zlacker

>>pbrw+(OP)
Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads. Lots of websites have marginal utility, but can be paid for with ads. And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain.

>>thornc+X6
Ads are not the discussion. It’s tracking.

Some will say that ads hijack your attention and therefore should be blocked by default. This is a different question. But since ad companies wanted to track ROI it became a problem, because it’s pretty easy for them to do that on the internet. That’s why more people are opposed to ads on the internet but not on a busstop.

If the busstop ads start taking retina scans to show you more personal ads while you travel around town, people will be opposed to that too.

You don’t need to track every user and every click to show ads and make money. But as ad companies like meta can make more money by tracking your every step they will just do that.

There were ads on the internet before tracking became a thing. And people made money off of those ads.

>>deutsc+g9
Ads are significantly more useful with tracking. Non-personalized ads are effectively spam and we would be better off without those entirely. Personalized ads can often be as good as the content you're looking for in the first place, if not even better.

>>avarun+B02
Even without pervasive tracking, ads can still be targeted based on the content you are looking at. That's probably still quite useful in most cases.

And if you want more, you can opt in to one of the many schemes that would have popped up if the entire ad industry didn't just decide to ignore GDPR and the DPAs didn't decide to ignore those violations.