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Comment by BaseballPhysics | Hacker News Reader

> Paywalls offend me. The Internet exists to share knowledge with everyone across the world. You shouldn’t need a subscription, all you should need is an internet connection to access the world’s knowledge.

Cool. So remind me how anyone can survive creating high quality content online?

Ads? Nope. Privacy nightmare.

Subscriptions? Nope. "Offensive".

What next? Tips? Please. We already know most people won't pay for content if they don't have to.

Micropayments? Just tips dressed up as technology.

What's left? Patronage of the rich?

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Ads don't have to be a privacy nightmare, e.g., highway billboards and broadcast TV. Why can't we have privacy preserving ads on the Web?

Because the financial incentives don't reward it[1].

The only way you'll get what you're describing is via government regulation.

[1]: There's actually a much much longer-winded answer that gets into the complexities of advertising across hundreds of millions of small publishers that is too much to cover here. Honestly, you could probably write a book about the topic (and odds are someone already has).

Yeah, it's a problem. I suppose badly implemented paywalls that tech savvy people can get around but others can't is almost worse...

I think we should keep searching for solutions.

I'm not a huge fan of advertising, but I also don't think they have to be a privacy nightmare. I don't think there's actually strong evidence that intimately targeted advertising works significantly better than simple context-based advertising (put an advert for bicycles in an article about bicycles). I think that's a myth that's been propagated by the tech giants who depend on it (Google & Facebook, obviously). So maybe non-invasive advertising could work quite well?

At the end of the day, I accept we're going to have a mix of models. A bit like tackling climate change - we need a mix. Some ads sponsored, some donation-based, some with affiliate links, some with billionaire patrons, some state-sponsored.

But to my mind, models that literally block those who can't pay, or are disadvantaged in some other way (not tech-savvy enough) are the worst models of all.

> So maybe non-invasive advertising could work quite well?

You'll never get that without government intervention. At a bare minimum, ignoring targeting, tracking to enable conversion analysis--which necessarily requires deanonymizing users and connecting advertising engagements with purchases--is nirvana for advertisers and they'll never want to give that up without a fight.

And that's ignoring the fact that users install ad blockers because ads are also "offensive".

> But to my mind, models that literally block those who can't pay, or are disadvantaged in some other way (not tech-savvy enough) are the worst models of all.

Why? Until the internet came along, for folks not privileged enough to be able to pay for content, there was the library, and that remains an option today (many libraries offer free access to both physical and digital newspapers, among other things).

Given that, unless the content is sponsored by the government in some way (e.g. BBC, CBC, etc), what gives individuals the right to benefit from others' work for free?

I'm not sure how much longer I really want to entertain this discussion, but I'll have one more crack.

The number of people using and blockers is still quite low, not nearly critical mass. The "conversion analysis" stuff is mostly pseudoscience. Most companies just don't know what to do with the mountain of data they have access to. Data collection is just an addiction at this point.

But the more important thing is the "why". The library has very limited information. Sharing of information, having a voice and engagement in the conversation are all essential to the growth of mankind. Our ideas evolve as a species by including everyone, sharing honestly, increasing access to quality information and standing on the shoulders of giants.

If you believe that preserving people's ability to make money in a free market is more important than that, I really have nothing further to say to you.

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