Comment by bondarchuk
2 months ago
Quite an interesting idea tbh, however if you want to frame it in commodity terms then you should also admit that currently, this very valuable commodity is taken from its owners without their consent. You could compare it to e.g. human labour, maybe: sure, there will always be a market for it, yet we allow labour to be extracted from people only in a heavily regulated framework and don't just let it be taken by force from them. Or property: there is a near infinite demand for physical objects, yet when I own a physical object you nevertheless can't just take it from me. So it should be with our attention.
Is it taken without consent? Don't you consent when you watch YouTube, or use some ad-funded site? Don't you get something (the content) in return?
There are alternatives, but most people choose to pay with attention, so that's where creators are being pulled to. But that doesn't mean that you're forced to consume it.
It is taken without consent if you leave your house or use public transport, or use certain private sector services that are de facto required to live a normal life.
With that line of thought we'd quickly get into very strange territory. You can't use public transport without either standing or sitting on their chairs, even though you might prefer different chairs. Are they now forcing you to use their services without your consent?
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I think the difference here is people don't really know what they're giving up psychologically.
When you're manipulating someone to choose against their best interests, it's happening on an unconscious level and freedom of choice is completely removed from the picture. In these types of cases, no I don't believe there is consent involved.
If I go play chess against a rando at a park and lose, I lost.
If I go play chess against someone who spent 150,000 human years studying how to beat me, to say 'well, it was all up to your mental strength, same as it's always been forever, and you just weren't strong enough' is BS.
In the last 40 years (which equate to 80 billion human years of output) there has been hundreds of thousands if not millions of human years of effort put into tearing down peoples' barriers, implanting ideas, etc. This isn't 1960 madmen advertising, this is something different from all of human history. Never before have hundreds of thousands to millions of human years been dedicated to manipulating humans in such a continuous, scientifically approached way and on such ever present/connected platforms with the synchronization of message/manipulation across contexts/mediums.
Edit: Changed from using 'man years' to 'human years'.
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Is that limited to ads? If someone buys a car because it looks sporty and powerful which speaks to his subconscious, was he not manipulated? Was he able to give consent to trade money for that car?
I understand where you're coming from, but psychological manipulation is everywhere and committed by everyone all the time and defining its use as voiding consent seems very problematic.
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Is it taken without consent?
There's no clearer lack of consent than attempts by advertisers to circumvent, block, or ban ad-blockers.
These advertisers could choose to put up paywalls but that would harm their search rankings, so they don't. Instead, they play games with cloaking [1] and other SEO techniques in order to bypass the user's wishes and show them ads (or even ads + cloaked paywalls).
At least YouTube offers a paid premium service which remains ad-free.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking
> There's no clearer lack of consent than attempts by advertisers to circumvent, block, or ban ad-blockers.
There is consent (otherwise you wouldn't visit the website in the first place), users with adblock are just trying to minimize their exposure. Totally reasonable (I do it too), but nobody is forcing them.
That may be true for e.g. a malicious software on your computer that force-redirects your regular browsing activity to some evil site, but that's not what we're discussing.
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Would you support a regulation that all ads must offer a paid opt out?
How is the price determined?
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In practical terms there isn't an alternative. Sure there are websites without ads, but they won't tell me about what happens in my community. Sure, I could go to the town hall and watch sessions, but it's not practical.
Also: Even alternatives to YouTube will end up in the ad market. Just see the different streaming services where one already pays and who are rolling out ads. And well, YouTube still is the central place with all the videos. The only choice I have is using an ad blocker, which could be seen as amoral.
I hate ads as much as anyone (full disclosure, I use an ad blocker), but with all due respect, the reason there is no “practical” alternative to a service displaying ads is – someone has to pay for it. And before you say “I am paying or I am willing to pay”, it often costs more than you are willing to pay to run these services.
When you say it is “not practical” to go to the town hall, what you are really saying is “my time is valuable and I want someone else to expend their valuable time recording that information and disseminating it to me at low or no cost to me”. Believe me, I understand the desire. But if we were all honest, someone has to pay for this and capitalism has decided that this is the “best” way to do that.
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