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Comment by snaky | Hacker News Reader

A new internet where $273 billion advertising industry does not exist?

Can I ask what the amount of money that can be made has to do with this? First of all: they make a case against a particular type of advertising, not all of them. While I honestly believe an argument can be made against any type of advertisement, that's not what they're doing. Second: if an industry is based on immoral practices, what do we care if they make a lot of money? It's like saying "we should not go against slavery, it's a $X billions industry". If they make the money by using data the users did not know they were giving, then I don't care how much money they make: they should not be making it.

Human weighting of incentive signals differs. "We should not go against slavery, it's an $X billions industry" isn't precisely how the US South thought about the problem, but ultimately they did go to war because they recognized that chnage in the status quo would bring utter economic ruin to a powerful sector of the populace with the political and social clout to goad the rest into war.

So yeah, "That industry makes an awful lot of cash" is useful to factor into one's thought process when one tries to reason through how one could tear it down. If nothing else, it's a first-approximation barometer of how much people will spend to oppose your efforts.

Slavery is a bad analogy. The increased buying power of the new consumers (freed slaves) is economically more beneficial than having them locked in as non-consumers (slaves).

Absolutely agree it gives an idea of what we're fighting. What I wanted to point out is that, whether or not they make a lot of money off of it, this fact should have no consequences on whether we allow it or not.

A new internet where Brave gets a cut of the advertising, apparently. Yay?

A new internet where the major players continue making their money but have to adopt more consumer friendly practices.

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