There's some things that seem inevitable to me. True flat-rate music streaming services was one of those things and we're pretty much there. Moving away from ad-supported websites to a convenient subscription model is the other.
I don't think the war against AdBlock can be won. How do you disable a software that simply hides content? Force users to click the ads? Put them into more and more annoying places? We already know the endgame of that and it's shady pop-up orgies. I doubt the New York Times wants to be associated with that. But I also won't pay $10 for every single website I might visit a month (some, maybe, for only an article or two in a link).
What we need is a common subscription flat-rate that fairly splits revenue between websites you actually visit. Not sure about the privacy concerns but at least here, the user data wouldn't have to be used for advertising.
This entire thing where your attention is hijacked because you have a passing interest in subject X is out of date. Yes, we've had passive ad sponsorship of all kinds of events in times past, but it wasn't a situation where the advertisers monitored your every move and were aggressively interfering with your content consumption. It was a situation where they wanted to be recognized for supporting the content you were consuming. Ads have gone from being passive, supportive, widespread constructs to being aggressive, directive, in-your-business constructs. Not good.
I don't mind ads. Trackers need to be outlawed. I'll tell an ad service what kinds of ads I'd like to see if they'd like. I don't want to be tracked though.
I'd be happily spending the equivalent of a annual nyt subscription per year but I'm not willing to pay that amount to a sole news site. As it is, everybody tries to do a vendor lock-in while whining that people are not walking into or get out of that trap.
I like it. Not sure how to get enough vendor participation, though. I imagine the way to go would be to pair up with one of the large ad networks -- you could even work it where if you pay, the ads don't come. If you're not in the system, you get ad-ed like everybody else.
My prediction is, if centralized content micropayment service is ever going to happen, it won't come from the publishers, but a big player with enough leverage like Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. Then the publisher will write outrage articles about how unfair and anti press freedom the cut they get is. Until they adapt silently.
Maybe I'm a bit pessimistic, but I doubt that the proud traditional companies have learnt much from what happened in the music industry. Which on the bright side might be good for new media startups and different approaches to journalism.
There are clear laws against copying content without permission, not so with adverts. I am not obliged to sit in front of TV and watch ads during the break, nor when visiting a website unless there is some contractual obligation for me to do so. I have yet to come across a site that tells me I must agree to view the adverts to access the content.
What's the closest to this at the moment ?
That way, you know how much you're spending every month, avoiding the tip jar situation where you might wind up donating more than you'd reckoned, and you're able to contribute, even if modestly, to that many more sites than with, say, Patreon.
This uninvited use of your resources is stealing. I think you could make the case that all of the resources wasted by visitors is more valuable than the website is generating via ads (or losing from being blocked).
There would be many hurdles to cover especially due to all of the technical details (you requested a resource, they just served it) but I think you can argue that when you click a link to an article the user intends to request the article not the junk they're forcing you to have with it.
It actually would be nice if Google ranked pages by page size or had some way to tell you what you were in for by clicking on a link in your search results...
> you requested a resource, they just served it
Again: If you tell me a link will take me to very specific content (eg, a news article) I expect to receive only that content. Surprising me with other content is not welcome. Maybe it would be easier for you to relate to if the unwelcome material I'm forcing you to download is porn, gore, or malicious? Ads are equally unwelcome and you shouldn't be allowed to force someone to receive them.
This is why it would be great for search engines to analyze all of the elements on a page and rank those with less javascript and smaller page load higher than those with tons of junk...And if a website is entirely javascript it should go at the bottom of the bin, because so much can be hidden and we don't need to play cat and mouse games with search engines...
When you have a 500MB data plan and a single news page loads 50MB of junk, that's 1/10th your allotted transfer for a few KB of text! THIS IS CRIMINAL.
I'm getting the feeling nobody here has ever read RFC 1855? I think it's just as relevant now as back then when tailored towards mobile users and the current way we consume content.
> Don't send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.
The law should/could be interpreted in a way so that a website belongs only on a certain domain. Then access outside of it would be uninvited?
Cookies were banned in European Union, e.i. only made available if the user agrees. Then it is up to the user to white/black list sites. The same could be made for external domains.
Most blockers already support that. It is already happening. What we need is merely making it mandatory by law.
That's a bit like saying that encrypting a DVD is going to prevent someone copying it. If you reveal something to the user you reveal it to the computer too and then it's just an arms race.It would be better to have a functioning micro-payments system.