When you don't know how to monetize your service, you add ads.

From a very entertaining Matt Levine article (https://archive.is/8QYxl)

> In a science fiction story, if you invented a superintelligent robot and asked it how to make money, it might come up with cool never-before-seen ideas, or at least massive fun market manipulation. But in real life, if you train a large language model on the internet and ask it how to make money, it will say “advertising, affiliate shopping links and porn.” That’s the lesson the internet teaches!

But I think it makes a lot of sense for very popular consumer products. In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT etc exist for free, but with ads, rather than not exist at all. Preferably with an option to pay and remove ads

Nowadays I'm happy to pay for Youtube premium or LLM, but back during my student days I could not really afford it - and I'm glad there was a free tier (with ads)

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rcMgD2BwE72F 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>In my honest opinion, I much prefer having services like Google, Youtube, Gmail, Maps, ChatGPT

I don't use any of these except YouTube (if only I could find the content elsewhere…) and I still pay for them when I purchase anything advertised on these properties because, of course, the companies advertising on Google makes all their customers pay for the free (lol) services. All advertising expenses are included in the price of the products, even if you never saw any ads.

We could easily charge for each of these services and still have them. Advertising is not necessary at all. It's just a way to make others pay for your services. It's a free riding problem to externalize costs on those who don't partake in the scheme.

Pay your share and don't call free what others will subsidize. Unless if a public service and we collectively agree on the split (vote and taxes, which we can debate publicly)

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dktp 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right. But a good portion of the world can't afford the premium and having access to these services is still valuable. For every broke student or someone from a poor background, who probably don't make any money for the company (due to not buying advertised stuff), there's someone from a well off background, who will more than subsidize it by virtue of clicking on a lawyer ad (or whatever)

Nowadays I'm happy to pay, but that wasn't always the case. And I personally think that having an ad tier and fee tier is fine. Serves everyone

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rcMgD2BwE72F 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I much prefer to subsidize my neighborhood / friends / colleagues / family / … than have the world sink in ads. That enshites everything. It turns all social media into hate machines. And the cost is only externalized and it is definitely not reduced by polluting the mind with all the ads (same as climate change where we're only making the situation worse by procrastinating). The free part and the fake generosity are an illusion.

	▲	rcMgD2BwE72F an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Freemium is the way if you're ok with paying forward. Not admium. The online media I support as subscribers don't display any ad. And it's fine. I don't pay for the content, I pay for journalism.

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stogot 11 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ve thought if they ban car commercials and truck ads, the price would go down. How much is an open question? Would they actually want to drop the cost?

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gehsty 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or you end up with one of the greatest business models of all time like Google?

I struggle to understand people getting butt hurt about a free service showing its users adverts, that will keep the service free.

They should have done this earlier, so their adds would be better by now, and they have a better chance against Google.