DISQUS

Ben Gitlow · 1 year ago

If the internet was based on use charges and not advertising then ther would be a penalty for overuse of bandwith. Also I think spam would be largely reduced. Streaming color video on PCs and cell phones uses up bandwitt that wold be better used for information, Streaming color video also slows down every thing e.g. while my browser is loading such an ad that I have no interest in. Same holds for cable video. The internet industry is squandering bandwith and driving hardware product cycles so short that equipment and software is foisted on users before it is finished because product life is so short the developmengt costs to get it right can not be recovered.

Ryan Radia · 1 year ago

Ben, the Internet would look a whole lot different in a world where the end user paid for bandwidth on a unit basis like power or water. On one hand, people would think twice before watching that YouTube video or browsing the web, meaning less worthless traffic would be generated.

But isn’t the essence of the Web that people can browse to their heart's content, constrained only by their own time. Part of the reason advertisers spend so much money on web ads is because there are so many eyeballs out there online. Make it so people must pay each time they click a link, and the number of eyeballs floating around shrinks dramatically, especially for "fun" websites.

It is extremely tough to say that one type of "information" is a better use of the Internet than streaming color video. Most times, that might be the case, but who knows when watching a video might matter a lot? Making blanket judgments about traffic based on broad characteristics is prone to wild inaccuracies. Different people value bits differently, and what matters most to me might not matter to you at all. That's why a pricing mechanism for bandwidth might be better than your ISP simply deciding what kind of traffic is important.