zlacker

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?

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

>>gpdere+Y3
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+Z5
Of course I meant targeted to the specific reader/watcher. Context targeting was not the issue.

>>vasdae+Z5
> 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+(OP)
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.

>>gpdere+Y3
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.