Sounds like projection. Though I'd agree that most internet users don't like ads, what's true is that most internet users don't like paying for things. Using YouTube as an example, the most popular site on the internet, the vast majority of people do not pay for YouTube premium even though it's available.
At the end of the day no one is stopping you from going back to circa-2000s internet, using IRC, going on plain text websites, using BBS, etc.
Those companies have transformed the internet, and its users, by offering services for free, in exchange for user data. We have raised an entire generation (two, maybe?) of people taking that model for granted, nicely illustrated by completely ad-dependent YouTube superstars.
Of course, we cannot simply ban all advertising and start charging for everything. But I'm of the firm opinion that, in order to go forward, we have to leave this business model behind, as humanity. The only way to achieve this is by making it unattractive via legislation.
What exactly are you proposing? Anyone who wants to pay for email can do so already.
It's very trivial to not use any of Google's services or be tracked. Install uBlock, and don't go to any Google or subsidiary service. Done.
What exactly is the issue?
I propose that we try to move humanity past this way of generating revenue, because it's wasting productivity and resources, encouraging shady behaviour, and leads to less freedom overall.
We have social networks manipulating users into staying on the platforms as long as possible, scrolling down infinite feeds, to expose them to as much advertising as possible, thus wasting productivity.
We have big players such as the IAB and its members tracking and spying on users to obtain more data to sell, as an alternative revenue stream to charging for their services.
We have quality journalism disappear in favour of whatever generates the most clicks, in order to expose more readers to advertisements. YouTube stars pushing hidden ads on children. Advertisers crossing ever more boundaries of privacy, by aggregating data from thousands of companies, with basically no oversight by anyone.
That is the issue. I think we should do something against that, and I think "something" may be to nudge the market into another direction, from ad-based to transaction-based revenue sources.
Your argument is "People have free choice, so anything that they do is legal."
The excuse of the perpetrators is "I'm not the one (directly) responsible for your poor economic situation, or your lack of education, so it's fair and moral for me to offer you a terrible proposition that you absolutely would not make if you were in a better economic situation." This is just where extreme capitalism gets you.
The list of examples is endless. Scrip. Children working in mines or cleaning chimneys. Click-through TOS. "Free" email. Indentured servitude.
At the end of the day it's no different than "You need to get on this boat to america, or this gentleman here is going to cut your wife's throat. Hey, it's not me doing the cutting. I'm the good guy. I'm trying to keep you safe. But its your choice."
It really depends on what we mean by "choice".
Of course, the reality is that if they _did_ use "good" ads, then the free version wouldn't make enough money (at least not in today's ad market). So either the free version couldn't exist, OR it would need to be subsidized by the paid version being even more expensive.
But this problem could go away if "bad" ads weren't allowed or possible. Because then the price sites get per impression on those ads could go up, as advertisers can't simply pay more for precisely targeted ads.
Now, there are a few risks with this: 1) There is every risk that money on the regular web dries up, as targeting is more effective in apps and other siloed environments. We have already seen this to some extent 2) If online advertising is less efficient because of worse targeting, then traditional advertising will again be relatively more attractive, so some of the money would leave the internet economy that way, returning to traditional advertising.
1 and 2 taken together might mean that a lot of "free" content (and I use scare quotes) will simply disappear. And I think that's a risk we should be willing to take. And not only that: I'd go so far as saying that even if 90% of internet users answered in a survey that "I don't care about tracking ads, I just want free content", that's not something regulators should care about at all.
Good luck with that. Instead, you should treat all the sites that have ads as inaccessible and personally use the small percentage that fit your needs.
Everyone wins.
No. I'm conpletely fine with ads. This isn't about ads vs.no ads. This is about "bad" ads. The wholeseale trading in people's information. It's a transaction where the price (Being their PII sold somewhere) isn't visible to the buyer.
The reason we ended up where we are now where a site MUST use horrible adtech, is this: Because there exists ways of displaying pinpoint targeted tracking ads through unscrupulous adtech companies then that's what sets the baseline revenue for ads. Show ads that are 1/10th as efficient? You'll get just 1/10th the revenue. It's what a website has to do.
So if I'm a site that wants to show "ethical" ads, I can't. Because the ad market is such that ethical ads don't make money. If, however, bad ads don't exist - then ethical advertising could be able to make more money again. The endgame of all this isn't forcing all sites to either die or become paid services. To me the important outcome is to level the playing field between those that display (or want to display) "better" ads.
This is a bit circular. People would rather use a free service than a paid service. So long as free services exist it will be hard or impossible for paid services to exist or thrive.
>At the end of the day no one is stopping you from going back to circa-2000s internet, using IRC, going on plain text websites, using BBS, etc.
There's no reason that we should have to make this choice. We don't have to live in a spyware dystopia so that we can have cheaper internet services. This spyware economy is less than 20 years old, and we should throw it out.
Of course. If a paid product wants to thrive it needs to be better. People do use paid search engines, email, maps, etc. most people don’t because most people don’t value it that much.
> There's no reason that we should have to make this choice. We don't have to live in a spyware dystopia so that we can have cheaper internet services. This spyware economy is less than 20 years old, and we should throw it out.
I don’t think there’s a dystopia. If you want to regress you can do so alone. We have irc and bbs that won’t track you. I’m sure there are also some plain text sites you can peruse.
Not really understanding why you want to change things for others. Just change it for yourself and then you’re good.
Can you find me one? The only one I know about is Kagi which is in beta and invite-only.
The problem with the current status-quo is that as long as advertising powered by illicit data collection is possible in practice, it's not viable for a paid service to compete.
> Just change it for yourself and then you’re good.
It doesn't matter what you do if ad-tech scum will track you anyway and create a shadow profile by tricking your friends into giving out information about you such as how Facebook infers social graphs (including non-users) by sneaking into people's contacts lists.
Coal mines that used indebted servitude out competed mines that did not, and if people didn't want to go into indebted servitude they could always choose to not sign the contract. The market spoke and the customers choose of their own free will to go to the company store, paying more than they earned, and increased their debt year after year.
The problem with YT Premium specifically is that it still requires a Google account, agreeing to their "privacy" policy and provides no guarantee that Google isn't still going to stalk you.
> That being said, who are we to say what's valuable?
We can infer this based on whether enough people pay for the content. There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content.
