the unethical way and act like criminals that redirect our traffic to external parties without our consent. I was perfectly fine when ads were few and far between, not covering half the screen, served locally and only a click on the ad would send me to the advertiser.

account42 2y ago

You make it sound like poor people wouldn't have those services without those oh so generous ad-supported businesses. It's all about extracting money from those communities rather than helping them.

carlosjobim 2y ago

In theory maybe, but in practice no, since ad free is usually extremely cheap. If you can't afford to pay the ad free subscription you're not poor, you're desperate.

Kon5ole 2y ago

>I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets, even though it's basically the same thing and a very similar business model. That's clearly wrong. The equivalent of not buying a ticket would be to use a paywall bypass service to read content that's not free. Using an ad blocker is instead equivalent to reading a book on the subway instead of looking at the ad posters. Which I hope you will agree is entirely acceptable.

janalsncm 2y ago

The author isn’t arguing that no ads should ever be shown. They are arguing that there should always be a subscription tier where you can remove all ads.

amaurose 2y ago

Who defines what is culturally OK? I ask because in my book, using an ad blocker regularily is worse then skipping the occasional public transport ticket. I don't even know why. But I definitely dont give ad blcoker people that much slack. If you want the ads gone, PAY or stop using the service. Hiring a virtual bodyguard to bully your way through cyberspace is somehow weird to me.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
> If you want the ads gone, PAY or stop using the service. Paying is not always an option and, when it is, it's often ridiculously overpriced. Websites send me their ads, I choose not to look at them. Should I somehow be forced to consume adverts on television, prevented from leaving the room or muting the sound? I would have more sympathy if there were no alternative, but there's a very easy one where everyone wins: static ads. I won't block those and I can't block them!
prmoustache 2y ago
Ads are aggressions, not an entry ticket. The proof is that even paywalled service still serve ads. And the whole point of that blog post was to talk about ads served to paying users. Apparently some people just want to comment without actually knowing what they are talking about. Hiring a bodyguard seems like the right solution if you are regularly at risk of aggression.
int_19h 2y ago
Society collectively decides what is culturally okay. If ad blocker use is widespread and most people don't see a problem with it even if they don't use one themselves, it is culturally okay.
k__ 2y ago
Because privacy
Timwi 2y ago
> Who defines what is culturally OK? I define what's OK to me. I am able (and legally allowed) to choose what my browser displays to me, so I use browser extensions to control my (and only my) experience of the web. I do not hurt anybody and I do not impinge on anyone's rights. I resent attempts at moral preaching aimed to make me feel guilty, especially when it's in defense of powerful entities that I find reprehensible and who do impinge on my life in ways that I object to. My local bus company does not do that.

Timwi 2y ago

> The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor This is technically true, but it leaves out the entire flipside of the coin. The rich wouldn't do that at the scale that they do if it didn't benefit them more than it does the poor. The services you speak of are offered at a high, but invisible, price (in the form of lost privacy, hijacked attention, manipulated will, etc.). If you really want to help the poor, UBI does it better. It doesn't require charity from self-centered rich psychopaths. We should tax them whether they want to or not.

nektro 2y ago

OP is not anti-ads. OP is anti-ads after becoming a direct paying customer.

LaGrange 2y ago

> To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. That's silly. > The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, [Citation needed]. > On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit Actually I know exactly zero people who are not ok with either. The only reason I pay for public transport is that I'm afraid of being caught, but just like the correct amount of ads is zero, the correct public transport fare is also zero. > a very similar business model. Public transport is not a business, and it's not my concern that your business model sucks.

skummetmaelk 2y ago

This is such a hilariously bad take given how much advertising is targeted towards "the poor" to extract what little they have. Gambling ads, exploitative financial services, unhealthy "cheap" foods etc. Also, why don't we just support the poor directly instead of requiring the construction of a consumer sentiment shaping global surveillance network?

closewith 2y ago

> and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tickets I don't accept that it's an analogous situation, but many people have no problem with fare dodging. Public transport is for the public good and if someone can't afford the fare, dodging it the moral option.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
Luxembourg has taken this to the logical moral conclusion: public transport is actually free at the point of use, as the name suggests. Several cities in Europe have also introduced free public transport.

ulrikrasmussen 2y ago

No, because you can believe that the poor needs to be subsidized but disagree that ad-tech is the right approach. The poor also does not have the money to buy expensive books, but that is why we have libraries funded by tax money - placing banner ads in the middle of textbooks would be a dystopia, but somehow we are more okay with it if the content is digital.

miki123211 2y ago
> placing banner ads in the middle of textbooks would be a dystopia The far-less capitalist, far more revered society that is Germany actually did this, far before the age of surveillance capitalism. Not sure about textbooks speficically, but it was definitely a thing with fiction, to the point of editing foreign books so that the ad would form part of the plot. See e.g. https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and-the-maggi-soup-adverts/ https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and...

closewith 2y ago

> To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. Resolving that the poor must endure advertising to be subsidised by the wealthy is anti-poor and anti-person. A more reasonable take is that all humans should have reasonable access to services through the fruits of their labour, and a situation where wealth inequality makes this infeasible should be rectified.

fastball 2y ago
How exactly are you planning to adjust the situation so that someone in Liberia making $2.50/day can afford a YouTube subscription?
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  This is just a general point about globalisation and selling to different markets. Obviously, a YouTube subscription should cost a Liberian a proportional amount, not the same as a wealthy US citizen. Do YouTube advertisers make as much money from the average Liberian as they do from the average American?
  - fastball 2y ago
    YouTube is a US company with US costs. It might not be worth it to provide the service at a rate that Liberians can afford. The reason they do so now is because the ad-driven model allows them to extract a lot more value out of the US (or other more affluent) customers than those people would reasonably be willing to pay for.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      One wonders if there's be a lot more local competitors to services like YouTube in an ad-free world, then. Where the revenues would boost the local economy rather than US.
- closewith 2y ago
  Well, the moral and true answer is that invest into the developing world until everyone has the ability to earn a living wage and can afford small fees like this should they choose. Anything else is anti-poor.

grishka 2y ago

It's all about implicit vs explicit contracts. Blocking ads on your own device is a breach of an "implicit contract" that the website owner thinks you have with them, but that you've never entered into or even seen, because it's not written out anywhere, it's "assumed". Riding public transit without a ticket is breaching an explicit contract with the transit agency that you entered into when you physically entered their property, and that is usually printed out and posted somewhere. In some places it's a municipal law as well.

fastball 2y ago
Using adblocker on YouTube (for example) is a violation of the ToS, which is not an "implicit contract".
- grishka 2y ago
  It's still kinda implicit because ToS is not legally binding and not enforceable ("by continuing use, you agree blah blah blah" is just someone covering their asses), and because everything you do happens on your own device, not someone else's property. It's more of a suggestion than a law. The most an online service can do for a ToS violation is to ban your account, if you even have one to begin with.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

angrox 2y ago

Yep, and if the ad industry would hold on to certain standards I would agree: No collection of personal data, no real-time brokering on ad content, no permanent tracking cookies. Further should the site which shows the ad take responsibility if something inappropriate is shown. The ad industry needs users so ad-free content is unlikely to happen even if you pay.

bobbruno 2y ago

I don't necessarily agree. Blocking ads on a private site is more like going into a bookstore, reading the magazines and books and not buying anything. At some point the store clerk will approach you and suggest that you either pay or leave. Poor people should have the option to go to the public library and read things for free. In the public transportation metaphor, poor people should get fair public transportation at an affordable price, and not need to ride without tickets. Saying ads sustain poor people is, in my view, saying there is no expectation that the State/society will give a decent base level of service to anyone, and we're left to what private companies are willing to do and the mercy of the ones who can pay - coupled with their willingness to go along with whatever conditions the companies enforce for their "benevolence" (i.e., making you and your data the product). So, what's wrong is that there's a gap here, and the poor people are not getting any support to bridge that gap and eventually get better off and add more value to society. Private philanthropy is not a valid welfare policy. We need a new model like we had with libraries, one that handles the fact that most new content is now online. Unfortunately, most discussions I've seen around that were more about IP rights and protecting paywalls than enabling a 21st century lending model. And the traditional libraries are dying. Solving that would do more for the poor than subjecting yourself to intrusive ads ever will.