Hatred of advertising at a larger scale, nice. How are those people on said websites (and almost any other medium) supposed to make money?
My local bus stop has adverts (London).
My local metro station does too (London).
They're all over the roads (UK).
They're in pubs (UK).
They're on paid television services (Sky).
They're on paid programs (Windows 10).
They're shown before movies (cinema, UK).
Advertising is _everywhere_, in paid services, unpaid services, whatever.
Unless I'm in my own, or a friend's private home I could probably find an advert by spinning my head around.
Ask yourself - why haven't you included an advert on your comment? You could, and it'd allow you to comment on HN more, right?
Now, if you made an argument that the entire structure is screwed up and the people at the top deserve to make less and therefore not needing as much cash flow and therefore we should be able to cut the ads, THEN I might agree...
I don't believe that my train or bus would cost substantially more without the advertising.
And even if it did, it's just an internalization of costs.
The advertising (if it works) pulls money in through a side channel (someone sees an ad and later buys a thing).
It makes far more sense to just pay for the bus.
Other examples, like ads at the side of the road, don't even pay for anything. Driving along the road, I see an ad in a farmer's field. I'm not using that field in any meaningful sense.
edit: I actually looked up the transport example.
Transport for London had approximately a 1:20 ratio of advertising to fare revenue last year.
So, I'd have to pay approximately 5% more, or 7 pence per bus fare, to not have adverts plastered on the inside and outside of buses, tubes, station platforms, corridors within stations, and probably various roads under TfL authority as well.
I think the world in which we pay 7 pence more for bus fare and have nice artwork on the bus or something instead of hair loss adverts that call us ugly balds is better.
Even bought the Kindle with special offers. Preferred it to the one I have without.
I reckon if we ever get to that point, by then the pint alone might be 12 quid though. Soz.
Berlin just has... clean empty walls on the metro. I mean yeah there's advertising and particularly crappy screens on the actual trains but it's so much better.
1. Have less annoying ads that respect the user.
2. Charge money.
3. Some novel funding model that's unexplored because obnoxious ads dominate everything and suck all the air out of the room.
1. That's fair, but it takes time and talent to create these.
2. Clearly that isn't working; see almost any news site in existence
3. This is a hope, and a nice one. https://scroll.com/
This advertising model hasn't been around for very long. It's baffling how suddenly nobody can even conceive of how the world would work without malicious advertising and culture-wide psyops digging into everyone's brains. The advertising model is one of the worst inventions in history.
The problem is that the perception of the advertising industry at a larger scale is that it's a blood sucking industry with no thought for anything other than taking the attention of everyone away from what they were looking for and towards what the industry has been paid to help sell.
It's ironic, I think, that the advertising industry is perceived so badly.
How could the advertising industry market itself? "Our knowledge of psychologically attacking the human mind is second-only to the CIA, but we're catching up!"
If you were to say working in advertising Girl Scout Cookies in Cannabis Advocate magazines you would get fired so very quickly even if it boosted their sales substantially because of the controversy.
It is part of how Google got their good reputation in the first place - they gave the people what they wanted and were loved for it. Obviously it has greyed over time since.
I find this comment fascinating, in that:
1. If more of the 'ad targets' (ie. consumers) knew this, then it wouldn't work so well.
2. The advertising industry, by keeping their clients happy, are treating the customers of their clients as a resource to be squeezed wherever and whenever possible, and the clients are obviously fine with this.
3. Point #2 results in the advertising industry being a lightning rod for angry anti-consumer sentiment, allowing the ad industry clients to remain relatively clean.
4. It would be 'good / right' if the ad-industry clients that sell the various products being shoved in our faces on most of the flat-surfaces to be found on the Internet could be held to account just as much as the ad industry itself, then the ad industry would have more reason to drag itself out of the sewer. See point #1.
Edited to add: @Nasrudith, just to clarify, your comment is a great point, and succinct. Well said.
Advertising is much worse on the internet because it's a lot easier to propagate, not being constrained by time slots in a broadcast. That means that an overwhelming amount of trash is allowed to survive, drowning out a lot of the things that are worthwhile and building up an audience that is low-value and perhaps even dangerous to society in some regards; I would argue such for the amount of "viral" tripe that sways how people view politics, science, religion, etc.
It seems like the future is getting a free refridgerator that you pay for by watching an ad before you can take out the milk. (Oops, did I just spoil someone's startup?)