"A lot of things are free in Vegas but most of them aren't all that good"

I had a lot of reason to think about the above quote while vacationing in Las Vegas over the New Years Holiday.  But more than Vegas it got me to thinking about the "Web 2.0" world and how much of our lives are now dependent on companies that don't answer to us directly.

What I mean is that, in the old days, if your local Newspaper printed something about you that wasn't true you could call someone up and complain.  Now, if someone writes something false about you in Wikipedia and Google is indexing it for the world to see there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.

This is one of the biggest problems and least discussed consequences of Web 2.0's new "Advertisement Based Economy".  By being an intermediary between you and the service you are using the advertising company is preventing you from having any hold over the company that is actually providing you with a service.  Because of that you lose the ability to hold them accountable for providing that service poorly. 

It actually adds a lot of credence to the idea that nothing comes for free.

So the question is, what can be done?  People certainly don't want to start paying for something that is currently free and web sites have no reason to listen to users while the people with the ads are providing all the funding.  What needs to happen is the middle man (a.k.a. the advertiser) needs to start advocating for the user.

This isn't unheard of believe it or not.  For all the hate that gets slung Wal-Marts' way they are actually famous for being a middle man who advocates for their customers.  If you'll recall, items you had to assemble didn't come with little mini screw drivers until a few years ago when Wal-Mart insisted that manufacturers wanting to sell through them include mini tools for the consumer. 

The Advertisers could do that too.  It would take very little effort for them to set up a web site allowing their customers to lodge complaints about sites they advertise on and then advocating for their customers against the various web properties that have no reason to listen to the users otherwise. 

The truth is, if the advertisers were smart they'd band together and form services in which you'd register with them and they could advocate for you.  In doing so they'd be getting user information that they could use to promote themselves while providing a valuable service to the user.