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Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

On a subset of the devices I use, I pay by the byte for my Internet service. In that case, blasting me with a bunch of video content that's much larger than the article I intended to read. Advertisers do not respect this, even though it has an impact on my finances. I reserve the right to choose whether I consent to paying for something, and I don't consent to the terms they're trying to offer me.

If they were to give me some opportunity to make a decision about this, in the same way that a real storefront does implicitly by me being able to look into the store before choosing to enter, that would be one thing. But such a mechanism does not exist, so as far as I'm concerned the analogy is invalid.

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Valid point, I hadn't considered that the amount of data they're trying to send you may end up costing you more money than you were willing to allot to their site. However, I don't think that makes the entirety of the analogy invalid. They still think about their website differently than you, regardless of how you're being charged to view it.

It could also be argued that once you're in a store, there is a very real disrespect of your personal finances placed on you by the burden of advertising and product placement. An abuse of consumer psychology in a physical space is just as bad as an abuse of your phone data. Both cost you time and money. While it still stands that you couldn't have seen the video advertising coming ahead of time, you also can't see the psychological tricks that get you to purchase more coming ahead of time either. In both cases I think it's up to us to not get fooled again.

Another spot where the analogy breaks down is that I don't think of a non-ecommerce website as a kind of store. I think of it as being more equivalent to a magazine or newspaper. And in those cases advertising is certainly present, but the overall experience is much less overtly invasive to me, the consumer.

I also suspect that non-ecommerce website publishers really would rather think about their websites as being akin to magazines. They aren't really in control of what gets put on their page through the ad networks in the same way that print publishers are, and I can't imagine many editors are terribly thrilled about the things that ad networks place alongside the content they produce. I really kind off feel bad for them; they're caught up in a pretty terrible Faustian bargain.

Very true! Non ecommerce sites suffer just as badly as their users when an executive decision is made to increase the amount of advertising on their pages.

I wonder if the increase in adverts is based on someone thinking that it will pay for their site's cost or if they're doing it with the mindset that advertising is their business model rather than providing interesting content.

Nowadays, advertising is their business model and producing quality content is merely a means to an end.

The rule of thumb is pretty simple: If you're not paying them money then you couldn't possibly be their customer. You're probably actually their product.

> You're probably actually their product.

In some cases - like GMail and other communications services where other people are involved - you and the people you communicate with are their product.

The "second hand smoke"-style effect of these "free" services has been largely ignored. Making a (bad) decision to trade your privacy for some service can be morally justifiable. Making that decision for the friends/family you communicate with is another thing entirely.

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