this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
74 points (89.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26633 readers
3303 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I started to notice that more sites are turning into paywalls, and I don't like that and would prefer ads over subscriptions.

I am curious, what does the general community think about that?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

The question is a bit loaded, since "prefer ads" means you see the content, whereas "prefer paywalls" means you don't.

A fairer framing would have been: "how do you prefer to pay for content?"

Because, contrary to many opinions here, there is a price to pay when you watch an ad. At the very least, you're paying with your sanity. And very possibly you're paying with your wallet too, later, when you buy some product or service you don't really need. If ads didn't work, there wouldn't be so many of them.

Next, in a world where content is funded by advertising, the people who control our tech have an infernal incentive to spy on us - so we all end up paying with our privacy.

Advertising is the lifeblood of consumer capitalism. It's what powers the pseudo-needs and pseudo-desires and status competition that drives all that material throughput of JUNK that is killing our planet. That price tag is gonna be pretty hefty.

Advertising is sheer poison. But paywalls are not the enemy. It is not immoral to pay for things that have value.