Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites

The same could be said with all advertising and surveillance.

No one wants to be advertised to, but powerful lobbies argue that ending ads will lower consumption and thus harm the economy; and no politician wants to lower GDP.

No one wants to be spied on, but powerful lobbies argue tracking people allow better security; and no politician wants to be soft on crime and terrorism.

>> No one wants to be advertised to, but powerful lobbies argue that ending ads will lower consumption and thus harm the economy; and no politician wants to lower GDP.

I doubt that. People tend to spend their money regardless. Advertising just determines what they spend it on.

Famously....

Advertising is only used heavily when all products are similar, otherwise the best would naturally rise to the top.

For example, washing powder/liquid is advertised heavily on TV, yet do you really believe one brand of powder/liquid gets your clothes cleaner than any other?

not so sure about that, I am pretty sure ads promote materialism and consumerism, probably even leading to people working more to be able to afford more

Yes, but then you might consume beer based on how it tastes rather than the likelihood of winding up in an impromptu volleyball game with a bunch of Nordic bikini models. So you see where the entrenched players want to keep the status quo.

The single most powerful lobby, by far, to the point that it is essentially the only lobby, is the enormous mass of people who refuse to pay money for content. Absolutely refuse.

Even when you give them the option to pay, with no ads or tracking, the conversion rate is still around 0.5-1%.

Our culture values the act of buying things for social status (consumerism), and one of the main reasons for that is advertising.

You're assuming people would still have the same amount of money, but for most money is not a given, and people strive to earn money precisely because they want to buy the things they were advertised.

Without the social pressure to acquire things one doesn't need, it's very possible people might simply work less and use that time for other things.

This is a false dichotomy. You can have ads without tracking.

In some sense, "no one wants to be advertised to" is similar to "no one wants to pay for stuff". Like yeah it'd be nice if my groceries were free, but that's not very realistic, the grocery store would just close if they had to give everything away. Advertising is similar - a cost we pay so that websites can make some money in exchange for their services. Most ad supported websites would just disappear without them.

People are willing to pay for things they value. Those people who "refuse to pay money for content" probably go to the cinema, perhaps purchase magazines, purchase drinks with friends, etc.

We should however make it easier to pay for content online; let's implement HTTP 402 and integrate it into the users' browser and internet bill to reduce friction. Who wants to create an account and enter their credit card details to read a single article or watch a single video?

In some sense I agree but there is a fundamental difference. I pay for my groceries because I have the fundamental need for sustenance, and that requires land and toil. I have neither and therefore I pay someone else; but for me to survive it is necessary that _someone_ perform that work.

My need for websites is much less predominant and really I could live without. So of course I bounce when mildly interesting websites ask to host cookies on my browser or want me to create an account and enter my card details.

If one considers maximizing utility the goal of economic science, then this is in fact good, as it redirects me to more useful venues like doing chores I'd been putting off instead of mindlessly scrolling online. Some metrics such as GDP however might suffer.

I suspect that most people would not vote for a government policy that puts their favorite websites out of business so they can do more chores :)

Micropayments and judging the value of content before viewing it remain unsolved problems.

Eh. I've not seen any convincing arguments about this, especially because the quality of said content was dragged down specifically to support ad revenue and SEO. We really never saw the potential of an internet with microtransactions, largely because Google explicitly decided to force people to use ads.

>People are willing to pay for things they value

No, they overwhelmingly are not. When given the opportunity to not pay, and do so anonymously (no social shame), the actual pay rates drop to the 1-5% range.

This is a clear trend from thousands of creators who give simple payment options to those who wish to support them directly. The conversion rates from "ad-supported (but blocked)" to "paying member" are usually around 5% of the active audience.

The numbers are atrocious despite the deafening virtue signalling of comment sections ("I always pay creators to support them!")

You just assert "no" to my suggestion that people don't pay for these things because they just don't value them enough to pay for them, which doesn't really move the conversation forward. There's loadsa stuff more important in life than youtube videos so it's unsurprising the conversion rate is low.

My point is that the value prop breaks when people can shamelessly be dishonest.

If people actually didn't value the content, they wouldn't devote their time to it. I don't know anyone who regularly devotes hours a day to something they get zero value from...

I think this is a pricing and billing problem more than a "people only want free shit" problem.

All the paywalled news agencies want a monthly subscription. But I, as someone who doesn't like getting all their news from a single source, am not interested in signing up for news subscriptions because the cost would pile up fast, and to be honest I don't read that many news articles in a given month.

I think we need some kind of usage based billing system where participating outlets can set a price per article, and users can agree to be billed for that article when they go to view it.