[inesranzo]

Ads should not exist at all.

They are psychological, manipulative, influencing tools. It's like an annoying wasp that appears out of nowhere and follows you around.

Nobody asked for this.

When this comes to StackExchange, use a PiHole and protect yourself from this barrage of irrelevant ads.

[throwaway77385]

Ads, which are the sole reason for the attention-grabbing-at-all-costs society we find ourselves in, are, in my opinion, one of the greatest cancers to ever befall us.

[gdulli]

Ads are information. They're made up of fact and opinion. The facts are valuable. I would like to know if there's a new pizza place that opened in my town. We all, by necessity, have to buy lots of things in life, and we should know what the options are. We're also adults who can separate the fact that a pizza place exists from their biased claim that it's the best pizza.

We don't need to go overboard with calling advertising cancer. As is usually the case, we can ignore the most extremist takes. Ads are annoying more often than useful, but you can say that about lots of things in life.

[hagbard_c]

Ads are to information what propaganda is to objective reporting. Informative ads used to exist, e.g. the content of the venerable Computer Shopper magazine was mostly ads and quite informative. What changed? Well, those Computer Shopper ads mostly consisted of lists of bits and parts and widgets followed by their sales price, some contact information and that's it. Not so for the blithering idiocracy which is the 'modern' advertising industry where it is all about lifestyle and image and signalling and sex and anything else except for just saying 'buy our widget for €XX.yy a piece, 10% off when buying 3 or more'. Nope, instead of an informative list of widgets and gizmos we get a diverse couple - black man, white woman - smiling happy smiles because of ${reasons} which have nothing to do with whatever they're trying to peddle. Add some bullshit about sustainability and building better worlds together and such, drape it in a rainbow flag and done, here's your ad for those ramen noodles. Oh, you're selling cars instead of noodles? No problem, we'll ask the diverse couple to eat their noodles in a parking lot. What, no noodles? Fine, let them starve in the parking lot, smiling happy smiles because of $reasons. We'll throw in an angry fool of a white man who can be told off by the kind and wise black man, that'll sell those noodles - ehhh sorry, cars. Yes, cars, or was it bathroom slippers? Doesn't matter. Here's your ad, now pay us.

[ASalazarMX]

This is why ads should be something you actively look for, not something that is shoved into your eyeballs on every medium conceivable.

[skywalqer]

However, ads are also the reason why many services on the Internet are free. So maybe they are not completely bad.

[YetAnotherNick]

HN complains about any monetization strategy including recurring payments, yet complains if the company revenue is low. Almost all of the internet is paid by ads, users almost never pays. Company pays, but then the company is paying the money that they directly or indirectly earned through ads.

[xigoi]

Recurring payments are fine for services that have a recurring cost, which is often not the case.

[ThrowawayTestr]

How do you feel about news subscriptions?

[YetAnotherNick]

Development cost is recurring cost.

[xigoi]

Great, then let me buy a specific version as a single purchase.

[YetAnotherNick]

Would you be fine if that version is affected by botnet in the future, or if the documentation is not updated for newer windows version unless you pay.

And would you be willing to pay $200 one time or $10/month(say assume the average subscription time for users is 2 years), so to recoup the amount they need to increase the cost a lot.

[immibis]

Most ad-supported things also should not exist.

Although Stack Overflow, terrible as it is, is not one of those.

[ThrowawayTestr]

HN is ad supported (in that it's marketing for ycombinator) should it not exist?

[user3939382]

It’s not free you’re just paying with your attention which is the most valuable and scarce resource you have. Its value is convertible into money, it’s just not obvious from the user’s perspective how. From SV’s perspective is crystal clear. Every moment your mind is focused on an ad is a moment it’s not focused on something more important to your life. Some people don’t value their time or attention and Silicon Valley is happy to agree.

[immibis]

Your attention is convertible into money through showing you which things you should spend money on. You can also convert your own attention into your own money by not spending money on those things.

At least it was originally like that. Nowadays political propaganda is also massive. The monetary value to Russia or Israel, of the majority of the USA supporting their side of their war, is immense.

[user3939382]

Which thing you should spend money/attention/energy on is the primary task you have at any given moment of your life. It’s maybe the one decision that is not appropriate to outsource. Consider fine, but dictate no. And if you don’t find the next most important investment in your life by pull, not push, you’re lost. Which is okay but when I’m lost I’ll take my inspiration from somewhere other than, anywhere actually other than, Madison Ave. Or anyone’s political agenda for that matter. Thanks but no thanks.

[Iolaum]

Ads are also used as infection vectors by spyware now. See:

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/int...

Note: Ctrl + F: malicious advertisements

as the purpose of the post was not to highlight that fact. But given that Google is an advertising company and they still mention it ...

[estimator7292]

....now?

Friend, it has always been this way. Malware in ads is literally the primary reason we created adblockers in the dark mists of time.

Flash was killed off because a majority of ads became cancerous Flash abominations executing all kinds of malicious code.

[Iolaum]

I stand corrected. Had heard the term malvertising but didn't happen to read such a concrete example like the one I shared. But from what you said I m sure many exist.

[throw0101d]

> Nobody asked for this.

The people who aren't willing to sign up for an account and pay a monthly/annual/per-article fee asked for this.

People have bills to pay after all.

[htmlcoderexe]

I always think of ads like a big flashing sign saying "I'm trying to screw you over!"

Given how much research goes into psychology just to make them work, they're basically a form of malware for the brain (and sometimes for the device they run on).

[delichon]

TANSTAAFL. Ads are just another way that lunch isn't free. You're welcome to consume all the ad paid content you want and then bitch about it. But it's just like complaining that other things cost money. However we pay for other people's labor, it's a corellary of opposing slavery. The alternative is compelled unpaid labor, or not consuming things. So choose: slavery, poverty, or perform labor to compensate other people for theirs. Sometimes that means waking up at 4am to work in the salt mines, and sometimes it means watching stupid ads. Personally I like having the occasional choice.

[Iolaum]

Even paid products have ads now. Like Smart TV's, Windows11, etc, ...

[aleph_minus_one]

> Ads should not exist at all.

> They are psychological, manipulative, influencing tools.

The second paragraph is in my opinion also an accurate description of a very huge amount of people. By your argumentation that ads should not exist at all: shouldn't these people also not exist at all?

[user3939382]

If you have questions consult São Paulo where they already implemented OPs philosophy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

[nyczomg]

How is a PiHole going to stop native ads on stackexchange?

[technothrasher]

> Nobody asked for this.

Well... the advertisers did.

[YetAnotherNick]

No they didn't. Most advertisers are running at negative ROI, but they just have to run ads as they can't risk other companies taking over. Biggest advertisers would be happy if the ads are banned. It's the new and small companies that would find it harder.