Comment by TheDong
9 days ago
Just because some people are more resilient to opium, and some people can have a good time on it, doesn't mean you should get an opium injection when you're going for a regularly scheduled doctor's appointment.
Ads are being forced on you when you're trying to do something else, like you go to facebook to see your actual friend's pictures of their kids, you're not looking for ads, and yet you get some micro-brainwashing on the side.
The true "skill issue" is that governments are too unskilled to prevent these mass mental attacks to prey upon their citizens, and haven't gotten off their ass enough to make advertisement even more illegal than other similarly harmful substances like opium, tobacco, and online gambling (both sports gambling and gacha games).
Those apps where you share pics or whatever would not exist without ads if people had to pay for them.
So I am not sure if all is bad in that sense. Bc it lets the apps for sharing without people having to pay to exist in the first place.
I am not doing any assessment regarding to the toxicity of ads. I am just trying to objectively say that this also spreads "horizontally" software for free in some sense.
> Those apps where you share pics or whatever would not exist without ads if people had to pay for them.
This is a wild assertion.
Were we not able to build roads before billboards were invented? Does your telephone company interrupt your call with ads? Does the postal service open your letters to insert a leaflet with promotional offers? What alternate universe do people who claim this live in???
They would exist, but would be less spread. I am not saying it is good or bad. I am saying that if the barrier to entry is lowest, more people can reach it.
This is a fact with almost anything that you look at around you, not only software. Any incentives in general.
Also, people prefer to have ads than to pay for something. You will say ads are worse or whatever, and you can be right. But the fact is that people that do not pay for software have no problem in being monetized. Otherwise free apps would not have users and paying apps would have a lot. But the reality is that paid apps have a higher barrier to entry from the point of view of users reached.
The only alternative to ads isn't people directly paying cash to evil private companies.
Like, the fact that instagram's average revenue per user is around $25 means that instagram ads are, on average, tricking people into buying 100s of dollars of crap they don't need.
If the ads weren't successfully brainwashing people, eventually people would stop buying ads presumably.
... But yes, I agree people will generally choose a "brainwashed consumer" tax to the tune of $300/year over paying instagram $25/year.
So, what's the solution? Advertisement should be illegal, the government should tax everyone a bit more, and taxpayer dollars should go to making ad-free social networks where people can post pictures of their dog.
Like, having highways and electricity and the internet was seen as beneficial, so the government has subsidized a huge amount of infrastructure for those things, to the benefit of all.
If being able to search the largest collection of knowledge ever created, the internet, has value to the people, the government should create or subsidize an ad-free search engine. If communicating has such value, the government should create or subsidize a messaging app that doesn't brainwash the users.
To add to this, government-run services can't absolve themselves of all wrongdoing with Terms of Service they can change on a whim. Censorship within government-run social media is subject to the restrictions placed on the government's control of speech.
(Technically, the terms are still there but they're called Titles and Statutes and other things that require a bunch of ceremony and agreement to change, not just an email.)
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