[throwawayacc2]

I wrote this before and I will write it here again.

There is a burger place.

The burger place offers free burgers.

They are able to do this because Big Lettuce pays the burger place to put lettuce in their burger.

When I go and get a burger from the free burger place, what I do is I remove the lettuce from my burger. I just don’t like it.

I made no agreement with the burger place to eat lettuce.

They assume I will. They try to convince me to. They might even try to make the lettuce hard to remove from the burger.

But what has not happened, unlike you are implying, is an agreement that I will consume the lettuce.

I’m not going to stop going to the free burger place. I really like free burgers. And I won’t stop removing lettuce from my burger either. I deeply dislike lettuce.

So, instead of telling me to stop going to the free burger shop because I like removing lettuce, how about you tell the shop to stop giving away free lettuce?

If people really like their burgers, they will pay for them.

If their burgers aren’t really that good and people consume them just because they’re free, maybe the burger place should go out of business.

[datavirtue]

As ridiculous as this sounds, it makes sense. We tried the business model and it just didn't work out. We need to innovate ways to support content explicitly with some form of payment. The elusive micro-transactions that economists have been begging for for decades now.

Maybe it is too late?

[throwawayacc2]

If I had an answer for this I’d be pitching my startup somewhere. I honestly don’t know what the alternative will be. But I am sure there is on. Forcing people to consume ads just isn’t sustainable I think.

[cwkoss]

The analogy would work better if the lettuce was infected with parasitic worms that make the victim more likely to spend money on lettuce.

[jefftk]

Here's where we had this conversation last time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32765972

As I said before, in your hypothetical you would be undermining a business model that is letting a lot of people eat burgers for free, and that would be selfishly making the world worse.

[horsawlarway]

Except very few things are free.

That lettuce company is making revenue somehow, or it will go out of business anyways. In which case the world ends up in exactly the same spot.

So lets make the analogy closer to real life - the lettuce company funds the burger making because everyone MUST eat a salad at least one a day, using lettuce they have paid for with real money. This company wants it to be their lettuce. So they fund the burgers, and make up for it by charging more for their lettuce.

You see my point? Some small subset of folks might end up getting a free burger, but it's at the cost of many other purchasers choosing to buy lettuce with a higher markup.

The lettuce company (ad companies) aren't some fucking fairy tale good guy handing out free stuff - they're very carefully adjusting the habits of shoppers to make MORE money. They are not good - the world is not less good by avoiding them.

[jefftk]

In the previous round of this discussion I tried to flesh out the lettuce analogy more, and make it more similar to online ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32766236

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

Let's try a different reason for the free burgers: the lettuce company makes money by selling information that's (somehow magically) sent to them from inside my mouth while I am eating the lettuce about how I chew, maybe using certain aspects of my mouth and stomach which allows them to isolate me as an individual.

Given all that, they put effort into requiring that their lettuce makes its way to my mouth with a free burger. Fine, I'll pay for the burger: Big Lettuce is still adamant about getting their tracking lettuce in my body. One has to go to great lengths to find a burger place that doesn't have a deal with such a lettuce-provider. Whatever, I'll just take the stupid lettuce off.

(I agree, it's a weird analogy.)

Anyway, the stakes are different with free food vs. free content, so to the point that one is selfishly undermining the ability for others to get content for free: that decision is not what makes the world worse. If the content is truly worth seeing, it's likely that someone will be inspired to make it as accessible as possible[0], regardless of the lack of potential profit, and other content will become less available. (Maybe I'll sing a different tune when Khan Academy is overrun with ads.)

[0] https://www.khanacademy.org/

[account42]

You are assuming that the lettuce-funded buger business is the only possible way to provide free food for those in need. Maybe there are government bugers that are just as good but the burger joint they are served in is not as flashy. Maybe there are people who just like making burgers or want to help others and give them away without insisting on you eating lettuce - or they would if the lettuce-funded burger business didn't have exclusive bun contracts with all the local bakeries that they finance with their lettuce income.

Also, don't forget that big lettuce is not subsidizing the burgers out of the goodness of their hearts - they are doing so because they believe it will allow them to capture more wealth overall. Wealth that people could have used to pay for food.

[jefftk]

I don't understand where you're taking this analogy. You've introduced a ton of ideas that don't have obvious correlates to the ad-funded web.

[throwawayacc2]

I genuinely don’t know how to even approach this.

Here’s something that sprang to mind.

A slaver to his slave: Your attempts at achieving freedom are undermining a business model that is letting a lot of people enjoy cheap clothing, and that would be selfishly making the world worse.

What’s your thoughts on that one? Genuinely curious.

The way I see it, I’m not “making the world worse”. Waving away the can of worms opened by the notion of “making the world better/worse”, I genuinely cannot understand how refusing to consume something makes me selfish.

I’m not selfish for removing lettuce from my burger and I’m not selfish for removing ads. The problem is not with me. The problem is with the business model.

People not liking something drives innovation. Instead of doubling down on something that is not working and telling people “stop being a bad person and consume the ad” perhaps the business should find an alternative way of monetising.

[jefftk]

> A slaver to his slave: Your attempts at achieving freedom are undermining a business model that is letting a lot of people enjoy cheap clothing, and that would be selfishly making the world worse.

This ignores harm of slavery to the slave, but in both the online ads case and your burger hypothetical there are no analogs to the slave.

> I genuinely cannot understand how refusing to consume something makes me selfish.

The argument is pretty straightforward. In your hypothetical, hunger has been mostly solved: everyone can eat as many burgers as they want. But this solution is fragile, and rests on people consuming the lettuce that comes with the burgers. By choosing to remove your lettuce, you increase the risk that this falls apart and we'll be back to the status quo where some people are hungry, and others spend a substantial portion of their income on food.

(I still think this is a silly hypothetical)

[cwkoss]

Ads cause psychological harm to people. They are engineered with the intention to make them feel insecure and make worse decisions with their money.

[throwawayacc2]

I am literally harmed by ads. In my case, I suffer from internet addiction you see and those extra load seconds and interruptions are deeply harmful to me. They trigger anxiety and panic attacks.

But that’s just me. Other people are harmed way more! Maybe you can wave away my ad inducted anxiety but can you wave away people with epilepsy? Can you wave away people with ADHD? Can you wave away people with accessibility needs? Can you wave away people unwillingly outed as lgbt by the ads they are served? Can you wave away predatory ads? Can you wave away “making the world worse” through ad enabled miss information?

As for lettuce I am allergic to it. I will literally die if I don’t remove it.

Your move.

[jefftk]

> As for lettuce I am allergic to it. I will literally die if I don’t remove it.

If you're allergic to lettuce, it's very risky to eat a burger that has previously been contaminated by lettuce. Perhaps consider eating anything else?

I think the ad situation is much more complex than your hypothetical, and blocking ads for accessibility reasons is fine. But calls for everyone to block ads, even if they aren't "allergic", are calls for an end to free ad-supported things online, which includes the website we're currently using.