You don't have to have ads at all. The best option is an adblocker, and a non-Chrome-based browser.
If blog or similar can finance part of their cost with Ad's, why not.
Sure on slow internet it's a somewhat different matter.
Anyway Ad's okay, but tracking for me is spying and should be treated like that, i.e. it should be illegal.
There are ways to have personalized ads without it, like local learning which then selects to get an add for a specific topic, with that a side could still track which ads you got, but it would be much less useful as FLoC, and then you add additional steps to even further decrees any chance of tracking.
Companies still get implicit feedback by what adds get selected more then others.
People can explicitly blacklist annoying (or offensive) adds making sure they don't see them ever again and if enough do so in turn making that app not seen much more at all etc. etc.
But the FLoC cohorts are WAY to small/identifiying to not allow you to be tracked fairly easy with it. Just combine it with other identifying aspects of browsers (there are a lot) and I wouldn't be surprised if it's often allows a 100% unique identification.
And given that you likely wont be able to "ad-block" FLoC this makes it way worse then the status quo.
Yeah, in that world, ads would be ok with me. Sure they're pointless because I won't click on them - but not really worse than having a blank spot in the page because of an ad blocker.
While I have no problem with the concept itself of advertising, I do have a problem with modern implementations of ads. Almost invariably, they are loud (vocally and visually), intrusive, obnoxious and almost coercive in their use of language. They are intended to dumb down the target audience, rather than enrich their targets' lives.
I do have a problem with everything that attacks my ability to think freely.
It's fair to believe that ads are 'ok' - it's also possible that people in general don't want them. Hosting low-traffic websites on a smartphone with cellular data is just-about-feasible now.
Rather than inventing very technically clever ways to continue on our existing path, as Apple and Google are doing, I think it'd be pleasant to simply move beyond the advertising model of content on the internet.
If asked, I don't believe people would want to be tracked or have ads mixed into their content.
Could we make it cheap enough to host a personal blog and/or wiki on a smartphone for, say, $10 a year?
The economics would be very different as sites scale up their traffic (compare with, for example, The New York Times).
I think the (relatively) small number of high-traffic sites would be able to find revenue streams to support their hosting - perhaps those would be where subscriptions would be effective.
This may of may not be good, but I’m a bit concerned that destroying the adtech industry may have ripple effects that end up being worse than some middle way like FLoC
That's just how "new" works.
Websites can move to more efficient and lighter methods of delivery to cover the absence of advertising revenue. Anyone skilled who works in the advertising industry is freed to offer his skills to better human endeavours. Everyone wins.
With harmful incentives removed, this would encourage websites to focus on good writing and less on being 'content farms' to drive up engagement for the advertisers.
All I want from most sites is the text. Not adverts, trackers and those damnable autoplaying videos that jump out and follow me down the page. I use the reader mode in most cases. Why is it necessary to use reader mode if not to cut the useless cruft? Why can't the web just be like that?
I don't want to be rude, but won't they just end up losing their livelihoods? If the advertising industry goes, most programmers will see their salaries drop hugely. Even those not working in advertising will see a drop due to the flood of supply.
(I do think advertising is net positive and prohibiting it would be a bad idea: https://www.jefftk.com/p/effect-of-advertising)
Consumer habits will just become more unpredictable- and small companies could compete with big companies that spend billions on marketing.
Even if you were not directly influenced by advertising, you probably were indirectly through word of mouth.
They can handle some theft, but if literally everyone stole their candy, the store would close down and nobody can have candy.
Perhaps it is time for an advertising model to die out as the default.
I will not render your ads. I’d be happy to put that in the first http request to your site. If that means no site for me, then quite honestly 90% of my browsing is a waste of time anyway.
They encourage people to believe their self worth is linked to the things they own. That a persons status in society is somehow associated with how much money they have to spend.
Who's pretending? Ads naturally and quite effectively price-discriminate, and so they do make internet content cheaper for people with less money.
You may have problems with excessive consumption, but many people in developing countries do not. They desperately need the free content (educational, informative, and otherwise) that the current internet model provides them.
Well funded public broadcasters like Australia ABC provide news and entertainment content free. (both text and video)
Well funded public libraries can provide a wide range of alternate content.
While I love libraries and public broadcasting, I learned to code as a poor kid through library books, they are not the full solution and they never provided free, instant, and any time international communication for people.
Also, the store isn't freakishly stalking me and noting down all my habits whilst sharing what it has collected with its friends, or indeed anyone who will buy the data.
Besides, candy is impossible to replicate in the same way that data is. Theft of physical objects is a materially different act from advert blocking and avoidance. I'm not obligated to view adverts in every public space because they fund the local government. I'm not denied access to the cinema because I arrive 10 minutes after the start time to avoid the adverts. Or back in the day when I taped TV shows and fast-forwarded the adverts, had I a responsibility to view them?
They're useless noise that contribute no value to anyone beyond whoever pays for them, and therefore I find it a moral responsibility to limit my exposure to them and restrain the harm they do to others. And curiously, I am much more content and much less impulsive in my spending habits since I installed uBlock.
Many retail stores do, actually, through wireless tracking, cameras, and/or purchase history. They will buy and sell consumer data through the likes of Acxiom.
It would be great to have a ublock equivalent for the physical world.
No one is under any obligation to accept advertising. Only since the modern web have advertisers and content providers made this an argument on ethics.
We could all go around in circles like this for hours.
I'm not really sure what crowd of us you think claims that ad-blocking is "morally responsible". I certainly don't see it as a moral issue at all. I just don't want so see ads, period. I think they're psychologically manipulative garbage, and I don't want them in front of my eyes, infecting my brain.
If someone wants to publish something behind a paywall, I'll pay if I think it's worth the price. If someone wants to put up an ad-blocker-blocker and refuse to serve that content to me, that's fine too; I'll live without their content.
If a server is going to send me bits over the wire, I am going to decide how I view those bits, and which bits I do and do not want to see.
It's a bad metaphor, a better metaphor would be reading a journal and covering ads with post it notes.
Nobody frames, say, taking a bathroom break when the ads play during a football game this way.
One might argue that you are then not entitled to view the content on ad-supported pages as well.
I use an ad blocker too because many ads are just horribly intrusive, but I honestly can’t blame any page circumventing ad blockers, nor do I believe that I am somehow morally entitled to an ad-free, compensation-free browsing experience.
Narrowing all of this down to CPU time misses the point entirely in my opinion.
> They're useless noise that contribute no value to anyone beyond whoever pays for them, and therefore I find it a moral responsibility to limit my exposure to them and restrain the harm they do to others.
They‘re literally paying for the content you get to view for free.
This is true, and websites are entitled to try to detect and block users who use adblockers. And users are entitled to use better adblockers that are harder to detect.
Then they shouldn't serve the page in a way that it can be viewed without also viewing the ads. Ad-blocker-blockers are a thing, and I am happy to close that tab and never visit the site again when I see one.
> They‘re literally paying for the content you get to view for free.
Hopefully someday they'll be forced to find a business model that doesn't include destroying the privacy of their website's visitors.
I suggest you are incorrect to assert that "no one is entitled to my CPU time." I agree, however, that advertisers do not have that moral claim right.
> I suggest you are incorrect to assert that "no one is entitled to my CPU time."
Very well, please elaborate. I'm always up to delve deeper into reason and philosophy (time-permitting of course).
I'll start with ~~a humorous point for an autistic person~~ the worst kind of pedantry. An object cannot be no one's and mine at the same time. If I own it, then it isn't no one's. To the degree the CPU is indeed yours, then it is someone's CPU. Obviously, there's some conversational implicature embedded in your claim here, and that's what we're here to clarify.
For the record, I'm on your side. Your overall argument is something everyone needs to hear. So, I'm not here to destroy your assertion, but I think it should be weakened. There's a lot packed in there.
I take your proposition to mean, roughly, that the CPU in your possession is something only you have a cluster of moral claim rights to (which corresponds to a cluster of moral obligations of others to you regarding that CPU), with no possibility of overriding reasons, caveats, or provisos. Now, you could be speaking about political claim rights, but I don't think that's the case here (correct me if I'm wrong). Is that a fair interpretation, and do you wish to maintain that? Can you think of any exceptions? Are there any adjacent possible worlds in which that is not the case?
These reductionist approaches don‘t really help with understanding ads (and communication in general).
However, I do run an ad blocker and I'm completely fine if every company that relies on ads for income goes out of business. In fact, I'd appreciate it.
If websites really find that ad blockers are killing their revenue, they will switch to a paywall model, and maybe micropayments will finally happen (or perhaps a service that allows users to subscribe to large numbers of websites at a time). Whether or not that is a good thing depends on who you ask.