This guy works in ad tech and this is the extent of their moral reasoning on the issue? This is about one argument and 90% history. Better to say you don't want to think about how the sausage is made.
Many have commented on the inherently harmful nature of advertisement, so I would like to address the one argument I see in there, it goes something like must "ads must exist or else we would have to pay for content". But even this seems to me largely unfounded. By excluding "donations and hobbies", what the author is really saying is "ads must exist or else the content we get would be different (read: worse)".
I see no reason to believe this. The sources of information I find reliable are ones based on consensus, eg Wikipedia. If anything, I find getting information from traditional media less reliable than getting it directly from random people, as the latter don't have a financial interest to present only certain types of information or present the information in certain biased ways. The bigger a news corporation is, the more interest it has in 1) relying on fearmongering and 2) conforming to a "current government" bias (as we have seen to horrible effect when Trump was president). As for entertainment, it is doubtful that anyone could become a millionaire with daily vlogs or let's plays as they can today, but I personally know of many that would be glad to just make a living. It's also improbable that a single big website such as YouTube would totally dominate the video sharing landscape, as they wouldn't be able to rely on ads to do so. Incidentally, getting rid of ads would solve the "advertiser friendly" problem that plagues mass media, small content creators and consumers alike.
In short, saying "ads are the only way" seems to me the same as saying "the web is have is the best version of the web" or even "it's the only web we can have". I disagree on both counts, and I for one can't wait until the house of cards crumbles.
Many have commented on the inherently harmful nature of advertisement, so I would like to address the one argument I see in there, it goes something like must "ads must exist or else we would have to pay for content". But even this seems to me largely unfounded. By excluding "donations and hobbies", what the author is really saying is "ads must exist or else the content we get would be different (read: worse)".
I see no reason to believe this. The sources of information I find reliable are ones based on consensus, eg Wikipedia. If anything, I find getting information from traditional media less reliable than getting it directly from random people, as the latter don't have a financial interest to present only certain types of information or present the information in certain biased ways. The bigger a news corporation is, the more interest it has in 1) relying on fearmongering and 2) conforming to a "current government" bias (as we have seen to horrible effect when Trump was president). As for entertainment, it is doubtful that anyone could become a millionaire with daily vlogs or let's plays as they can today, but I personally know of many that would be glad to just make a living. It's also improbable that a single big website such as YouTube would totally dominate the video sharing landscape, as they wouldn't be able to rely on ads to do so. Incidentally, getting rid of ads would solve the "advertiser friendly" problem that plagues mass media, small content creators and consumers alike.
In short, saying "ads are the only way" seems to me the same as saying "the web is have is the best version of the web" or even "it's the only web we can have". I disagree on both counts, and I for one can't wait until the house of cards crumbles.