I read “The Internet’s Original Sin” by Ethan Zuckerman.
I think around 2014, I developed an implicit bias that advertising is “bad.” Having read so many articles, books, and research papers admonishing the utilization of advertisements in the technology industry and highlighting the harm they cause. Even thinking about advertisements outside the context of Silicon Valley and the free internet, it always felt like a hamster wheel of a business model; constantly trying to sell advertisement spaces, billboards, sponsors, and more, to help fund the thing you really want to do, or is really bringing value to people (ie. delivering a paper full of thoughtful news, opinions, and essays to an individual’s doorstep every morning).
However, returning to the technosphere – tech companies – the blanket statement that “ads are bad” has always left me discouraged because I want to be an entrepreneur who builds and creates new and wonderful things. In an ideal world, these new and wonderful things bring so much value to someone’s life, it’s a no-brainer that they pay for them! Then I look at something like Google, who offers Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, etc. for free. And obviously, they use the information they glean from these products – as well as their ubiquitous “Sign in with Google” and browser – to sharpen their advertising tools, even allowing for things like micro-targeting and individual targeting. But how are you supposed to compete with that?
How, as a fledgling company, could you build something more useful than Google Drive, right out of that gate? And beyond that, how do you even get people to care? Sure they know Google is collecting their information. They know Facebook sold 100 million profiles to Cambridge Analytica for pennies, but the ‘outrage’ has never seemed like enough to motivate true behavior change – and thus, it seems like individuals expect the internet to be free. And for that, they will knowingly, albeit begrudgingly, continue to pay the internet toll with their likes and content.
However, after reading this article, and taking some time to reflect on that implicit bias that I’ve had since I was 15, are advertisements truly bad? They feel ‘icky’ for sure. And they are an unsexy business model, but they definitely work. As I was thinking about it, I think a business model based on advertisement revenue could be executed morally and unobtrusively.
The crux of the problem is: that servers are expensive. There is an inherent cost to running the internet and someone has to pay it. The issue with ads was that, once one person saw they could make more money by collecting more information and allowing those who advertise, better insights into their advertisements and return on investment – everyone who sold advertisements needed to do that. Grow or die, right? A classic slippery slope.
So, the internet as it stands, is that consumers expect to use the internet for free, advertisers expect near individual-level advertisement targeting, and tech companies expect large returns. Software is cheap. Therefore, I think if I were to run a technology company whose revenue was based on advertisements – abstaining from any moral philosophizing about how to turn the behavior of the entire internet – I think I would set the expectations of both aforementioned groups appropriately. For the individuals using the platform: here are our advertising partners, here is why, and here is the limited amount of data (if at all, we collect) (al la dev). On the flip side, to advertisers, I would say: we don’t have the same level of targeting ability that other platforms have, but that doesn’t mean your advertisements won’t be seen, nor won’t be effective.
On a personal note, I would love the internet without advertisements. I’m not sure exactly what that looks like, micro-payments, mesh networks, etc., but I think an internet that maintains the free, rebellious spirit of its youth, is the internet I was promised, and the internet I want.
