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Comment by PhoenixReborn | Hacker News Reader

Rogan had ads on his podcast even before this partnership, and has had them for a long time now. I don't think that adtech is going away as long as there is a cost for the creator to make the content. Rogan (and other podcasters) have to pay for their studios somehow, and as long as the ads remain skippable (ex. at the beginning of the show like Joe has) I'm OK with it.

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I don't care about ads, I care about walled gardens. Especially walled gardens that are designed to spy on you. Right now there are basically no metrics adtech companies have for how listeners behave, and this changes that.

Spotify doesn't add ads to music if you pay for it. I don't know about podcasts. If it was a viable business strategy for them to be paid-only, I think they would have done it, I'm pretty sure they make much more profit on paying customers than free ad-supported ones.

Again, ads are not the issue. The freedom to listen without being spied on is.

You really think your http requests aren't being "spied on"? Especially since virtually every podcast is served via a CDN.

You really think your phone conversations aren't being "spied on"? Especially since virtually every phonecall is set up via SS7.

I download podcasts in bulk by downloading every available episode, and then listening in the offline audio player of my choice. I repeat every year or three when I catch up on a particular podcast. I'm unwilling to give any further information about myself to podcast publishers.

For shows that do fresh ad reads every episode, I don't even skip them. Just the slight difference of not being pure repetition every time makes them so much more bearable.

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