Re:Leaving Google has actively improved my life
by eudamoniac on Saturday February 28, 2026 @01:16PM
(#47198494)
All you are saying here is that the sites with ads are so much better than the actually-free sites that people still use them despite having ads. Which is maybe not a signal that ads need to be banned.
Re:Leaving Google has actively improved my life
by bubblewand on Saturday February 28, 2026 @04:08PM
(#47200248)
I’m saying that actually-free services and sites have no budget for promotion and become very hard to discover when drowned out by tons of ad-supported options, which drives down use, which discourages participation in improving them which suppresses how good they tend to be.
Re:Leaving Google has actively improved my life
by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe on Saturday February 28, 2026 @06:18PM
(#47201540)
In a world with add it's not the best site that wins but the site that games mass psychology the best.
It also suppresses open protocols. Protocols stagnated as the Internet centralized and commercialized for a reason. Some of these things could just be protocols.
Not saying that would cover everything, but I am sure those two factors would “step in” to replace some aspects of the ad-supported Internet, if the ads went away. How much, I don’t know.