Someone selling goods has to abide by some laws - typically, lies/false advertising is prohibited, they might have to provide a warranty, and most contracts can be cancelled within 14 days by returning the goods. This means that the car's specifications will be made available to me, the terms of the deal throughly detailed in a legal document I'd have to sign, and I might get to test drive the car before committing.
Ads in contrast don't have any of this. In your example of articles/poems/songs/funny videos, I don't get to check out the content beforehand, I have no recourse if it turns out to be defective/fraudulent/etc (such as clickbait, or a video with 2 mins actual content and 8 mins filler to get to the 10 min threshold for a second ad) after I "pay" by viewing the ad (and parting with my personal data) and I don't have any recourse either if the advertised product turns out to be a scam or malware.
What you are saying is, basically, if someone is selling bread for $100, and they dont let you taste in advance, you are allowed to steal that bread, because $100 is not a right price for the bread.
> steal
Theft implies that you are deprived of the item once it's stolen - this is not the case here, and the costs should be taken into account either way. You're comparing fractions of a cent from an ad view with $100. I'd feel much better about stealing the former than the latter even in case of actual, physical theft.
> they dont let you taste in advance
It doesn't have an impact on the "theft" scenario, but in case of a paid product I would still expect a refund if the bread is defective (moldy or fake) or was mis-sold with false advertising.
Yeah, exactly. If I write a book, and one person buys it, and a billion people copy it from that person (and I sell just one copy in total), there is nothing wrong, because I still have my book.
I am glad that most of people dont think this way, because we would not have any books in our world.
Piracy has been around for decades, may be making a resurgence thanks to the balkanization of media streaming services and yet we still have movies, music & TV.
You aren't just charging your users "ad views". You are also facilitating 3rd parties tracking their online behaviour, and they certainly aren't agreeing to those terms when they first land on your site.
github
google analytics
facebook
stackpath
wikimedia
google adwords
google fonts
amazon ads
(a few others I dont recognise)
and, of course, the companies that you use to collect "consent"...
criteo
33across
openx
adxpremium
setupad
4dex
adnxs
casalemedia
pubmatic
emxdgt
rubiconproject
districtm
lijit
These networks are able to identify me by a cookie (and other techniques), so they can compile my activity on YOUR site into a log of my activities across multiple sites which they "provide their ads" on. They can absolutely identify you as an individual - google, facebook, etc, are ones that people have INTENTIONALLY given their names too, and many of these other networks sell/lease the data to others to allow them to provide their own identity link.
Furthermore, these 3rd party "scripts" have access to the entire page content too. They can read my email address should I register. They can even capture my password if they were so configured (or were in themselves hacked to do so).
Bear in mind i did NOT consent to any of this when I landed on your site, and even when i specifically removed "consent" via the form on your landing page, i was STILL being tracked by ALL those I mention above.
THIS is why people have blockers, etc. I dont mind if you have an image with a link to some advertisers product/service/whatever. What I care about it that my every action on your site is providing additional data for these companies to mine and build a secret profile of my browsing habits.
EDIT: I browsed without an ad blocker to compile this behaviour. I feel dirty.
The privacy policy which is quite hidden on the website (https://www.photopea.com/privacy.html) says nothing about that. All it says is the following:
> We use third party tracking tools to improve the performance and features of the Service (e.g. Google Analytics). Such tools are created and managed by parties outside our control. As such, we are not responsible for what information is actually captured by such third parties or how such third parties use and protect that information.
This won't fly under GDPR, just saying. Not only you are responsible for third party behavior, but you didn't even mention all tracking scripts that are directly used (I see Facebook Pixel Code right in the source code for photopea.com). You are in Czech Republic, right? I think it is in European Union.
I’d just like to add that a decent chunk of the traffic to this site is from people typing “free photo editor” or things along those lines.
The creator of this site is specifically targeting people who want a free photo editor… And then complaining about people wanting to use it for free.
UK cookie law is pretty strict, and also pretty clear to read - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/guidance-...
The issue is nobody bothers to follow it, and enforcement isn't likely enough, or crippling enough, to drive compliance.
The only thing a website can know, is, that "someone with a screen resolution of 1920x1080 pixels visited www.Photopea.com at 18:37". It can be useful to know the number of visitors, or the usual screen resolutions.
Which one of those do you need to know usual screen resolutions of users? Or maybe there are some other reasons those all get contacted?
(You also missed some "minor" details like IP addresses and fingerprinting profiles overall, and I'm honestly not sure if you are as ignorant as you act or just pretend to do so, and which one would be more offensive)
Like really, if you open a website for the first time in your life, what kind of secret information could it know about you?
That on its own should give you pause. But that data is then used by companies like Facebook or Google to allow the highest bidder to alter that users behaviour - by getting them to believe some propaganda, to vote for a political party, or to spend money on something they don’t need.
That’s the business model. That is how you make money on your site.
There are other ways of making money – I’m sure that had ad revenue not been available you would have found a different way.
If I visit a website about cars, one could put up car ads because it’s obviously in my interests at this point.
I don’t visit websites that require me to block my adblocker for the simple reason that it means they have no other monetizable content apart from me, and as I didn’t even get to their magnet content yet I have no idea how the website feels, which makes me not so open to sharing my data fingerprint.
There are no good and bad ads. The creators of ad blockers decide, what the ad is. The code of an ad blocker literally contains a code like: if(website is Photopea.com) find a specific element and delete it.
If an ad blocker tells you, that they are not blocking "good ads", they are usually blackmailing ad companies to pay them, so that they do not block their ads. The money, which could go to content creators, are going to ad block creators.
I don't read news near enough to make a single subscription worthwhile, and even if I did I would read multiple sources meaning I'd need multiple subscriptions - that's completely unsustainable.
Never used photopea, hope it works out for you, but I wish website creators stopped thinking that invasion of my privacy is a currency
It doesn't work very well, unfortunately. Those willing to pay usually are the most interesting part of the audience for ad providers, so it's difficult to compensate that loss by a reasonably priced 'ad-free' option. You probably would be surprised if you knew how much your attention may cost. Targeted ads created a market where everyone pays proportionally to their spendings. I'm not saying it's a good situation, but it looks like that's a local optimum rather hard to leave.
What bothers me is that huge companies are more resilient to tracking and ads restrictions, so that fight may further speed up centralisation of the internet. I would personally prefer the chaotic old-school world wide web with ugly flashing banners instead.
I make around $.01 (one USD cent) for an hour of using Photopea with ads. If someone was willing to pay me two cents for an hour of using Photopea (with no ads), I would gladly accept it.
Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing that.
When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them money (i.e. stealing).
But when you see someone willing to give you an article, a poem, a song, a funny video, but they want you to watch the ad in exchange, lots of people think it is fine to break their conditions.
It is extremely easy to detect ad blockers on the web. I wish website creators stopped tolerating ad blockers. People would finally learn to watch ads, or pay for stuff, and the creators would be able to create much better content.