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Comment by yholio | Hacker News Reader

As a consequence, the ad-driven web is much more open and inclusive. The marginal cost of serving another page view to a Pakistani reader is zero, while a $10 subscription is a massive expense for someone who might earn just $100 a month. So if the content can be monetized by selling western eyeballs, the ad driven web works as a massive cultural redistribution to societies that can't really afford to develop similar resources in either subscription or ad-supported models.

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> As a consequence, the ad-driven web is much more open and inclusive.

It's also much more addictive, manipulative, and creepy. Is it desirable for Facebook to be accessible to everyone if the net effect of them accessing it is depression, anxiety, and pervasive behavioural tracking?

The specific example of Pakistan is also illustrative[1] because the ad-driven web acts as an arm of the government surveillance apparatus in states without robust privacy rights. Is "free" worth it in these cases? Maybe in the short-term, but I think the long-term outlook is much more grim.

[1] https://tribune.com.pk/story/992765/facebook-user-data-reque...

The problem with ad-driven content is that the content is no longer 'pure' -- it is optimized to maximize eyeballs rather than serve its purpose (e.g. news is meant to keep readers up to date with current affairs they're interested in, art and literature is meant to, well, do what art and literature do). When these things are driven by the desire to maximize advertising revenue, they take on a completely different quality.

Was any content ever 'pure'? Newspapers always relied on ad revenue, and there was always the potential for a conflict of interest there. Whether it's internet sites or papers or TV news shows, they can't afford to annoy their advertisers too much.

The only ways to avoid this are either:

A: Go with publically/government funded content, which will likely have a government bias (or one that encourages people to pay for them).

B: Go with free fan/volunteer run sources which don't have monetary interests, and that's becoming rarer and rarer nowadays.

This is definitely true, though it doesn't exclude a hybrid approach (where you can choose between free/ads, paid/no ads), which is what I believe the parent comment was talking about.

But if all the people who can afford to buy stuff buy "no ads", then there won't be a free/ads option at all, because advertisers are only interested in the people who can afford to buy stuff, who don't see the ads.

That's a fair point, but realistically, everyone won't be paying to hide ads - lots of people would prefer to browse for free, even if they could afford the subscription.

The people that can afford to pay and do not is a less valuable population than the people that can afford to pay and do.

Edit: valuable from an advertisement point of view.

Indeed, which is how we got into this comment thread to begin with. Personally I'd gladly pay to hide ads in services I use frequently, but that also makes me more attractive to the advertisers. Fortunately most services that I use that have an ad-free option have also kept it ad-free, at least for now.

  But if all the people who can afford
  to buy stuff buy "no ads"

Have you ever heard of a newspaper editor complaining "Too many of our readers are paying subscribers" ?

I haven't - seems to me that's a problem a lot of publications would love to have!

Newspaper subscribers still see ads... that's the whole point of this discussion.

The "ad-driven web" might as well not show ads to the Pakistani reader: near zero cost and near zero revenue.

> As a consequence, the ad-driven web is much more open and inclusive.

Nearly all the best and most useful community sites to me in my lifetime were the ones that start with no ad model and struggle as they scale.

This is among the most interesting and insightful things I’ve read on this topic. Thanks for sharing this idea.

This accessibility benefit also applies to "freemium" business models (mobile apps with a free tier and premium features) or Fortnite's free-to-play mode where payment does not change game mechanics. It is not limited to advertising.

> The marginal cost of serving another page view to a Pakistani reader is zero

Considering how much bloat news websites currently serve, I'm not sure it would even load properly.

Doesn't that run the risk that content is then "optimized" only for those Western eyeballs?

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