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Even though i hate ads as much as most commenters… as advocate of the devil: This black-and-white thinking [1] is also bad. What’s the point if they show 0 ads

Even though i hate ads as much as most commenters… as advocate of the devil: This black-and-white thinking [1] is also bad. What’s the point if they show 0 ads, subscription price will then have to go up to cover the costs, and nobody signs up so they go bankrupt. They also have to be able to survive in the current world/reality, even if they WANT to show 0 ads. My point is: we don’t have any insight in their financial data/revenue/costs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

prmoustache 2y ago
> They also have to be able to survive in the current world/reality, even if they WANT to show 0 ads. They have to? I don't think. If you can't offer a service the ethical way, maybe you shouldn't offer that service. Your kind of reasonning also is the reason these medias can't survive without ads. If we banned ads altogether, subscription prices would go higher but decent publications would be able to serve content without ads because they would not face unfair competition from unethical ones. People would still subscribe to interesting content. Maybe they would not subscribe to 10 different publications but only 2 or 3. But the quality of the content of those publications would be higher because their real customers would be the paying users, not the ad industry. Here we are in that weird state where the real customers are not the people subscribing to the service. Paying users are merely addicts that online medias sell to advertisers. So the content served is only meant to redirect users to ads through many kind of psychological manipulation.
- DavideNL 2y ago
  > I don't think well they are free to offer it - and i can understand they do this to try to build their service/company. If people don't LIKE this, of course that's fine too, then just don't subscribe / use it. I think the criticism of OP is a little too much black/white thinking.

prmoustache 2y ago

> They also have to be able to survive in the current world/reality, even if they WANT to show 0 ads. They have to? I don't think. If you can't offer a service the ethical way, maybe you shouldn't offer that service. Your kind of reasonning also is the reason these medias can't survive without ads. If we banned ads altogether, subscription prices would go higher but decent publications would be able to serve content without ads because they would not face unfair competition from unethical ones. People would still subscribe to interesting content. Maybe they would not subscribe to 10 different publications but only 2 or 3. But the quality of the content of those publications would be higher because their real customers would be the paying users, not the ad industry. Here we are in that weird state where the real customers are not the people subscribing to the service. Paying users are merely addicts that online medias sell to advertisers. So the content served is only meant to redirect users to ads through many kind of psychological manipulation.

DavideNL 2y ago
> I don't think well they are free to offer it - and i can understand they do this to try to build their service/company. If people don't LIKE this, of course that's fine too, then just don't subscribe / use it. I think the criticism of OP is a little too much black/white thinking.