This goes right to the heart of the issue so I felt it was worth highlighting: Who cares if they lock out their content? There are literally millions of news sources on the Internet, all (hilariously) copying each other's posts on what's trending in news, with often amusing (or horrifying) results when the stories are wrong. Oh, I can't read this story on Yahoo? Well I guess I'll just have to pick from the ten thousand freaking other copies of the same information available elsewhere.

We have TOO. MANY. NEWS. WEBSITES. The ad space isn't worth shit because the same ads are being pushed on millions of pages many times over, and the public is so desensitized to them at this point that the click rate is dropping like a safe.

If you work for one of these publishers, get a new job. Fast.

I think it's is a pretty compelling argument, but if we're being fair then the provider should have the right NOT to serve you data based on what you intend to do with it.

As an ad-blocker: I absolutely agree, however, there's no shortage of people offering me the same exact content elsewhere. Basically, supply and demand end up in the consumer's favor.

Likewise: "...essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions" - https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AdSupportedWebD...

Technology is a tool, and the world is not fair. I'm not sending you intention HTTP headers over. I make a request, you send me a response, I do what I want with that response. So sorry that ruins your business model.

Monetizing via ads is proving to NOT WORK yet so many businesses are still banking on it. I don't fucking get it.

Wait, really? Users can't read their email if an adblocker is installed? I can't imagine what mother would do if she ran into a error message like that while trying to check her email (but she doesn't use yahoo).

I call false on this claim, but the sample size here is beyond insufficient to draw a wide conclusion.

Have they? Just went to their sites, no indications there.... is it just mobile?

They somehow managed to get a law in place which prohibits quoting of even small passages online (i.e. Google News) without paying for it. What did Google do? Simply removed them from the results, they tried to sue and lost. Now they gave Google permission to include them for free. What about the smaller services? Who cares about those - loads of news aggregators shut down in response.

Now that (some) adblockers have been ruled legal they sued a bunch of people (youtuber, the adblock forum) for providing instruction on how to get around the anti-adblocker wall they put in Fun times

Sounds as if it worked out beautifully for Springer - the competition is gone and they are included with Google again.

I don't see a downward trend in their over-all profits: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/451654/umfrage...

But most of their profits are generated by their online markets for cars, houses and jobs, not their digital journalism.

[1] http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article138064544/Digitalstrate...

BTW I like your choice of adverb.

I also stopped using the Twitter and Facebook apps in favour of the mobile web sites. I only see Twitter ads now.

There really needs to be another model.

Question is - what other model? Would you give money to news?

But I hear 1Blocker is good and also very fast. It has an in app purchase to unlock all the features. Otherwise it is limited to one block list at a time.

Then trying to shut down ad blockers by legal routes must be completely pointless if just asking people is so effective?

Formulated like that, it even sounds like a feature ;).

They can't detect the volume on external speakers. But there's no reason why they couldn't with a microphone.

"There was a wonderful quote from CBS this autumn that they’re less worried about PVR ad-skipping ‘because people are too busy with their smartphones to bother skipping ads anymore’." - http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/11/24/tv-mobile-and-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

BTW. It took me a long time to figure out the meaning of the title of the show.

The funny twist is, Springer gives away content for free. They just imply that there is "some kind of contract" between a website provider an a visitor, that the visitor has to "pay" for the content by viewing Ads.

Most people (especially in Germany) don't block Ads because they hate Ads. They block because they hate tracking, slow websites, bandwidth usage etc.

The sad thing is, most of the big publishers, that rally against ad blocker don't have the guts to just go subscription-only.

Since they love their old business model so much, why not try that on the web? Because showing Ads and sell visitors to tracking and ad networks is so much easier.

Just to clarify: If the visitor has the choice to block ads, publishers should have the choice to block adblocker-enabled visitors.

They aren't desperate. They're stupid.

Do you run a network other people use? Are you really going to censor Springer because of a personal opinion?

1. information is a commodity (including most news)

2. information is valuable

I'm looking at this problem right now because which answer to this question is chosen is critical in shaping how we as a society function (and what the online landscape will look like).

Do people (in general) care about good information sources (your own personal criteria) to give money to them (by whitelisting, paying for subscription, donations etc)?

Full disclosure: I'm working on a project that is trying to tackle this problem.