Spyke
lemmy.ca

Ah yes, just like how free speech means corporations must be allowed to bribe politicians.

298
EatYouWellreply
lemmy.world

But they're people! Well, only in that one instance and not in any others that would allow punishments levied against people to be applied to businesses.

Like, if I sold poison that killed millions of people every year, I'd get the death penalty.

68
lemmy.ml

Didn't you know? Disabling ad blockers ensures free speech and apparently may also peacefully end the current crisis in the middle east... oh, did I mention it helps with world hunger too?

210
lemmy.ml

We are dedicated to safe and ethical advertising practices

Mates, that ship has long sailed

140
morrowindreply
lemmy.ml

There are ethical ad services, but I've never seen outside of one random blog site.

39
lemmy.world

What gets me about them (and any other sites really) saying that is there are safer ways in showing ads and that’s just hosting them from their domain instead of selling page space to random ad buyers.

Guess that’s too much trouble and not enough profit for these corporations.

23

Absolutely. I have no problem displaying a few ads with my content if it results in better content. If it’s done responsibly, which it never is. Instead, it’s always an abusive relationship.

8
FaeDrifterreply
midwest.social

CU vs FEC was specifically about campaign financing, but yeah basically ruled that organizations like corporations are protected by 1A, and money counts as free speech.

Which is obviously bullshit on every level, but just one way that a SCOTUS with a few corrupt individuals can destroy democracy for an entire country.

34

And that was under an overall-not-that-horrible president and with a somewhat-reasonably-not-corrupt supreme court, the next years will be a-ok I'm sure

2
nybble41reply
programming.dev

They ruled that people acting together have all the same rights that they would have acting individually, and that preventing someone from spending money on producing and promoting their speech effectively prevents them from being heard. Which are both perfectly true, common-sense statements.

0

They ruled that people acting together have all the same rights that they would have acting individually

Bullshit, corporations are not "people acting together", they're autocratic command structures where one or few people hold all the power.

preventing someone from spending money on producing and promoting their speech effectively prevents them from being heard

Also total bullshit, unless you agree that allowing people to be poor is a violation of the first amendment, because being poor effectively prevents them from being heard. Which you won't.

Which are both perfectly true, common-sense statements

I'm already confident you don't have a single ounce of common sense in your empty head after reading those two sentences.

3

They ruled that people acting together have all the same rights that they would have acting individually

Bullshit, corporations are not "people acting together", they're autocratic command structures where one or few people hold all the power.

preventing someone from spending money on producing and promoting their speech effectively prevents them from being heard

Also total bullshit, unless you agree that allowing people to be poor is a violation of the first amendment, because being poor effectively prevents them from being heard. Which you won't.

Which are both perfectly true, common-sense statements

I'm already confident you don't have a single ounce of common sense in your empty head after reading those two sentences.

1

Corporations are people and there should be a jail for them and a gallows.

11

In reality, no, you're right. Legally though, they are. And we are second class citizens.

9

I disagree. If you think USA today or any other news outlet shouldn't have free speech then why bother with free speech to begin with.

-6
lemmy.ca

I allow USA Today to speak freely, including speaking their ad frames and images.

But that doesn’t mean I’m compelled to listen to everything they say.

USA Today: speech isn’t free if I’m forced to listen to it.

69
lemm.ee

Well you're not forced. You don't actually have to go to their website at all.

They seem to be making the argument that if you want some of their content, you have to accept all of it (ads included). Of course, that's absurd. I can pick up a printed newspaper (if those still exist) and skip right to the comics if I want, and bypass the sports and classifieds entirely if I wish. I can pick up a book or album and only enjoy a single chapter or track. You get the idea.

24

While I agree with you in principle, I'm not sure the newspaper example supports your position, although it is an apt analogy.

I would imagine that the counter argument would take the form of something like, "Yes, you don't have to read the whole paper, but you can't just buy the comics. You buy the whole paper, get access to the whole thing, and the ads come with it. Similarly, with our web presence, in order to access everything, whether you choose to consume it all or not, the ads must come as a part of it."

Personally, I don't fully agree with either that argument or yours, can see the merits and flaws of both, and fall somewhere in the middle.

I'd argue that while they're within their rights to create, distribute, bundle, and price their content as they see fit, just like the current debate with social media companies, your monitor is your own personal, privately owned platform, and you shouldn't/can't be forced to offer a platform to any content you don't wish to publish (to your audience of one). So you're perfectly within your rights to want and attempt to only view the content you wish to see, while they're also perfectly within their rights to want and attempt to package their content in such a way that links their articles with the advertisements of their sponsors.

So at that point, it's just an arms race between the producer doing their best to force ads onto screens and consumers doing their best to avoid same. Neither side is morally right or wrong, and while there likely is a middle ground that wild be acceptable to both parties, there's zero good faith between the two sides which would be necessary to establish that middle ground.

17
lemm.ee

I don’t think they’re arguing that the ads are part of the free speech, I think they’re arguing the ads are a revenue source that allows them to fund free speech. Blocking ads in this case is more akin to sitting down at the newsstand for two hours while you read the paper, then putting the paper back without having paid for anything. Yes online advertising has become a massive breach of privacy, but they have no obligation to give away their product for free, and looking at ads is how you pay for it.

Free speech ≠ free beer.

7

Oh I intentionally wasn't touching the financial side of it, that's a whole other mess. But yeah I know it's inseparable these days and agree with your points.

2
lemmy.world

"We believe in free speech, so you should let us sell your data."

59
Sippy Cupreply
lemmy.world

See, if it's hard to get my data, suddenly it becomes more valuable. These organizations try harder and harder to get to it, and really won't stop. And really, once it's out, it's out.

So I'm just gonna make my data worthless. Fuckin everyone can have it what the hell do I care. I was among the first on Facebook when we had no idea what was happening. Phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, bare ass to the world. It's all out there already, no going back in the tube.

I don't see many ads, so who cares if they have a better idea of what to show me. I don't spend frivolously, and don't buy from websites I don't trust, so what even if I do see some more relevant ads. They're ads. I'm not paying attention anyway.

I'm not giving out answers to security questions and I'm using two factor authentication everywhere. My credit is frozen and I've got all the big stuff bought. I'm not really sure what I have to lose here

3

Data laws aren't for you. They are for marginalized and vulnerable demographics, who are put at risk when they get doxxed.

7
K3zi4reply
lemmy.world

I just don't feel comfortable having these big companies profiting from my information. If it's that valuable to them, then they should be paying me for it.

4

I think I read somewhere it was worth like .0005 cents per person. I think Netflix residuals pay better

1
lemmy.ml

Yeah, advertising is not "free speech." It's a way for corporations to steal your life from you, 60 seconds at a time

54
pawb.social

... They mean that you're supporting free speech by disabling and block and supporting them

4

Seriously. When did everyone get so stupid? They obviously aren't saying ads are free speech

6
SrTobireply
feddit.de

free installation, free admission, free appraisal, free alterations, free delivery, free home trial, and free parking. No cash? No problem. No kidding. No muss, no fuss, no risk, no obligation, no red tape, no down payment, no entry fee, no hidden charges, no purchase necessary, no one will call on you, no payments of interest 'til September. But limited time only, though, so act now, order today, send no money. Offer good while supplies last. Two to a customer, each item sold separately, batteries not included, mileage may vary, all sales are final, allow six weeks for delivery. Some items not available, some assembly required, some restrictions may apply.

8

Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

3

Whether or not USA Today believes in free speech, its sponsors to not. They expect brand safe conduct.

Also USA Today's upper management has opinions on what they would publish. You won't see pro-anarchist op-eds in USA Today.

That said, news agencies are less good for getting news rather used in conjunction with others to confirm their veracity.

41
kbin.social

Injection hackers do not give a single wet fuck about your "safe and ethical advertising practices".

40
rob64reply
startrek.website

Alright this just has me wondering which is worse, a wet fuck or a dry one...

-4

Tell me you’ve never fucked without telling me you’ve never fucked….

5
lemmy.blahaj.zone

why does nobody know what the concept of free speech actually is? it literally means congress will make no law restricting your right to assemble or speak as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights to do the same

31
InputZeroreply
lemmy.ml

It's because the people who pick and choose what the constitution is to them are the same people who pick and choose parts of The Bible. They believe they're always right and they don't want anyone to ever tell them they're wrong.

7

The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects:

  • The right to speak, specifically the right to political speech and to be critical of the administration or its officers
  • The right to practice religion (right now this is being used to override other rights and duties)
  • The right to publish, as per above
  • The right to assemble with others
  • The right to petition your representatives in office for redress of grievances.

When Justice Amy Coney Barrett was being reviewed for her bench position, she couldn't remember the last one.

But Pepperidge Farm remembers.

2
Phrodo_00reply
lemmy.world

The first amendment of the US is not the definition of free speech. People in other parts of the world also have the right to free speech, and it has nothing to do with the US constitution. I know it sounds crazy to you, but there's countries other than the US.

4

However, we are on a thread regarding 'USA Today'... so it would track that they'd bring up the Constitution

7
uberkaldenreply
lemmy.world

They're arguing that the press is important to maintaining and exercising free speech. If they go out of business because they don't make ad money, bad for free speech. Not saying they are right, but I think everyone here is missing what they are really saying.

5
Glytchreply
ttrpg.network

Because they said it poorly. Why would I trust their reporting if they can't communicate a simple message like that?

1
BreakDecksreply
lemmy.ml

You're confusing the "concept of free speech" with America's Constitutional protection of free speech (the First Amendment).

This is some peak America-brain to suggest that free speech only exists in the USA. I assure you, outside of America's borders, nobody is referencing the First Amendment when they talk about free speech, and the concept as you so condescendingly claim to be the expert on is not limited to government restriction.

2
katy ✨reply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

calm yourself i was obviously talking about the website usa today based in the usa. im not even from the usa...

2

PROVE YOUR FUCKING PATRIOTISM AND GIVE UP YOUR PRIVACY FOR [INSERT_COMMON_LOOTCRATE_ITEM]

26

Don't use your freedom of choice, it hurts our bank accounts and bonuses 😭😭 - board member.

26

Our ethics dictate we charge the advertisers the highest possible amount so we get more freedom bucks from them

5

Are you using uBlock Origin? I don't get that popup after clicking to a few articles.

18

Yes let’s let corporations dictate our freedoms! Literally nothing bad could ever happen guys!

16
lemmy.ml

Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to be forced to consume something (including ads). Freedom of speech includes not sending all of my metadata to you and your business partners.

16
lemm.ee

Dark patterns, gotta love em

15
BreakDecksreply
lemmy.ml

The definition of "dark pattern" has been evolving. Today I think it means "UI design I don't like", or at least that's how everyone's been using it.

Recently saw someone accuse PayPal of using dark patterns when they clicked the submit payment button and the payment went through (they wanted one more interstitial).

5
eee
lemm.ee

Just use the right ublock filter to get past these silly anti adblocks

13
Akasazhreply
feddit.nl

Could you point an interested party in the direction where those filters are?

9

I think they come with ublock itself and are called "annoyance filters" or something like that.

2
lemmy.world

I thought "whitelist" got cancelled for being racist? I distinctly remember being forced to rename everything to "IP Allowlist" and having to rename all my branches to "main" from "master". Jenkins is 3rd party software, so it still has slaves... 😂

11
uberkaldenreply
lemmy.world

There is no such thing as being cancelled. Do you think the cancelled police show up at usa today to shut them down for using whitelist?

1

I don't see anything about companies getting canceled, shut down, or otherwise

1
lemmy.zip

Its a bad marketing campaign because it is easily turned into threads like this. Also, I have no idea if USA Today is good or not (I genuinely have never even thought about it).

But it is worth understanding. News outlets need to get funding from somewhere. Some are state funded and I should not need to explain why that introduces biases. Others take massive sponsorship deals from companies and ensure that John Oliver will always have something to talk about. And others run ads to varying degrees of curation.

The last option is subscriptions and those are few and far between.

Its more or less the same thing we saw with ads in general over the 00s. More and more people learned how to block ads so more and more websites needed to add obnoxious flash based ads and insane uses of javascript and so forth to get any impressions. And fewer and fewer "good" companies wanted to advertise to adblock heavy audiences which led to more and more trojans and so forth. Which leads to more and more ad blockers and...

In the case of news media? We mostly see this manifest as less investigative journalism and more listicles and "clickbait" articles because those at least get the facebook crowd to click.

So it is very much worth looking in to more permissive blocklists and even permitlists. Block tracking cookies because fuck that shit. But permit sites that you "trust" to have reasonable ads and look in to finer grain blocklists that still allow the actual ads to be displayed, even if they aren't the ones based on Amazon figuring out you have a foot fetish.

11
hh93reply

Even though I'm probably not reading it enough to be worth it I pay a yearly online-subscription to one of the newspapers that gained my trust with good investigative pieces in the past.

If everyone was just consuming for free then a newspaper needs to either be heavily funded by a really wealthy person that pays them (and in turn makes it less likely that said newspaper will report against people like that) or the newspaper needs to sell ad-space. So if you are consuming for free AND blocking ads on a website then you are only costing that website money - and in case of newspapers that's not a good thing since it ensures that only those that are publicly funded or funded by billionaires will survive "almost unchanged" while the rest will try to get as populist as possible to the the most amount of clicks to increase their ad-revenue

5

One of the few sensible people in this thread. Hosting costs big amounts of cash. Paying decent journalists AND EDITORS even more. Their funding has to come from somewhere if you're trying to read news articles for free or using Archive and 9ft lol.

And people talk about reddit being half puns, memes, and pointless THIS comments lol.

1

This is also what nearly killed off local newspapers. It's a huge problem and journalism as a profession is still in the process of adjusting to the new realities.

1
Telexreply
sopuli.xyz

They're probably from the "all publicity is good publicity" school of marketing.

0

Nah. I think they just assumed more people remembered the ad campaign by (if memory serves) The New York Times where they more or less showed every step used to investigate and verify a story before reporting. Also, I would be amazed if that was actually the NYT's campaign which... probably sums things up.

Before they were mismanaged to the shadow realm, Vice was similar. The idea that they very much were "good news" and ACTUAL freedom of speech/the press in contrast to "I want to say all the slurs"

3

If we are playing "who got here 'first' 50 years ago" then I think we all best get to stepping so that the US Military has all the pipes.

Like I said: Look in to fine grain blocklists. Block ALL the tracking cookies because fuck that shit (and if you think ticking "don't give me curated ads" does anything...). But consider permitlisting the better ad sources so that the internet isn't completely run by profitable hate groups... like we see happening.

1
lemmy.ml

I wouldn't visit these sites if you paid me. Much less forced me to watch ads.

10

Nope because "Javascript not enabled". I would instead recommend some sort of "Anti adblock blocker"

14
lemmy.ca

Read as giving them ad revenue allows them to write without doing sponsored articles

9

Thank you, that's also how I understand it.

Still very badly explained I can understand the reaction...

1

I wonder which content blocker you're using, because with uBlock Origin (with a fairly aggressive config and custom blocklists) I do not get that "disable adblock" pop up.

Not like I'd visit this site at all, I just tried to see if I could create a uBO filter for you to remove the paywall.

9

Reminds me of Microsoft's "1,000,000 PCs can't be wrong" or whatever it was when they started pushing windows 10 to 7 users

7

Free speech for corporations and advertisers. For users is the paywall as adblocker. For this screenshot, Memes is a better place.

4

Free speech also entails how willingly you are to put that speech out there. If you want to cover it with a paywall of any sort, you are most welcome to do that. Keep in mind that free speech and its actions also have consequences. If your content is good enough, people might pay to see it. Free market and all that.

4

Ummm... That's the wrong freedom for them to be trying to invoke. They have their own. It's called Freedom of the Press. But they don't seem to want to invoke that one when they know it is bullshit.

4

Good Independent journalism requires money. You can't have everything for free you know. If you want to keep your privacy then you should pay for the news sources that you read.

Edit: I'm not american I do not know if USA today is good journalism or not. I am speaking more generally

2

On the contrary, I believe free speech gives me the right to JUST SAY NO. Don't give in, you have that right as an individual.

1