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Comment by throwaway91111 | Hacker News Reader

Woah, i'd give away a lot of information for a candy bar. I get nothing from ads; they lower the quality of everyone's life.

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Often, you're more-or-less getting the content surrounding the ads from the ads, albeit indirectly.

My local gas station upgraded its pumps recently to allow it to play video ads on the screen used to do the credit card transaction. I don't doubt it's partially the reason that gas station is still operational when similar non-franchises vendors in town have gone under.

Often times i don't give a damn about the content it sponsors. I'd much rather be able to do my business without being assaulted by ads, which often have little to do with reality, and often act as an alienating and dehumanizing force. It's very difficult to see the good.

I would rather have no content than ad-supported content. of course, nobody will ever offer that! You can't sell ads if people can opt out, and too many big players think they're the only way.

Thank gas station should have charged more or folded than sell you shit you don't want, won't want, and will never spend money on.

If you're expecting people to fold their livelihoods instead of sell ads, you may not understand how attached people are to their livelihoods. ;)

Meanwhile, there are some inroads into financial support alternatives to ads everywhere. Google has a "contributor" product (https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing) where you can basically bid against the ads they'd vend to you; instead of an ad running, you pay a microtransaction to buy the privilege of no ad.

It's an interesting idea, but it only works with Google's ad network.

Oh no, I'm not expecting it to go away.

Frankly, i don't mind google ads; i mind wasting 20 seconds to load a page with about two paragraphs of content and 3mb worth of ads. But this is all ignorig the broader point: why are we basing our revenue off of patterns many realize for being toxic, consumerist, negative-value? People AT GOOGLE will happily admit this while working to build it.

I do my own part by supporting Ad Nauseum[0] and actively punishing sites that serve ads, particularly facebook and google. It's also decent for a (very shallow, for now) layer of noise for your ad profiles. Offer me a flat fee and convince me to spend; don't trick me into viewing ads.

0: https://adnauseam.io

Gas stations in the US make very little, possibly zero, from the sale of gasoline.

Anyone have a source for this oft claimed fact? Retail to spot spread is averaging $.50-$.70/gallon for 86 octane with $.20-$.30 added for each premium tier in PHX. Does adding detergent & transport eat up that much margin?

There's no real reason to believe that, though. If someone has a space for an ad, why wouldn't they sell it, even if they don't need it to produce the content? This is one of the problems with profit-maximization: it means every avenue of efficient revenue generation should be exploited whether it's needed or welcomed or not.

Even the pay-for-no ads model doesn't hold up, because if you pay for content, why wouldn't they just double-collect and make you pay for ads served with the content? I purchased my phone and my phone service, but I still get ads in my notifications. Because I didn't pay "enough" to avoid it.

It's like paying off a blackmail ransom. You give them $100 and they come back next week and say "how about another $100?"

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