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They absolutely don't though. They skew the playing field to whoever has the most access to ad publishing (most money usually). I'd bet that a significant proportion of all the VC money raised over the last 25 years was funneled straight to Google AdSense.
What you're describing is leveling the playing field. Without Ads you'd have 10 entrepreneurs. With it you have 10000
Before the internet was fuelled by ads there were some ad-free directories and human-curated lists of websites that people seemed to like quite a lot. That could have been a viable alternative.
I'm not suggesting the proliferation of ads has been bad for the web. Far from it. It means anyone with an ad budget can compete, which is a valid point. The problem that brings is that so much of the success of a product comes from the marketing budget now. In a market where the worst product can win if it has a bigger ad spend, it's hard to believe ads are a net benefit.
And almost no startups extract or exploit. The reason Europe is so poor and not growing is because of this dark turn toward zero sum thinking. Startups literally create new wealth, it's not taken from somewhere (except rare cases of fraud or scams)
Yes, please!
Once a while I turn off ad-blocker to remind myself how bad it got. And OMG! It is bad, Bad, BAD! Unusable. Sometimes is less more.
It's pretty obvious that this is not what the person you're replying to's talking about
No, the complaint is about the "offering" in the first place. People don't want your shit forced in front of them. The fact that you are incapable of realizing this on your own is hilarious.
Person drives on road, billboards blast ads in face. (Just don't drive on this road, nothing is forced on you!)
Oh, and if you are going to argue that a website is not a public space like a road, then why the hell are you making it publicly accessible? Just lock that shit down behind a login if you are so private about it.
And I can distract you when you are working?
And I can pollute your view?
Or track you around the internet?
If you show me an office full of distractions and say, "would you like to work here? It comes with distractions" then of course that's fine (I would say no). But in fact most people prefer the tradeoffs that come with the distractions
So if you had someone follow you around in your day to day life writing down your every activity, then sold the log of your comings and goings to hundreds of companies for cash - that wouldn't be a "harm" by your definition then, would it? Because that's effectively what's happening on the internet, but because people don't see immediate negative impact on their lives they don't see it as "harm".
Also, most people wouldn't actually be harmed by what you're describing. It just wouldn't be super valuable data (we already know where you shop because the store and credit card will sell that information)
Internet ads can in theory be turned on or off per user, it's no rocket science, so you could opt-in and everybody could be happy.
....I don't recall making such an argument? Maybe you replied to the wrong person?
Well I mean that's pretty straightforward, is it not? Someone who is in a coma is not aware of what's happening to them = ergo, no harm is being done, no?
>>I'm claiming that nothing bad happens to you from information being traded about you
Ok let me follow this for couple more seconds then - any information? Or only specific kinds? Like if I take explicit pictures of my partner and put them on the internet(or sell them, to tick the "trading" box), but she _never_ finds out and it has zero impact on her life - was there harm being done?
>>"bad" you prefer
It's not a definiton of bad but a definition of harm we're differing on. You said no one was ever harmed by online tracking - I disagree on that point.
Perhaps the Internet would be smaller without ads but it would surely not be darker - all the darkness can be traced back to bad incentives from ad-based business models. Most likely it would be about the same size because the vast majority of content is created by users who never receive a single cent.
Adtech is parasitic. It provides zero value to society. All it does is force businesses to pay to get back the same visibility they'd receive if ads didn't exist.
You don't know how good we have it
Microwaves were also for the few, and now they are cheap and most people have them.
And microwaves got cheaper without having to resort to displaying ads while the user cooks food.
What a stupid argument.
UBI does that better. Not only does it mean we can build the businesses we actually care about and believe in, as opposed to having to defile our own purpose with ads to stay afloat; it also improves societal well-being by allowing people to focus on the content they want/need and not be distracted and annoyed by unsolicited ads literally every day.
If this doesn't resonate with you, you should reevaluate your reasons for making a business. Are you making it so that you can spend your time doing what you enjoy, or are you making it to exploit other people for your gain?
UBI won't work in the US, we have enough data now that I've moved on
But with zero ads the internet would be a smaller, exceedingly beautiful place.