I don't know what the solution here is.
My job is to keep my systems secure. Other peoples' jobs are their business. Unless I signed a contract or gave them my word, I have no obligation towards them.
> This means there's a shift to native advertising in response, which means they're not just shitting in the water. They're shitting in everything else too, and trying to cover up the taste.
Easy solution: if they shit on everything, I avoid the entire plague-ridden, smelly, nuclear waste dump they created.
(Please understand I'm not saying this to stoke conflict. I'm just sharing how I think through the question of how advertisers survive.)
Brutally honest here: I don't care if the advertisers survive. I do realize that at some level, a consumer has to be made aware of a product in order to purchase that product. The problem IMHO, there is too much advertising overall. I'd prefer more effort went into making quality products, than into manufacturing the need for more unnecessary products. Obviously, this is a pipe dream.
And thieves need to steal to survive.
The internet was great before advertising, and it'll be great after advertising.
"essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions" - https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AdSupportedWebD...
It is also a matter of preference I'd say (actually preference vs annoyance). I install adblock to everyone mainly for the malware+abusing; I wouldn't go to such lengths otherwise. AFAIK I did it with the default "allow non-intrusive ads" checked.
Car companies don't sue oil companies when high gas prices hurt SUV sales. It's part of the risk of doing business.
How many more sites are you willing to pay at that same level?
Right now, as far as I can tell, advertising supported sites are out-competing sites that directly charge users, meaning that users prefer not to pay. That makes leaves advertising as the most sustainable model.
Simple sites designed to promote the spread of genuinely useful information can be designed to use microscopic resources and operate on little money these will be fine.
Some sites provide neat services people are willing to pay for these will be fine.
Some sites represent the online presence of organizations with significant budgets these will be fine.
Much of what remains isn't worth much and if no viable means of support can be found I guess they shouldn't exist.
Honestly 1/2 of the modern web could go away and not much would be lost.
It's only a crisis if your livelihood depends on making a bunch of crap nobody in their right mind would pay significant resources to support.
Do you believe that's realistic?
What sites are so essential that we couldn't replace them?
https://mondaynote.com/the-nytimes-could-be-worth-19bn-inste...
Cuts both ways.
I'm sure that if a large number of companies were able to cut $277 from your average aggregate monthly spending in exchange for a guarantee that you were buying their products, they'd be signing up. Perhaps some sort of subscription service that you couldn't opt out of. You can try doing that as a startup.
As humanity progressed, this included various ad networks and other human beneficiary systems. Today, it's all about blocking the anti-ad blockers. :-\
I've been amazed over the years tho how some friends and colleagues let this crap through. My wife, for instance, using Yahoo mail would stupefy me on how she could concentrate on writing emails when there are banner and tower ads animating and annoyingly blinking on the periphery of their ui.
As a software developer/creator, having shit all over the screen going apeshit with animations and visually assaulting assets, was just to much for me from the beginning.
I'm much more like you in my desire for no distractions so I can focus. But I would go a little further and say that I consider ads somewhat of an affront to my personal autonomy, and avoid them whenever it isn't too difficult.
I much prefer researching all the options myself, after I've decided to buy something, instead of continually being influenced to believe x, y, or z by profit hungry companies whose incentives are often not aligned with mine.
I suggested he download uBlock to Chrome, just so the flashing would go away. I don't know how people put up with it.
I don't care about banner ads, re-targeting, etc., etc. But if you fucking hijack my speakers/headphones to play some random shit I don't want to hear, I hope you die a painful, slow, lingering death.
There are worse things in this world.
I can deal with the annoying interstitial (as much as i hate it) but when videos pop up and start playing I draw the line. Its incredibly obnoxious when you just want to read a website. Also it slows down your computer too if you're low on ram...
But when they janked the text I was reading out from under my eyes... It was Bugs Bunny, chewing that carrot, and telling Elmer Fudd "'dis means war".
If they want to pretend this unwritten contract exists (I don't think it does) then they need to uphold their part of the deal: don't infect users with malware.
In regards to the "invisible pact": I believe publishers would find more success by framing it in terms of the users' self-interest: Considering everything that's going on, do you believe the world would be a better place without The Wall Street Journal, NYT, Guardian, Bloomberg, Wired etc? Or even – for people prone to sudden exclamations of "CNN IS FAKE NEWS!", without Breitbart, Drudge, and The Intercept? If you cut out every publisher currently set up as a revenue-based organisation – would you be well informed? Is there some non-professional blogger(s) who could have served as a primary source for all the news of the last week?
PS: You have probably been part of several botnets, modern malware does not try and break your system.
Unfortunately, malware has shifted back into breaking systems, under the form of ransomware.
Congratulations; may your lucky streak continue.
> I believe publishers would find more success by framing it in terms of the users' self-interest: Considering everything that's going on, do you believe the world would be a better place without The Wall Street Journal, NYT, Guardian, Bloomberg, Wired etc?
Aren't they attempting to solve that problem by charging for access outright, instead of just begging their users to look at banner ads?
However, for my family, it is mostly the malware. Especially misleading download button ads. To be fair, I'm not entirely sure it's the ad blocking, but there's been a noticeable drop in tech support calls from my parents since I installed it for them.
I disagree with that. The invisible pact turns media into a clickbait factory.
>If you cut out every publisher currently set up as a revenue-based organisation – would you be well informed?
I don't believe these publishers accurately inform people most of the time (from either politically biased side). They give an illusion of "being informed" but are you really informed if you only know half the story with countless important details left out for brevity or because the situation is simply too complicated? How accurately do you think any of the places you mentioned cover what is happening in Syria? How many people do you think are actually "informed" about what is going on? Do you think most people are even capable of understanding what is going on from a few sound bytes or even segments on the news?
>Is there some non-professional blogger(s) who could have served as a primary source for all the news of the last week?
Yes actually, there are. They're just much harder to find. Most news worth knowing comes from a primary source (eg: Snowden) and while media may serve as a microphone to raise awareness - they aren't inventing news. They're sourcing news and hopefully verifying those sources for authenticity. Nowadays, they seem to have a vetting problem and most of their sources are users on Twitter.
When the media covers a huge event - they have people who (should) be knowledgeable on the topic discuss the topic. From my experiences, these "professionals" are rarely well informed on the topic and just have a degree in the relevant field and happen to be a contact source for the media body. "Hey, we need a doctor. Find a doctor on our contacts who is willing to speak. I don't care if he's a surgeon and this is neuroscience! Doctor is a doctor!" sort of thing. The worst of the media bodies have their news anchors speak on the topics.
I honestly think people would be better informed on topics without mass-media. Because a lack of knowledge, at this point, is often better than pre-existing but incorrect knowledge. Because then they think they are informed when they actually aren't. I think that's more harmful.
About your lack of malware - good malware goes undetected. If you've connected to the internet at all, I can nearly guarantee you're part of a botnet at this point. I'm probably part of a botnet at this point and I take steps to protect myself.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/16/major-sit...
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/guardian-article-on-cybercrime-...
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160111/05574633295/forbe...
I don't know if I would be, heck I don't know if I am now. But if 99% of them were cut out, I would still be suffering from information overload, there's just so much of it to indulge in. Seriously: all the press you mentioned could go away and my life wouldn't suffer for it (I hardly read them anyway). Meanwhile, I'm still forced to pay a special tax to fund my state's 500-million-eur-a-year BBC-wannabe news/entertainment/propaganda machine. And I hardly ever read them.
Because I don't see how a democracy could work without the media. Even a low-information voter like you profits (in my view) from a vibrant and free press by the decisions of more informed people in the voting booth.
If I understand correctly, you are saying "the media" is vital for democracy, so anyone who considers "the media" useless must also consider democracy to be useless.
However, the GP does not say all media is useless. He is saying there is more information than he can possibly consume even if most media outlets go away, and that the media outlets specifically mentioned by the GGP aren't of value to him.
Democracy worked in the United States (even surviving the Civil War) without "the media". "The media" as we know it has only existed since the late 1800s and it was first used to influence the American public toward war with Spain (funny that you mentioned Cuba).
I do agree that a healthy, functioning democracy requires the free flow of information, but that's a different concept which does not, necessarily, require "the media" as it exists now.
> Even a low-information voter like you
His post suggests he receives more information than he feels he can even handle. He simply isn't reading outlets that the GGP considers vital or necessary. If he's selective about his outlets, that may even increase the amount of useful information he uses to inform his vote.
> from a vibrant and free press
I am unconvinced this describes the modern media. Many of the incentives are misaligned, profit being the largest one. It describes, perhaps, some subset of the media.
> by the decisions of more informed people in the voting booth.
Are they 'more informed' though? I know plenty of people who consume "the media" all day long, and they are very misinformed.
It's an assumption, but it is a safe assumption when they have a history of doing it constantly.
Enable ad blocker is sooooooooo easy compare to watching even "good" ads. A well made, non-distubing, interesting ad will become boring after you see it couple more times. In addition, non of the "ad or subscription" websites ever worked to my knowledge since install ad blocker is easy and take the benefits from both side. One of my friend made an ios game that asked only $0.99 to remove all ads. Yet according to him, only 1/10000 user actually paid.
https://www.google.com/search?q=cats
How much of your screen is ads?
One click fixed
Most people (present company excluded of course) would not seek out an ad blocker for something so minor as PgDn.
I'm not sure how you can get more obtrusive than "entire default screen of main product replaced with ads."
I'm sure you have apologetics on the matter, carefully constructed while you were surveying "most people" on how they'd react to the Page Down key.
I also use a DNS based filter in addition to ad blockers. Gotta love centralised ad networks - you block some hostnames and you get rid of 80% of junk automagically. The rest is the ad blocker's business.
The only websites left in my whitelist are those that only have static image banners.
Many publishers are entirely, or mostly ad supported. Their expectation is that when you read their content you also glance at the ads. If they can't make money off the ads they can't afford to produce the content anymore. (or more likely try different monetization approaches)
This sounds like some sort of deal to me. And the impact of breaking it is apparent to anyone who thinks about it for more then a couple of seconds.
That being said I find that many sites have obnoxious ads (or other content) and I simply hit back if it is too much. (and I consider my tolerance quite low) The content simply wasn't worth that much to me, and I can likely find equal or better content without the shit surrounding it.
Ad blockers are blunt instruments. They generally affect all sites and whitelisting is rare and based on the good part of the site, not how awful the ads are. This seems like the wrong motivators for publishers. The "turn away" approach directly penalizes sites that are unpleasant.
I'd say it's a false expectation. Businesses only succeed within the culture that supports them. If the culture doesn't value the business model then the business will fail or, as you say, it will adopt another model.
We live, I think, in an age of advertising pollution. If the culture of web users is intolerant of advertising then advertising supported businesses will fail. I don't see this as being either good or bad. The business model either works or it doesn't, and no business should expect their particular model to work.
I've realized how little value the vast majority of these sites actually offer. In fact, they actually cost me more in time and productivity than anything and I gain very little.
There are plenty of services I pay for. But it probably won't be an internet news site.
On the other hand, do an exemplary job, and I'll seriously consider donating or buying merchandise. I've chipped money to Wikipedia, Reddit, and LWN, as well as Debian, the FSF and the EFF. Not everything needs to be for profit, and not every website is entitled to making money. If the work you do is important enough, it will find a way.
The newspaper doesn't necessarily know how bad the ads get for users, the users don't know what the financial stress is on the newspaper, and the advertising network doesn't have to care about either of them beyond squeezing the most water from a stone.
Whining about how consumers don't uphold their end of a pact that advertisers willfully broke is just delusional.
- Those pushing a product whom have a deal with advertisers.
- The advertisers who have a deal with both the companies selling products and web pages selling space for ads.
- Web pages which have a deal with advertisers.
- Users who have little obligations to anyone and less loyalty.
Advertisers, web pages, and sellers have confused the fact that their business model depends on someone who is not only disinterested in their arrangement but actively hostile to it with an unwritten pact. This is especially surprising when it becomes clear that their acts and ends are ultimately hostile to the user.
Its not only unwritten its wholly and entirely imaginary. Adapt or die the current state of the web and the crap on it is ultimately going to end with 70-90% of users using adblock.
Eugh.
The issue is that it's no longer in the hands of the users. It's in the hands of the creators of the Adblock software. They decide what is actually displayed and they even have a white list where a company can pay to get onto it.
This will backfire on the people rejoicing, however. Instead of advertisements on sites, we will see entire advertisements disguised as actual content (which can't be blocked).
Real journalism costs money. Plain and simple. When you take that out of the equation (because Adblock has destroyed many revenue streams), you get articles written on speculation that can be done from the comfort of an office chair.
Online advertisements are one of the only ways a person without a big company can actually make a living. I've never really understood this massive push against it from Hacker news, which is supposed to be about startups and the startup community.
I guess an actual path to profitability is never factored into the equation.
If everyone allowed normal ads through, advertisers wouldn't sit back and say "Well done everyone. Time for us to stop doing sponsored stories! Back to the old model!". They'd still be attacking on two fronts. Ad-blocking just prevents one avenue of attack.
> Online advertisements are one of the only ways a person without a big company can actually make a living.
So? We let people who have shitty business models fail all the time. Why don't they take one of the other methods for making a living?
...
In those regions, people’s efforts to block malware disguised as online advertising has been the main motivation for downloading ad blockers.
First, "critics say" a lot of things. And that "unwritten pact"? Yeah, you wanna know why it's unwritten? Because it doesn't exist. However, the second part that I quote undoes any kind of morality tale "critics" would like to spin. Users were apparently willing to tolerate a degree of advertising (which, BTW, is a loooong way from any kind of a pact), but after a point they'll turn the tap off if there are tools available to do so.