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Comment by bondarchuk | Hacker News Reader

The whole world is drowning in ads, and people have by and large done nothing about it. Revealed preference is that the vast majority of people support ads.

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Support or tolerate or don’t realize there are alternatives?

Everything on the internet is free. Everyone expects everything on the internet to be free. Therefore, everything is run on ads.

Lots of people don't mind paying when they have money to burn. The problem is that so many people don't.

Doesn't really work in practice, even among those who can afford it.

PERSON 1 Have you heard of Kagi? It’s like Google, but better, and... oh... you have to pay for it.

PERSON 2 Why would I pay for something when I can use Google for free? I use Adblock anyway.

I actually did pay for Kagi, but the results weren't nearly as good. I absolutely would pay if they were though.

That is true but even some paid services (like Disney Plus and Amazon Prime) have ads now

Not true, this very site has no ads.

Uh, yes it does? HN has tons of "[some YC startup] is hiring a [something]". Not sure if they're paid though.

HN is an ad!

https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

It's a talent acquisition ploy.

Revealed preference tells you which of the given options people prefer over the others made available, not which they support. Sometimes that's the same thing, sometimes it's not.

I've known people in abusive relationships who would tell you they're happy. We can't pretend like conditioning or manufactured consent aren't a thing.

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