How The 'Do Not Track' Plan Will Ultimately Kill Free Speech

Online advertising gets a bad rap.

Consumers, bombarded for years with belly fat and acai berry ads, dont welcome most display, video, and search ads.

Fortunately, many digital ads have evolved. Theyve become more relevant and less invasive, and consumers have become more open to them.

But what if ads disappeared? The alternative to an ad-supported Internet is a pay-for-play world supported by subscriptions or private ownership. Consumers may think they want an ad-free Internet, but do we really want to pay subscription fees to access all the sites we currently visit for free? In the end, advertising is the only thing that will keep the web free.

The web is a free resource we take for granted. Since the early 1990s, when it was first introduced, the web has grown at rates no expert could have predicted. And advertising has paid for most of that growth.

Imagine if access to web content had been set up differently, with a subscription model. A subscription model would limit Internet access to those who could afford it. And content creation would be driven by those few companies able to find enough subscribers to sustain their writers, editors, and techs. It would be a much smaller web.

Thankfully, most web content remains free. But it costs money to create that content. Professional writers, editors, photographers, designers, engineers, and on and onall spend a great deal of time and effort to create the content we enjoy for free. And where does the money come from to pay for their work? From advertising.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and user-generated content (UGC) sites like YouTube, also rely on advertising revenues to pay for the back-end hosting and technology that enables consumers to post their comments, videos, and content for free.

Everyone claims to hate online advertising, but everyone also uses it. We dont engage with all of the advertising were exposed to. But when the ad is interesting, relevant, or just a deal we cant ignore, we do indeed pay attention.

More importantly, with all the heated debate about Do Not Track and other privacy initiatives aimed at the online advertising industry, one issue rarely comes up: the impact these controls would have on free speech.

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How The 'Do Not Track' Plan Will Ultimately Kill Free Speech