Dungeon Crawler BenMar 1
'Pay to remove ads' is such an awful insidious now common phrase. Give us money or else we'll do this to you. If you don't pay us, we will control your experience. We will force ourselves upon you unless you meet our demands. Modern day protection racket.
Show threadSwappage

@TheBreadmonkey

feeding you AD is way more remunerative for the big tech then removing ADs for a mohtnly fee.

I don't see anything evil in giving you the option of chosing to pay for going AD free.

It's unfair to ask to use a product/service without giving anything in return.
If we talk about social media, same goes for mastodon instances which are run by volunteers with their own money for hosting and their free time for maintenance.

Same goes for messages services like signal, it won't be possible for it to exist without donations.

That said, I want to point out that I don't condone evil behaviour, but for that, it's just a matter of opting out of these services and go for something else.

Mar 1 at 9:04pmWeb
Show threadRoche LimitMar 1
@Swappage
Yet the Mastodon instances don't pepper my timeline with ads if I don't donate. They just ask nicely or wait until I change my mind.
@TheBreadmonkey
Show threadSwappageMar 1

@rochelimit @TheBreadmonkey

of course they don't, but that's the main difference between a business and something that is run as a volunteer project.

I ask nicely, because I'm running a volunteering project, and if it doesn't get funded, I can shut it down, eventually apologizing for the inconvenience, but i'd still be able to pay my bills and won't end up sleeping under a bridge.

But If i'm a business and my living depends on it, I have to do everything it I can in order to keep my revenue up and the business up and running. Unfortunately in many scenarios this ends up becoming annoying.

Being too much of annoying or abusing my position of dominance in the market to push too aggressively or making revenue by damaging the end user is where evil behavior starts, and is where i don't condone.

Show threadRoche LimitMar 1
@Swappage
Yep. I'd like to see a switch back to contextual, non-tracking ads, which are cost effective but don't bring in the money of the likely illegal ad auctions. I didn't choose the adtec industry's business model, and I'd love it to be driven out of the internet.
@TheBreadmonkey
Show threadSwappageMar 1

@rochelimit @TheBreadmonkey

I think the best bet we have is to "fork" for a better internet built by users for users, like it was when most of the infrastructure was kept up by universities and run by students for the sake of research and leisure... and not by companies.

damn I miss the old late '90s days with IRC and psychedelic personal websites and bulletin boards :D

Show threadRoche LimitMar 2
@Swappage
We can dream. :)
@TheBreadmonkey