Ignoring advertising gets you nothing. Ignoring taxation gets you jail time. They are hardly equals.
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@chadrick Yes I too really value all these points of view and the discsussions were all having here…
@chadrick One person’s freedom of speech (to speak so loudly that only a few people can be heard) is another person’s censorship. This is one of the problems of advertising, also of lobbying, and so on. All can and are justified on the basis of free speech and misleading (partial) arguments of “censorship”.
Advertising is worse than just the volume (or number of eyes @russell), because it is not just about “volume” but also about creating unconscious influences - deliberately designing advertising to avoid conscious decision making in the recipient makes it more effective and so is widely practiced. You’ll find a lot of psychology practiced in the industry, but few of the recipients of advertising even understand these techniques, and even fewer (hardly any of us) are immune to them.
@Traktion I’m not arguing for a ban or even censorship at this point. I’m arguing that the harmful aspects of advertising are largely unrecognised and that SAFE provides us with opportunities, and maybe one of them will be freedom of expression without freedom to manipulate by power of psychology or money. Of course advertising is only one tool used for this kind of abuse, but it is become very much more powerful: it now makes use of vast amounts of personalised “market intelligence” on every individual (through surveillance, big data analysis, data fusion, activity tracking, individual profiling), and more and more subtly invasive means of delivery (such as posts inserted into facebook streams, posters that notice when you look towards them and change to grab your attention etc.)
Few individuals - and I include myself in this - can stand up to this sophisticated coordinated assault on our individual personalities, our individual desires, fears and habits, which ultimately erode our autonomy and ability to exercise free will. (BTW I’m not assuming everyone is dumb @russell, I’m seeing how overwhelmingly powerful the forces are becoming, that face everyone).
To recognise and oppose this is not to destroy freedom, but to reclaim it before it is too late.
The whole micropayments/anonymous wallets is one of the big reasons I started seriously looking into project SAFE. I personally would use that model over ads.
I’m just trying to make a point that advertising, unless forced on someone (a person was tied into a chair with their eyes clamped open) is simply not evil, but in fact neutral, even when done by “the evil rich people”. What one does with advertising could be evil, as with a ton of propaganda put out there. This is where your ideas around net journalism will could/should come into things. I’ve been thinking a long time about journalism/whistleblowing and all kinds of things to fight propaganda, this is one area where SAFE should be HUGE IMHO
The point I make is that this is happening, but that people do not realise it. We can of course disagree about whether this is the case, but to regard it as only if someone is “literally” physically forced is to ignore the power of psychology. One can be “forced” to do many things without every being physically touched, appearing to be directed, even persuaded. The idea that only physical or obvious coercian is coercian, leaves a massive loophole for those who do understand this, and have the means to exploit it, to operate. And they do.
Where does gentle persuasion end and manipulation begin?
Are salespeople manipulators? How about sponsors? How about pressure groups?
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This is what we are discussing. Would you say that because it is a grey area, we should not attempt to draw a line? That anything goes? That is simply shifting from one extreme to the other. Neither is correct, human values are about establishing what is best overall, the best compromise. Ideally a win-win. It is not easy, it is never unanimous, but we can find concensus still.
If it isn’t universally acknowledged, how can you draw a line anywhere? At best, it will be a majority imposing their will on a minority.
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What if we offered an optional ad-block service with your SAFE account that is payed in Safecoins.
The SAFE network would distribute the Safecoins to sites that the users of the ad-block service have visited and they wouldn’t see any ads.
The more interesting part of this scheme would have to be the price discovery for the cost of the ad-block service. Any Ideas?
@ the thread on how coercive advertising can be. On the old one way mass aggregate broadcast medium they could jam the same ad into the roughly the same 20 million people’s heads at the same time day in and day out. Think of people marching in unison across a bridge its enough to knock it down. Think of what may be coming with automated shopping. If you opt in I can imagine Amazon possibly on the basis of questions getting to know you and other collected data just automating you shopping so that staples and novelties just show up at your door step or special door step lock box. Don’t like it? Just don’t take it in and you won’t be billed. That second option doesn’t seem like such a bad thing but its got to voluntary. And personally I tend to prefer ads to content unless its an infomercial but when we are dealing with sponsored media all content is part of an ad and is just an ad delivery vehicle.
As a kind of concrete thought picture, imagine the set of every screen ad and billboard in the US happening in any given second. Add in their collective cacophony, Now place the US congress with the president and vice president at the dais in the center of a sealed box like patchwork consisting of this opaque set. Now place the voters outside. The the entire set of eligible voters outside screaming at the top of their lungs a message in unison trying to get through this patchwork. Go ahead and consider screen and billboard thicknesses and average volumes and how far the seated congress would be from the edge of this barrier. I don’t think the collective united states gets heard. We don’t get through the sponsor filter, instead we literally get farmed animal husbandry style by it.
Traktion, said:
“Where does gentle persuasion end and manipulation begin? Are salespeople manipulators? How about sponsors? How about pressure groups?”
I think you’d definitely draw the line at sponsorship. My sense after thinking for a good while about it is that in practice the whole point of sponsorship is censorship to the extent that sponsorship is a particularly insidious form of censorship and the clearest kind of conflict of interest. Going back the start of paid mediums there was the implicit assumption that the end user was the customer, but where sponsorship is involved the sponsor is the customer and is someone who pays to exploit the end user.
Marin said:
“What if we offered an optional ad-block service with your SAFE account that is payed in Safecoins. The SAFE network would distribute the Safecoins to sites that the users of the ad-block service have visited and they wouldn’t see any ads. The more interesting part of this scheme would have to be the price discovery for the cost of the ad-block service. Any Ideas?”
Personally I’d pay to ban, boycott this kind of business model and go even further pay to have this kind of model outlawed through grass roots action. We don’t want an ads plus model and we never want to be paying a premium to be free of ads. The very minimum would be all monies involved with an ad being paid directly to the end user and only ever offered if the end user opted in on a case by case basis. We’d never want to start off with an enclosure approach set up to allow suppliers to exploit consumers
Great idea! When combined with micro payments, it still funds the sites too.
Edit: thinking about it, this takes out the manual payment process too. It could automatically tip a site, unless you tell it not to from your browser. You would just charge your tip wallet periodically.
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@Traktion, on a micropayment basis that might be even better. Could even allow the end user to auto tip on the basis of the time they spend on the site, capturing more directly an attention basis.
Its all the difference in the world when end users retain the power. Its more of a relationship of equals between buyers and sellers then where the public’s vital needs are respected. I honestly think that quickly translates into responsive society where there are shorter working hours and higher quality of life and standard of living for most people. We don’t want top down supply side stuff and when people experience the freedom from that and are made aware of the difference we can possibly make big improvements in how livable society is.
This is a good system, I think paying for ad removal is a decent system. But how does that tie into the network itself on a lower level?
To me, as long as the network can access media and facilitate transactions, all other mechanisms will just sit on top and will be created/dictate by the content creators, right?
Yes, I would agree with that - the builders can create this sort of stuff.
Rather than rely on advert blockers, perhaps the advertisers themselves could offer the choice of adverts or micro-payments? Ofc, some will always find a way to block and pay no fee either, but this would give an option for those who wish to support the sites they frequent.
TBH though, I wonder how many would volunteer to tip websites. Considering that advertisement aggregators can already offer a pre-pay system using even a credit card, yet none have bothered, suggests that there isn’t a high demand for it.
When micro-payments become easy and you can be sure the content creator is going to receive it, maybe this will change though. Connecting directly with the content creator creates a bond in a way that going via a third party cannot.
@Traktion & Russell,
No that seems completely backwards. We’d never want to pay ad companies to be rid of ads we want to be rid of ads and our interaction with the companies behind them period, by having all or most sites become sites that are not ad supported. I absolutely reject that ad companies have a right to do what they do and personally I think its something the public will come around on. It is both an invasion of privacy and an attempt to profit at another’s expense without any recompense voluntary or otherwise. There are some pluses to the current system but they are “Turkish delight” type pluses.
Think it through backwards. To me the default for ads must be opt out. Then there should be at least two levels of opt in. I’ll opt in globally to allow correspondence with ad firms on the issue and then opt in individually to be paid all the monies involved in a transaction that allows a product maker to educate me on their product. No leakage of funds would be acceptable in my opinion. Its my attention and I should be paid vice someone else being paid to thieve my time, attention and cause the stress of interruption and distraction- and certainly never for any minor relatives. But even this doesn’t go remotely far enough.-------------------
A legitimate business for an ad company is generating high quality product information, but no amount of push or coercion should be involved with that process. The only time product education info should come up is at the end of a end user initiated ad free, sponsor free search for a specific product via honest search, trending and word of mouth- all sponsor and ad free. At that point its fine to pay Ford if one likes their products with a crypto currency micro payment but never ever for the advertisement- rather for future good works or something we’d like to encourage the use of in the future. My starting place will always be that ad companies have no right to exist (and the laws will come around) and not just because what they do is a kind of mass aggregate theft that undermines society but in particular it undermines the bottom up basis of democratic society by inevitably creating captured media platforms and systems that lead to captured government and captive society.
Sponsorship is an enclosure tool, that we don’t need and can no longer afford. It was never a good idea.
To get rid of the conflict of interest we don’t need a phony stake holder model we need media systems that only take money and influence from their legitimate end users. Media systems are for vital communication and access to needed info and not for class enrichment.
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I actually like the idea of being paid to be marketed to 
I commend your ambitious goals.
Unfortunately I disagree, and the history of media seems to support advertising as a successful, popular method of generating revenue.
But kudos to you. If you figuring out an alternative system, that’d be fantastic. Lots of people would love it.
One big thing though. Are you primarily railing against targeted advertising and tracking systems? Because those I do disagree with. They’re an invasion of privacy and really questionable, morally. But I have literally not a single problem with radio ads, TV ads, etc.
Websites need to fund themselves. Advertisement agencies aggregate adverts from third parties, then pay websites to show them.
You do not have to go to websites which show ads. If you had an option to pay what the advertising agency would pay instead, then the website would not need to show you the ads.
The reality is, there is no big conspiracy. There are just content creators struggling to find ways to fund it.
By all means, suggest that they accept payments instead, but the advertising agencies are primed to provide that service - it is their job to please their customers, or they will use an alternative service.
If advertising is inherently evil, you should have no problem peacefully persuading sites to stop showing them. If you are right, they are an accessory to a crime after all!
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@Russell. I have the same sentiment. Fine on TV and Radio as that is how those mediums grew and they definitely served their purpose. I think I mentioned else where that I tend to enjoy the ads themselves more than the actual content but still try to avoid them.
@Traktion That’s a good point. No problem with paying sites I care for especially with micropayment mechanisms (even in lieu of the incomes they’d get from ads) to support what they do especially for future works and am even more enthused if there can be a Safecoin or crypto currency that can tie the whole question of access and content and even positive income for end users to providing resources to build an end user owned and controlled net. I think I misunderstood and thought the suggestion was that we paid the ad companies instead of the sites for no ads. Direct payment to the sites is one thing but paying to not have ads seems like fostering the situation where poison covered vegetation is deemed natural and organic vegetation is odd, special or expensive. I personally don’t want the creative types in the any industry to go with less income, a lot more to the people who make everyone better off is in order.
What does it mean to think about the medium that comes after TV? For many the medium that comes after TV may not be much of a distinction. But its an outrage to save TV by blending it into a functioning internet. Let me attempt to capture some of the emotion of that with a word picture.
Imagine a fine French restaurant. It’s cozy and dimly lit with great night ambiance. Couplea are engaging in conversation and the joy of fine food. But the owners of the restaurant have the conversations bugged. On the long car ride over they are howling all the way as they listen on their patrons. They barge through the front doors and unceremoniously seat themselves in the dead center of the restaurant. The average patron happens to be French but these two begin bloviating in very loud English. Soon the patrons can’t hear each other or even hear themselves think. The owners start dropping little innuendos in English but with French nuance and all of them pertaining to previously overheard conversations. These two take it right to the limit before heading for the restaurant they really came to visit. Luckily its just two doors down as they are both laughing so hard they are in need of a restroom.
Comcast has no interest in blowing up its internet business, by its own account it will phase in its nonsense slowly. By the same token the owners of the French restaurant plan to buy up and close all the other French restaurants in the town so they can push their fun even further as they raise their rates. Now maybe I am a bloviator but TV is definitely a medium of bloviation and that is not what the internet crowd wants from the internet. They don’t want their internet contaminated with TV.
The infinitely better ad free Neflix model could offer all content, but instead we are supposed to pay more for what? But relative to what we could have the Netflix model isn’t good enough especially in terms of payment process. Imagine what we could have, Netflix is still largely peddling media that was tainted by sponsorship and its still listed on Wall. St. which is another form of sponsorship. We can have a coercion free and friction free medium.
We’re not talking about SAFE here, but SAFE apps - or perhaps app-support such as a platform (really an app but actually a service intended for app builders to use) that provides the revenue model. Some will no doubt provide ad-based services.
The best solution to the evils of advertising will be to provide a better model for consumers, and hopefully content providers, and therefore app builders.
Of course I’m not agreeing that advertising is inherently evil, but I can totally agree with you that a better model is the way to ultimately effect change. I’ll have to read through this post again with less scanning and figure out if we have come up with something even close to that… or the seeds for something that might work.