Hacker News Reader

Comment by girvo | Hacker News Reader

Why should we give ad-tech their one millionth chance to "do the right thing"? They've proven time and time again they cannot be trusted.

View on HN

it isn't about giving ad-tech any chance of anything, it is about websites that are liked and used by people (most of whom have either no means or no desire to support those websites with money directly) being able to sustain themselves in order to exist.

If only there were other models for ad sales, say ones that were successfully used for decades prior to the advent of the internet and ubiquitous surveillance, that could be used instead of said ubiquitous surveillance...

But no. The internet enabled vast, invasive user tracking, therefore vast, invasive user tracking is the only conceivable way to sell advertising.

That's pretty much a false dichotomy: a site must either support itself via ads, or cease to exist.

There are other ways to get money to support your work, and if those ways are too painful right now, that's just an opportunity for disruption. Even better, it's an opportunity to prove that disruption doesn't have to be exploitative.

There are entire markets that cannot be accessed by publishers unless they subsidize content with ads. That is not a false dichotomy, that is a market requirement.

Not every website is the WSJ or Bloomberg, which cater to markets that are willing to pay for content.

Then maybe markets are the wrong tool to organized this kind of publishing.

Not saying that it has to be ads only. If there comes a disruptive alternative revenue model that allows all those websites to self-support themselves, I will be one of the first people to jump the ship and advocate for the ban of ads in favor of that new model.

To be honest, that doesn't matter to me. I think that websites who inflict the ad-slingers on their readers are showing great disrespect to and disregard for their readers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com