There are a few services that help track IPs that view and click ads on a global basis. They are backed by ML algos that can determine with a high rate of accuracy whether it's fraud or not.
Using some of the reputable services, the advertiser can go back to the network and request refunds due to the fraudulent clicks.
So if you did do this, you'd only be hurting the smaller players who rely on ads to fund their ventures.
An article I read sometimes last week made an unflattering, but rather astute comparison that a site which relies on ad networks for their income is like a streetwalker - selling out integrity integrity for money, competing with or against shady people (the scammy porn sites, the automated link-farms with Markov-generated pseudo content, etc.). And if one has to "interact" with sites like that, it is smart to use protection (adblock&friends).
I wish I could find the article. I'm quite certain it was linked here on HN one or two weeks ago.
Actual investigative work like the kind of stuff Shane Bauer has done would still have legs on subscription/donor based platforms.
QFT. Journalism has been awful at least for decades.
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- Michael Chrichton
In a complex world, the very idea of generalist journalists is broken.
I think it would be tough to argue that modern institutional journalism is somehow worse than that of, say, the World War 2 era.
Crichton's "amnesia effect" is a vivid example of how people get this wrong. Are newspapers wrong about Palestine? Quite often. But it's not for the same reason that they're wrong about show business. Show business is a specialized beat with specialized reporters and not every newspaper has someone dedicated to it. Everyone understands that about reporting Palestine, but fewer people understand that about show business, and so Crichton sounds incisive when really he's just making a banal observation: different journalism outlets are strong on different topics.
Ultimately I think the next newspaper will probably come from Google, and be AI.
[fn:1] Old newspapers may be excepted, as they have a long time to deal with this. I assume that buying ads in NYT can't change their editorial stances, but they are an exception.
[fn:2] HN, reddit, facebook, twitter, etc.
Wouldn't some kind of syndication service work, where you subscribe to a custom bundle out of selection of available news sites, and the sites then get revenue based on how many readers included them in their subscription?
From here, my impression is that nearly all of them are completely unwilling to change anything at all. Even their layout they can't bother to adapt for the web.