So, following the discussion from the YouTube/uBlock Origin thread the other day - Is it amoral to block this advertisement client side? Is it entitled to not sit through the advertisement...
Exemplary
So, following the discussion from the YouTube/uBlock Origin thread the other day -
Is it amoral to block this advertisement client side?
Is it entitled to not sit through the advertisement directed at attacking you and your friends or family?
I will go a step further and say that blocking ads is a security issues. It's not whether we should block ads, it's whether we can. Some ads contain sketchy code, and are delivered by a party...
I will go a step further and say that blocking ads is a security issues. It's not whether we should block ads, it's whether we can. Some ads contain sketchy code, and are delivered by a party other than the one we agree to visit when we go to a webpage. (Edited because of my apparent inability to put the horse before the cart re: can and should.)
In multiple senses of the word. Not just issues like viruses and crypto miners, or the stealing of bandwidth and computational power, but also the matter of stealing your attention. Ads have only...
I will go a step further and say that blocking ads is a security issues
In multiple senses of the word. Not just issues like viruses and crypto miners, or the stealing of bandwidth and computational power, but also the matter of stealing your attention. Ads have only one purpose and that is to draw your attention away from whatever it was that you wanted to do to spend your time and energy and on them. Since time and attention is scarce, I always feel kind of robbed of something valuable whenever they succeed.
The attention thing is the biggest thing for me. Every now and then I help people with computer problems and seeing how their computers run is shocking. Modern computers running Windows 10 and 11...
The attention thing is the biggest thing for me. Every now and then I help people with computer problems and seeing how their computers run is shocking. Modern computers running Windows 10 and 11 as they come out of the box is just as bad as if they were infected with adware. I honestly don’t see how people can live like that.
How far we have fallen. The internet was created by a combination of scientific organizations, universities, egalitarian hippies, with support from federal funding agencies. It wasn't founded by...
Is it amoral to block this advertisement client side?
How far we have fallen. The internet was created by a combination of scientific organizations, universities, egalitarian hippies, with support from federal funding agencies. It wasn't founded by businesses or for-profit news agencies. We even had a decade long major cultural debate on whether for-profit activities should even be allowed on the internet at all.
We should have never allowed for-profit activities on the internet, period. It's antithetical to the foundational principles of the net. And now we've degenerated so far that we've gone from wondering if we should even allow online commercial activity at all to debating if its ethical to block ads that should have never been allowed on the internet in the first place.
This is actually the most important point. Arguably one of the greatest inventions of the modern age was not profit motivated. This should immediately give pause to anyone claiming we need to...
This is actually the most important point.
Arguably one of the greatest inventions of the modern age was not profit motivated. This should immediately give pause to anyone claiming we need to materially reward people extra for innovation.
Well, as much as I despise ads and what commerce has done to the internet, one of the big drivers behind the development of the internet was the cold war. The goal was to build a network that...
Well, as much as I despise ads and what commerce has done to the internet, one of the big drivers behind the development of the internet was the cold war. The goal was to build a network that would be resilient to attack and would still work even if a major part of it was destroyed. Not really a better motivator than commerce, I'd say.
antithetical, but also inevitable. A tool that connects people around the world together without worries of pesky landlines? Of course VC's were going to throw billions at the wall just to see...
We should have never allowed for-profit activities on the internet, period. It's antithetical to the foundational principles of the net.
antithetical, but also inevitable. A tool that connects people around the world together without worries of pesky landlines? Of course VC's were going to throw billions at the wall just to see what sticks.
wondering if we should even allow online commercial activity at all to debating if its ethical to block ads that should have never been allowed on the internet in the first place.
Taking this in a more general sentiment: it is morally dubious. Someone needs to host those servers, and those servers cost money just to upkeep. And of course, for quality content someone needed time, expertise, and effort to arrange such content to viewers. That's a lot of energy expended to just accept wholesale as always being el gratis, no strings attached.
Back in the day those funds came from the government, indirectly or otherwise. That funding shifted, and with it the goals.
So there's a spectrum. I don't care about some trillion dollar company losing maybe a few million from people reaching around their monetization. I would feel bad about blocking an ad from a small forum owner who legitimately needs just some few dozen, or hundred dollars to offset server costs. Especially if they are serving an audience who isn't used to asking how a website is hosted and just expects it to always be some free public ground to tread on.
This was not an inevitability. We CHOSE to allow that to happen. Again, there were huge debates in public and in Congress about this. This is something we actively chose, not some law of nature....
Of course VC's were going to throw billions at the wall just to see what sticks.
This was not an inevitability. We CHOSE to allow that to happen. Again, there were huge debates in public and in Congress about this. This is something we actively chose, not some law of nature. We could have kept the internet as a noncommercial, digital public square.
Someone needs to host those servers, and those servers cost money just to upkeep.
And who says those have to be for-profit entities? The internet still managed to be hosted prior to commercialization. It was mostly hosted by universities, nonprofit organizations, and private individuals. Yes, the number of users has increased by orders of magnitude, but in turn the number of people who can host sites has increased by a similar magnitude.
Even today, the best content online is often, if not usually, created by non-profit entities. You and I aren't getting paid to post these comments. Most YouTube channels start off as modest passion projects without a hope of making a profit. The most commercial-optimized products online tend to be the shittiest, by far.
The thing to keep in mind is that a noncommercial internet would fundamentally not be the same as the modern internet. We wouldn't have companies like Facebook. Social media would have developed in a much more distributed, self-hosted fashion, in line with what the Fediverse is trying to do. We would have seen many more foundation-supported projects like tildes. Very bandwidth-hungry applications like video would have seen their development delayed. Maybe only now we would have seen large scale self-hosted video, (and at resolutions lower than HD), as the tech finally allows it. Or maybe YouTube would have been founded more as a nonprofit entity, supported by subscriptions, government grants, or donations.
Not everything needs to be commercialized. It's fine to have public spaces without commercialization. The county courthouse in my town is a true public space. You can go out in front of the courthouse and protest or advocate for anything you want, and people frequently do. Yet if you try to set up a billboard on the courthouse lawn, you're likely to receive a fine. And yet, this is a public space, directly paid for and maintained by public tax dollars.
how were we supposed to prevent it? This is simply the tragedy of the commons, despite there being theoretically infinite digital resource. No single government can't just lay down a law saying...
This was not an inevitability. We CHOSE to allow that to happen.
how were we supposed to prevent it? This is simply the tragedy of the commons, despite there being theoretically infinite digital resource. No single government can't just lay down a law saying "all internet stuff needs to be free" because the internet isn't constrained by traditional borders.
The public, meanwhile, is in an infinitely better position in 2023 to homespin everything compared to 1993, but that support has several holes. Nothing physical is stopping more tildes-esque sites from popping up except a lack of interest, both from potential hosters and potential readers. Humans settling for short term convenience despite long term destruction is a critique as old as civilization.
Even today, the best content online is often, if not usually, created by non-profit entities. You and I aren't getting paid to post these comments.
I respect the cozy community here that can talk in depth about topics that would devolve into anti-capitalistic rants elsewhere. But I wouldn't say our content it high quality. Simply "not low quality". I'm not sourcing every claim I make, nor interviewing domain experts, nor being careful with my grammar and sentence structure (again, maybe it shows how low the bar is in modern social media, but it isn't even close to touching the ceiling either). I'm simply not trying to throw ads and affiliate links out with every other paragraph like a modern professional writer is forced to do (and fortunately, Deimos isn't either).
Tildes' content is about as high quality as you can get without expecting to pay for such content, but either of us can walk away today and lose nothing if we don't post comments for years on end. That doesn't make for particularly engaged "content creators". Maybe that's a good thing in a moral sense, but I don't think that sort of mindset would have lead to modern content creators going toe-to-toe with, and even toppling the cable behemoth, nor disrupting Hollywood. It would simply be seen as a stepping stone until those two entities whisked away the best talent for a professional role.
The thing to keep in mind is that a noncommercial internet would fundamentally not be the same as the modern internet.
Sure. But do you really think we can keep money out of the internet? Threads shows you can still fund a fediverse project in a way that goes against the core experience expected from such an audience. There are definitely people hosting copyright torrents or direct downloads under paywalls (very illegally, I might ad), offering curation as an incentive. So there would be paywalls in other less illegal P2P ventures. Video hosting would slow, but it wouldn't necessarily stop the rise of streaming services (which charged a premium from the get go). And to your government example, maybe they would get more involved. i.e. the open borders of the internet would close even faster than they are right now.
I'm not saying we're the lesser of two evils, simply that different flavors of evil exist with any given approach.
This kind of defeatism is so tired and played out. "Things are and have always been and will always be bad" is a thought terminating cliche. C'mon now. We prevent this and stop this by choosing as...
how were we supposed to prevent it? This is simply the tragedy of the commons, despite there being theoretically infinite digital resource. No single government can't just lay down a law saying "all internet stuff needs to be free" because the internet isn't constrained by traditional borders.
This kind of defeatism is so tired and played out. "Things are and have always been and will always be bad" is a thought terminating cliche. C'mon now.
We prevent this and stop this by choosing as a society to not allow our digital third spaces to be run by assholes who only care about making a buck. Of course those assholes are going to fight back, that's their livelihood. But if we're going to have an Internet that gets better over time and not worse we need to solve this because it's not actually true that public spaces will always get worse over time. That's only true when you don't punish assholes.
This wasn't a rhetorical question, more of a philosophical one. People over millenia have tried to ask and answer "how do we keep people from being greedy?". Those answers more or less encompass...
This kind of defeatism is so tired and played out. "Things are and have always been and will always be bad" is a thought terminating cliche. C'mon now.
This wasn't a rhetorical question, more of a philosophical one. People over millenia have tried to ask and answer "how do we keep people from being greedy?". Those answers more or less encompass every political philosophy in history. Religion, democracy, autocracy, small tribes within a larger society with its own rulings. From what I can gleam, it's never quashed, only mitigated.
We prevent this and stop this by choosing as a society to not allow our digital third spaces to be run by assholes who only care about making a buck
Well, we (the larger society) made a choice. We (you and me) can still make our own choice independently despite others surrendering to Tiktok, TwitterX, Google, and whatnot.
As I poked at with the commons metaphor, the digital commons has an advantage over physical land in that it's excessively cheaper in energy to create new spaces. So it's never truly lost, just not cultivated. But you and me can't really make "society" relinquish its base nature. You can call it defeatism, and I commend anyone who chooses to fight the behemoth. I just personally see it as a better use of my time to tread new land and start cultivating a new life, new communities of like-minded individuals.
Here's the thing though....the commons was a thing.... for millenia. I find it circumspect that we see it inevitable that the commons is destroyed when that is a fairly recent invention inside the...
Here's the thing though....the commons was a thing.... for millenia.
I find it circumspect that we see it inevitable that the commons is destroyed when that is a fairly recent invention inside the last 500 years.
I think the more important question is whether it's moral to support a company that enriches itself off such rhetoric. Whether you personally block the ad or not, it's still having its negative...
I think the more important question is whether it's moral to support a company that enriches itself off such rhetoric. Whether you personally block the ad or not, it's still having its negative effects and Twitter (I'll stop deadnaming Elon's site when he stops deadnaming his trans daughter) is directly profiting off it and promoting it. They're selling this ad space based on there being a certain number of active users.
Of course, it's easier for me to say this from my high horse, since I already quit Twitter when Musk took over. I know when people don't have other ways of getting certain info or talking to certain people, it can be a lot more difficult to leave a platform like that.
Without giving too many details, I had a conversation with someone yesterday in a professional environment and their social media engagement specialist had abandoned X. They were focused on...
Without giving too many details, I had a conversation with someone yesterday in a professional environment and their social media engagement specialist had abandoned X. They were focused on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok (possibly others, the social media person wasn't in the room)
yeah to be fair I think even this article says they've been having trouble with advertisers for a while now... unsurprising, since the worse and more hateful the platform gets, the less...
yeah to be fair I think even this article says they've been having trouble with advertisers for a while now... unsurprising, since the worse and more hateful the platform gets, the less advertisers will want to be associated with it.
If people are in the UK they could possibly try reporting it to ASA. Which isn't going to achieve anything but give it more airtime when the ASA rule against it and X says "so what?"
If people are in the UK they could possibly try reporting it to ASA. Which isn't going to achieve anything but give it more airtime when the ASA rule against it and X says "so what?"
Probably the morally correct thing to do is to stop using twitter. This line of argument is basically, is it ok to steal from people that I don’t like?
Probably the morally correct thing to do is to stop using twitter. This line of argument is basically, is it ok to steal from people that I don’t like?
Using Twitter keeps it in the public consciousness and keeps it socially relevant. Whether or not you are seeing the ads, it helps enrich the assholes running it.
Using Twitter keeps it in the public consciousness and keeps it socially relevant. Whether or not you are seeing the ads, it helps enrich the assholes running it.
Even if I accept the idea that piracy is not theft, which I don’t, this is not comparable. This isn’t like making copies of movies and spreading them through torrents — the analogous action is...
Even if I accept the idea that piracy is not theft, which I don’t, this is not comparable. This isn’t like making copies of movies and spreading them through torrents — the analogous action is sneaking into theatres through the back door. Twitter is directly serving this content to you from their servers, incurring costs, and ad blockers are avoiding paying the price of admission.
A theatre often charges an entry fee, and a website can do the same. I think it's fair to say that if a for-profit company chooses not to do so, it's because they value the size of their user base...
A theatre often charges an entry fee, and a website can do the same. I think it's fair to say that if a for-profit company chooses not to do so, it's because they value the size of their user base / customer base more than the revenue they can generate from a paywall.
A more apt analogy, I think, is paying any applicable admission fee there is to the movie theatre, then either arriving after the pre-movie commercials have run or closing your eyes and plugging your ears while they play. The theatre still pays for the time and resources required to run those advertisements, just as the website may pay for attempting to serve ads to a visitor.
Is there an obligation for movie theatre visitors to pay attention to the ads?
What responsibility is there on the movie theatre to actively inform the visitor of the duration and type of content of the ads so that they can make an informed choice?
What responsibility do they have to make this type of expectation clear by defining it in terms of service or sales agreements?
What responsibility do they have in enforcing any such expectations?
Do the answers to these questions depend on whether or not the provider charges an admission fee?
To the best of my knowledge, theatres do not include actively watching ads as part of their terms of service. The deal with a theatre is simple: I pay for a ticket, and I can go in the room where...
To the best of my knowledge, theatres do not include actively watching ads as part of their terms of service. The deal with a theatre is simple: I pay for a ticket, and I can go in the room where the film is playing at any time and I can leave any time I choose.
With Twitter, the deal is that in exchange for viewing their content I will be shown ads and I will use their interface without modification.
In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place advertising on the Services or in connection with the display of Content or information from the Services whether submitted by you or others. You also agree not to misuse our Services, for example, by interfering with them or accessing them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide.
We don’t charge you to use Facebook or the other products and services covered by these Terms, unless we state otherwise. Instead, businesses and organizations, and other persons pay us to show you ads for their products and services. By using our Products, you agree that we can show you ads that we think may be relevant to you and your interests.
So the answers to these questions depend on what the agreement is between the provider and the user.
Man, it's remarkable how seconds before coming across this headline, I'd been feeling the pull to go back. I miss Twitter. I don't like X. Perfect timing, thanks for the reality check.
Man, it's remarkable how seconds before coming across this headline, I'd been feeling the pull to go back. I miss Twitter. I don't like X.
No kidding. I quit Twitter & Reddit within about 2 months of each other, and I still feel such a huge loss. There are so many niche communities I'm just not in contact with anymore, period. But as...
I miss Twitter.
No kidding. I quit Twitter & Reddit within about 2 months of each other, and I still feel such a huge loss. There are so many niche communities I'm just not in contact with anymore, period. But as another commenter said in this thread, I just can't find it moral in any way to contribute to either platform.
Between Tildes, Bluesky, and Lemmy I can get my fix. It's definitely not the same though and the hardest to let go was for sure Reddit. Not the hardest to quit - they took away RiF and that was a...
Between Tildes, Bluesky, and Lemmy I can get my fix. It's definitely not the same though and the hardest to let go was for sure Reddit. Not the hardest to quit - they took away RiF and that was a big part of my experience - but the hardest to let go. It was something special to be able to find a community for anything and nearly everything that was active.
I created an account to reserve a handle for a side project and, hoo boy, that site is a dumpster fire. I created an account and chose nothing from the interests concierge. The first couple...
I created an account to reserve a handle for a side project and, hoo boy, that site is a dumpster fire. I created an account and chose nothing from the interests concierge. The first couple scrolls of a default timeline I saw Musk at least twice plus his other properties like Space X/Tesla. In between those was a bunch of incel/libertarian/ultra right wing stuff/people retweeting Musk. I was recommended to follow: 1. Andrew Tate 2. Elon Musk 3. Joe Biden (to not appear TOO obvious I guess) 4. Jordan Peterson
I haven't gone to Twitter (except when checking out a link from someone I know) since they killed free user Tweetdeck. Even then, I had curtailed my use dramatically. I'll admit, my day has gotten...
I haven't gone to Twitter (except when checking out a link from someone I know) since they killed free user Tweetdeck. Even then, I had curtailed my use dramatically. I'll admit, my day has gotten a little dull (I checked for news and such), but I don't miss the platform, just a few of the users (I miss my daily dose of Gail Simone WTFery.)
I wait for her to move to bluesky, even if it isn't going to be as trolly. I check it for a few podcasts/news announcement sort of things. But I stay away from anything approaching discourse.
I wait for her to move to bluesky, even if it isn't going to be as trolly. I check it for a few podcasts/news announcement sort of things. But I stay away from anything approaching discourse.
Yes another reminder of why it's unethical to disable ad blockers for modern social media sites. By merely clicking on a video from your favourite creator or opening your homepage as normal, you...
Yes another reminder of why it's unethical to disable ad blockers for modern social media sites. By merely clicking on a video from your favourite creator or opening your homepage as normal, you risk inadvertently contributing to vermin like Dennis Prager. Ghoulish.
I think you got that backwards? When the advertising appears, it drains Prager's bank account (very slightly) and the money goes to the website they advertise on. It only helps them to the extent...
I think you got that backwards? When the advertising appears, it drains Prager's bank account (very slightly) and the money goes to the website they advertise on.
It only helps them to the extent that the advertising is effective in promoting their movie.
(Meanwhile, stories like this one are effectively free advertising, but it seems unlikely to be effective on Tildes, so I don't think we need to worry about it.)
I disagree. Yes, the money drains Prager's funds, but success of the campaign would motivate Prager to direct more money into it, spreading the content further.
I disagree. Yes, the money drains Prager's funds, but success of the campaign would motivate Prager to direct more money into it, spreading the content further.
Although all publicity is good publicity, I think this story is very well done and responsibly written. I'm impressed with Tech Crunch's care about the subject.
Although all publicity is good publicity, I think this story is very well done and responsibly written. I'm impressed with Tech Crunch's care about the subject.
Despite pushback from some users on X, the company confirmed that PragerU’s advertisements do not violate platform guidelines.
The ad on X cannot be dismissed, even if a user has the advertiser PragerU’s account blocked. Typically, ads on X can be reported, but this one cannot be flagged.
PragerU is also advertising its documentary on Meta and Google, albeit in a far less prominent placement. The organization claimed that it sought a similar “takeover” ad placement on YouTube, which is part of Google, but was denied.
“The ads in question do not violate our ads policies and are currently running across our platforms,” said Google spokesperson Michael Aciman. “In accordance with our YouTube ad requirements, since 2021, ads related to political topics are ineligible to run on the YouTube Masthead.”
Ah yes, the two genders: white male and political. I think I've seen similar ads on YouTube recently for some anti trans movie. I didn't pay enough attention beyond hearing the dog whistles and...
Ah yes, the two genders: white male and political.
I think I've seen similar ads on YouTube recently for some anti trans movie. I didn't pay enough attention beyond hearing the dog whistles and then reporting it and trying to block it. I still say it again afterwards, so I've just been going to YouTube less and less.
I'm not surprised about twitter, it's been reinstating accounts for bad actors since elmo bought it, so making ads full of hate speech unblockable should be expected. I'm guessing they may have instead just introduced a new tier of ad buys where companies can pay more money to make their ads unblockable. With how many companies have pulled their ads from twitter, I'm not surprised they needed to find a way to make more money with the ever dwindling number of companies willing to buy ads space on the flailing social media website.
Honestly the title made it seem a lot more extreme than it seems..? It's literally just one promoted hashtag.. but it's not a trend I'd like to see them continue cause that removes a lot of value...
Honestly the title made it seem a lot more extreme than it seems..?
It's literally just one promoted hashtag.. but it's not a trend I'd like to see them continue cause that removes a lot of value from the trending hashtags..
I mean maybe they shouldn't make a political ad on a controversial issue unblockable and unable to be reported as objectionable? I wouldn't like an unblockable ad for a fundamentalist Megachurch....
I mean maybe they shouldn't make a political ad on a controversial issue unblockable and unable to be reported as objectionable?
I wouldn't like an unblockable ad for a fundamentalist Megachurch. This is similar.
Couldn't have said it better myself. They're a bigoted, far-right, socially regressive organization. They spread misinformation, brainwash children and adults, and spread harmful beliefs. Such...
Couldn't have said it better myself.
They're a bigoted, far-right, socially regressive organization. They spread misinformation, brainwash children and adults, and spread harmful beliefs. Such beliefs have led to measurable harm in society.
So, following the discussion from the YouTube/uBlock Origin thread the other day -
Is it amoral to block this advertisement client side?
Is it entitled to not sit through the advertisement directed at attacking you and your friends or family?
It’s not immoral to block any ad, ever.
I will go a step further and say that blocking ads is a security issues. It's not whether we should block ads, it's whether we can. Some ads contain sketchy code, and are delivered by a party other than the one we agree to visit when we go to a webpage. (Edited because of my apparent inability to put the horse before the cart re: can and should.)
In multiple senses of the word. Not just issues like viruses and crypto miners, or the stealing of bandwidth and computational power, but also the matter of stealing your attention. Ads have only one purpose and that is to draw your attention away from whatever it was that you wanted to do to spend your time and energy and on them. Since time and attention is scarce, I always feel kind of robbed of something valuable whenever they succeed.
The attention thing is the biggest thing for me. Every now and then I help people with computer problems and seeing how their computers run is shocking. Modern computers running Windows 10 and 11 as they come out of the box is just as bad as if they were infected with adware. I honestly don’t see how people can live like that.
How far we have fallen. The internet was created by a combination of scientific organizations, universities, egalitarian hippies, with support from federal funding agencies. It wasn't founded by businesses or for-profit news agencies. We even had a decade long major cultural debate on whether for-profit activities should even be allowed on the internet at all.
We should have never allowed for-profit activities on the internet, period. It's antithetical to the foundational principles of the net. And now we've degenerated so far that we've gone from wondering if we should even allow online commercial activity at all to debating if its ethical to block ads that should have never been allowed on the internet in the first place.
This is actually the most important point.
Arguably one of the greatest inventions of the modern age was not profit motivated. This should immediately give pause to anyone claiming we need to materially reward people extra for innovation.
Well, as much as I despise ads and what commerce has done to the internet, one of the big drivers behind the development of the internet was the cold war. The goal was to build a network that would be resilient to attack and would still work even if a major part of it was destroyed. Not really a better motivator than commerce, I'd say.
antithetical, but also inevitable. A tool that connects people around the world together without worries of pesky landlines? Of course VC's were going to throw billions at the wall just to see what sticks.
Taking this in a more general sentiment: it is morally dubious. Someone needs to host those servers, and those servers cost money just to upkeep. And of course, for quality content someone needed time, expertise, and effort to arrange such content to viewers. That's a lot of energy expended to just accept wholesale as always being el gratis, no strings attached.
Back in the day those funds came from the government, indirectly or otherwise. That funding shifted, and with it the goals.
So there's a spectrum. I don't care about some trillion dollar company losing maybe a few million from people reaching around their monetization. I would feel bad about blocking an ad from a small forum owner who legitimately needs just some few dozen, or hundred dollars to offset server costs. Especially if they are serving an audience who isn't used to asking how a website is hosted and just expects it to always be some free public ground to tread on.
This was not an inevitability. We CHOSE to allow that to happen. Again, there were huge debates in public and in Congress about this. This is something we actively chose, not some law of nature. We could have kept the internet as a noncommercial, digital public square.
And who says those have to be for-profit entities? The internet still managed to be hosted prior to commercialization. It was mostly hosted by universities, nonprofit organizations, and private individuals. Yes, the number of users has increased by orders of magnitude, but in turn the number of people who can host sites has increased by a similar magnitude.
Even today, the best content online is often, if not usually, created by non-profit entities. You and I aren't getting paid to post these comments. Most YouTube channels start off as modest passion projects without a hope of making a profit. The most commercial-optimized products online tend to be the shittiest, by far.
The thing to keep in mind is that a noncommercial internet would fundamentally not be the same as the modern internet. We wouldn't have companies like Facebook. Social media would have developed in a much more distributed, self-hosted fashion, in line with what the Fediverse is trying to do. We would have seen many more foundation-supported projects like tildes. Very bandwidth-hungry applications like video would have seen their development delayed. Maybe only now we would have seen large scale self-hosted video, (and at resolutions lower than HD), as the tech finally allows it. Or maybe YouTube would have been founded more as a nonprofit entity, supported by subscriptions, government grants, or donations.
Not everything needs to be commercialized. It's fine to have public spaces without commercialization. The county courthouse in my town is a true public space. You can go out in front of the courthouse and protest or advocate for anything you want, and people frequently do. Yet if you try to set up a billboard on the courthouse lawn, you're likely to receive a fine. And yet, this is a public space, directly paid for and maintained by public tax dollars.
how were we supposed to prevent it? This is simply the tragedy of the commons, despite there being theoretically infinite digital resource. No single government can't just lay down a law saying "all internet stuff needs to be free" because the internet isn't constrained by traditional borders.
The public, meanwhile, is in an infinitely better position in 2023 to homespin everything compared to 1993, but that support has several holes. Nothing physical is stopping more tildes-esque sites from popping up except a lack of interest, both from potential hosters and potential readers. Humans settling for short term convenience despite long term destruction is a critique as old as civilization.
I respect the cozy community here that can talk in depth about topics that would devolve into anti-capitalistic rants elsewhere. But I wouldn't say our content it high quality. Simply "not low quality". I'm not sourcing every claim I make, nor interviewing domain experts, nor being careful with my grammar and sentence structure (again, maybe it shows how low the bar is in modern social media, but it isn't even close to touching the ceiling either). I'm simply not trying to throw ads and affiliate links out with every other paragraph like a modern professional writer is forced to do (and fortunately, Deimos isn't either).
Tildes' content is about as high quality as you can get without expecting to pay for such content, but either of us can walk away today and lose nothing if we don't post comments for years on end. That doesn't make for particularly engaged "content creators". Maybe that's a good thing in a moral sense, but I don't think that sort of mindset would have lead to modern content creators going toe-to-toe with, and even toppling the cable behemoth, nor disrupting Hollywood. It would simply be seen as a stepping stone until those two entities whisked away the best talent for a professional role.
Sure. But do you really think we can keep money out of the internet? Threads shows you can still fund a fediverse project in a way that goes against the core experience expected from such an audience. There are definitely people hosting copyright torrents or direct downloads under paywalls (very illegally, I might ad), offering curation as an incentive. So there would be paywalls in other less illegal P2P ventures. Video hosting would slow, but it wouldn't necessarily stop the rise of streaming services (which charged a premium from the get go). And to your government example, maybe they would get more involved. i.e. the open borders of the internet would close even faster than they are right now.
I'm not saying we're the lesser of two evils, simply that different flavors of evil exist with any given approach.
This kind of defeatism is so tired and played out. "Things are and have always been and will always be bad" is a thought terminating cliche. C'mon now.
We prevent this and stop this by choosing as a society to not allow our digital third spaces to be run by assholes who only care about making a buck. Of course those assholes are going to fight back, that's their livelihood. But if we're going to have an Internet that gets better over time and not worse we need to solve this because it's not actually true that public spaces will always get worse over time. That's only true when you don't punish assholes.
This wasn't a rhetorical question, more of a philosophical one. People over millenia have tried to ask and answer "how do we keep people from being greedy?". Those answers more or less encompass every political philosophy in history. Religion, democracy, autocracy, small tribes within a larger society with its own rulings. From what I can gleam, it's never quashed, only mitigated.
Well, we (the larger society) made a choice. We (you and me) can still make our own choice independently despite others surrendering to Tiktok, TwitterX, Google, and whatnot.
As I poked at with the commons metaphor, the digital commons has an advantage over physical land in that it's excessively cheaper in energy to create new spaces. So it's never truly lost, just not cultivated. But you and me can't really make "society" relinquish its base nature. You can call it defeatism, and I commend anyone who chooses to fight the behemoth. I just personally see it as a better use of my time to tread new land and start cultivating a new life, new communities of like-minded individuals.
Here's the thing though....the commons was a thing.... for millenia.
I find it circumspect that we see it inevitable that the commons is destroyed when that is a fairly recent invention inside the last 500 years.
I think the more important question is whether it's moral to support a company that enriches itself off such rhetoric. Whether you personally block the ad or not, it's still having its negative effects and Twitter (I'll stop deadnaming Elon's site when he stops deadnaming his trans daughter) is directly profiting off it and promoting it. They're selling this ad space based on there being a certain number of active users.
Of course, it's easier for me to say this from my high horse, since I already quit Twitter when Musk took over. I know when people don't have other ways of getting certain info or talking to certain people, it can be a lot more difficult to leave a platform like that.
Without giving too many details, I had a conversation with someone yesterday in a professional environment and their social media engagement specialist had abandoned X. They were focused on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok (possibly others, the social media person wasn't in the room)
yeah to be fair I think even this article says they've been having trouble with advertisers for a while now... unsurprising, since the worse and more hateful the platform gets, the less advertisers will want to be associated with it.
I don't get this question because that implies the ad is some sort of video, when it' looks like this was the ad in question.
One could argue that it's immoral to only block this clientside, but I also think most of us aren't in a situation to block it serverside.
If people are in the UK they could possibly try reporting it to ASA. Which isn't going to achieve anything but give it more airtime when the ASA rule against it and X says "so what?"
They can call me amoral or entitled if they want, I don't care.
I universally block internet advertisements on all platforms. I don't feel bad.
Probably the morally correct thing to do is to stop using twitter. This line of argument is basically, is it ok to steal from people that I don’t like?
What are you, the RIAA? Adblocking ≠ piracy ≠ theft.
Using Twitter keeps it in the public consciousness and keeps it socially relevant. Whether or not you are seeing the ads, it helps enrich the assholes running it.
Even if I accept the idea that piracy is not theft, which I don’t, this is not comparable. This isn’t like making copies of movies and spreading them through torrents — the analogous action is sneaking into theatres through the back door. Twitter is directly serving this content to you from their servers, incurring costs, and ad blockers are avoiding paying the price of admission.
A theatre often charges an entry fee, and a website can do the same. I think it's fair to say that if a for-profit company chooses not to do so, it's because they value the size of their user base / customer base more than the revenue they can generate from a paywall.
A more apt analogy, I think, is paying any applicable admission fee there is to the movie theatre, then either arriving after the pre-movie commercials have run or closing your eyes and plugging your ears while they play. The theatre still pays for the time and resources required to run those advertisements, just as the website may pay for attempting to serve ads to a visitor.
Is there an obligation for movie theatre visitors to pay attention to the ads?
What responsibility is there on the movie theatre to actively inform the visitor of the duration and type of content of the ads so that they can make an informed choice?
What responsibility do they have to make this type of expectation clear by defining it in terms of service or sales agreements?
What responsibility do they have in enforcing any such expectations?
Do the answers to these questions depend on whether or not the provider charges an admission fee?
To the best of my knowledge, theatres do not include actively watching ads as part of their terms of service. The deal with a theatre is simple: I pay for a ticket, and I can go in the room where the film is playing at any time and I can leave any time I choose.
With Twitter, the deal is that in exchange for viewing their content I will be shown ads and I will use their interface without modification.
https://twitter.com/en/tos/previous/version_13
Similarly with Facebook,
https://m.facebook.com/legal/terms
So the answers to these questions depend on what the agreement is between the provider and the user.
Man, it's remarkable how seconds before coming across this headline, I'd been feeling the pull to go back. I miss Twitter. I don't like X.
Perfect timing, thanks for the reality check.
No kidding. I quit Twitter & Reddit within about 2 months of each other, and I still feel such a huge loss. There are so many niche communities I'm just not in contact with anymore, period. But as another commenter said in this thread, I just can't find it moral in any way to contribute to either platform.
Between Tildes, Bluesky, and Lemmy I can get my fix. It's definitely not the same though and the hardest to let go was for sure Reddit. Not the hardest to quit - they took away RiF and that was a big part of my experience - but the hardest to let go. It was something special to be able to find a community for anything and nearly everything that was active.
I created an account to reserve a handle for a side project and, hoo boy, that site is a dumpster fire. I created an account and chose nothing from the interests concierge. The first couple scrolls of a default timeline I saw Musk at least twice plus his other properties like Space X/Tesla. In between those was a bunch of incel/libertarian/ultra right wing stuff/people retweeting Musk. I was recommended to follow: 1. Andrew Tate 2. Elon Musk 3. Joe Biden (to not appear TOO obvious I guess) 4. Jordan Peterson
I haven't gone to Twitter (except when checking out a link from someone I know) since they killed free user Tweetdeck. Even then, I had curtailed my use dramatically. I'll admit, my day has gotten a little dull (I checked for news and such), but I don't miss the platform, just a few of the users (I miss my daily dose of Gail Simone WTFery.)
I wait for her to move to bluesky, even if it isn't going to be as trolly. I check it for a few podcasts/news announcement sort of things. But I stay away from anything approaching discourse.
Yes another reminder of why it's unethical to disable ad blockers for modern social media sites. By merely clicking on a video from your favourite creator or opening your homepage as normal, you risk inadvertently contributing to vermin like Dennis Prager. Ghoulish.
I think you got that backwards? When the advertising appears, it drains Prager's bank account (very slightly) and the money goes to the website they advertise on.
It only helps them to the extent that the advertising is effective in promoting their movie.
(Meanwhile, stories like this one are effectively free advertising, but it seems unlikely to be effective on Tildes, so I don't think we need to worry about it.)
I disagree. Yes, the money drains Prager's funds, but success of the campaign would motivate Prager to direct more money into it, spreading the content further.
Although all publicity is good publicity, I think this story is very well done and responsibly written. I'm impressed with Tech Crunch's care about the subject.
Ah yes, the two genders: white male and political.
I think I've seen similar ads on YouTube recently for some anti trans movie. I didn't pay enough attention beyond hearing the dog whistles and then reporting it and trying to block it. I still say it again afterwards, so I've just been going to YouTube less and less.
I'm not surprised about twitter, it's been reinstating accounts for bad actors since elmo bought it, so making ads full of hate speech unblockable should be expected. I'm guessing they may have instead just introduced a new tier of ad buys where companies can pay more money to make their ads unblockable. With how many companies have pulled their ads from twitter, I'm not surprised they needed to find a way to make more money with the ever dwindling number of companies willing to buy ads space on the flailing social media website.
Honestly the title made it seem a lot more extreme than it seems..?
It's literally just one promoted hashtag.. but it's not a trend I'd like to see them continue cause that removes a lot of value from the trending hashtags..
I mean maybe they shouldn't make a political ad on a controversial issue unblockable and unable to be reported as objectionable?
I wouldn't like an unblockable ad for a fundamentalist Megachurch. This is similar.
Another day, another bizarre Twitter story. Every time I think things can’t get worse, they find a way. Amazing.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
They're a bigoted, far-right, socially regressive organization. They spread misinformation, brainwash children and adults, and spread harmful beliefs. Such beliefs have led to measurable harm in society.
If hell existed, they'd be the there.
Haha, this text now appears on my comment that you replied to: "This comment has been removed and is not visible to other users"