We will find another way to fund the internet. I have no doubt about that.
The important thing is to encourage mutual engagement and trust between sites and their users. Sites don’t currently need to do this because personal information stripping by the advertisers substitutes for it very well. Take that away and the relationship between authors and audience get pushed to the front, where they should be.
Obviously there are good reasons to have advertising, but we’re so far afield at this point, big changes are required.
Regulate it into the ground, and watch societies that don’t also do so, turn into slave nations.
I think "ban advertising" is a naive solution to an extremely complex problem. Personally I'm okay with advertising if it isn't intrusive. What I'm not okay with is manipulation, which is hard to pin down where you draw the line in the sand. And specifically the problem ads in this space are often impossible to differentiate between ads and naturally arising memes.
Still, I think banning advertising is a bad idea, even if I personally would be happy if I never saw a bit of advertising again in my life. It can perform a valuable function, especially if there's an underdog that is trying to offer a competing widget, say one that is more sustainable and also cheaper. Without advertising, I could see a large incumbent making it nearly impossible for this underdog to make a dent, which would harm customers of that product category.
In that case the advertising isn't "hey, I'm going to use psychology to convince you to buy this thing you don't have and don't really need" (the thing I object to), but "hey, I know you already buy this thing, but I'd like you to consider buying my version of it, which is objectively and factually better than the thing you're already buying". I think that is valuable information to get into the hands of potential customers.
But I just don't see a way of legislating away the psychological-manipulation types of ads while keeping the genuinely informative and useful kind, at least not without purveyors of the former finding loopholes to pretend that they're pushing the latter.
Where we draw the line could be where people make a business out of advertising. Those businesses would be illegal.
Word of mouth is good because it encourages businesses to provide the best service & value as that will directly affect whether they get referrals or not.
Phone book is also good because although it's similar to advertising, it's advertising that benefits both sides. The customer is in the market for a service and looks at ads from businesses that are looking for customers, unlike now where ads are pushed at you even when you don't actually need anything and distract you from whatever task you were doing.
There's no reason we can't have a modern version of the "phone book" where businesses can publish ads for a nominal fee (to pay for a background check to ensure they're legitimate) and prospective customers can then search through it.
Same here and now. Even if we did restrict advertising through laws, it would be a race to see who could advertise “legally” first, and thus suddenly capture everyone’s attention.
This would still resolve all of the issues caused by the current model of advertising, so I think it's worth it. Sure, it may make business more difficult, but so do the various safety regulations we already have; being in business is not a right and if your business can't be sustained without heavy advertising (which has negative externalities) then maybe it shouldn't exist?
- Buy the largest storefront in the most visible area, even if all you have is one product
- Create a shell company that creates directories, position it as “the best directory for <your industry>”, charge bleeding-high prices then give yourself adspace for pennies
- Good old fashion bribery: pay the lawmakers 10mil to put in a clause so that you’re allowed to advertise “in the header of your own site”, then buy a bunch of industry sites
Keep in mind that any solution has to understand that at the top of the heap there are companies making millions of dollars per month, and who are willing to spend whatever it takes to keep the revenue high
Sort of like smoking: people used to do it because it was cool, even after the enormous health problems were well-understood. And it didn't stop being cool until enough people started to treat it like a gross and dirty habit.
I think it’s one of the only ways to change society but it should be done with a light touch. With smoking I think people thought “it’s gross” not that you are a gross and morally repugnant person. So demonizing the act and not the person is important.
Granted if people are not using social media the mobs will be smaller, but even if everyone is in communities the size of HN, it’s still possible to form “mob sentiment”
"Social-media-using" should be treated like an adjective that modifies the individual, not a noun that defines them.
It's a shame that nuance seems like the first thing to go out the window when we use social media sites like this, but maybe someday we'll be able to do better.
Start by shaming government officials and organizations, any official government channels, even schools and school boards, that require tools provided by surveillance capitalists. If a ToS and privacy policy to a third party is required, then your right to freedom of association is infringed upon.
If governments make official releases only to walled gardens, then those who choose not to associate are cut-off from important information in the political process.
Giving up your equal rights unless you give in to surveillance capitalism is a threat to democracy.
Start there.
You should fear both. Big Anything will eventually abuse their position of power after leadership changes hands enough times. And who is going to help you tame Big Government when they hold all the keys?
I see a lot of rhetoric around "free markets" and "not interfering with enterprise" -- usually pushed by corporations themselves. People need to reject that thinking and understand that the corporations don't have their best interests at heart when they say these things.
The reason enterprises don't want the government to interfere is that often the government is used maliciously to deal with competing enterprises. It's still the government doing it though, whether a corporation influences the politicians or not. And if this is on the table then corporations will fight over getting politicians on their side rather than improving their product. After all, if you can outlaw your competition then that's a better investment than marginally outperforming your competitors with a slightly better product.