Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.
“We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you’re looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we’ll probably opt you back in when you aren’t paying attention.”
Many friends of mine are like saying why would i care i’d rather see ads that are relevant than ones that arent. Like dude i dont want ads at all and i dont want my data to be used to influence my buying behavior.
I don’t care if I have to see unobtrusive ads (not overlays, not popups, not unskippable videos) ads help keep many web services free, sometimes I even find it helpful when ads are relevant to my recent searches or the page I am looking at. But having companies build up profiles about me and then share that between themselves is bullshit, that kind of behavior would be treated as stalking if done by an individual, why is it ok for a business?
While this is an understandable desire my question is as follow:
If you don’t want ads, and don’t want to pay for every service, how’s all the internet system supposed to be sustainable on the long run? How should things be financed?
Honestly that’s not our problem to solve. If we disagree with a business model we can choose not to use it, the onus isn’t on us to find another one for the business.
If your product isn’t worth paying for that’s a you problem and if your business goes under because it wasn’t sustainable that’s also a you problem.
Is pretty likely that the business offered nothing new or innovative at a price people would part with their money for and just because you want to start a competing business in a market means nothing.
Competition is great but no business is entitled to a piece of the market solely because they want to exist. There’s no point being a carbon copy of an existing service if you expect people to pay when your offering already exists somewhere else and if you want people to pay your business instead of another you need to improve something or create something of benefit for them to at a price point both sides can work with.
You’re absolutely right, but this is a different case I think: It’s freerider problem, people WANT to use internet services, want to use social and so on, the problem is, if possible, they don’t want to pay for it. In the scenario where we make ads completely illegal, companies will look for other ways to monetize the service, because a system which is not in break even on the long term is cursed to bankruptcy.
People want to watch Netflix, but without paying, that means that if everyone do like that, Netflix will find other ways of monetization. That’s why games became full of microtransanction and always online stuff, for example. That’s what made ads popular in the first place, don’t want to pay? No problem, here’s a free sites with ads. should socials be closed community where you can access only paying, like pay tv? Because even right now removing ads on Reddit or YouTube paying is possible.
Even Lemmy growth at a certain point will incur in this, because a platform can’t hold itself on 2 unpaid developers and free labor of volunteers who pay for server costs too.
Would we better off without these sites if we’re not willing to pay for them? Maybe yes. But what certain is that without financial stability a project can’t go far. The problem is both of the producer of the producer, sure, but also its users should wonder how much they want the platform, because it will evolve accordingly.
Honest answer: by op’s friends!
Most people don’t mind the parasites? Great! Let those who wanna be part of the system subsidise those of us in the margins who don’t.
We already paid for the Internet though.
You pay for internet connection, not internet content.
Services don’t get a penny out of what you pay your ISP
Ok then hear me out. Let free content supported by ads die out. Make everything paid.
This is practically impossible because piracy is easy and convenient.
Ads emerged right because they are a simpler way of monetization
Why don’t businesses do away with free and go to a completely paid model?
Let’s continue on this path of thinking: Customers already pay using their data. So if you want to show ads you have to pay customers since you are scrapping their data?
Unfortunately, a majority of the population like the ad based free service model, so here we are.