4 ms·

Ask HN: Will AD Blockers kill the little guy's internet?

10 points by jcslzr 10y ago

philipkglass 10y ago
No. Source: am a little guy. If you remember the early days of the Web, most sites then were small, free, and ad-free to boot. I'm still running the same personal/hobby web site I've had since 2000, still out of my own pocket, still without ads. The costs have fallen over time even as I've added much more content and switched to a VPS from a shared host.
Mz 10y ago
If you really want to do a thing, you do that thing. The ecosystem changes, you adapt. I run my sites on free hosting (Blogger). I would like to more effectively monetize them and I am working on that, but I write for reasons other than money. It may kill the projects that are intended to be easy money. I suspect a lot of those are sort of low value anyway. If that suspicion is fairly accurate, it won't remove much of value from the system. Also, Patreon is working for some "little guys." (shrug)
zerognowl 10y ago
Things like Brave enable you to pay publishers using micropayments. See https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ It's a very ambitious new feature that they are piloting for now, but I expect this to become the norm when Bitcoin finally hits mass adoption. Also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment
micro_softy 10y ago
No. But they could theoretically kill the "big guys" internet. If a company controlled search, blogs, video content distribution, email, web browser, mobile phone OS, regional internet access, etc., and that company derived 98% of its revenue from ads, then ad blockers could theoretically kill its business. The question is can the "little guys" internet survive without relying on handouts from the "big guy"? philipkglass answered this question at least with respect to the www part of the internet. History shows a noncommercial internet and then a little guys web predates the big guys internet. A more intriguing question is whether the big guys internet can survive ad-blocking. The big guys internet relies on little guys all coming to the big guys for handouts. The big guys internet produces no content of its own. It simply acts as middleman for the little guy and sells ads.

10 points by jcslzr 10y ago

No. Source: am a little guy. If you remember the early days of the Web, most sites then were small, free, and ad-free to boot. I'm still running the same personal/hobby web site I've had since 2000, still out of my own pocket, still without ads. The costs have fallen over time even as I've added much more content and switched to a VPS from a shared host.

Mz 10y ago

If you really want to do a thing, you do that thing. The ecosystem changes, you adapt. I run my sites on free hosting (Blogger). I would like to more effectively monetize them and I am working on that, but I write for reasons other than money. It may kill the projects that are intended to be easy money. I suspect a lot of those are sort of low value anyway. If that suspicion is fairly accurate, it won't remove much of value from the system. Also, Patreon is working for some "little guys." (shrug)

zerognowl 10y ago

Things like Brave enable you to pay publishers using micropayments. See https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ It's a very ambitious new feature that they are piloting for now, but I expect this to become the norm when Bitcoin finally hits mass adoption. Also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment

micro_softy 10y ago

No. But they could theoretically kill the "big guys" internet. If a company controlled search, blogs, video content distribution, email, web browser, mobile phone OS, regional internet access, etc., and that company derived 98% of its revenue from ads, then ad blockers could theoretically kill its business. The question is can the "little guys" internet survive without relying on handouts from the "big guy"? philipkglass answered this question at least with respect to the www part of the internet. History shows a noncommercial internet and then a little guys web predates the big guys internet. A more intriguing question is whether the big guys internet can survive ad-blocking. The big guys internet relies on little guys all coming to the big guys for handouts. The big guys internet produces no content of its own. It simply acts as middleman for the little guy and sells ads.