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The correct amount of ads is zero

manuelmoreale.com

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Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#271

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

closewith wrote: post #214
miki123211 wrote: post #192

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 tic…

> 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.

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.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#272

Post by eitland »

redserk wrote: post #50
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

Regarding The Verge, I wish something like Apple News existed in this space. I'd happily throw in $10/mo into a pool that distributed money towards a bunch of different smaller tech reporting/blogs/YouTube channels. I just can't justify paying $X/mo individually to 20 different sources. Though, I dislike that Apple News now runs ads in it's offering and would happily pay a little more to completely get rid of them, b…

> but I like the idea that I get access to a number of sources for one payment.

For me it wouldn't even need to be all-I-can-read.

I'd be very happy to pay a reasonable fee pr thing I read, and I'd frankly be excited about it. I was a vocal supporter of the original Blendle for this exact reason.

It either need to be

- (almost) everything at one price like Spotify or Apple Music,

- or it needs to be a reasonable price with reasonable terms, say about the same price, (adjusted for inflation) as what it used to cost back when we bought it on DVDs or CDs.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#273

Post by secondcoming »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #119
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's the thing: the subscription is not being cancelled. Amazon tries it, gets some people grumbling, but their bottom line is not affected and in fact goes up from this move because in addition to subscribers they also get ad revenue. A vocal minority doesn't outweigh hard numbers in this case. But that's one of the causes of enshittification, everything becoming metrics-driven.

I did cancel my subscription to Amazon Prime because of this exact reason.

Me too, not 100% due to ads but it was the final straw.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#274

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

nox101 wrote: post #11

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 even if you pay then don't use the service. People still subscribe to newspaper even though they are full of ads. They paid money, they got an ad full paper. People still subscribe to cable TV even though it's full of ads. People still buy magazines (paid for the…

> 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.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#275

Post by cuddlyogre »

dspillett wrote: post #247
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

I'm sort of with you here, but not… > I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. > I don't pay any websites/blogs for subscriptions for articles either. While some content creators do it for love, art, whatever, others do need an income stream to keep going. I'm fine with blocking annoying ads (pop-ups, forced interstitials, autoplaying audio, …) but basic image-and-some-text-on-the…

The problem with allowing "basic image-and-some-text-on-the-page adverts" is that you also allow "pop-ups, forced interstitials, autoplaying audio, …" and malware attacks since they all pull from the same pool by default.

They track you like an animal across the entire web to learn your conscious and unconscious desires and insecurities and weaknesses so they can most effectively take your time and money and attention from you.

Why should I be expected to tolerate that even for a moment?

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#276

Post by 9o1d »

Veen wrote: post #135
9o1d wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, in 2009 I used free hosting. However, my articles were so interesting that in one week my site was visited by about a million people. Because of the huge traffic, I was kicked out of free hosting. Then I rented a VPS. Then I was still a big opponent of advertising, like all of you, and I was naive. I was an idealist. But when I tried to sell access to the site for sending SMS messages costing 10 cents, no one…

If ads are first-party, non-personalized, non-tracking, and don't get in the way of the content, people are mostly fine with them. Most ads are not like this, so people use ad-blockers, and the good ads get blocked along with the bad ads. The fault lies with the advertising industry, not the consumers. It's an old-fashioned notion, but the advertising industry has extremely bad manners: it doesn't respect civilized s…

I understand you perfectly. I apologize, as a defender of advertising, for the fact that advertising often causes you inconvenience. However, I believe that advertising does less damage than cars. Okay, let's ban cars? What about alcohol and smoking? Why doesn't anyone try to throw a blanket over the shelves with alcohol?

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#277

Post by freeAgent »

izacus wrote: post #264
freeAgent wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were absolutely obnoxious ads, including pop-ups and pop-unders 15 years ago, but at least they were generally contextual rather than targeted to your ad profile.

I'm not sure if "Punch the Monkey" was ever really contextual tbh :)

But it also certainly wasn’t targeted!

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#278

Post by onion2k »

mgraczyk wrote: post #179
onion2k wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They level the playing field and provide economic opportunity to hard working entrepreneurs everywhere. They absolutely don't though. They skew the playing field to whoever has the most access to ad publishing (most money usually). I'd bet that a significant proportion of all the VC money raised over the last 25 years was funneled straight to Google AdSense.

Ads aren't money, they are a thing you spend money on. What you're describing is leveling the playing field. Without Ads you'd have 10 entrepreneurs. With it you have 10000

Without Ads you'd have 10 entrepreneurs. With it you have 10000

Before the internet was fuelled by ads there were some ad-free directories and human-curated lists of websites that people seemed to like quite a lot. That could have been a viable alternative.

I'm not suggesting the proliferation of ads has been bad for the web. Far from it. It means anyone with an ad budget can compete, which is a valid point. The problem that brings is that so much of the success of a product comes from the marketing budget now. In a market where the worst product can win if it has a bigger ad spend, it's hard to believe ads are a net benefit.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#279

Post by left-struck »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #155
refulgentis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advertising is fundamentally corrosive to society Interesting, why?

They incentivize collecting sensitive data about people. They incentivize businesses to maximize for engagement which generally promotes harmful content over informational content. Empty informational calories.

To be fair advertising without collecting sensitive data does exist. I think the collection of sensitive data is a more serious issue so let’s not say all ads are abusive in that way.

However, I agree with the position that all ads with some small exceptions are a negative thing. I think the incentives behind advertising are inherently perverse because of what they are at their core, an attempt to manipulate (if they work then a successful attempt!). They are dishonest and inauthentic by design. It’s possible to create an ad that is like “hey this thing exists and this is strictly what it does without any exaggeration” but that basically never happens because the people who make ads have no external incentive to do that.

I think a much more ideal situation is where a user searches for something on a search engine, or an LLM or whatever, and they are shown as unbiased as possible results. This way the people making good products get their exposure and the people looking stuff get the stuff they want. Of course there’s a lot of problems in practice with that as well.

I don’t claim to have a solution, and I don’t think making an add is like super immoral, but I think ads are a scourge on our society and culture.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#280

Post by eqvinox »

shortformblog wrote: post #265

Stances like this probably feel good to write out, but they miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper, but the ads subsidize enough of it to make it so that a paid subscription is accessible to more people. On the in…

I think you're missing the point. There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange. The business decision The Verge needs to make is whether they want to try to reach these people or not, since these people won't pay for a model that still has ads. (There could of course be 2 subscription levels at different prices, one that still has some ads… but that's also extra work and a different consumer experience.)

I don't think newspaper ads are a good analogy either since the consumption model of a dead-tree newspaper isn't such that you get the ads thrown into your face when trying to read an article. And classifieds specifically I wouldn't even call ads, more of a community note board service.

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