zlacker

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+(OP)
but yet, when we pay for services (Google Suite) and websites... we still get adverts

we're not incentivised to pay as our data is mined and sold anyway, our attention still fought for

>>thornc+(OP)
> And those websites will disappear when CPM rates go down the drain.

Good!

>>thornc+(OP)
>Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads

pretty easy if you publicly fund it. My vision of Europe is every town, every city putting some money into building out federated and decentralized systems, supported by small and middle-sized business. Effectively the same way radio or public broadcasting is already supported in say Germany or the UK.

We should go all the way and just rid ourselves of Meta, Tencent et al, sadly there's probably not enough vision for something like it.

>>buro9+e
For larger companies I think that’s a fair assessment, but there’s a lot of small websites that I only use one or twice a year which are very useful, like camerasize.com, which otherwise I wouldn’t pay for.

>>thornc+(OP)
There's a conspiracy here that people can't see.

Free sites will close without targeted advertisement, obviously; they barely can afford to pay salaries now, so with untargeted ads it will be impossible. And the only media sites that will be able to afford to run are those that are subsidised by the state. This is already happening in Europe, where most of the big media are practically bankrupt and their income comes from the state in the form of subsidies, ad campaigns, internships paid by the state, etc.

You already have a sibling comment in this thread precisely asking for that: the state paying for the media. How do they think this will end?

>>Barrin+A
Anything is easy if you can take people's money and assign it to companies deemed worthy by a bureaucrat. But now you have a much bigger problem.

>>thornc+H
Sites like camerasize could feasibly target based on the niche they fill rather than showing generic "personalized" ads. There are ad networks out there that do this, e.g. Carbon.

>>thornc+(OP)
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.

>>robert+s1
Pretty much already how startup are funded in Europe. Size of the EU tech scene shows how efficient that is.

>>Barrin+A
It's a very nice vision

>>thornc+(OP)
As many many others points out, it's not the ads. It is the massive surveillance and privacy invading machinery that powers it all.

For me personally it's also the constant pushing pushing pushing to buy crap that you don't need or replace things you already own. I already have a washing machine, I got it last month, you don't need to sell me another (It's actually amazing that we haven't gotten to the point there advertisers can stop push products a consumer already bought).

Google is actually really good as a "I need to buy X,Y,Z" in that case the ads are super helpful and often more relevant than the search results. I will absolutely click those ads, but I'm not going to order that new washing machine while I'm reading the news anyway.

>>vasdae+71
It all boils down to the same problem : people want to have the cake and eat it.

We all want roads to allow us to roam freely but don't want to pay the government people that manage everything around those roads.

Everyone wants free content but everyone wants to be paid for their work.

I have a pihole and one of the website I frequently visit has been remade and now everything is empty. I'm currently thinking about paying for this content... or just quit and live without this content.

>>vasdae+71
I don't understand. We were able to run with untargeted ads for decades. Why now, suddenly only targeted ads are viable?

>>thornc+(OP)
> Hot take, it’s hard to have a free internet without ads.

But that's not the issue here is it? *Personalized* ads is the issue. Can the free internet survive without personalized ads? Of course it can. Will a ton of companies disappear? Yes, and so what? Business fail all the time, and new businesses based on different models will fill the void. We might even see a ton of innovation beyond figuring out how to harvest and profile people's data when our biggest brains are directed towards different problems.

>>gpdere+55
That's not true, ads have always been targeted. On the telly you don't see the same ads on all stations all the time. They are segmented depending on the average profile of the viewer. If you are watching a soap opera you will see ads for diapers for female incontinence.

>>vasdae+67
Of course I meant targeted to the specific reader/watcher. Context targeting was not the issue.

>>thornc+(OP)
Lots of things like niche review sites might die, but those are impossible to find thanks to SEO spam (which is fueled by ads) anyway. Something like forums? The entire reddit database (excluding media) fits on a $150 SSD, and a used laptop can serve tens of thousands of requests/second for such a simple site. Something like a Ryzen 7950X with a few NVMe drives could probably do more than you could reasonably get a network connection for. Someone with 10 gigabit Internet could serve a forum for 10s of millions of users at least at almost no cost.

The primary issue is liability. Secondary is ISPs not allowing people to use their Internet connections for server hosting (a hobbyist could do colocation, and many do already). Fix the law there and the compute cost is peanuts.

>>vasdae+67
> ads have always been targeted.

To groups, not individuals. Soap operas cast a wide net, they don’t target you specifically. Which is very much possible with Facebook ads.

https://observer.com/2014/09/marketing-whiz-drives-roommate-...

>>vasdae+71
Alternatively, when the ad-supported sites crash, the space in the marketplace they were filling will be filled by either pay-to-use commercial sites or by free non-profit sites.

>>thornc+(OP)
This would open an opportunity for a universal micropayments system.

>>thornc+(OP)
>those websites will disappear

nothing of value will be lost and all that meme.

On a flip note: that's not reddit to preface comments w/ 'hot take'

>>thornc+(OP)
Another hot take: I honestly can't wait for that to happen.

>>gpdere+55
If you manage to normalize the unencumbered profiling of people's online behavior (which increasingly spans like 100% of what people do) you wield enormous power which can be monetized in countless ways. So its not just about the type of ads. It is about the legality of monetizing user behavior where that profiling, in particular involves collecting and integrating data way beyond any bilateral interaction.

This is not idle talk. Think e.g. about personal credit. An important consideration in certain banking models is filtering out good from bad credits. Guess what, so-called "alternative credit data" which include social media activity is already a thing (search for it).

Its basically a digital wild west. Greed, hypocrisy, misrepresentation, collusion, corruption. As a rule, anything that is not be prohibited by draconian fines and license removals will be done. The honeypot is irresistible and people left on their own are just digitally illiterate idiots.

>>ndrisc+ga
Product review sites seem like the perfect case for contextual advertising; no user tracking necessary at all.

>>thornc+(OP)
Another hot take, its hard to do a consumer based startup without effective and cheap advertising. Its going to hit their startups like fintech, direct to consumer, etc.

>>robert+s1
Got some news for you about the history of currently existing society.

>>deutsc+j2
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.

>>ndrisc+ga
> SEO spam (which is fueled by ads)

Huh? SEO exists because companies don't want to pay for ads. If advertising disappears, SEO will just become more prevalent and we'll have to suffer through more and more garbage.

>>avarun+ET1
I value privacy above the marginal usefulness of targeted ads. You should be free to opt-in to tracking and personalization if that's what you want. But we shouldn't all be caught in a surveillance dragnet by default.

>>deutsc+j2
Funny reading that from someone with your nickname :-)

The Deutsche Post, or DHL is sort of tracking too, since a looong time. By having their delivery minions gather information about the circumstances people live in, and selling that information to interested parties.

>>ryanbl+U12
> You should be free to opt-in to tracking and personalization if that's what you want.

Agreed. So why is the EU making that illegal? I want to be able to use products for free by opting in to personalized ads so that businesses can make enough revenue to justify having an ad-supported free version of their product.

The incompetent bureaucrats at the EU won't allow Meta to offer that.

>>thornc+(OP)
The vast majority of data gathered by Facebook isn't gathered on Facebook. The vast majority of that data isn't used by Facebook for delivering ads. The utility of Facebook is long lost. I'd gladly pay a few bucks to keep in touch with friends, maintain niche groups, have a Marketplace etc. But Facebook hasn't been that for over a decade. Its utility is all in tracking us around the internet, and selling our profile to the highest bidder.

Ads are fine, but if the idea is that in order to have a free internet, Facebook needs to monopolize our online presence and shape how we receive information on other sites, then that's hardly a free internet. Facebook ruined the internet.

>>avarun+ET1
Let's clarify - 3rd party tracking is the issue. Tracking me on your site is fine... it's expected. Spotify should build a profile of my musical tastes. But my profile on your site should be relegated to your site. Facebook not only tracks you off their site, they sell your information to literally anyone willing to pay. It's ludicrous that we've allowed this, and the EU is finally stepping in.

>>avarun+vb2
Because Meta has proven year after year that they can't be trusted with our data. It's a sanction on their gross negligence and complete lack of morals

>>cush+Aj2
> Facebook not only tracks you off their site, they sell your information to literally anyone willing to pay.

This is just blatantly incorrect. Please inform yourself about topics before choosing to comment on them. https://www.facebook.com/help/152637448140583

>>avarun+ET1
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.

>>avarun+An2
Sure. Facebook is still the data custodian, but it's been proven that the granularity of their targeting is so small that it's possible to target individuals - a la Cambridge Analytica and a few other studies. They're selling the use of your profile, not the profile itself. It's gross.

>>bigbil+NI1
...yes?

>>LargoL+B22
Any proofs?

>>fsflov+NF3
I'd like to deliver, but it seems what I've read long ago is lost now, or buried under more recent and digital things which don't directly apply to the specific gathering in person by their delivery personnel. With the exception of the first part of the Spiegel.de article which mentions 'Lebensweise'. Unfortunately the link from there to the source is rotten, and isn't archived/cached anywhere.

I'm sure I've read much more about that, some 20 years ago, and after. Some small blips in the press, several fora. Sometimes even from people who claimed to be, or have been working as postman, and described what they had to look for (like house being renovated, new windows, nice garden, door, car, or in appartment houses clean floors, door mats, no trash, graffiti, what 'sort' of people) how to write it down in forms, and so on. Which annoyed them, because it was a hassle, unrelated to their job/task.

Anyways, they do have that data, gathered by whichever means, and sell them. As is obvious from their own sites.

It may be that they changed parts of that recently, because incompatible with EU-Law, DSGVO/GDPR, whatnot, but they did it.

[German] https://www.deutschepost.de/de/d/deutsche-post-direkt.html

https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/netzwelt-ticker-deutsche...

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/faq-post-daten-101.html

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/datenverkauf-an-cdu-und-fdp-d...

[English] https://www.deutschepost.com/en/business-customers/dialogue-...

---------------------- Letter is lost. Shrug.