Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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At the end of the day web sites cost money. There needs to be a way to fund them.
People 100% aren't going to pay to access every random website they want to visit. So what you'd end up with in a world without ads is only the big corporations being able to run a website.
Back in my day (lol) ads were based on the website not the user. When you set up ads you selected keywords for your website and those were used to select ads.
Like you'd visit a programming blog and get ads for computer games and porn. Made total sense. You're still targeting your target audience just not the individual.
Targeted ads are obviously way more effective and therefore generate more money. But it's not the only way.
The alternative is to set up some system where you pay a monthly fee and it's divided amongst the websites you use. But that seems like an equally bad privacy nightmare.
I'm not so sure this has turned out to be all that true
I'm not so convinced. I run a website with zero ads or tracking and I'm not a big corporation.