the advertisers, they're going to come for you at night?
when this happens, just hit "reconnect" on the VPN and refresh - usually after one or two reconnects Reddit won't have blocked that IP yet, IME
we have ads because services paid for with attention are more accessible and get more traffic than services paid for with a monthly subscription ... we could probably subsidize a lot of websites or make them community efforts (like Wikipedia), but because there is a desire to profit from websites, we have this aggressive push for ads and monetization in every corner of the web.
Commercialization, though, is the problem more than advertising itself is. Monetization through "native ads" or affiliate link marketing is just as insidious and toxic, and pervasive. Just like people hate loot boxes and games that have mechanics where skill is less important than paying cash for in-game content to gain an advantage, the root problem is commercialization.
This is just capitalism, and cyberpunk as a genre is meant to be critical of capitalism and its rotten fruits.
I think it misses the mark to interpret the war as a war between humanity and advertisers when it's a war between the powerful and wealthy and the 99%.
the future capitalists dream of
just wow, I feel like I need more time just to grok this meal - I want to try it out myself, looks sooo good 😍 🤤
I don't tend to post news or politics, I think those posts are rather saturated on Lemmy.
It's pretty ironic my most recent post is a political post, and here's another political news article post I made ... So to say I've "never made a single news or politics post" I think is factually wrong.
Either way, I was hoping to appeal to your conscience here.
I'm not sure I understand your moral argument - you say that there are moral problems with every news source, and if we held moral standards to the sources we used, no posts would be permitted on Lemmy, but ... you know, there are better and worse places to drive traffic, better and worse places to use as a source. It's not all or nothing, you have to know this right?
So, reading between the lines, what I'm hearing from you is that it's not a deal-breaker for you to drive traffic to a website that perpetuates conspiracy theories and seeks to deny people like me healthcare, that these are morally tolerable positions.
I've been thinking about this a lot since reading this article on free speech about how often people will side with "free speech" until it's a topic they don't actually tolerate - e.g. very few "free speech" advocates continued to defend Milo Yiannopoulos after he started to advocate for pedophilia.
Here's the salient point I think the article makes:
The truth of the matter is that there are two types of speech or expression: those that we (either as individuals, or as a society) are willing to tolerate, and those that we do not. (This is explained compellingly here.) You may cherish a particular word, idea, expression, or identity. But if enough people collectively refuse to tolerate it, well . . . you can shout “free speech!” at the top of your lungs all you want, but it isn’t going to protect you.
In the end, what I'm hearing is you are willing to tolerate a news source that peddles far-right conspiracy theories that aim to strip people of their rights and manipulate people into rejecting science, that these ultimately are tolerable views, ones you are willing to indirectly support by continuing to link to Newsweek and drive traffic there.
Maybe you would not feel the same about linking to a neo-Nazi website directly, or to a Holocaust denial website, or maybe a website that hosts child pornography or advocates for pedophilia - I assume these are views you probably wouldn't tolerate and wouldn't want to be associated with or support even indirectly.
It's OK if my attempt to appeal to your conscience failed - I assumed from the start that we were more likely to be on the same page on this, but I guess I was wrong. Sorry for wasting your time.
In November 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Newsweek had "taken a marked radical right turn by buoying extremists and promoting authoritarian leaders" since it hired conservative political activist Josh Hammer as editor-at-large. It noted the magazine's elevation of conspiracy theorists, publication of conspiracy theories about COVID-19, views such as support for a ban on all legal immigration to the United States and denying adults access to trans-affirming medical care, and failure to disclose potential conflicts of interest in the content published on Hammer's opinion section and podcast.
Newsweek in particular is vile and horrible, and you are driving traffic to them. The argument that there are other news sites with problems is whataboutism, it doesn't address that this news source has a serious problem.
Besides, here's an easy alternative and less problematic source: https://www.axios.com/local/tampa-bay/2025/03/25/florida-child-labor-bill-migrant-workers
(it's not that hard)
newsweek is a conspiracy peddling right-wing rag, please stop driving traffic to them
fun fact: mulberry trees have edible leaves, they're not amazing but it's something you can enjoy in addition to the berries!
classic fruit tree story, lol
in the 1960s and 70s there was a similar moral panic about lesbians, and a rejection of lesbians as women and as belonging to feminist groups by a vocal minority of second-wave feminists, very similar in some ways to the current moral panic about trans women and the vocal minority of TERFs.
https://www.advocate.com/history/betty-friedan-anti-lesbian