I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions.

But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.

▲ kibwen 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> But how is the internet economy supposed to function

If the existence of a given industry requires the annihilation of individual privacy and the elimination of free thought, then that industry does not deserve to exist. Kill the ad industry.

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suriya-ganesh 2 days ago | parent [-]

And in the process kill all the possibilities the internet has empowered?

Medicine being better delivered, all the research that has been accelerated because of reducing compute and storage costs, the list is infinite.

	▲	nananana9 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You will need to provide stronger justification how "medicine being delivered" hinges upon me watching a 60 second unskippable ad before a YouTube video.
	▲	sumalamana 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes, kill it all. None of that is worth the panopticon that is being built.

▲ crims0n 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy works.

There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.

	▲	BeetleB 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. That's a logical leap. The artist can want both things. There are two payments involved: 1. The user pays with his time/attention 2. The ad company pays the site In most cases, the author doesn't mind getting the payments from number 2 even if you skip 1. Many, many sites explicitly point out they don't find a it a problem if you install an ad blocker. I don't have ads on my site. I'm OK with you consuming it for free. If I put ads one day, I'll still be OK with it, because I know I'll get some money regardless. It's practically free money. I will not miss the vast majority of sites I go to that serve ads if they all decided to shut down and/or go paid only. I should be spending a lot less time on the Internet/phone to begin with!
	▲	tcfhgj 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		If a medium doesn't exist because of the lack of ads and you think it's a loss, you should have paid for it (which overall is cheaper than paying though ads).
	▲	deckard1 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The day I stopped giving half a fraction of a shit was the day Google served me malware in an ad. It was one of those fake "Download" buttons on a very popular open source tool. I wonder how many people have been harmed by that. > medium you are consuming may not exist at all I've realized that's not my problem. It's not like most of the internet is healthy anyway. It's psychologically manipulative and designed to keep you fearful, angry, spiteful, jealous, and above all, depressed. Fuck Google. Fuck Meta. And fuck every single last person working for them.

▲ OkayPhysicist 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most things worth doing on the internet are either A) paid for B) garner enough good will that they can be supported via some polite pan-handling or C) cheap enough to operate that it's a perfectly acceptable hobby expense for 1 person in your community.

Streaming services and E-commerce are the classic examples for A. Wikipedia is the quintessential example for B. C includes pretty much all the social outlets: Web forums, a Matrix server, private game servers (public game servers fall under A), blogs, etc.

▲ akersten 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Behavioral (invisible) analytics alone is the secret trillion dollar industry that online advertisers want to distract you from by focusing on the morality of ad blocking.

A good blocker should block many of those scripts too, but there's no stopping server-side analytics at scale.

▲ tcfhgj 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Other types of micro transactions and payments are possible

▲ godelski 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I struggle with this too. I struggle less when I remind myself of how much the tech sector has grown in the past 20 years. Not even just in power and control over critical infrastructure, but in wealth.

                              Market Cap by Year
   Year       0                  1                2                3                  4
   2025   Nvidia (4.6T)    Apple (3.9T)      Google (3.8T)    Microsoft (3.5T)    Amazon (2.6T)
   2020   Apple (2.3T)     Microsoft (1.7T)  Amazon (1.6T)    Google (1.2T)       Meta (777M)
   2015   Apple (598M)     Google (534M)     Microsoft (440M) Berkshire (324M)    Exxon (325M)
   2010   Exxon (369M)     PetroChina (303M) Apple (296M)     BHP (244M)          Microsoft (239M) 

             Some Billionaires...
   Year       Musk    Page    Bezos   Ellison  Zuck  Buffett
   Current    714B    257B    251B    244B     227B   148B
   2024       195B    114B    194B    141B     177B   133B 
   2023       180B     79B    114B    107B      64B   106B
   2022       219B    111B    171B    106B      67B   118B
   2021       151B     92B    177B     93B      97B    96B
   2020        25B     51B    113B     59B      55B    68B
   2016        11B     35B     45B     44B      45B    61B
   - There are currently 19 people worth more than $100bn!
     - 4 of them are not American (Arnault, Ortega, Ambani, Helu)
     - 27 of the top 50 richest are non-Americans
     - 57 of the top 100 are non-Americans
   - Bill Gates was first worth $100bn in 1999, becoming the first centibillionaire

It is hard to feel bad when we've seen such an explosion of wealth, especially over the last 5 years. I mean we had a fucking pandemic and all the big players doubled (or nearly) their market caps. We constantly hear about how these companies are having "money issues" but then keep announcing record profits and record bonuses to CEOs.

  > A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.

So I don't agree that it is *ONLY* through this mechanism. Or that if it is that it needs to be done to this degree. It is hard for me personally to take pity when we're on the verge of having the first trillionaire. Honestly, I don't care about a wealth cap and I don't think there should be. It isn't a zero-sum game. But I do care about the wealth floor. It is hard to think of that floor when just the top 5 richest made $887B last year and $1.47T in the last 5 (2024 was a "good" year. Musk is 519B/689B so 368B/781B excluding) and average people are feeling the pressure.

If times were good for the rest of us I honestly couldn't care less if Musk became a trillionaire. Good for him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But while wages are stagnant, while the job market is very competitive, we have major layoffs, while inflation is hitting average people hard, and while they keep pretending they can replace us all with AI; then hell fucking yeah I do care.

It ends up being a question about what is more right, than what is right. I'd feel more conflicted if we all, or the majority of us, were benefiting from the advancements. But sympathy is difficult when we look at those numbers.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...

https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/

P.S. here's a fun game for understanding how much a billion dollars is. It's difficult because that level of money generates so much interest.

Imagine you have a billion dollars. You put it in an investment account that earns 10% yearly interest, compounded daily. On day 1 you need funds, so sit on your ass and do nothing. After than, on each weekday you hire a new employee at the cost of $250k/yr and is also paid daily.

How many employees can you hire before you have less than a billion dollars?

There's a lot of variants you can run on this kind of thought experiment and I think they're helpful for understanding that level of wealth.

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suriya-ganesh 2 days ago | parent [-]

This is sort of my line of reasoning as well.

In my own petty way. I consider this my pushback against a system that is pushing oppressive systems onto me. But really, I'm partially glad this system works and partially annoyed that this is the cost.

	▲	godelski a day ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. And I want you but clear, I'd have a very different opinion if either the companies and C-suite people were struggling or the average person had a significantly higher standard of living. The dramatically widening gap with the 0.01% is just absurd. Capitalist economies need capital to flow through the system, not pool up. I mean look at Mackenzie Scott. She's trying to throw her money away as fast as possible but earns it faster than she can give it away lol. And that's only 35bn. I just won't be guilt tripped by people who are at the top. Especially when they're calling the kettle black and just flat out lying (e.g. companies "struggling". Struggling to what? Outperform the previous year's growth? In the middle of a global pandemic? lol)