You joke but it’s actually shocking how often you’ll hear the refrain repeated that without ubiquitous advertising we could not possibly have a free public internet.
And no one stops to ask how the internet sustained itself from the years 1995 to 2005. Or big search engines, for that matter. The answer is that they were smaller and their revenue was based on selling real things, not constant hassle and attention-grabbing. The internet was not an ad hellscape back then simply because every single market and every single sector was smaller. It's big now because tech giants are supercharged growth-addicted behemoths.
It was better when it was smaller. Pretty much everything is in some stage of enshittification.
The internet sustained itself during those times with Ads. Doubleclick was started in 95. Do you not remember pop ups, pop unders, banner ads on every site?
Ads have always been part of the commercial internet and I'd argue they were far worse back then.
The reason Google started off so well was because adverts were non existent, then just relevant text on the side. Compare to altavista, excite, hit it etc it was a beacon of calm.
If advertising were to disappear overnight, I'd argue the internet would go on.
First, there was an internet before there were ads. When there's a need there's a way and BitTorrent and Napster taught us that P2P is feasible when the users care about it.
Then there's the issue of competitive advantage. If the newspaper from the next town over has a website then my local newspaper has to have a website too. So the incentives would switch from "I'll finance this service with ads" to "this website costs money but that's another cost of doing business".
And finally, people do pay for services. Patreon and Wikipedia are examples where a bunch of users provide the funds for those who can't/won't pay for a service.
Would all services survive? No. And it would certainly be a different experience. But I believe an internet driven by a mixture of fans and sensible economic strategy wouldn't be a bad thing.
> There wasn't really an internet before ads though.
You must be very young, or have forgotten?
The Internet (and the Web also) existed well before ads. Advertising (all commercial use) was forbidden.
The Internet existed and was much better. All content was from people who cared about it, not because they were exploiting you for ads. The glory days of the Internet was before ads were legal.
I don't know how old you are so I may be very young but I'm in my 40s and was on the internet in the early 90s and it was covered in ads then. It was about as early as you could get on the internet and not be part of a university or government contractor. You believe the glory days of the internet were the 70s and 80s?
If you’re on a mobile and have metered traffic, chances are you are wasting more money downloading ads than the website owner would make. If you could pay directly instead, both you and the owner would be better off. Zero tracking, zero ads.
I don’t think anybody had any success yet, but we can dream.
I keep hearing this for the last 20 years but I have never once seen a successful implementation of this.
So in theory micro transactions are the cure - in reality it’s never been tried
Yeah, I mean, it sounds doable, but it could be a tarpit idea of course. Or maybe adtech is too powerful and we need to let it crash before something like this can be implemented.
It doesn't seem true to me. Pretty much everything worthwhile on the web is gratis (nonprofits, academia, governments, hobbyists, etc.) or paid. The ad supported stuff is basically mainstream news, social media, youtube, and SEO spam sites. The overwhelming majority is less than worthless.
Online banking is a service you pay for, not ad funded. I suspect if youtube disappeared tomorrow, peertube might become more popular for hobbies. Maybe the more entertainment focused professionals would find a way to make money, or maybe people would realize that if they're going to pay for entertainment, they expect something more like netflix.
It was better when it was smaller. Pretty much everything is in some stage of enshittification.