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Looks like the war against advertising is continuing to fail, predictably. Google Chrome is now
banningrestricting ad blockers starting as early as next year. (1) I am not convinced this model of: create a free, ad-free service to get users --> slowly pull in ads for $$$ --> eventually become an ad-riddled hell is the best model. I often balk at paying for services up front, but if a service as essential as google is now bowing to the pressure, when will it end?Advertising definitely has some uses in connecting buyers to sellers, and informing consumers about the market, but I'm convinced it's a bit of a 'tamed demon.' If we don't want to devolve into a horrid anarcho-capitalist future, we need to get serious about restricting what advertisers can do, and where they can advertise. I predict advertising will become far more ubiquitous with the rise of Dall-E and similar image producing AIs. The cost of creating extremely compelling, beautiful ads will plummet, and more and more of our daily visual space will become filled with non stop advertising.
On top of this, we have Meta and other tech oligarchs attempting to push us all into the Metaverse. I am no detractor of AR/VR, in fact I think utilized correctly it could solve many of our current problems. However if the Powers That Be take over the metaverse, we will soon have ads that engage all of our sense - not just vision and hearing.
Given how powerful advertising already is, can we really afford to let it run rampant in an age where we have such powerful technologies?
1 - https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/
Using ad-blockers is antisocial behavior and should be discouraged or banned wherever possible. If you don't want to consume content that contains ads, don't consume the content if it contains ads. Simple as.
Advertiser supported content makes it possible for a much broader array of content creators to make a living producing commercially viable products. A world without advertising is a world with more paywalls and fewer creators making a living. See the decline of the newspaper for what content creation looks like without advertising dollars: fewer writers making a decent living, higher prices for less content, increasingly desperate catering to a tiny demographic target.
If you don't want advertising on your TV, don't watch OTA TV, limit your viewing to paid streaming services that don't show ads. If you don't like youtube ads, subscribe to premium. If you don't like reading essays with pop up ads, pay for a newspaper subscription, or if you're too cheap for that go to the library and read it for free. If you expect to google "How to fix my sink when it gurgles" and find the answer for free, you have to expect that the ads on the side of the page are paying the guy to make it.
If you think that putting advertising in your face is wrong, vote with your feet/wallet/eyeballs: reward content producers that offer alternative models. If content producers find that they're losing customers when they put up obnoxious ads, they'll stop doing it.
Can anyone offer me an argument in favor of ad-blockers that doesn't amount to some kind of misanthropic "The system, man, it's broken; so whatever I do against the system is a-ok"? I really can't even create a steelman for the ad-block position. I can understand the logic of not liking to be tracked, sure, and I find that a somewhat reasonable ask; but not viewing any ads that pay for the content you consume is just expecting the world to provide you with something free of charge.
It's an interesting question. I haven't read all the comments here, but if I were to try to provide a steelman, it might be:
As others have argued here, the medium the ads are on are fundamentally being displayed on technology that the user is in control of. Therefore people have the capability to use ad blockers, and some portion, but not all, will
Companies that buy ad-space know point #1, and they factor it into the price they're willing to pay. Lots of market research goes into whether ads are worth it, how much to spend, where to spend it, and the expected ROI for ads.
So basically, it's sort of a free market solution to the problem, in that the market should balance itself out. No serious company would buy ad-space if it was going to get them nothing in return. So basically, the system still works, even despite the fact that some people use ad blockers. If it didn't work, like if everyone everywhere decided to install an ad blocker, then the system wouldn't still be ongoing, and a new system with a new model would take its place. This is very similar to how I may argue that it's okay to change the channel on TV when a commercial is on.
As a further argument that the system works as is, websites and web tech really could be doing a lot more if they felt that ad blockers were stepping on their business model and revenue. Chrome could ban the biggest ad blocker plugins. Some sites already don't let you view their content if they detect such plugins.
And then there are totally weird and sneaky ways that sites could get around your ad blockers. Ever watch just about any free internet porn past 2015-ish? All the porn sites all do weird things to make sure you get those ads. Like for example, when you first click the video, it redirects your tab to an ad, and makes a new tab for your content. I assume it does this to fool the adblocker plugin, since such plugins are mostly looking for popups, not site redirects.
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