The problem isn't fundamentally advertising - it's stuff like toxic and anti-user advertisements, and the ad industry not knowing what the word "privacy" means.

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thfuran 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think there is a fundamental problem with an ad-subsidized service. Even ignoring the privacy issues inherent to the way modern advertising works in practice (which you probably shouldn’t ignore), the mere presence of an advertiser as a third party whose interests the service provider must consider creates malign incentives.

I also think providing a service for free is fundamentally anti-competitive. It’s like the ultimate form of dumping. And there are many studies showing that people are irrational about zero-cost goods, so it’s even harder to compete against than might be expected.

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strogonoff 2 days ago | parent [-]

Arguably, the advertiser is not merely a third party whose interests the service provider must consider, but rather the actual paying customer (and much more of the second party) whose interests the service provider must satisfy to make revenue. That to me puts into perspective the absurdity of this business model: the user is not the customer, the product or service itself is not the product but only a means to keep offering the actual product to the paying customer.

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thfuran 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, I mean from the consumer perspective. You're right that the user of an entirely ad-funded service isn't the real customer. They're still at least somewhat the customer when they're still providing some of the revenue though.

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somenameforme 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would disagree on this. The reason is that the main point of most ads is to induce artificial demand. When successful this is essentially making people think their lives are missing something, repeatedly. I think it is fairly self evident that at scale this simply leads to social discontent, materialism, and the overall degradation of a society.

There are endless studies, such as this [1] demonstrating a significant inverse relationship between ads and happiness. The more ads, the less happy people are. And I think it's very easy to see the causal relationship there. And this would apply even if the ad industry wasn't so scummy.

[1] - https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy

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tcfhgj 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

the fundamental problem is capitalism