Of all the ad blockers, AdNauseam is the one that is feared the most. If everybody used it, it would kill the industry.
Fingerprinting and click fraud detection says NO!
Seriously, are we in 2000s where ad platforms couldn't detect malicious patterns and fake clicks and I could join a ad click group on facebook to make 100s of dollars?
Even in a case of everyone using an adblock, do you think they're not going to serve ads through first party domains making it very difficult to block? There are already ad companies who do this through their CDNs. why are the supposed users of "Hacker News" site oblivious to these things?
Because some people on this site aren't hackers and aren't even technical. They're from old media and are looking for "useful people" to help take down Google and Facebook.
Think Rupert Murdock browsing here globbing onto any anti-tech thread with the understanding of a typical 80yo.
Ad-supported media existed before the Internet. They would target based on content rather than reader.
That would be fine.
Any websites that prefer it could still be free then, but the costs to host them would have to be paid by their owner (like most personal or business websites today), not sponsored by ads.
Especially in the year 2023 where technology and internet access is so crucial to survival, I’d prefer for a low-income family to not have to choose between a meal and renewing their monthly email subscription.
No, I'm speaking from the position of someone who believes we should use fewer (or even no) services, be it Gmail, or Figma or Spotify free tier, or whatever.
There's always FOSS software. There's also freemium (no ads, just reduced functionality to lure someone to the premium full-featured version), and of course freeware.
Ad-supported also has a cost: the ad-induced consumerist spending is one of the biggest expenses people make (disproportionaly so for poorer people). And there's also the jacking up of product costs to cover an ad budget. Plus the social cost in multitude of ways (from the advertisers having influence over the service provider, to personal data being harvested and sold).
That's probably less than you pay more for your phone for more traffic and power to display ads.
More interestingly, where does all the money for ads (this for Google and the service showing ads) come from? It's paid by all consumers already.
Yes things cost money. Why should the poor be subsidised in viewing a website when they arent buying the expensive products being advertised on it?
Not if it was made illegal to show ads on paid services.
Passing such legislation would be rather redundant at that point, wouldn't it?
- micro transactions
- Abonnements
And I'm not entirely opposed to advertising; TV and radio have been ad supported for generations, but we've now added surveillance which is unacceptable. (The ads themselves are also more intrusive, but that's my secondary concern.)
hit the nail on the head with that typo
I suspect that at least some of those websites shouldn't exist to begin with. I don't see why any improved economic model needs to consider them.