dudenas@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I can imagine a model of ethical, user opt-in ad service, which could be privacy aware and still allow monetizing. Users could actively subscribe topics of goods-services they are interested in, as to sponsored account, or in even more anonymised, rss-like way (techies surely know more appropriate methods).
I would subscribe to some ethical and relevant for me ads, especially if it helped sustain and develop a platform.
snooggums@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
What a terrible opinion to have.
dudenas@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Why? Could you please add some arguments to your harsh judgement?
snooggums@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
The fediverse was intended to be the opposite of the ad infested enshittified internet. Inserting ads would turn it into the same shit.
Wanting to receive ‘relevant’ ads is wanting to have personal information harvested, since that is the only way to make that work. That necessity is what led to google goong from a useful, minimal search engine into the enshittified mess that it is now.
Wanting users to actively engage in ads is even worse. Just wanting to get fucked over by corporate interests, just begging for the whole thing lean into sponsored content pushing out any user created content and eventually requiring draconian moderation and centralization to appease corporate interests because that is what always happens. There are no ethical and relevant ads. Relevant ads cannot be ethicsl
Your opinion is what led streaming services to change from affordable and easy fo access in netflix to ad infested, shittily designed and poorly run streaming sevices. Wanting ads to be added to a free community supported network of instances means you want the whole thing to turn to shit. There is no other possible outcome.
dudenas@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Thanks for detailing. I also witnessed what happened, but I tend to blame corporate surveillance capitalism instead demonizing the very concept of ads.
Firstly, ads are information of value exchange, which itself has value. Even anarchists need to exchange goods and services.
Also, enthusiasm-based services die, because volunteers get tired, retire or find new exciting projects. They need money or other value to keep working in the long term. And we want them to.
Now, can there be a different system of ads, which would not enshittify it all? I think there can be, maybe it isnt yet created.
From the user perspective, I can imagine an option in server settings, letting me switch on some ads to support its upkeep. It would let me tick some boxes, e.g. only handmade fishing gear and personal IT assistance (whoever the sponsors are). It could be served passively like rss, with no tracking - but the server owners could be paid by estimates, like tv does. Or maybe even some ethical cryptography is possible in the open source system.
Maybe not exactly like that, but you get my line of thinking. Because there is also another type of enshitification: open source projects get abandoned, broken and die just like commercial ones.
Yes, there are donations, but most of us can afford to make only so much of them.
Therefore I prefer to think about reinventing and reclaiming system of honourable advertising, instead of extracting unpaid labor from all those volunteers until they quit.