But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away.

Many won't even create a free account. Tracking tech is so sneaky because just the effort of logging in is too much.

Maybe the world would be a better place if we bit the bullet, nuked the vast majority of web sites, and built a better web on what's left. But it's not going to be an instant, ad-free privacy paradise.

Dear god, yes, please, good. Pass laws that force the bloated companies to lose users. Yes. World = better.

My understanding of the parent comment and the comment above the parent comment was that the grand comment was frustrated on why things can't be subscription based internet instead of a sneaky ad tech which invades our privacy.

The comment responding to it basically said that it isn't profitable. Users just don't sign up and growth / stock profit matters to the company and so that is the reason why the world is the way it is right now with so privacy invasive ad spyware tech

Now, you want to pass laws to force the bloated companies to lose users, so deep down you are saying that losing users is unprofitable for them and that a subscription based model just wouldn't work for the internet which the grand parent comment wanted / preferred and many people do.

I might not be able to explain it but in just 3 different comments of different people, we might have gotten a justification as to why the internet is the way it is right now

Companies don't want to lose users or money :) which is why they turn to spyware. Now I am not for big tech at all but we need to understand them, we need to realize how this economy of privacy works to fix / liberate ourselves.

And also I think that a lot of these companies just pay fines when they do in fact breach any laws as for them its just a drop of bucket and there is very few amount of times that a company is genuinely punished reasonably and I am not even sure the last time that it happened...

but this is exactly why they spy on us, for profit and how we don't really pay for subscriptions or even let alone the idea of signing up or adding credit card details.

I feel somewhere somehow along the way, we got entitled to everything and we stopped paying for internet services and we started paying with our privacy. There is a point to be made that we live a world where evil adware no matter how much we might comment here is still more profitable sometimes than subscription for a lot of companies and so somehow I do think that its a bit of both on us and taking responsibility ourselves might help us too instead of just dunking them Completely on big tech.

I also think that open source is a good example of this, I just don't understand why people would much rather pay with their ads which might scam them or they might pay for subscription based software and not donate to an open source software.

We as a society complain about open source sometimes not being as good as closed source but why would it if we as a society don't fund it and open source is in a dire state of underfunding, how do we as a society then feel entitled of good quality open source...

The system is a bit broken and it starts from all of us I suppose.

Since the point of these comments on these websites to me seems to be to try to bring change imo otherwhere there is no point in discussing and I want to take it in that direction...

Like, The point I want to really ask is, do people care? Aside from the people here who might be passionate about it, but is there a way that the masses can be taught about such things in a way that they start caring?

Is there a way that we can show people how insane these companies track you all across the internet and how insane big tech is to the general public so that they might care and look at open source or any things like donations / subscriptions as a healthy medium and start taking part in it instead of being into yet another adware software part.

What are some mechanisms to help people share this knowledge I suppose?

Who will share this message of cutting the hand of algorithm when the algorithm is feeding the people the slop and people are eating it. The algorithm wouldn't listen, it wouldn't bother. We might need to think of something else and I just wanted to discuss it here if its alright.

Nebula, the "answer" to the shittyness of youtube that creators have been falling over themselves to promote for the last 5 years, still has a conversion rate under 1%.

People hate ads, but they really really hate subscriptions.

If I can be honest, in an ideal world we would have something like patreon and the likes and people sharing their videos on something like peertube and other mechanisms.

I don't want to gatekeep content behind a subscription so that people would be unable to access a community or content when the economy might be out of their hands and they don't want to pay for a subscription but I just wish if more people who do have the means to help and wouldn't be financially impacted much by donating actually do that more often / more as that would be the ideal world but maybe the question is if we can ever reach that or would that always remain an ideal and that we are just stuck with the things in current form.

Personally, I really don’t think the problem is subscriptions at this point. I think it’s just having enough content to justify the subscription. Netflix probably costs 4x what Nebula does but certainly has at least that much more content.

I subscribe to Disney/Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube premium. I’ve tried others but there’s not enough content to justify the monthly expense unless I’m actively watching something. And Disney/Hulu is next on the chopping block because the content sort of sucks, there are large periods of time where nothing I want to watch is released, and the whole thing with Kimmel.

My feeling is that this arrangement is massively negative for people and since we ostensibly live in a democracy we should fix it and they can go fuck themselves.

another issue which might be is that we are living in a democracy but our options are limited because of the money that flows into these elections.

Is it truly a democracy if its just two options and in my opinion, there is very little that both parties do to fundamentally drastically change the system because of both of them are funded by money donations from large corporations mostly...

They are just different flavours and one might be more preferred than the other for obvious options but even that is not enough and there might be a need for something radical if we truly want to call ourselves democracy and fight against an oligarchy and the sheer influence that big tech has.

I think that we definitely might need to do something as the rights of citizens if we feel like the govt is favouring the big tech or taking decisions that aren't in our interests but that takes real energy but that might be the best way moving forward I am just not sure.

We definitely need some radical change for the economy too and the influence that big tech has. In my opinion we have fought for less and won yet this things seems so hidden that nobody discusses it in real life except here and maybe its hidden because some people might be scared of having all people be educated about this topic as its not in their interests.

To me, I am not sure mate but a lot of the times, to me it seems that people have given hope on radical change, they have accepted things, they have accepted being spied upon so much that they don't even think about it. But as I said in my previous comment that there is definitely a scope of discussion / real change in this I suppose too.

To an extent. I think if everyday users were shown just how much personal data follows them around from site to site I think they’d be horrified. Enough to change their habits? Possibly not. But I don’t think people have full understanding.

us discussing things here won't reach those people and frankly I am not sure what would.

There is so much actual content about it that I am sure even I don't know 20% about, of all the ways these companies spy but I do know that there are some options to soften the blow by using things like librewolf etc. if you need privacy and ublock origin etc. too

We don't need people to have a full understanding imo, we just somehow need to show them enough and show them the alternatives somehow and hope that things change or try our best but I am not sure.

a huge number of people think their ads are targeted based on their phone microphone always listening to them. and they don't change any habits as a result of that assumption.

I have a pet theory that these business models paper over the vast worthlessness of many modern technologies. That the value of Facebook is not in it's technologies or network, but rather in the arbitrage of the value of data when combined. We pay for the nearly worthless service of facebook, with our nearly worthless data. Facebook combines that data with other data from other people, and create data that is extremely valuable for advertisers.

The important bit of this theory is that Facebook is presumed nearly worthless. What that means is that outlawing their combining or collection of data from users wouldn't cause their service to transition to a pay-per-user model, but rather would completely dissolve the product, which nobody would miss.

That alone is definitely not worthless lol

The truth is the content on Facebook is basically worthless and basically nobody wants to watch it. But humans are stupid. If you tell them something is free, they're gonna use it, even if they don't want to use it.

If Facebook cost even 1 dollar a month, I can garuantee those videos views would fall off a cliff.

Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites.

Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.

It's easier to expect that your phone is always listening (because it is) and sending that data to apps for advertising than to force app providers to open source their code and prove they aren't collecting data on what the phone mic picks up.

But maybe you have more insight on a single provider's application that has been thus accused than other people in the thread.

There's also an economic problem with the pay-or-ad model. The users who won't pay are the ones with the least money, so your remaining advertisers won't pay as much. They may not even break even with the ads, but persist just to annoy you into subscribing.

The reason is of course that tracking is their moat. Nobody else has tracking networks as pervasive as them. But everyone can sell context-based ads

That's precisely why it should be done statutorily. People are known to be irrational about free things, so it's a fundamentally anti-competitive business model that disadvantages companies that want to actually charge for their services.

That is unfortunate, due to Mark Zuckerberg has redefined the successful business model. META is on track to clear $80 billion per year in net profit. Like it or not, they have a mutually beneficial relationship with advertisers and investors. It's like a Unicorn reproduced with an ATM. It's one of the stocks that seem like neutral ground for institutions, like TSLA. There has to be a high table where those guys talk on phones carried in suitcases.

To put $80 billion per year in perspective, that is approximately the amount of annual federal Medicare matching funds reimbursement for the state of California (Cal-Aid).

So yeah, I understand that Meta wants a lot of money, but I reject the idea that we need to suffer this much to have the social features we need.

I do worry that without that free option users just simply wouldn't ever try anything new and just stay where they are new. If everything costs money to move ... I worry nobody moves and everything stagnates. Facebook and similar, now in an even stronger position.

Users, for worse, like it this way and make free with ads the best route because of their choices. Users with their choices incentivize this system too ...

Even that's not enough with the shadow profiles they build on people without accounts. It's more like "if you don't like it, don't use instagram and also make sure none of your friends, coworkers, family, associates, or anywhere you go doesn't use it either. Also make sure you, nor the others mentioned, visit any website using Meta's pixel."

We definitely need laws when an individual effectively can't opt out because of network effects.

I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subscription based like you say. And for Facebook, Meta and the like, I don’t think the subscription revenue will be anywhere close due to economies of scale on the free model.

I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it.

What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library.

FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.

The “price” includes giving your data to the data vampires and is thereby incredibly unreasonable.

actually i forgot about youtube

Or to put it another way, most of the content on the internet is already unpaid with the creator not receiving any compensation. What's left is the hosting/distribution and we can find many different ways to (collectively) pay for that besides ads and user subscriptions.

Don't they already offer this? Did it get canceled?

basic history one google search away for the top ranking comment on Hacker News

The data is extraordinarily valuable and the morals of Meta is so utterly low.

So if any ad is shown based on user profiling from data gathered illegally (i.e. without a proper opt-in as per GDPR etc) then the site showing the ad could potentially be sued?

Essentially, make it so onerous to legally advertise without risking a large class action lawsuit that the practice more or less dies out without technically being "banned" per se...

I've long thought we are going to reach a point where the return on social advertising isn't worth the investment, these models have a crisis and pivot, but it still seems to be going strong.

There's also a bit of competitive pressure. Even if people get numb to ads, business, especially small businesses, can't afford to not show up if their competitors are still showing up in feeds.

The usual advertising psychology tricks still apply also which is why ads still work. Even if the ad itself doesn't result in a conversion, there's still the exposure effect of someone seeing your brand over and over again in their feed. The more times someone sees it, they'll subconsciously start preferring that brand or see it as more trustworthy. Among other tricks.

Attribution, for example, has to be an absolute mess. Especially in the case of the psychology tricks you mention... If I was shown an ad for Subway, and then ate a Subway sandwich a few days later -- it had absolutely nothing to do with the ad. I only eat there when there aren't better options. Yet, I bet some ad conversion counter ticked up somewhere. I see ads for ShopRite all the time, but it's the only grocery store in my area, so of course I shop there. When you repeat this millions of times, it's surprising to me that ads are still provably effective to the point of being a trillion dollar industry.

I wonder if it will become less so as older generations go offline.

These companies are filled to the brim with utter sociopaths, Especially Facebook. Companies that internal metrics with them fully aware of the mental health damage they're doing at a massive scale to young children, and buried it.

Companies that did psychological manipulation AB tests.

It's not quite that simple though. The problem is that they are not simply showing you relevant ads, they actively attempt to deliver an outcome the ad is trying to achieve.

On the surface this is relatively benign, Nike wants to sell shoes, they run ads and optimise towards shoe sales, and Meta makes that happen.

But what happens when people run political advertising? What happens when crypto companies promote scams?

this can be a business model, economic circumstance, mgmt change. a lot can trigger such a shift in services up to then just fine to use.

most companies did not start out on these premises, and its really hard to tell what service will turn next.

i hope maybe ISPs could handle it and offer it as a service. like an ad free internet. but then they will just more deeply embed the ads and it will still get past. changes in designs of the apps will lead to blocking being ineffective.

so really then all that is left is not to use anything that has potential to identify you and your use of it. thats not a lot of things currently. most are frowned upon if you use it in a lot of regions.

You do not pay for Instagram with your personal data. The data is elsewhere, not on Instagram. For example with your local retailer or credit card company.

Instagram pays for data about you, which they buy from other people. You do not have a say in this for the most part. Whether or not Instagram buys this data does not affect its collection.

You pay for Instagram with your time spent watching ads. The data they collect about you is mostly not for ads, it's to get you to spend more time on Instagram

To make it clear why this matters: If you banned advertising on social media, the amount of data collected about you would not decrease

Talk to somebody who works at Netflix or Spotify

The reason is that retention is much, much more important than reducing usage cost for almost every business

I get what you're saying but by current EU privacy law interpretation this approach is not allowed.

You can of course charge for services but you cannot charge people just to get rid of tracking. This is not to be confused with ads. You can run ads and offer a paid version without ads. It's about the tracking.

For me the tracking is a lot more harmful than the ads. Ads are much more noticeable but tracking is a lot more insidious.

It's really that tracking that I want to see gone

Early Google style text box ads were fine. Any ad put on the side of the page with no animated elements is probably fine. But in reality ads are intrusive and those block my mental process when I'm trying to read about of focus on something. Especially ads in videos would just make me focus really, really hard on blocking off the message until I can restore my mental stack and continue with the original video. (I can't watch youtube with ads, for that reason.) Anything that pops up, takes space, or requires me to find an X button to shut them off gets me to C-w the browser tab nearly without exception.

If the ads do behave I don't particularly mind. I even used to peruse ads in print magazines. In fact, untargetted ads are generally complete shit and if the "inter Net cloud thing" has even an inkling of what I might be interested at all, that's all the better I think. I don't ever click on ads though, so I'm probably not part of the prime target audience. But meaningful ads may make me add their products in the comparison set if I'm in the process of buying something similar.