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"View them or leave", that's the kind of attitude that's very weird. "View ads or the newspaper industry DIES!" Very Clockwork Orange, eyes forcibly peeled open

by jordigh 10y ago

"View them or leave", that's the kind of attitude that's very weird. "View ads or the newspaper industry DIES!" Very Clockwork Orange, eyes forcibly peeled open. Very antagonistic. When I look at a physical newspaper, nobody is telling me either you look at this ad-filled page or you must not open any page. Nobody is telling me, you can't cover ads with your hands or a book. You must look at ads in order to look at this magazine. If you don't carefully read all of the ads in this magazine, you are not allowed to read this magazine. It just so happens that with a computer I can more conveniently hide ads, but that's somehow more wrong than covering them with my hand? I also just find it fundamentally strange that by me viewing ads someone gets money. Why? Well, because the person who made the ad is hoping that I will buy something off them or entice others to buy something off them. This is also strange, I don't want to buy anything or tell anyone else to buy anything. Why is me being indoctrinated by a third party the way that the website gets money? It's a bizarre situation. This is a very strange world we have built. There's gotta be a better economic model that doesn't require guilting me into viewing ads.

soared 10y ago
I see your point. I think the phrasing would be "View ads or the newspaper industry will KILL ITSELF!" because they aren't adapting. That analogy does make sense, but the difference lies in that a physical newspaper presells ads, so if you never see them they don't care. But in digital, they don't get paid until you see them, so they do care. Really blocking ads in the physical newspaper hurts whoever bought the ads, blocking them online hurts the actual newspaper. Maybe newspapers should adapt and presell ad space on their pages! (My university online paper does this because pageviews are so low that they wouldn't earn a dime on adsense. The local businesses who prebuy ads effectively sponsor the website).

by jordigh 10y ago

soared 10y ago

I see your point. I think the phrasing would be "View ads or the newspaper industry will KILL ITSELF!" because they aren't adapting. That analogy does make sense, but the difference lies in that a physical newspaper presells ads, so if you never see them they don't care. But in digital, they don't get paid until you see them, so they do care. Really blocking ads in the physical newspaper hurts whoever bought the ads, blocking them online hurts the actual newspaper. Maybe newspapers should adapt and presell ad space on their pages! (My university online paper does this because pageviews are so low that they wouldn't earn a dime on adsense. The local businesses who prebuy ads effectively sponsor the website).