Ads incentivize them to make the platform addicting and to prioritize ragebait because it will cause people to stay engaged in the app longer.
cocolowlander@feddit.nl 1 month ago
I’m going to state an unpopular opinion. Bluesky should have ads, not a personalized ads that track users, but just simple ones at the very top of the feed. Consumers today are too addicted to free services, and companies need to be financially independent so that they can support a quality product.
xnx@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
JealousJail@feddit.org 1 month ago
Agreed. Being financially independent can also foster ad investments and lead to a popularity gain
Darkenfolk@dormi.zone 1 month ago
Free services? Where?
Free services don’t really exist.
m0darn@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Could you suggest alternate wording that succinctly conveys what the commenter obviously meant?
Darkenfolk@dormi.zone 1 month ago
I probably could if I could be bothered to do that.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Which means no.
Why the first comment if you were not going to bother to elaborate?
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
If you mean somebody, somewhere is footing the bill, then sure, if you torture the definition of “free” enough, then nothing on Earth is free. It is worth pointing out that if you enjoy (for example) Wikipedia, then you should donate if you can, because Wikipedia runs on donations. If you’re just trying to be a pedantic jackass, though, that’s another thing.
Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 month ago
You’re saying this on lemmy.
Tyfud@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Alternatively, no ads and we can support it through donations or anti-oligarchy purchases like this shirt.
Ads open up a pandoras box of monetization of user data/traffic/clicks/links/additional engagement, etc.
It’s a dark, dark, dark road, and we’ve been down it dozens of times with tech giants. It never ends well.
Let’s stop having advertising be the way we fund pseudo-free services, and instead just give people options to donate or pay into it some other way. We need to end this reliance on advertising industry for revenue.
Yoga@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Ads are attractive to many users because they have a simple option for universal opt out (adblocking) at the cost of everyone who isn’t a Freerider.
Traister101@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Yes but a lot of us who do block ads block them largely because they are intolerable. I largly only started blocking ads at all because of how utterly miserable YouTube ads became.
Yoga@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Gotta love loading a mobile webpage and 20% of it is readable text and the rest is advertising.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Another reason why they just externalize the cost of the website onto anyone who can’t use an ad blocker or doesn’t know how.