Unless you are a psychopath, your human instincts will alert you to when you need to show respect or gratitude, or reciprocity is expected from you. You don't need to try to think your way in or out of those things, especially when the other party is a large corporation bothering you over the internet. The whole premise of the article is just nuts.
TLDR: You should blocks ads because they are annoying. Don't overthink it.
I think the danger is the opposite. Normal (non-psychopathic) people are prone to being manipulated into feeling for inanimate objects, such as corporations, especially if those are driven by exploitative incentives where humanizing _itselves_ is beneficial.
My project manager wanted to try just changing our endpoints periodically to evade the list. I said to him "You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go up against a software pirate or ad blocker when privacy is on the line!'
Wait, these people are clearly not just saying: Do Not Track me, they're also saying: Don't show me ads!
Which is a demand that any ad-tech company must take very seriously! We can't ignore the privacy implications of our ad networks. We better avoid any such privacy concerns and comply with the user's expressed priorities.And to risk being seen as preaching, have you read https://drewdevault.com/2025/04/20/2025-04-20-Tech-sector-re... ?
Perhaps you searched "laptops". You see a handful of results, and at the top a banner says "Dell XPS - 20% off!"
Have we manipulated you in any way? Have we lied to you? The fact that a laptop is 20% off is valuable information to a user who might consider price in their purchase. What we sell is not advertising, but real estate on your screen
Am I in love with what I do? No. But we dont engage in the kind of advertising market described in the OP's article. What we do is the equivalent of a grocery store putting products on the end cap of an aisle and getting paid extra for the valuable real estate
I’m surprised your business model doesn’t completely dominate over the social media algorithmic nonsense. I’d expect people who searched for something to be actually interested in it.
My company operates only on small ecommerce sites. Because we have a huge catalog of products, advertisers can come to us and launch a campaign, and we can automatically deliver across dozens of sites. We can connect small ecommerce sites to large advertisers so that they dont need first party relationships with those advertisers. The way I see it, we are helping smaller retailers be more competitive against Amazon by helping them squeeze more blood from the stone, as we like to say in advertising.
What keeps me up at night is who our customers are. Among our advertisers, we sell ads for alcohol. While those who see our ads generally already have high intent to buy alcohol in the first place, I know from family history that even the slightest temptation can put an alcoholic back at step 0. We dont run too many of those but im still struggling with it
So you see, it is exploitative. Amazon has an advantageous position thanks to its brand name and it allows it to extract money from companies who want their product sold which in turn is extracted from customers. Meanwhile if a better (in terms of quality/longevity/cost) product existed, it would be unable to compete without also being forced to advertise. It has to spend money on ads which would be better spent improving the product (or making it cheaper in the complete absence of advertising).
EDIT: Btw, I do appreciate the honesty. There are absolutely different levels of severity of anti-social / anti-consumer behavior - the exploitation I pointed out has lower severity but a higher scale/prevalence and your alcohol example is a good example of low scale/prevalence but high severity.
Other ads just take up screen space and bandwidth: they displace more useful uses of these scarce resources, but they don't cause any direct harm. By contrast, ads targeting people in the market for a good or service actively displace quality signals. In doing so they make quality uneconomical and thus destroy it. They make the world a worse place.
Yes, advertisements make customers aware of a particular category of product but by pushing one specific brand instead of the whole category. I would OK with advertisements which push the whole category, that is positive-sum.
But currently we have an arms race where you have to invest in ads to compete with other products of the same category and that is zero-sum. Inter-category competition should be based on quality/longevity/cost.
This doesn't get rid of people buying what is most well known. In fact without the possibility of being exposed to more niche options people will just go with the incumbents. Advertising allows new competitors in a space to be able to acquire customers based off their value for customers instead of being a wellknown thing.
Meanwhile this forces other brands in the same category to also spend on advertising even if they have a better product, thus increasing the cost.
I haven't the time to read it myself at the moment, but the gist appears to be about "attention economy" and how technology affects our lives. There's a blurb and some discussion on goodreads [1].
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38364667-stand-out-of-ou...
Attention is scarce, but what makes it valuable?
Attention's value lies in its scarcity and its ability to drive action, connection, and influence.
Every moment you spend focusing on something comes at the cost of not focusing on something else.
On the other hand, others value my attention because they can make fractions of a cent by making me look at stuff, because there’s a minimal chance they’ll convince me to spend money on stuff of probably little value.
Seems to me they don’t value my attention a lot, and I don’t get much of value out of it.
So, um, is this what internet ads are now? Because even if it weren't "ok" to block these ads, I'm sure as shit going to keep blocking them.
YouTube ads are terrifying. Probably others are to, but my opinion to avoid any product showed on internet if possible is vindicated. How can I trust an Axe ad if it's advertised side by side with an obvious scam?
The standard on the internet is that people send what they want and the recipients render it however they want. That’s how it’s always been, and how it always will be. That includes the possibility that they won’t want to send me anything. But once it is sent, it is my bits in my RAM, to do with what I will.
If you were given free pizza and a stack of ad flyers, do you have to read the ads? Do you have to even acknowledge them? Can you accept the free food while putting the flyers directly in the trash?
Obviously yes you would toss those ads in the garbage, because what fool would give away food and expect you to look at ads in exchange? So it is with ads online: their business model is not your responsibility and you can ignore stuff (even automatically) if you want, they're your eyes.
keernan•8h ago
roscas•8h ago
dkdcio•8h ago
al_borland•8h ago
I would like to say I've only run into one person like this, but no. I've lost count of how many of these people I've run into. I like to think I'm pretty good at understand other people's point of view, even if I don't agree with it. This is one I have a lot of trouble with.
I'm fine with relevant ads, but I think they should be relevant based on the context around them, not on the viewer. If I go to a website about trout fishing, show me ads that would be useful to a trout fisherman. There is no need to track anyone to do that.
nkrisc•7h ago
charcircuit•7h ago
al_borland•6h ago
A lot of this stuff is being purchased with debt. People aren’t happy about their debt, their inability to buy a house, or all the clutter that consumes their home. Yet, in the moment, they are led to believe that a Labubu is what they really desire. It’s not.
ndriscoll•7h ago
They think the system is thinking "ohh! I bet X will like this pair of shoes! And this is a great deal on them!" when in fact a more accurate model is "Who is willing to pay the most to put a message in front of someone with the following detailed list of characteristics?" and then people bid for the right to manipulate you, so even if 2 companies are trying to sell you the exact same thing that you do want, the one that thinks they can extract more from you will pay more and win the spot.
maximus_01•7h ago
somerandom2407•7h ago
I think if you take ads away from the internet, you'll also take away a lot of the bullshit and inaccurate or misleading information. If no-one is making any money off of it, you'll be left with largely relevant information.
The internet today is like a free to air television network, but I remember a time when it was nothing like that.
vel0city•7h ago
Just a gut feeling, but I doubt it. You'll still get a lot of bullshit inaccurate/misleading information, just only pushed by those with the budgets to keep pushing it.
Right-wing podcasters that take money from the Russian government to spread disinformation[0] will still get their checks even if their supplement sponsorships get outlawed.
You can take away all of Alex Jones' money and he'll still find some way to put his nonsense out there.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/two-rt-employees-ind...
somerandom2407•7h ago
I think most sensible people are quite competent at ignoring the bullshit, so I would love it if there was less bullshit to wade through to get to the nuggets of useful information which are out there. For those too stupid to look past misleading information, there's no helping them anyway.
ndriscoll•7h ago
Generally the most useful information on the web is freely given. Turns out actual experts frequently like nerding out about their thing and trying to get other people interested in it/to understand some facet of it.