A company can bar the exits, letting you burn to death [0]. A company can send private militias to force you to work [1] (or because you were sent the wrong set of MtG cards [2]). A company can improperly store pesticide, until the resulting explosion kills thousands [3]. A company can own every house and store in a town, managing your expenses to ensure you can't leave [4]. A company can bribe judges to provide them with child labor [5].
Some of these were illegal at the time they were done. Some of these were made illegal as a result of these events. All of them are within the nature of companies, optimizing in pursuit of profit regardless of the human cost. That nature is useful for improving lives, but must be carefully controlled to prevent it from trampling us all.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
[2] https://gizmodo.com/magic-the-gathering-leaks-wizards-wotc-p...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
I can’t vote out Google. Their customers are advertisers, not me. And I don’t know which apps on my phone send my information to Facebook or what they do with it.
If you can avoid a company, the fact that there is an acceptable alternative itself says that the market is not monopolized and so there is less chance of abuse.
In the markets where abuse is possible there are often monopolies, or there is illusion of choice like a (colluding or copycatting)duopoly or one where all the "competing" brands being owned by the same parent conglomerate etc.
It is very difficult to participate in the modern economy/world while avoiding certain companies. It might be possible but there are both social and economical costs involved that majority cannot afford.
Avoiding a company doesn't necessarily mean there's an acceptable alternative. I could use no social media and my life wouldn't be much worse or burdensome.
There's very little I can do to prevent the government from doing what it's doing by myself.
I doubt that this relates to the online advertising space.
Disregarding the personal data and other tracking, banning all targeted advertising is... not ideal. I genuinely would prefer to have ads that are relevant, than ads for table casters.
One thing that we should also be aware, is that ads aren't going away. They're going to be more obnoxious as a result of this decision.
I can't avoid not paying taxes to fund the catholic church in my country, that uses that money to lobby homophobic laws... I can block Google and not use them.
This is not a simple "just vote them out", unless you're part of the privileged majority that can affect the policy.
But telling a small newspaper to stop using ads for revenue, when you aren't willing to financially support them is... hypocritical.
In short - just like a lot of "this ids good for you" laws, this will definitely impact smaller companies way more than you think.
Systemic > Isolated instances but also harder to point out.
No, you actually can’t, in a very real and practical sense.
How do you know I am not willing to pay?
OK, I'll be the millionth commenter to repeat this viewpoint for the millionth time on HN: nobody has issues with online ads to support their favorite newspaper or creator, people have an issue with tracking and targeting ads.
We've had ad supported websites, forums and blogs since the 90's, but those were generic and harmless, and wouldn't track and target YOU.
So if newspapers or any other websites want to use weaponized ad-tech on me, then excuse me, but I'm gonna block the shit out of them with no remorse, to protect myself.
You can stop doing business with Mom&Pop’s coffee shop relatively easily, just like you can move to a different town to get away from your city government authority.
But you’re practically never going to truly get away from Meta, Google, Amazon, Nestle, McKesson, ATT, and those behemoths due to their size, similar to how you’re going to struggle to get out from under the US Federal government.
Now, for a productive conversation, I'd recommend you putting effort in as well, instead of just sea lioning [6].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Privacy_is...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-mak...
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/analysis-health-insuranc...
[4] https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/not-again-bone-grafts...
[5] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/poopy-lettuce-at-wen...
Because we've been there, done that. How many local or small news outlet subscriptions do you have? I'm pretty sure it's not a lot.
> We've had ad supported websites, forums and blogs since the 90's, but those were generic and harmless, and wouldn't track and target YOU.
And as a result any website with reasonable traffic, would have to put up a million ads - to just break even. Attendance was rising, costs associated with maintenance as well. Advertisers don't want to pay just to show random individuals ads that have close to 0 chance of being useful.
Generic advertising effectively excludes smaller companies from advertising space. If your advertising budget is $50k today, with targeted ads, you can effectively spend it to show your product to people who would be interested in it. Without, you have to spend $1mil on ads to show it to everyone and get results equal to spending $1k with targeted ads.
> weaponized ad-tech
Yes, yes... The "mid 20ies, IT person, with interest in HN" is definitely a weapon to take "you" down. Quit with the hyperbole, no ad tech keeps anything remotely interesting about you.
And no, they're not going to magically stop funding the Catholic church or become a safe haven for LGBT people.
Nobody is gonna argue that companies are going to require zero regulation. There will be instances of companies trying to bullshit their way to get more profit, and for this reason the regulations exist, but these all isolated cases.
The point is that widespread advertising legislation on every single company by non technical people in the government under a false pretense of increasing privacy is not really a good thing. Governments should be there to step in when companies get out of line, but in that case, the task is clear. Introducing legislation that later on can be used to push more nefarious agendas are not.
After all, both governments and companies are ran by people.