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A comment on The Internet Made Me Sad Today. Parent comment

Re:The Internet Made Me Sad Today by patio11 on Thursday February 23, 2012 @04:19PM (#3626824)
The information is not the inventory, because this particular information is not available for sale in a rivalrous fashion. Your attention is the inventory. (This is sometimes phrased sardonically as "If you're not paying for it, you are the product.")
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Re:The Internet Made Me Sad Today by jasondrowley on Thursday February 23, 2012 @04:36PM (#3626902)
Exactly. I've made the same comments re being the customer vs. the product regarding Facebook. Except with Facebook, there's a lot more than users' attention on offer to advertisers.

The real question is, would content quality improve if we paid for it directly, instead of indirectly through ads?

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Re:The Internet Made Me Sad Today by rmc on Friday February 24, 2012 @09:51AM (#3629327)
Another related question: What content would not exist if you had to charge for it and couldn't use ads?
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