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My feeling is that the current model adds liquidity to the internet. Paywall sites are annoying now as it is, I get frustrated when I click an interesting title

My feeling is that the current model adds liquidity to the internet. Paywall sites are annoying now as it is, I get frustrated when I click an interesting title and can't read the article. I really don't see how not being able to access huge swaths of the internet without managing your subscriptions is better than just having ads on the screen. Ads mean you just don't need to worry about it. I remember seeing tons of this image (tiered internet: http://www.gacetadigital.com/wp-content/2010/12/TieredInternet.jpg http://www.gacetadigital.com/wp-content/2010/12/TieredIntern...) used to scare people about net neutrality and yet this seems to be what a lot of these proposals boil down to. The other ideas are nice, but they just add to the cost of monetizing your content. The advantage of ad networks was not having to spend time negotiating advertising or finding a vendor for shirts. I think there is a compromise version of an ad-blocker that just freezes all animation -- that seems to be the biggest complaint that can be reasonably addressed. Privacy can be addressed by targeting ads based on the content of the page and possibly proxying the ad content through that server so the ad network never gets the request directly from a client. Since most ads only pay for a click instead of a view anyway I think confirming an ad loaded is becoming less of an issue from the other side.

eevilspock 11y ago
If by "liquidity" you meant diarrhea, I would have totally agreed! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706 It is a lack of imagination and logically false to conclude that the only alternative to ads is "annoying" management of subscriptions. But we love get rich quick schemes and that's what the advertising "business model" enables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049494. Net neutrality has nothing to do with much less rely on so-called "free" ad-supported sites. Net neutrality is not about free access, but equal access and equal cost for the same volume of data transmission regardless of source. Besides, that ads make the web free is a lie: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 Advertising diminished editorial freedom and replaces the readers position as customer, completely changing who the free market's "invisible hand" serves.
tracker1 11y ago
It isn't just animation, it's audio.. it's layers of iframes and tracking scripts that slow down the rest of the page/browser/computer ... I don't begrudge tasteful, and limited use of advertising windows on a page... the issue is that many sites go too far beyond that. When left to their own devices advertisers and the sites that cater to them, most recently the clickbait article sites, will use ever more intrusive methods of advertising. Much of which aren't easily avoidable... you see someone post something on facebook that looks interesting, you click it, you've already been abused, before you realize it's the same site that has abused you in the past. These abuses include fly over ads, popup/out actions that are all but unavoidable, clickjacking, close filtering and more. It's not that the full-screen ads aren't enough, but there's pervasive and invasive ads that are disguised and integrated to look like content at first glance. If it weren't for the bad actors in advertising we wouldn't have popup blocking built into the browsers. And as time goes it doesn't look to me like advertisers have learned their lesson. If Firefox wasn't such a performance nightmare with adblock on android, I'd use it more.. if I could get uBlock with chrome on android that would be better still. As it stands, using my phone more has only served to increase my desire for ad/privacy software everywhere.

eevilspock 11y ago

If by "liquidity" you meant diarrhea, I would have totally agreed! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706 It is a lack of imagination and logically false to conclude that the only alternative to ads is "annoying" management of subscriptions. But we love get rich quick schemes and that's what the advertising "business model" enables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10049494. Net neutrality has nothing to do with much less rely on so-called "free" ad-supported sites. Net neutrality is not about free access, but equal access and equal cost for the same volume of data transmission regardless of source. Besides, that ads make the web free is a lie: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 Advertising diminished editorial freedom and replaces the readers position as customer, completely changing who the free market's "invisible hand" serves.

tracker1 11y ago

It isn't just animation, it's audio.. it's layers of iframes and tracking scripts that slow down the rest of the page/browser/computer ... I don't begrudge tasteful, and limited use of advertising windows on a page... the issue is that many sites go too far beyond that. When left to their own devices advertisers and the sites that cater to them, most recently the clickbait article sites, will use ever more intrusive methods of advertising. Much of which aren't easily avoidable... you see someone post something on facebook that looks interesting, you click it, you've already been abused, before you realize it's the same site that has abused you in the past. These abuses include fly over ads, popup/out actions that are all but unavoidable, clickjacking, close filtering and more. It's not that the full-screen ads aren't enough, but there's pervasive and invasive ads that are disguised and integrated to look like content at first glance. If it weren't for the bad actors in advertising we wouldn't have popup blocking built into the browsers. And as time goes it doesn't look to me like advertisers have learned their lesson. If Firefox wasn't such a performance nightmare with adblock on android, I'd use it more.. if I could get uBlock with chrome on android that would be better still. As it stands, using my phone more has only served to increase my desire for ad/privacy software everywhere.