So I get ads are terrible, obviously. I run ad-blockers all the time. But people also get angry at paywalls. So that leaves me wondering, if not through ads or subscriptions, how is a news publisher supposed to sustain itself?
So I get ads are terrible, obviously. I run ad-blockers all the time. But people also get angry at paywalls. So that leaves me wondering, if not through ads or subscriptions, how is a news publisher supposed to sustain itself?
You are saying 2 conflicting things, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you feel, what matters is what actually happens.
And what actually happens is opt-out personalized ads with digital fingerprinting alongside surveillance capitalism.
Here is a book on the topic.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism : The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
I’m not sure what I said is conflicting, and I feel like your statement is trying to minimize the point I am making, but thats ok, I believe we will never come to agreement here because I firmly disagree with the disruption of privacy for the sake of advertisement.
You can say my feelings are meaningless, but as this gets more invasive people will seek ways to opt out, which I believe is meaningful, although you can say and feel whatever you want my friend :).
Thanks for the book rec, I’ll look it over!
I think we are in agreement that privacy is paramount.
Where we differ is that you seem to think it’s possible to have some form of personalized ads and maintain privacy. While I think modern day ads and especially virtual personalized ads are intended to subvert privacy, while simultaneously also creating a lot of profit for some of the most evil companies that exist today like Google, Amazon, and Meta.
This makes ads on the internet simply not ethical at all in my opinion. Which inturn means ads are not an appropriate solution for funding news or any other website.
I do hope you read the book.
I did not intend to ever say you can have personalized advertisements without invading someone’s privacy, I’m not sure what I wrote that you interpreted that way, possibly my discussion about how I feel the current ads are not always relevant?
Either way, I stated that advertisers should utilize the content of the website or the content being viewed as a method to advertise, which does not involve invasions of privacy.
Or maybe it was when I said “you don’t need to invade someones privacy to advertise to them”
That is me saying, you can have advertisements that are meant for a specific group, and believe that someone is part of that group based on them visiting a website, without invading their privacy.
Its how newspapers did advertisements, its why magazines existed - to sell ad space for specific interest groups. People also give away data by signing up for websites, interest groups, or ordering things, all data that can be harvested without entering my computer or invading my privacy.