[Aerroon]

Then how do they make money? Everything is a subscription service? Cable TV 2.0? Can you use the internet normally by avoiding these services? No Google, no YouTube, no Windows, no Android etc.

Right now we basically get the products of the internet for free. If you kill advertising as monetization you don't have those free services anymore. And if you have to pay for everything then you'll leave even more of a trail on what you did. It just might not be accessible to corporations, but it'll still exist.

[no_time]

>Windows

lol most people pay money for windows (even against their will if they want to buy a laptop for example) and still get ads and telemetry cranked to the max. What's up with that?

>Android

Another bad example. In a less shitty world where the majority share of the global mobile OS duopoly isn't owned by a glorified surveillance company, the support of a device would be covered by, and only by the sale price of the device. Which wouldn't be such a huge cost if Android better had engineered HAL and better standards so every device could update from the same repo tree.

>if you have to pay for everything then you'll leave even more of a trail on what you did.

This is my problem with Kagi[0](frequently posted here). This is more of the fault of the current global payment infrastructure than any ordinary tech company's. But if you think that the current ad infested browsing experience makes you any more private I have bad news for you. Namely fingerprintJS[1].

You might be asking what are my solution's to these problems. And my answer is that I have no idea. The only thing I know is that I'm seriously jaded with the current {mono,duo}poly ridden state of tech.

[0]: https://kagi.com/ (currently throwing internal server error lol)

[1]: https://fingerprintjs.com/

[freediver]

> You might be asking what are my solution's to these problems. And my answer is that I have no idea.

The thing is you always pay, just the currency changes. In one case you pay with your data and in another with money out of your pocket. At least with the appearance of Kagi, now people also have the second option on the table. For web search it did not exist previously and having more options is always good thing from a consumer perspective.

[no_time]

Definitely. I may have went too hard on you guys previously. Wishing you the best of luck :^)

[freediver]

No worries, I didn't take it as such, critique is always welcome.

[M2Ys4U]

Banning behavioural advertising is not the same thing as banning advertising in its entirety.

Newspapers, for example, survived for centuries on a mixture of subscriptions and advertising before they could snoop on their readers to decide which ads to show.

TV and radio advertising right now works as a funding model without syphoning personal data.

[Aerroon]

TV, radio, and newspaper ads are also local. They do not have international reach. Would ads be useful to you in Russian or Chinese? Would the company paying for the ads find it useful that you get those ads? No, they wouldn't, but on the internet without data everyone would get all of the ads.

[labawi]

You don't need to snoop on your visitors to choose a language. Choosing an ad based on browser preferred language or geoip is not behavioral advertising. It is behavioral advertising when you record the data, when you track the user and show your ad on a site with the lowest bid instead of the relevant site that your target audience originally visited.

You don't need the persons purchasing history, sex, marital status, age, ethnicity, interests, political orientation, a list of visited sites and all data you can get your hands on, to choose a language.

[freediver]

"Free" commercial services were made possible only in recent years with the advent of ad-tech that was able to monetize the data being gathered.

If you want an alternative to that, yes then of course you have to pay for it.

[JAlexoid]

The primary reason to collect personal data is retargeting, which is a massive waste of money. (Have you ever heard of the game theory?) Google(search) and YouTube Ads rely on content you're being served to actually target ads, that's much more relevant and drives higher click-though rates.

PS: I definitely pay for Windows, MacOS, iPad OS and Android. Developers of those systems get paid from proceeds of hardware sales.

[Aerroon]

>Google(search) and YouTube Ads rely on content you're being served to actually target ads, that's much more relevant and drives higher click-though rates.

Then how come I get ads in my native language despite almost never watching or searching for content in my native language? Obviously ads in my native language are more useful, because I might actually partake in those services. Walmart advertising to me would never matter, because I will never be able to get to a Walmart.

[zwaps]

For what’s worth, Windows is paid and there are better alternatives to all the other things you mentioned. I do not use any of them.