But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
If the existence of a given industry requires the annihilation of individual privacy and the elimination of free thought, then that industry does not deserve to exist. Kill the ad industry.
Medicine being better delivered, all the research that has been accelerated because of reducing compute and storage costs, the list is infinite.
There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.
That's a logical leap. The artist can want both things.
There are two payments involved:
1. The user pays with his time/attention
2. The ad company pays the site
In most cases, the author doesn't mind getting the payments from number 2 even if you skip 1. Many, many sites explicitly point out they don't find a it a problem if you install an ad blocker.
I don't have ads on my site. I'm OK with you consuming it for free. If I put ads one day, I'll still be OK with it, because I know I'll get some money regardless. It's practically free money.
I will not miss the vast majority of sites I go to that serve ads if they all decided to shut down and/or go paid only. I should be spending a lot less time on the Internet/phone to begin with!
> medium you are consuming may not exist at all
I've realized that's not my problem. It's not like most of the internet is healthy anyway. It's psychologically manipulative and designed to keep you fearful, angry, spiteful, jealous, and above all, depressed.
Fuck Google. Fuck Meta. And fuck every single last person working for them.
Streaming services and E-commerce are the classic examples for A. Wikipedia is the quintessential example for B. C includes pretty much all the social outlets: Web forums, a Matrix server, private game servers (public game servers fall under A), blogs, etc.
A good blocker should block many of those scripts too, but there's no stopping server-side analytics at scale.
Market Cap by Year
Year 0 1 2 3 4
2025 Nvidia (4.6T) Apple (3.9T) Google (3.8T) Microsoft (3.5T) Amazon (2.6T)
2020 Apple (2.3T) Microsoft (1.7T) Amazon (1.6T) Google (1.2T) Meta (777M)
2015 Apple (598M) Google (534M) Microsoft (440M) Berkshire (324M) Exxon (325M)
2010 Exxon (369M) PetroChina (303M) Apple (296M) BHP (244M) Microsoft (239M)
Some Billionaires...
Year Musk Page Bezos Ellison Zuck Buffett
Current 714B 257B 251B 244B 227B 148B
2024 195B 114B 194B 141B 177B 133B
2023 180B 79B 114B 107B 64B 106B
2022 219B 111B 171B 106B 67B 118B
2021 151B 92B 177B 93B 97B 96B
2020 25B 51B 113B 59B 55B 68B
2016 11B 35B 45B 44B 45B 61B
- There are currently 19 people worth more than $100bn!
- 4 of them are not American (Arnault, Ortega, Ambani, Helu)
- 27 of the top 50 richest are non-Americans
- 57 of the top 100 are non-Americans
- Bill Gates was first worth $100bn in 1999, becoming the first centibillionaire
> A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
If times were good for the rest of us I honestly couldn't care less if Musk became a trillionaire. Good for him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But while wages are stagnant, while the job market is very competitive, we have major layoffs, while inflation is hitting average people hard, and while they keep pretending they can replace us all with AI; then hell fucking yeah I do care.
It ends up being a question about what is more right, than what is right. I'd feel more conflicted if we all, or the majority of us, were benefiting from the advancements. But sympathy is difficult when we look at those numbers.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
P.S. here's a fun game for understanding how much a billion dollars is. It's difficult because that level of money generates so much interest.
Imagine you have a billion dollars. You put it in an investment account that earns 10% yearly interest, compounded daily. On day 1 you need funds, so sit on your ass and do nothing. After than, on each weekday you hire a new employee at the cost of $250k/yr and is also paid daily.
How many employees can you hire before you have less than a billion dollars?
There's a lot of variants you can run on this kind of thought experiment and I think they're helpful for understanding that level of wealth.
In my own petty way. I consider this my pushback against a system that is pushing oppressive systems onto me. But really, I'm partially glad this system works and partially annoyed that this is the cost.
The dramatically widening gap with the 0.01% is just absurd. Capitalist economies need capital to flow through the system, not pool up. I mean look at Mackenzie Scott. She's trying to throw her money away as fast as possible but earns it faster than she can give it away lol. And that's only 35bn.
I just won't be guilt tripped by people who are at the top. Especially when they're calling the kettle black and just flat out lying (e.g. companies "struggling". Struggling to what? Outperform the previous year's growth? In the middle of a global pandemic? lol)