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Comment by functionmouse | Hacker News Reader

I have a feeling everyone with understanding of the situation or even a vague malaise opening a news article and being bombarded with popups that intercept their attention knows why ad blockers are needed, and any perceived "discourse" to the contrary is one sided, from the ad agencies and media platforms that largely and subversively direct the narrative.

It's getting harder by the day to tell sentiment apart from narrative.

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"You will be annoyed" and "you will be served malware" are two different classes of need. The first is enough to get me running Firefox/uBlock Origin on my own devices. The second is what got me to run it at work.

Nobody wants ads (*) but somehow they are never banned.

Makes you wonder, are we living in a democracy or not?

(*) shown at inconvenient moments and tracking the user; yellow pages were fine

I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads. These days, good luck getting bipartisan agreement, especially with all the dark money in politics being legalized and normalized.

That said... The modern internet is built off many free services paid for by people who buy stuff from ads. It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear. Hosting costs money.

I could see a dystopia without ads where a government provides free hosting for citizens. That quickly becomes "thought police" when an authoritarian leading head of state comes in. If we pretend like that will not happen, I think we would have a much more wonderful internet.

> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.

Don't you see the problem with that statement? Ads are profitable, and we are paying for them, indirectly, through buying products and services. Adtech takes a chunk of that profit. Therefore, we pay more than we should!

So you are paying more than you should for a loaf of bread because your local shop is making a profit? because if you went to the factory you could buy the same loaf for less? Of course you could make the bread yourself for even less because the factory is making a profit, and grow the wheat yourself for even less because the farmer is making a profit.

You are not 'paying more than you should'. Not least because there is no price you 'should' be paying. Further I'm not sure how you imagine this working? The retailer gets to decide prices or not? They get to decide if they advertise or not? The advertiser's have competition? The retailers? Retailers are presumably choosing to advertise because they think it's worth it, thus it is? You are free to choose to buy those products, that will feed into their decision whether and how to advertise.

Are you equating the shopkeeper across the street earning 15 an hour to sell me my loaf of bread to the advertisement industrial complex?

Why are we appealing to emotion?

Why a shopkeeper on 15 and hour and not Walmart?

Why the advertising industrial complex and not some small 1 man advertising firm?

That's a fallacy like the broken window fallacy.

In no way is the consumer helped here, in the end.

To make things worse, the consumer is nudged into buying more stuff and thus contributing to global overconsumption.

I'm not saying the consumer is helped.

I'm saying that all businesses aim to make money, so the fact that this one is doesn't make it morally wrong.

Further you've ascribed some price we 'should' be paying. There's no such thing, and you can't even say that prices would be lower without it. Tobacco companies haven't lowered prices in countries where advertising is banned.

>To make things worse, the consumer is nudged into buying more stuff and thus contributing to global overconsumption

A. Surely the consumer would have bought something else? Although gambling advertising is popular...

B. You are now contradicting yourself. You made the claim that advertising was essentially an economic dead weight. Now you're saying it contributes to over consumption. If advertising only puts up prices, that means we can buy less things than we would be able to.

C. This is assuming only bad things are advertised.

In summary. You're trying to make a quasi economic argument against advertising that isn't really correct. I have my own issues with advertising, so I'm not particularly defending it. But that doesn't excuse making up an argument that doesn't make much sense.

The entire problem is that you're looking at it from an economic perspective. From within that framework your reasoning might make sense, but that doesn't mean that with a different starting point it is still valid.

> A + B

No, because you can save money. And when you buy things not on a whim you might actually buy something that has lasting value as opposed to all the tons of cheap fashion people buy.

> C. This is assuming only bad things are advertised.

For good things, go to the yellow pages. I'm not against advertising. Just the forms where it is shoved in my face randomly instead of brought up when I am actively looking for something and want to be informed about products, and of course the forms that have user tracking.

The point of ads is generally to tempt you to make purchases where the alternative is having nothing. So the comparison I think is more like grocery stores putting junk food right in the checkout to try and have you buy some on impulse?

I'm pushing back against the argument that the advertiser make money, ergo we are paying more than we 'should'.

That's how businesses work. The shop makes money when you buy things, so surely the same argument should apply. Except it doesn't, because that is an acceptable business, so the argument isn't really an argument.

The advertiser loses money when you see ads. It makes money when you buy stuff, so it raises prices.

Or the advert increases sales, this paying for itself, and why the advertiser advertises in the first place.

I don't care. It was better before there were ads. It will be better after there are ads. Most actual useful content isn't monetised, and most monetised content is slop. There is a spectrum between the two endpoints, of course.

My town banned billboards entirely. It's been a resounding success.

> I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads.

See e.g. https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Measure_5,_Prohibit_Billboard...

> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.

It is hard to imagine a world without horses & carts; many businesses would disappear.

Horses and carts didn't need to be banned to become obsolete.

If people not liking a thing is enough reason to ban it in a democracy, then how come we still pay tax?

And if you want to say "but someone must pay for the public services," the I have some bad news about what pays for your online content consumptions.

This thread already discussed that point. See the discussion if you're interested in why it is false.

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