- What are the pros and cons of an advertising revenue model for your product, and the internet overall?
How (and why) does this model affect individual well-being? What are ways to reduce the negative impacts of this revenue model?
As a website or app that advertises, a company collects data on their spending habits, their personal information, and their behaviour. That much we know, but learning how this model came into fruition was really interesting. I had always thought about the Internet as something that was designed to be free and never questioned why it would be different from purchasing newspapers or having cable, just at no cost. Now I see the argument behind the potentially contrarian idea that the internet should never have been free, and selling personal information is another way of purchasing access to the internet. I’d wonder how it is possible for people to completely avoid having their digital fingerprint tracked by companies, or rather, if that even is possible.
I see how Ethan Zuckerman was devastated by the butterfly effect of monetised information created by his pop-up ads. Still, I’d argue that this model could have very easily come about in a number of other ways, and that he was just the first one to come up with the “how”. I think this revenue model is particularly harmful because it pushes consumers to think under a false pretense: that they’re accessing something for free. I think the worst part of it is the lack of transparency that it presents, but since it does operate under a lack of transparency, I think that it’s highly likely that advertisers and IT companies would have found another way to use something new and mysterious (at the time) for profit.
