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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

Ads don’t suck!

They’re a way for us to read articles, watch videos, see images, etc. without paying with our credit cards. Plus they’re a way for us to learn about new products and services we might be interested in.

What’s wrong with that?

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They are enormously biased toward people who can afford to pay for ads.

So they aren’t the best new products and services.

Also they encourage behavior that harms the planet like overconsumption and buying things like Coca Cola and whatnot.

The world would be better without ads. And I think videos, articles, and images would be better with alternate forms of paying for them.

> Also they encourage behavior that harms the planet like overconsumption and buying things like Coca Cola and whatnot.

They also encourage buying solar panels and electric cars. Huge ad campaigns were run around the recent COVID vaccine as well.

> They are enormously biased toward people who can afford to pay for ads.

But they make content, videos, etc. more accessible to people who don’t have the means to choose to overcome a paywall.

I’m not saying that ads have no positive value. I’m saying that their positive value is lower than their negative value and that they are a net detriment to society and technology.

I’m not for banning them. Like I don’t want to ban added sugar or drugs. I just wish we’d use them less. And I would never advise a friend to work on ad tech. It’s not quite as bad as working for a spam company, but maybe up there with making weapons of war or something.

> without paying with our credit cards

I'm not sure whether your message is an advocacy for 0 click micro-payment, or whether it's assuming that consumers don't pay for the ads.

I do not pay for ads with money. I pay for ads with my attention and personal data.

Please do not make the argument that I technically pay for my internet connection and so do in fact pay for ads. Please also do not make the argument that my time is money. It isn’t. I’m not interested in trading my time for money (outside of my day job).

> I’m not interested in trading my time for money (outside of my day job).

Then you should oppose ads. You are literally trading your time to compensate for content, as opposed to trading your money for content.

I’m not trading my time for money.

I’m trading (part of) my attention and some of my data for content.

> You are literally trading your time to compensate for content

This is literally not trading time for money.

You are bartering your time for a thing of value.

There is literally no difference between that, and selling your time for money and then buying the thing of value. Well, the latter takes two transactions to accomplish the same thing

Yes, there is literally no difference between those two things except that they are different things and one requires an additional step.

Other than that you are correct that there is literally no difference between them.

I'm making the argument that consumers pay for ads, because if the company didn't make any ads, it'd cost them less so they could decrease the price of the product?

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