> Advertising allows people with no means to use the internet, and this value is worth more to society as a whole than ads.
Community efforts would step up in a big way if there weren't free spy-vertising services making them seem pointless. Or yeah, paid options. Maybe even profitable but non-behemoth businesses built on human-vetted static ads with minimal targeting, which might be valuable again if invasive targeting weren't an option and we stopped letting companies dodge responsibility for serving malware/scam ads just because waaaaaah paying humans to look at things is expensive and we don't wanna.
Google the massive company making enormous amounts of money abusing near-monopoly status and human dignity and throwing that money chaotically into dozens of sometimes-neat-but-destined-to-be-used-to-spy-on-people side projects? Yeah, that'd be gone.
That's a bit of a lofty statement with no accompanying argument whatsoever. I think current technology has been wholly negative on society.
>I don't have money to pay for every service I want
So you've decided to exchange your personal data and (in some cases) your computers safety to use them on credit? Maybe you should rethink that. Also, there are services you can use which exist which do not sustain themselves with advertisements.
That's a bit of a lofty statement with no accompanying argument whatsoever.
We could go on and on, no? Also, he did say "Advertising allows people with no means to use the internet", so there was an accompanying argument.
That's a bit of a lofty statement with no accompanying argument whatsoever.
In all fairness, you didn't provide any either. Most things have a mixed outcome, some good and some bad. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So you've decided to exchange your personal data and (in some cases) your computers safety to use them on credit? Maybe you should rethink that. Also, there are services you can use which exist which do not sustain themselves with advertisements.
The safety counts for very little if advertising-free web browsing means you aren't truly using the internet.Sure, those services exist, but the free ones are few. HN wouldn't be very usable, for example, if I refused to click on sites that happen to have advertisements.
So yes, between being short on cash and wanting to actually get use out of the internet - including being able to easily and cheaply talk to my family overseas - I'll deal with it. Something else might be right for you, and that's fine.
And in way too many cases, it's more than worth it!
We could have better ads, that don't require any privacy or safety loss from our side, and blocking ads does set things the way they need to be for those ads to appear. But no, I can't agree that ads are inherently bad.