Imagine if a crime syndicate would brag about their efforts to make their worldwide criminal activities more efficient.
Therefore I think the best we can hope for is that engineering breakthroughs achieved in profit driven fields will gradually leak into other fields where they can actually be used to improve people's lives.
Breakthroughs achieved would be funded by taxpayers and customers of these agencies and the patents for technology produced would be more likely enter the public domain.
As I read this article I was thinking "I bet the first comment on the article will just be complaining about the effort going into ads", and I wasn't wrong.
Honestly, it's becoming tiresome. Low latency computing is a great area to talk about, and instead it's derailed by this essentially off-topic discussion.
Because that's what happens if you don't have web advertising. Free things disappear without revenue.
Or maybe you'd prefer to go back to the days of randomly-targeted or "PUNCH THE MONKEY" ads. Because THAT'S what happens without ad auctions and targeting.
The reality is: advertisers and ad-supported sites WANT to show you a relevant ad that you're likely to click (modulo obvious bad actors). That's how they get paid. Anything else is, by definition, "[wasting] users' time and attention."
Was I supposed to respond “oh no, current ads are so much better”?
That doesn't match my experience at all, but maybe you can chalk it up to targeting?
They might disappear, but not without replacements. Hosted email, videos, photos, discussion boards, and search are all services that would exist with or without a business model built on ad money. I don't care if they are free or paid. But the fact is that the privacy-depraved model wins because it's provided for free to the eyeballs.
And yes, I'd rather have punch-the-monkey ads. I'd even go so far as to say that I'd prefer my search results and most content-provider's offerings not ordered and filtered based on my previous behaviors.
The web doesn't work without free services. For everyone who has extra money they would gladly use to pay for everysite they visit the majority won't and you will end up buying overpriced bundles from your phone company and your privacy will be worse. Free allows users a chance not to be tracked. Once you start involving money you can easily be traced.
Facebook? There are plenty of sites like facebook without users. Charge for an account.. reduce the userbase, the platform loses value without the free users.
Even if it were possible to convert these to paid services now, there's no way they could have started out paid with no existing content/user base.
If it is just friends why waste money on facebook just to talk. Most would rather spend that money on a more focused community/hobby like gaming and connect ingame.
I run some services that are paid for by advertising and I see this myself: the second I start trying to charge money, I'm now the one service that people see as costing them money when all my competitors are "free." And the associated entitlement is toxic.
To answer your first question, imagine a world where advertising doesn't exist and we simply pay for those things.
I was reluctant to admit this since ads paid my way through university. But as ads make less and less money, it's harder and harder to ignore the truth. And while ads are viable, they impede the necessary cultural transformation we'll need to form a healthier relationship with the goods and services we want.
It actually boils down to an expectation of slave labor for a lot of things, which people don't want to hear.
Also you could learn a lot about tunnel building, and tunnel detection.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/irish-data-privacy-watchdog-...