197
Why is the internet overflowing with rubbish ads – and what can we do about it?
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
197 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
59366 readers
5918 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As with any devil's bargain, one must evaluate whether it's really worth it or not.
If all advertising on the Web disappeared tomorrow, would some valuable content be lost because the people putting it up are not willing to fund their site out of pocket? Certainly yes.
Would even more worthless garbage be lost? I think that's also a "yes".
I'm willing to accept a smaller Web with some losses in order to get rid of obnoxious advertising. So are many others. You appear to disagree, as is your right. In any case, it would take a major legislative movement and/or cultural change to cram the genie back into the bottle at this point, so the argument is most likely moot.
Yeah but the web has been this way since the mid 90's. It's been funded by ads the way that things that came before it were. Broadcast television is a good example. People switched to cable because of less ads and more channels with the expectation that there would be better content. That didn't last. Then we had tivo and DVRs and so many other products to get around ads. But the root of the problem is that people won't buy things they don't know about, won't use services they don't know about, will have a hard time looking for goods and services that they do want without some form of advertisement. Word of mouth is advertisment too when you get right down to it. The ads were often less intrusive but became more so over time because it's such a hotly contested area that pretty much every company small and large is throwing money at.
What's worthless garbage to some may be useful in a pinch to others. The point is that combating ads means taking away a source of revenue not just for ad aggregators and ad companies but for business full stop. I hate billboards. I'd be perfectly happy to never see a billboard again in my life. That being said, they have been effective ads for a long time, and have been used for good purposes occasionally (missing persons, unsolved crimes etc come to mind).
I'm not saying ads aren't more often than not intrusive, annoying, or lost on me. I actually do find them intrusive, run a pihole and a private DNS etc. But I also recognize that really laws to curtain what ads can do is a major problem, and that services have bills to pay.
And all that is to also say that worth is subjective.