this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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I'm going to state an unpopular opinion. Bluesky should have ads, not a personalized ads that track users, but just simple ones at the very top of the feed. Consumers today are too addicted to free services, and companies need to be financially independent so that they can support a quality product.
Alternatively, no ads and we can support it through donations or anti-oligarchy purchases like this shirt.
Ads open up a pandoras box of monetization of user data/traffic/clicks/links/additional engagement, etc.
It's a dark, dark, dark road, and we've been down it dozens of times with tech giants. It never ends well.
Let's stop having advertising be the way we fund pseudo-free services, and instead just give people options to donate or pay into it some other way. We need to end this reliance on advertising industry for revenue.
Yes but a lot of us who do block ads block them largely because they are intolerable. I largly only started blocking ads at all because of how utterly miserable YouTube ads became.
Another reason why they just externalize the cost of the website onto anyone who can't use an ad blocker or doesn't know how.
Ads incentivize them to make the platform addicting and to prioritize ragebait because it will cause people to stay engaged in the app longer.
Agreed. Being financially independent can also foster ad investments and lead to a popularity gain
Free services? Where?
Free services don't really exist.
Could you suggest alternate wording that succinctly conveys what the commenter obviously meant?
I probably could if I could be bothered to do that.
Which means no.
Why the first comment if you were not going to bother to elaborate?
Elaborate what exactly?
And I honestly thought that he was screwing around with me, because it was such a strangely worded sentence.
Thanks for letting us know! 🥰
😘
If you mean somebody, somewhere is footing the bill, then sure, if you torture the definition of "free" enough, then nothing on Earth is free. It is worth pointing out that if you enjoy (for example) Wikipedia, then you should donate if you can, because Wikipedia runs on donations. If you're just trying to be a pedantic jackass, though, that's another thing.
You're saying this on lemmy.