Comment by functionmouse
17 days ago
I have a feeling everyone with understanding of the situation or even a vague malaise opening a news article and being bombarded with popups that intercept their attention knows why ad blockers are needed, and any perceived "discourse" to the contrary is one sided, from the ad agencies and media platforms that largely and subversively direct the narrative.
It's getting harder by the day to tell sentiment apart from narrative.
"You will be annoyed" and "you will be served malware" are two different classes of need. The first is enough to get me running Firefox/uBlock Origin on my own devices. The second is what got me to run it at work.
Nobody wants ads (*) but somehow they are never banned.
Makes you wonder, are we living in a democracy or not?
(*) shown at inconvenient moments and tracking the user; yellow pages were fine
If people not liking a thing is enough reason to ban it in a democracy, then how come we still pay tax?
And if you want to say "but someone must pay for the public services," the I have some bad news about what pays for your online content consumptions.
This thread already discussed that point. See the discussion if you're interested in why it is false.
I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads. These days, good luck getting bipartisan agreement, especially with all the dark money in politics being legalized and normalized.
That said... The modern internet is built off many free services paid for by people who buy stuff from ads. It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear. Hosting costs money.
I could see a dystopia without ads where a government provides free hosting for citizens. That quickly becomes "thought police" when an authoritarian leading head of state comes in. If we pretend like that will not happen, I think we would have a much more wonderful internet.
> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.
Don't you see the problem with that statement? Ads are profitable, and we are paying for them, indirectly, through buying products and services. Adtech takes a chunk of that profit. Therefore, we pay more than we should!
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> I do not recall ever hearing of an organized effort to ban ads.
See e.g. https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Measure_5,_Prohibit_Billboard...
> It is hard to imagine a world without ads - many sites and services would disappear.
It is hard to imagine a world without horses & carts; many businesses would disappear.
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My town banned billboards entirely. It's been a resounding success.
I don't care. It was better before there were ads. It will be better after there are ads. Most actual useful content isn't monetised, and most monetised content is slop. There is a spectrum between the two endpoints, of course.