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Comment by littlecranky67 | Hacker News Reader

Online advertisements should be forbidden as a whole. The attention-stealing and engagement-maximising internet with all it horribly effects only exist, due to advertising. And we know that the world without online ads is perfectly possible and livable, since we all lived through 1996.

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This is a wild take. Most serious media companies would collapse without online ad revenue. Google would be dead, along with all the products that sorta run the world like maps. But even local publications, like your independent city news site, which you presumably think is good, also die instantly.

The ladder is also pulled up behind any kind of independent quality content producers. You cant run a successful channel without dedicated paid subscribers, and you can't build a dedicated subscriber base without years of work and supplementing your income with ads, so basically everything with an online audience also dies.

They wouldnt be dead, everbody would use subscription and they could easily afford them because stuff would be cheaper.

The biggest misconception that average people can’t get their head around is that all ads are being paid for by themselves - the consumer. Meta and Google offer nothing for free to you, you are paying for their services everytime you buy a Coke, a car, or a Levis pant, or … anything.

what assures you they would be cheaper? they have already proven people can pay a higher price so why not charge more? this won't be enforced worldwide people would just switch platforms to one that isn't in a jurisdiction where ads are banned

because contrary to many peoples believe system, prices actually work to modulate demand. The whole idea that you can increase prices without losing customers is nonsense.

Did you not read:

> And we know that the world without online ads is perfectly possible and livable, since we all lived through 1996.

We're in an information crisis. Most people don't know what is true or false anymore. Google and Meta didn't make it better and in fact might have contributed to it. I'd say let's go back to 1996.

Real household median income in the US has risen by more than 25% since 1996, largely driven by technology built for and by the ecosystem you want to pull out by the roots.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

That would be a staggering cut to everyone’s standard of living.

assuming 2% inflation over 30 years, that means that a dollar in 1996 is now worth $1.81. 80% depreciation versus 25% increase in income is not comparable.

The wealth inequality in the past 30 years has dramatically shifted in favor of the ultra rich.

Technology has been used to create illegal monopolies -> too big to fail -> surely we can't / don't need to regulate this -> tech companies get away with murder and laugh all the way to the bank.

A company like Meta could finesse their algorythms to bias people against antitrust action and you would never know.

To repeat the talking point of tech companies that "technology has helped us, therefore we should not regulate it in any way" is to accept the premise of people that spend every waking hour of their day figuring out what they can get away with to screw you over.

I would asume the FRED statistic already is inflation adjusted as they said real income (usally inflation adjusted). That is 25% come ontop of the inflation, while you subtract it.

That being said, inflation or CPI is a very poor metric over time. I mean, sure, lets look what a smartphone with an all-knowing AI and internet access cost 100 years ago and see how much more we are paying now for it. Or the price of antibiotics, polio vacines and so on - sure they were cheap 100 years ago.

Because it is obvisouly not possible, we measure CPI in the price of eggs, milk, veggies, transportation and so on. Sure, we are all happy that we can buy today 25% more butter than we could 20 years ago.

As you suggest, if anything, inflation statistics overstate the decline in currency value over time.

Over the long term, attempting to quantitatively adjust for the value of goods that simply did not exist prior to time X becomes a subjective game.

What’s the value of $10 worth of penicillin or $10 worth of LLM tokens relative to their “substitutes” in an era before they were invented?

“We should regulate tech companies” != “Online advertising should be illegal.”

Also, real median household income.

Oh no, would Google and Meta be dead? How will we manage?!

Why do you think podcasters give you recommendations for mattresses?

True but the whole “influencer” and “creative” industry would collapse overnight. A few large ones would survive on their patreon income, most would collapse and have to get a real job, if those are still around.

…and nothing of value would be lost.

Mostly true but there are a few good channels with very practical information for picking up new skills (gardening, woodwork, playing an instrument, etc) as well as looking up troubleshooting information.

Those too would be lost.

Sure some drag out three minutes into fifteen, but whatever…

In the olden days, those people wrote for things we called ‘magazines’. Without infinite free content at people’s fingertips, actually paying for curated content will likely make a comeback.

Magazines primarily make money through advertising.

Even that “curated” content is often the result of a company’s PR professionals sending free gear for review and possibly wining and dining the writers.

It’s a bit harder to find stuff in a magazine that helps troubleshoot a water pump at night…

I’m going to shock you, but you can pay for magazine-like content through the Internet right now.

That information used to come with the water pump

How many people keep those docs around? It’s also easier to search on YT than rifle though the pump manual which may include all failure modes…

You do realize that sponsored stories aren’t modern invention? Magazines were full of it too, sometimes disclosed, most often not.

And? They’d be banned too.

In fact they were, and perhaps even still are, however regulators have simply stopped enforcing consumer protection laws in the past 20 years. Neo-liberalism reigns supreme and Ronald Regan became the king of Europe.

Nothing would be lost, it would just be somewhere else. Meta and Google monopolized content and ads.

We had the usenet, irc, ftp and small hobbiest websites long before those companies existed. It actually helps if you can remember 1996 or maybe 1998.

If it's really that good, you'll pay for it with the money you saved in advertising. You're paying for the ads, don't forget. Plenty of people used to pay for things like woodworking classes, back when there was money. Doing a woodworking class in person at a woodworking shop will teach you much better than youtube.

Yeah, but why don't we ever hear any MEPs talk about it like that?

They buy ads too. It’d adversely affect their campaign budgets. (Sure, it would adversely affect their competitors’ too, but second-order effects are usually too complex for politicians to understand.)

MEPs want to write rules that mean they get to fine rich US companies. Local advertising might be worse for you overall but you'd have to do more work to get less free money.

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