Re:The Digital Advertising Duopoly
by jasode on Thursday December 28, 2017 @03:23PM
(#16024629)
>Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions?
He's ok with subscriptions. However, his particular statement is in context of subscriptions interfering with providing free content.
As far as I can tell, if we want to have websites provide "free" content we have the following choices to that puzzle:
1) sponsored by advertisers
2) sponsored by government taxes (e.g. collect a new "web usage tax" from citizens to fund a CitizenBook as free alternative to Facebook ads and PublicNewsTimes as free alternative to New York Times paid subscription. I doubt that enough voters would support such a tax just to avoid ads.)
3) blockchain? cryptocurrency? (Not sure what Fred has seen with this option.)
He's ok with subscriptions. However, his particular statement is in context of subscriptions interfering with providing free content.
As far as I can tell, if we want to have websites provide "free" content we have the following choices to that puzzle:
1) sponsored by advertisers
2) sponsored by government taxes (e.g. collect a new "web usage tax" from citizens to fund a CitizenBook as free alternative to Facebook ads and PublicNewsTimes as free alternative to New York Times paid subscription. I doubt that enough voters would support such a tax just to avoid ads.)
3) blockchain? cryptocurrency? (Not sure what Fred has seen with this option.)