The government has agreed to proposals that would allow Australians to opt out of targeted advertising, require search engines to "de-index" certain information about them, and draw small businesses into Australia's privacy scheme.
Yeah that’s fair. I was being rather clumsy with my wording, and sort of doing a bit of both the pragmatic and idealistic approach, without clearly distinguishing when I was doing which. I think idealistically there’s a lot of good to be said for the micropayment system, but it’s not necessarily as much of a clear-cut good as you suggest. There are still equity issues at play as described above. There are also practical questions. Would every single site charge precisely the same amount? Would it be per page view or per user? Per page but with a cap on monthly spend per user? All this could be addressed of course, but would either create an equity issue distinct from the above-mentioned one, or would create awkward UX interactions for the user to manage their expenditure. Ads have the benefit of being both completely equitable and dead simple.
Yeah that’s fair. I was being rather clumsy with my wording, and sort of doing a bit of both the pragmatic and idealistic approach, without clearly distinguishing when I was doing which. I think idealistically there’s a lot of good to be said for the micropayment system, but it’s not necessarily as much of a clear-cut good as you suggest. There are still equity issues at play as described above. There are also practical questions. Would every single site charge precisely the same amount? Would it be per page view or per user? Per page but with a cap on monthly spend per user? All this could be addressed of course, but would either create an equity issue distinct from the above-mentioned one, or would create awkward UX interactions for the user to manage their expenditure. Ads have the benefit of being both completely equitable and dead simple.