Media Websites: 70% of the Carbon Footprint Caused by Ads and Stats
marmelab.com
marmelab.com
Am I reading this right?
> On average, using an Ad Blocker reduces emissions by 37%
As much as I hate advertising, I guess to be completely fair you'd have to compare an ad-laden site with a comparable ad-free site that had a sustainable business model. I'd guess the ads still use for energy overall, but there must be hidden costs of an "ad-free" content-business site that include energy.
If that is true, the savings seem completely nonsubstantial to me. I am all for saying that everyone must do its part in term of being more energy efficient, but I suspect here the elevated energy consumption due to ads are nothing compared to the energy consumed by the screen when you read an article, for example.
You can have plenty of reasons to be against ads, and energy consumption may be one of them, but I don't think this article proves that point.
Regulation would go a long way, like it did with Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) after Reagan and Thatcher came together to facilitate the "ban" on these substances. People slowly changing their buying behavior would not have sufficed.
The business model I’m going for is free daily news, everything else is accessible with an annual subscription. The idea is to find a sustainable model that brings in enough revenue via subscriptions to pay for all the work needed to bring more text-only content to the world.