[throwaway_sb666]

Disagree. Let it burn, it's the only way. (change my mind?)

This made me think of the Ukraine war, and how the sanctions may turn out to be a bigger help to climate crisis than any political entity could muster on the basis of the impeding climate snafu. Sometimes radical action is the right course of action; for democracy-(pre)serving reasons our governance systems often inhibit change unless most of the population is rallied around a specific cause as we see with Ukraine. That is the time for radical change to happen, or democracies would never progress. End of sidetrack :)

EDIT: I mean, Strong agree with "Necessary site functionality, without the spyware. ", but disagree with last part

[andai]

I was just asserting out that a law that banned spyware-based advertising would harm the current website ecomomy which is largely based around spyware. I would like to see an end to mass spying, and therefore the creation of a different kind of funding mechanism. That could indeed be brought about by law, but that seems a bit too violent to me. I think what we're missing is a better alternative.

I read an interesting article (from the mid 2000s? Will update if I can find it) arguing that microtransactions will never work due to the cognitive burden of paying for hundreds (or thousands!) of tiny things a day.

Brave's BAT seems to solve this part of the problem by automating the payments based on how much time the user spends on each site. It would require everyone to switch to Brave and use their crypto thing to make it work, so it's obviously "suboptimal".

[throwaway_sb666]

> I was just asserting out that a law that banned spyware-based advertising would harm the current website ecomomy which is largely based around spyware.

I think that largely, the website economy is based around advertising. I honestly doubt the advertising-centered business model would disappear even if large-scale tracking did. Would it be less targeted and less efficient on a micro-level - yes probably.

But less abusive advertising would also have upsides for website owners: Privacy conscious people are increasingly blocking all ads, losing them eyeballs. Privacy friendly ads may be given a pass.

Right now it's mostly impossible for privacy-conscious people to support a website the like by looking at their ads. The adtech industry is to blame for this for data-raping people. Website owners would benefit from a sustainable advertising model, where users don't have to make the choice between not contributing financially, vs sacrificing their privacy to data leeches. All the websites crying over ad-blockers would instead be forced to use legal ad networks that don't rely on illegal tracking, and people might again be willing to look at ads for content.

Brave is an interesting take, but I think the more optimal solution is to just ban the practice of tracking and shadow-profile building. Problem solved, and I don't need to encourage people to install ad-blockers anymore.

[andai]

>Would it be less targeted and less efficient on a micro-level - yes probably.

I remember reading not too long ago that tracking did not increase profits! I find that hard to believe because once the tracking gets good enough, they actually start showing me ads for things I actually might want to buy! (Imagine that!) In my experience, Facebook's ads (at least on Instagram) show me really cool things, while Google (who should know way more about me) shows me complete garbage on all its platforms (YouTube being worst of all).

Re: less abusive advertising

I'm considering making some (hopefully!) profitable web games but I'm averse to putting ads on them. After giving it some thought I realized my main objection wasn't aesthetics / UX (though that is certainly a concern when it comes to "art" -- I want my games to be beautiful and ads sort of kill the vibe there) -- my main concern was actually running strange 3rd party fingerprinting / zombie-tracker / god-knows-what. If it was just a clearly labeled affiliate link, eg. <a><img>, that would do away with most of my concerns! (And simplify my GDPR compliance by just.. not storing anything.. and eliminate the need for those horrible banners :)

In general I'm averse to government regulations, but this might be a rare case where the alternative (rampant spying) is worse... After that, all that remains is to get the governments to ban themselves from spying too ;)

[throwaway_sb666]

> my main concern was actually running strange 3rd party fingerprinting / zombie-tracker / god-knows-what

Exactly - i briefly looked into https://www.ethicalads.io/ but mostly IT related ads it seems.

> Facebook's ads (at least on Instagram) show me really cool things, while Google (who should know way more about me) shows me complete garbage

I personally remember being pretty shocked at how the Facebook like button & social login spread to everywhere and they could track you all around. Long time ago. Facebook probably knows a lot more about you than you think.

[hutzlibu]

"This made me think of the Ukraine war, and how the sanctions may turn out to be a bigger help to climate crisis than any political entity could muster on the basis of the impeding climate snafu."

Huh? Here in germany there is talk by politicians that climate policies have to stand back now and we need to rely more on the coal plants and not close them, as it was planned.

I really hope, that the actual solutions will be more renewables and nuclear, but I am a bit pessimistic about it.

[throwaway_sb666]

Germany is in a very tough spot energy-wise and is the most impacted by the Russian sanctions. A lot of house heating is gas and that isn't something you can change in 6 month. So in the very short term they probably need coal to replace the gas where possible so that stockpiles can meet next winters demand for heating.

But for medium-term, a lot of infrastructure investment will be needed. Times are such that the public will be quick to condemn investment in fossil energy, so there will be pressure to find green solutions where feasible.

The other day I saw a headline that France had stopped subsidizing gas heating installations. I don't get why it took a Russian war to do that, but apparently it did.

There have been many other such headlines. Will it matter? Probably some, maybe a lot... one can hope.

Edit: or maybe the opposite. who knows