Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure which one is yours?
I kinda mean a better alternative to funding all this stuff. As pointed out in the OP, ads are actually a progressive model while the oft-cited alternative ("just charge people for what they use") is fairly regressive.
The is actually what I like about Brave's solution, which is:
- no ads by default.
- if you have money and want to pay for the content you consume, you can load money into the browser and have it automatically dispense to publishers/creators based on which content you consume for how long, determined locally on your machine so no privacy leakage there.
- or if you don't have enough to justify paying all those creators directly you can turn on (again) privacy focused ads, where analysis for targeting only happens locally in the browser.
But from what I've seen, HN really hates Brave so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Brave seems interesting, although I haven't tried it. Why does HN hate it?
> I kinda mean a better alternative to funding all this stuff.
I tend to think we'd be just fine without this "stuff." The internet still worked when the only advertising was banner ads that didn't run code on my machine. In a lot of ways, it worked better.
Could you be more specific about what you think the ethical issue is? I've seen many comments describing very different ethical objections, from several perspectives, and I'm not sure which one is yours?