| > Advertising is not a public service. You don't need to weight benefits of it for it to exist. This is a complete non-sequitur. Plenty of things that are not public services are regulated or even forbidden. In fact, most of the things that are regulated or forbidden are, and the decision to do so is always based on "weighing benefits/downsides of it." > This might seem harsh, but no one is weighing the benefits of your existence to decide whether you live or die. Actually, yes we do, it's called criminal law. It is used to lock up (or in some barbaric nations, end the lives of) people whose "benefits of existing" within society have been found wanting. For humans we just happen default to assuming innocents until proven otherwise. And whether or not something can exist on its own has no connection to whether or not it should, except in regards to how hard it is to get rid of. > You're voluntarily consuming content which has ads. If you don't like it don't use ad-laden products No, I'm not. The society that exists around me as a whole is not my choice, at best I can poke and prod at it and hope if enough people push into the same direction something changes. Until alternate payment systems like Patreon came along there simply was no way of being both a full member of said society without being confronted (or actively blocking) ads. |