

Why we don't sell ads? - hsuresh
http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/06/why-we-dont-sell-ads/?hn

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10098
And now they sold themselves to a company that sells ads. Huh.

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eevilspock
Too many have bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes things
free, a delusion that helps bury the fact that one had made a deal with the
devil. There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. The cost of the "fee
lunch" is simply shifted to the price of the things being advertised. In other
words we still end up paying. It may even shift costs regressively, to
products predominately consumed by those with lower incomes, in which case the
poor are subsidizing the better off.

BUT IT'S WORSE...

We end up paying a lot more than if we just paid for our content and services
straight up. Not only are you still paying for the costs of the "free
website", you are paying for all that advertising overhead, the costs of
advertising technology and infrastructure (huge, btw), the agency and creative
costs (Don Draper and company have to pay for the hookers and scotch somehow,
not to mention what’s-his-name who basically just lounges in his office
barefoot thinking Japanese), and big marketing departments that often
outnumber the people who actually write or make things.

You are also paying the opportunity cost of inferior product, because that’s
what happens when websites have to design to please advertisers over pleasing
us, the users. Dalton Caldwell makes this point comparing Sourceforge to
Github: [http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-
proposal](http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal).

Our identities and privacy are bought and sold to the highest bidders. So we
foot the bill for those bids AND we pay the cost of lost privacy. A double
whammy! It's personalization? Bullshit. Personalization means optimizing
something for me, not optimizing for the advertiser. Again, who's the real
customer?

IT GETS EVEN WORSE...

 _Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can
buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club_

Think of the social costs of advertising. The web is infested with
misinformation and manipulation. Beside the lying ads themselves, relying on a
revenue stream entirely dependent on how many ads are seen severely affects
the moral choices of those who decide what gets produced and how its
presented. What are the costs of a misinformed and variously manipulated
citizenry, of distortions to the free-market?

Knowledge and discourse are the lifeblood of both democracy, free markets,
progress. The web, from the little scammy websites to the big brand ones that
so many blindly trust, has a huge influence on who we vote for, what we buy,
and most importantly, what we believe.

