> Users have very widely varying amounts of money.
I really do not understand this argument. This is a fact of life.
Isn't the price of gas affecting poorer citizens? Should we subsidize the gas with ads in you car? Isn't the price of housing affecting poorer citizens? Should we subsidize houses with ads on your walls? How abot having ads via an electrode in your brain 24/7 to get food for free? Where would this lead humanity?
Having a price point is how 99% of world's economy works and it is completely normal that everyone can not buy everything, and that people have to budget and prioritise their expenses based on the perceived value they are getting. I am pretty sure that people would give up on 99% ad-supported content on the web quite easilly if it had even a $0.01 price point, because it is simply not worth it for most people (and not consuming it would arguably improve their lives too).
> I have yet to see a good micropayments proposal,
Or the simple answer is just unwillingness to implement because of conflict of interest. We went to the Moon in 8 years and micropayments are objectively a simpler problem.
> Hacker News has ads (paid links on the front page for job openings), and Wikipedia has fundraising banners (which many adblockers block).
I was not aware you can buy an ad on Hacker News. Source?
Wikipedia example is different from what we are discussing, because for Wikipedia user=customer so they are selling their service to their users, for Google Search, Chrome Browser and most ad-supported websites user!=customer (customer there being an advertiser, introducing conflict of interest).
> My blog is funded just by me as a hobby project, yes, but most of what I (and I suspect you) read on the web isn't.
Most of the content I choose to read does not have ads. I do this consciously as I know that the content with ads will be lower quaility and probably not worth my time. This includes almost all news. "We are what we read" [1] and I am very careful about what content I put in my brain, like I am careful what food I put in my body.
> Isn't the price of housing affecting poorer citizens?
Housing is so expensive that advertising couldn't put an appreciable dent in it. But I don't have any sort of moral objection to some company renting out apartments that are a bit cheaper but have advertisements. (And I would be opposed to outlawing them if they existed)
> I am pretty sure that people would give up on 99% ad-supported content on the web quite easilly if it had even a $0.01 price point, because it is simply not worth it for most people
I think you would see that as well, but mostly because of friction, not because of willingness how much value people get out of things.
> We went to the Moon in 8 years
This cost the US a quarter of a trillion dollars, adjusted for inflation. This was a massive investment. Almost everything has received far less investment than that; no need to posit a conspiracy!
If you think it is just a matter of implementation, I would love to see a link to a proposal you would endorse?
> I was not aware you can buy an ad on Hacker News
There's one in the front page right now: "UPchieve (EdTech Nonprofit, YC W21) is hiring senior engineers"
> Most of the content I choose to read...
I can believe this for you, though that you did not notice the ads here makes me wonder whether you might be missing tasteful ads elsewhere? But it's definitely not true for most people: a web without advertising funding is a web that the vast majority of people who currently use the web would enjoy much less.
> I can believe this for you, though that you did not notice the ads here makes me wonder whether you might be missing tasteful ads elsewhere? But it's definitely not true for most people: a web without advertising funding is a web that the vast majority of people who currently use the web would enjoy much less.
"Most people" argument is generally a bad one as it takes a point in time statistic vs a first principles merit-based observation.
For example "most people" enjoyed smoking in 1960s, which can at best be a point in time statistic and in no way a good argument for smoking (actually it is a terrible argument).
Whether you can make a moral based argument for ads requires at least moral consistency. If you can truly say "I strongly believe ads are a driving force for the good in the society, and therefore I also choose to expose my kids to ads from a young age and would not mind them one day living in an apartment that is running ads on their walls 24/7" then you can at least hold a morally consistent position and I would applaud you for that.
I of course completely disagree with this position, and am doing whatever I can to protect my kids from exposure to ads from young age by limiting TV, paying for YouTube Premium, having them use an ad-free search engine, use a browser that has built in ad blocker and so forth. I teach them that companies never give away things for free unless it benefits them in some other way, and that in life you always get what you pay for.
I really do not understand this argument. This is a fact of life.
Isn't the price of gas affecting poorer citizens? Should we subsidize the gas with ads in you car? Isn't the price of housing affecting poorer citizens? Should we subsidize houses with ads on your walls? How abot having ads via an electrode in your brain 24/7 to get food for free? Where would this lead humanity?
Having a price point is how 99% of world's economy works and it is completely normal that everyone can not buy everything, and that people have to budget and prioritise their expenses based on the perceived value they are getting. I am pretty sure that people would give up on 99% ad-supported content on the web quite easilly if it had even a $0.01 price point, because it is simply not worth it for most people (and not consuming it would arguably improve their lives too).
> I have yet to see a good micropayments proposal,
Or the simple answer is just unwillingness to implement because of conflict of interest. We went to the Moon in 8 years and micropayments are objectively a simpler problem.
> Hacker News has ads (paid links on the front page for job openings), and Wikipedia has fundraising banners (which many adblockers block).
I was not aware you can buy an ad on Hacker News. Source?
Wikipedia example is different from what we are discussing, because for Wikipedia user=customer so they are selling their service to their users, for Google Search, Chrome Browser and most ad-supported websites user!=customer (customer there being an advertiser, introducing conflict of interest).
> My blog is funded just by me as a hobby project, yes, but most of what I (and I suspect you) read on the web isn't.
Most of the content I choose to read does not have ads. I do this consciously as I know that the content with ads will be lower quaility and probably not worth my time. This includes almost all news. "We are what we read" [1] and I am very careful about what content I put in my brain, like I am careful what food I put in my body.
https://tinygem.org/about/#stopnews