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Comment by virgildotcodes | Hacker News Reader

I’ll probably be crucified for this but I think the free w/advertising model is not fundamentally evil, and gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have, keeps the rest of us from death by 1,000 monthly subscriptions.

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> gives poor people access to lots of shit that they otherwise wouldn’t have

Addiction is a precursor to poverty. If we accept the domino theory of "online advertising -> addictive design" then the fundamental evil becomes clear. Holding people in poverty in order to profit from their time and attention.

But the most valuable ad targets are people with money unless my product specifically targets low-income individuals (pay day lenders, etc).

Most of the people I know with money are difficult to convince to spend it. e.g. rich people don't buy designer bags; poor people do. My wife makes all of our food; we do delivery or go out to eat maybe once every year or two. We have no recurring subscriptions (other than utilities). Our phone bill is $20 for both of us. etc.

We also live in an area where outdoor ads are banned (which tends to be the case in wealthy areas IME), and I block ads on our computers, so we rarely encounter them. Consumerism is gauche.

I think that's debatable, there's arguments like quantity over quality to be made, but I also think it's somewhat beside the point of "ad supported services are a favour to the poor."

Which is why a lot of things are moving to "pay w/ ads". Not only do you get paid twice, your ad space is more valuable because you've weeded out the people who can't pay.

I agree. I think the main problem is personalized advertisement that incentivizes companies to record as much data as possible. I'd prefer if they worked like they do in print magazines. Every reader sees the same.

Lets say I'm reading a laptop review. Show me adds from the laptop manufacturer or of websites that sell said laptop. People reading the review are likely in the market for a laptop so it makes sense to show it. At most you could probably narrow it down to the country so a German doesn't get shown a Best Buy ad but thats as far as I would go.

> death by 1,000 monthly subscriptions

Is another area needing new legislation. Changes to copyright, interoperability requirements and such, we can change more than one parameter

>I think the free w/advertising model is not fundamentally evil

I think it's fundamentally anti-competitive.

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