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Comment by Test0129 | Hacker News Reader

Have you watched TV in the last 50 years? All television, radio, etc relies on ad revenue. The difference is that those ads tend to be better targeted because the channels/stations tend to be granular enough to figure out good things to run.

The problem is, now, that any advertiser can run on any video. If I am watching a woodworking video I shouldn't get an ad for dawn soap. It would make sense for a brief ad on tools, or a wood supplier, or something which I might even appreciate because it lets me know something exists.

It's not ads. It's the increased quantity of them and the low signal to noise ratio. Ads are useful, being inundated with them is not. It's further made worse by the average youtube video's quality going straight down to nothing over the 10 years. It's mostly "professionals". At this point, I'd rather go back to watching TV.

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There is non-advertising-supported television and (especially) radio. The BBC and other public broadcasters fund themselves with tax or licence fee income. And when you have small children, avoiding the incessant advertising for toys by putting on CBeebies is a godsend. It's also has really good shows, as it turns out.

Radio is easier because radio broadcasting is much cheaper. At least over here there are BBC stations (locally and nationally), and things like student and hospital radio that are run by volunteers and have no or minimal advertising.

I'm not saying these models are better than ad-funded media, but the ubiquity of ads isn't an actual prerequisite of media. There have also been subscription channels without advertising (before cable companies decided to double-dip) and you can imagine other funding models like television-as-propaganda (either by an oligarch or an unfriendly state), or as philanthropy (why not run ad-free 'worthy' television as a modern version of the Carnegie Library?)

> Have you watched TV in the last 50 years? All television, radio, etc relies on ad revenue.

Yes, and that's been a horror that Lovecraft and Orwell combined wouldn't comprehend. The uncountable hours of human eyeball time wasted utterly; worse than wasted; used to whitewash the reputations of criminals and scumbags.

For what? To sponsor "news" that itself is a commercial? For TV and radio that leaves people dumber than they'd be without it?

Billionaire media moguls have done very well. Entrenched political interests have done great. Fossil fuel fucks and tobacco companies, pharma and insurance, polluters and propagandists have all done very well indeed - for themselves.

... The rest of us - not so much. Cheap junk, rotting minds, hyper saturated nonsense killing thought itself.

> The difference is that those ads tend to be better targeted

The problem is NOT the targeting. The problem is the unfathomable scale of the negative externalities.

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