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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

I hate to seem condescending, but the "why" is basically what the essay is about for the first 75%. The issue that advertisements have is that the incentives and desires of advertisers usually misaligns with users, sometimes greatly. It's not a concept that's particularly new; for example, take Wikipedia's reasoning for not accepting advertisements. (I'd like to ignore the unrelated issues with Wikipedia funding here, since it's not relevant to this particular point.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Funding_Wikipedia_th...

I don't believe direct sales fixes everything. There's no single party whose ultimate wishes are fully aligned with what's best for everyone. I do think, however, that direct sales and donations are preferable to ads in this regard.

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I could have been more clear: I don't understand why the non-advertising business's interest is aligned with that of the user. I follow the idea that advertising creates a conflict of interests, but I don't follow that not advertising aligns interests. The business is there to sell a product for the most profit. Making money by selling the product doesn't by itself give them an incentive to produce a better product.

If they don't make the website provide value to me, I will stop paying them. If things are popping up that are irrelevant to my search, that's not helping me. If it's not helping me, I stop paying, and they feel a hit. It's probably not a big deal if a single person does it, but if enough people do it, then they either change to get those people back (or replace them with new customers), or they go out of business.

I don't entirely follow, though; the idea is that you want the people who pay you to be satisfied with what they're paying for so that they continue to do so, convince others to do so, and are willing to increase their spending. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be a conflict of interest for advertisers in the first place.

There's reasons that the incentive to keep the users satisfied may not be followed, but it's mostly tangential, and relates more to other forces than it does where the money comes from.

> Making money by selling the product doesn't by itself give them an incentive to produce a better product.

Selling more product / continued subscriptions is the incentive.

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