An advertising model seems to be the standard, “go-to” revenue model for any company trying to get off the ground. I made a product earlier this year that now has a loyal user base of hundreds, and I could easily monetize it by putting ads here and there. However, I hesitate. It’s for the same reason why the advertising revenue model was not appealing to Ford in the first place — people do not want to be struck with ads if it’s not related to the content they are seeing, or content they are interested in. Also, in the best interest of the advertisers, they would not want their ads to be related to certain content (like the inappropriate page that they landed on during the demo). This seems to be the primary con of advertising models, in that there is a mismatch between content and ad.
The other concerning downside is that now we just track user data to generate specific ads for specific people, so that we are now matching the content/user and the ad. But this means, like the podcast said, that we are used to being in a surveillance state.
The pro of all of this is that it keeps the internet free for everyone, and this makes it accessible to anyone. If we had to pay for everything on the internet, then we are shutting out a large population of people who may not be able to afford it. Free information can have negative effects to, but it allows everyone to be on the same playing field. Everyone should deserve access to free information and (harmless) content. Is there a middle ground?
