I myself do not like ads or tracking, but we need to be realistic and there needs a way to make web sustainable.
How to do that and making sure that monopolies like Google are in check is a valid concern though, but in these conversations is the only point I hear. Ironically Google does not even need these apis because it already has so much data on users, it is primarily for smaller companies.
No, it doesn't. I have no issue with it making money, but that was neither the original purpose of the web nor is it an end goal for everyone using it.
> Giving tools to advertisers while making sure user privacy is preserved is better than free reign of tracking we have before, no?
This statement is unconnected to the first. The way people just link "web", "money" and "advertising" without even stopping to think that there might be alternatives is exactly why everything online is in such a sad state of affairs.
I'm old enough to remember a day when the "social media" that I used was a set of phpBB forums paid for by one or more of the members because they wanted to host the community. Nothing on the modern ad-supported web comes close to the dynamic of friendship and camaraderie of those community-supported forums—if anything the new platforms are a great place to ruin real-life friendships rather than create new ones.
So, no, I don't think the web needs to be made "sustainable" in the sense you seem to mean. Things were better when people sacrificed a bit to keep their communities alive.
I don’t think this is true. No one “needs” to make money. Museums don’t need to make money. OSS doesn’t need to make money.
The web has value without making money.
But even if it does make money, it doesn’t need to maximize profits at the expense of user privacy and joy.
It could be zero in some conditions, but in the other cases, I'm also against ads. Fortunately, there are other ways of making money, without compromising the "open source" / "free software" part:
- consulting (including prioritizing new features and fixes)
- support
- providing an actual paid service
- selling free software extensions (and yes, that means someone can recompile the extension and distribute it gratis - that's what happening with OSMAnd+ on F-Droid, but they are still doing fine)
I think there’s lots of software written by people who have jobs and code because it’s fun.
For example, Linus Torvalds made Subsurface [0] as open source. He had a job while he made this. He didn’t get paid for it directly, but it’s not like paying him extra would make it better.
Where do you get them for web?
Check out Wikipedia for an example of a huge site that doesn’t make money and just runs on donations.
I run my crappy blog and a bunch of other sites for “free” because I just pay the fees.
Absolutely, but as long as adverting is allowed to finance the whole bloody thing we're not going to improve anything. Advertising should be limited as to not influence content and that's currently not what's happing. As it stand, outside of "the small web" ads are the main attraction and any content that may be provided to us is done so to enable advertising, or at least not upset advertisers.
I want privacy pushed so far that the majority of the web is going to have to find financing outside of advertising, be it micro-payments, donation, subscriptions or benefactors. People should pay directly for software, service, like social media, news, email and possibly even search. If we as a side-effect uses these things less I see that as an absolute benefit.
Locally produced, given the cheaper labour cost they should also be able to compete in the EU or US by offering a cheaper product, due to cheaper production cost. At least in some areas.
I don't think the current state of the web is doing poor regions any favours by granting the free access to western products, compared to encouraging or even forcing them to build their own infrastructure or products.
Donating Europe's discarded clothing to Africa killed pretty much all of Africa's textile industry. Free access to the online services from the west (or China) is just as much of an obstacle to growing their own technology and media companies.
Edit: Free access to general knowledge, open source software and learning material is clearly a bonus, but it also takes little away from local industry and can help kick start companies.
Commercial use of the internet was banned until 1991, it worked perfectly fine until then.
An example, look at TikTok or YouTube. 99.999% garbage, essentially clickbait farms, with zero valuable content.
Influencers? A plague. Political click bait videos? Harmful to democracy. Nutty flat earth, perpetual motion, conspiracy videos? Same.
The rest of the web is the same. Affiliate links are vile, evil things. And endless pages copy pasted to steal hits.
Monetization has destroyed the internet.
I'd much prefer people setting up their own small webpages, their hobbies, etc, with no monetization incentives.
