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Re:Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default by Freak_NL on Friday February 22, 2019 @11:57AM (#19226846)
If people can't afford paying, then it follows that they can't afford being advertised at in order to stimulate their consumption beyond what they actually need. If the answer to that is that people are of course in their right to ignore advertisements (as if that is possible), then by extension blocking them outright is morally defensible as well, and we are right back to where we are now.

Either that, or on-line advertising is not nearly as effective as advertisers think it is, and they are just subsidising the whole shebang while the Facebooks and Googles profit.

As for journalism: yes, that is tricky. Personally, I'm subscribed to one national quality newspaper (NRC in the Netherlands) as my main source of news and research journalism, and just today I've set up an annual subscription for €12 with the Guardian, which I visit occasionally as it is one of the few reliable British sources for news on the whole Brexit ordeal.

Ideally, I would pay a monthly flat fee that I can distribute at the end of each month to participating websites I've visited, but such a system would have to be fair to both the consumers and the publishing websites. If it just ends up a system with yet another FAANG-like Silicon Valley middleman that takes a 30% cut I'm not interested.

Re:Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default by dmortin on Friday February 22, 2019 @12:18PM (#19227040)
> If people can't afford paying, then it follows that they can't afford being advertised

You know the answer to that. People can pay with their data, their interests. And if you put the question to people if they want a free web which sells their data or pay for every site then most people will choose the first.

Re:Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default by Freak_NL on Friday February 22, 2019 @02:14PM (#19228175)
And what is that data used for, if not targetted advertising?

The data is a means to an end: the ability to provide advertisers with a way to reach very specific groups of people, and a way for advertising platforms to track not just the same user, but a very detailed user profile.

Knowing what people's interests are is worth diddly-squat until you use that knowledge to push ads to them that are likely to resonate with them.