Fuck Pandora, then.

[theweaselking]

Pandora spams users, which would be entirely unacceptable on its own, but then they double down by spamming for Rmoney.

Lolbertarians, being dipshits, think "taxes are theft". This is because they're stupid. But advertising? "All advertising is theft" - that's a position I could be convinced to get behind.

Comments

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

That's ad-supported software. And Apple's shitty, patented (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/15digi.html?_r=4&ref=business) system where it locks your whole system down until you watch the ad, instead of an out-of-the-way banner.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I think it's only $12 a year to have pandora ad free, guess that puts an upper limit on how valuable it is to have the opportunity to spam people. Or at least it's that much until they run out of money and go out of business due to high costs from the record labels.

[harald387.livejournal.com]

What others have said - if you're using the free version of Pandora, you're paying for the cost of them securing the rights for the music by subjecting yourself to ads. The money has to come from somewhere. Paid users won't see it.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Obviously it's not my philosophy so they don't have to listen to me (and are exceedingly unlikely to do so), but I've long thought libertarians should be opposed to most* advertising.

According to the usual apologia, libertarianism is about letting individuals make their own decisions on an entirely voluntary basis, free of coercion. Usually (though not always) this is accompanied by the belief that rational self-interest will lead to good outcomes for most.

Meanwhile, a large chunk of advertising is predicated on the idea that you can influence other people to behave irrationally by pushing the right buttons. If you want to sell cigarettes, you're only going to do it by overriding rational self-interest.

*I exclude the stuff that works by assisting informed choice: "here's a product you didn't know about that might meet your needs".

[jerril]

Enlightened self-interest is good!

Assuming humanity is any good at enlightened self-interest, as an aggregate, is... out of touch. And when your plan that ends with "...and then everyone does the Right Thing out of enlightened self interest" starts with "First we cut off all the funding to the education system..." I start wondering when the space-bats got you.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I apparently have some kind of sweet combination of add ins at work that lets me skip all ads on Pandora.

I shall purchase Pandora One

[disgruntledgrrl.livejournal.com]

And I shall go forth and see if these ads hie themselves off to a fuckery...

Or however it's said.

But if I get ads - especially political ads - after paying: then I shall set their virtual world on fire.
If I don't - there you have it.

Harris said she loves Pandora but that political ads may convince her to upgrade to an ad-free version of the service. this could be a clever membership drive.

To be honest though: I did not run into that this week on Pandora.

[iamdollface.livejournal.com]

Oh right, I knew there were reasons I left Pandora for Last.FM years ago...