6 ms·

The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content, unless it's distributed under an open license. Otherwise advertising-supported busin

The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content, unless it's distributed under an open license. Otherwise advertising-supported businesses will always be able to outcompete everyone else via dumping, and these businesses always benefit from being increasingly centralized. That's why we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S., because ad supported papers put them all out of business. At the very least people need to be trained that it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker.

imglorp 10y ago
The centralization is a good point, but I wanted to ask about why > we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S. Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum? > it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker It's also unethical to insert malware into ads, or to hire syndication services that allow it. I'll continue to block until that's fixed.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  >> we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S. >Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. I think this effect can be best demonstrated by a conversation I had with a Google fan last week. In particular, I've had an ongoing banter with him about his choice to refer to The Verge as "iVerge". I find this very odd, that people believe The Verge has a strong Apple bias. You see, The Verge regularly gets exclusive interviews and opportunities from Google. When the Pixel was announced, The Verge staff had already been sent a demo unit, and they had a ton of quotes from senior Google employees available to use in their article, written in advance. Why would an Apple-biased blog be given so much direct access to Google? And this isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. What I've come to recognize is that The Verge will shill for anyone who gives them the goods. Exclusives are as valuable as Google or Apple outright cutting them a check, because it guarantees a ton of page views. Apple and Google both are pretty manipulative when it comes to their press, and unsurprisingly, The Verge rarely posts hard-hitting critical material of either, because hurting a company's reputation in an article is a great way to get blacklisted by their PR team. Anyways, the point of the story: The Google fan stated that even though The Verge seemed equally positive about both companies, that it was Google, in his opinion, which was innovative and did amazing things. So by giving Apple similar coverage, The Verge was being biased towards Apple. Because in his opinion, Apple didn't deserve the praise, but Google did. If you are a biased viewer, a moderate voice can be quickly confused with bias for the other side. This is also, for instance, why liberals think I'm a conservative, and conservatives think I'm a liberal.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    This brings up the larger view of the problem - exclusives. If someone gets an exclusive review before the actual launch and doesn't even have the commodity to spend enough time with the product, that will absolutely have an effect to the review result. The good old cool headed reviewing style like Anandtech, where they take the time, perhaps even wait for an software update or two, then state the verdict is more reliable. Or perhaps even some reviewers where they repeat the test after 6 months and review the unit how it stood the test of time and what's changed. That's proper, adult way to examine something. But it sure as hell doesn't bring up all the marketing hype and SEO numbers. Modern media is SHIT.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      For the reason above, I'd say we should learn to treat an exclusively granted review or interview to be a sponsored post. Because an exclusive interview with Sundar Pichai is not substantially distinguishable from a paycheck in the long run for an ad supported blog.
      - tdkl 10y ago
        > we should learn to treat an exclusively granted review or interview to be a sponsored post. I agree, although unless the authors will state this in the headline, there's still the element of dishonesty left. Or we start teaching the difference between ads/sponsored articles and true ones in schools.
- Scirra_Tom 10y ago
  > Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum? Really? Isn't Fox ranked at like number 2? If anyone think that's liberal they need to realign their gauges
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    It may be worth noting that the OP referred solely to newspapers, and Fox is a TV channel. Noting that the parent did say "papers and media outlets", which is definitely less true, because of Fox. Note that Fox is likely so popular because of how few strongly conservative-biased media options there are.
  - hga 10y ago
    Looks like #1 for cable news right now, but compare e.g. http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/scoreboard-wednesday-october-5/307022 http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/scoreboard-wednesday-october-... and http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/evening-news-ratings-week-of-sept-19/305713 http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/evening-news-ratings-week-of-... and you'll see that broadcast news totally crushes cable news.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum? How many active communist newspapers are there left in the U.S.? As far as I know zero, but I could be mistaken. And yet those are what gave us our labor laws, integrated workplaces, women's rights, etc.
susurrus 10y ago
Newspapers have always been ad supported. They charged for the paper, yes, but they always depended on ad revenue to survive.
- johannes1234321 10y ago
  In fact ads, job ads and classified ads had always (well at least last 50 years) the main revenue source. Sale prices are often a smaller, but still relevant, factor. The newspaper crisis actually is caused by job and classified ads going away.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Actually, not so much. There was some but largely limited advertising in the 19th century, but the start date was February of 1860, when The Atlantic accepted its first print ad. The practice exploded in the late 19th and early 20th century, with the rise of the factory process and widespread distribution networks, such that goods could be centrally produced and sold in distant markets. Alexander Holt discussed this in a 1909 lecture, "Commercialism and Journalism", presented at the University of California and published as a small book. It's available on the Internet Archive, and the first section has a considerable overview of advertising practices and statistics: https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n8/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n... Quoting: In olden times the dailies carried only a very little advertising --- a few legal notices, an appeal for the return of a strayed cow, or a house for sale. It is only within the past fifty years that advertising as a means of bringing together the producer and consumer began. And, curiously enough, the men who first began to appreciate the immense selling-power that lay in the printed advertisment were "makers", or "fakirs", of patent medicines. The beginning of modern advertising is in fact synchronous with the beginnings of the patent-medicine business. The remainder of the essay is mostly a cautionary exploration of the consequences of commercially-financed press.
  - jasode 10y ago
    >, but the start date was February of 1860, when The Atlantic accepted its first print ad Can you explain the criteria for "advertising" such that 1860 is marked as the significant date? There were paid ads in newspapers/pamphlets in the 1600s: https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/387509/Newspaper_advertising_article_2011.pdf https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/387509/Newspaper_advertising_... That said, I think it's reasonable to set boundary date of when newspapers switched the majority of their sustainable revenue from subscriptions to ads. However, I'm not sure The Atlantic in 1860 is an example of that.
dcposch 10y ago
> The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content The First Amendment guarantees that I can publish freely, with or without charging for access
johannes1234321 10y ago
> At the very least people need to be trained that it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker. It's also unethical that ad Networks spread malware (that happened multiple times) and cause costs from my mobile company due to all those auto playing videos. It's also unethical that they track me all over the web. In a newspaper I'm not tracked and no ads jump at me and I get to throw away all those stupid flyers without anybody judging my ethics.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Eh, you are not the one with problems noticing the without part. Pattern matching is powerful.
apetrovic 10y ago
I lived in one totalitarian society, in Eastern Europe, which started on a good principles of general equality, but with caveat that people aren't really ready for the bright future, so we should train them to do the right thing, and make illegal to do things that leaders don't like. Why we don't, instead, make that free, decentralized Web 3.0 better than the current one, so the people will willingly use it? To borrow the example from the article, people are using git over subversion not because it's more ethical, but because it's more convenient. It's easy sitting on a high horse and preaching about freedom and liberty. Making something that ordinary people, who don't give a flying fuck about ethical implication of software use but just want to see the picture of the grandchild or want to share the pie recipe on the internet would want to use without being "trained" or marked as "illegal" - well, that's the hard part.
- tdkl 10y ago
  The time spent making it better isn't free.
icebraining 10y ago
You realize that your own post would have been deemed illegal under that rule? We don't need more censorship, thanks. If you want to abolish advertising, then target it specifically.
kowdermeister 10y ago
Ad supported business is a side effect of business / marketing guys taking existing business model to a new medium. There's nothing wrong with it, it's the dumbest model ever to generate revenue. That's not the current web's or law system's fault that people can't come up with a better alternative and bigger newspapers are so clueless how to make money by other means. I think the real issue is that 99.9% of internet users are not tech savvy and don't really care how the content pops up on their screen. The internet and content is now an utility, like tap water. It's a hard sell to tell everybody to drill their own wells.
witty_username 10y ago
How is it dumping? Dumping means artificially reducing the price, i.e. running at a loss. Aside, this destroys free speech.

imglorp 10y ago

The centralization is a good point, but I wanted to ask about why > we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S. Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum? > it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker It's also unethical to insert malware into ads, or to hire syndication services that allow it. I'll continue to block until that's fixed.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
>> we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S. >Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. I think this effect can be best demonstrated by a conversation I had with a Google fan last week. In particular, I've had an ongoing banter with him about his choice to refer to The Verge as "iVerge". I find this very odd, that people believe The Verge has a strong Apple bias. You see, The Verge regularly gets exclusive interviews and opportunities from Google. When the Pixel was announced, The Verge staff had already been sent a demo unit, and they had a ton of quotes from senior Google employees available to use in their article, written in advance. Why would an Apple-biased blog be given so much direct access to Google? And this isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. What I've come to recognize is that The Verge will shill for anyone who gives them the goods. Exclusives are as valuable as Google or Apple outright cutting them a check, because it guarantees a ton of page views. Apple and Google both are pretty manipulative when it comes to their press, and unsurprisingly, The Verge rarely posts hard-hitting critical material of either, because hurting a company's reputation in an article is a great way to get blacklisted by their PR team. Anyways, the point of the story: The Google fan stated that even though The Verge seemed equally positive about both companies, that it was Google, in his opinion, which was innovative and did amazing things. So by giving Apple similar coverage, The Verge was being biased towards Apple. Because in his opinion, Apple didn't deserve the praise, but Google did. If you are a biased viewer, a moderate voice can be quickly confused with bias for the other side. This is also, for instance, why liberals think I'm a conservative, and conservatives think I'm a liberal.
- tdkl 10y ago
  This brings up the larger view of the problem - exclusives. If someone gets an exclusive review before the actual launch and doesn't even have the commodity to spend enough time with the product, that will absolutely have an effect to the review result. The good old cool headed reviewing style like Anandtech, where they take the time, perhaps even wait for an software update or two, then state the verdict is more reliable. Or perhaps even some reviewers where they repeat the test after 6 months and review the unit how it stood the test of time and what's changed. That's proper, adult way to examine something. But it sure as hell doesn't bring up all the marketing hype and SEO numbers. Modern media is SHIT.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    For the reason above, I'd say we should learn to treat an exclusively granted review or interview to be a sponsored post. Because an exclusive interview with Sundar Pichai is not substantially distinguishable from a paycheck in the long run for an ad supported blog.
    - tdkl 10y ago
      > we should learn to treat an exclusively granted review or interview to be a sponsored post. I agree, although unless the authors will state this in the headline, there's still the element of dishonesty left. Or we start teaching the difference between ads/sponsored articles and true ones in schools.
Scirra_Tom 10y ago
> Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum? Really? Isn't Fox ranked at like number 2? If anyone think that's liberal they need to realign their gauges
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  It may be worth noting that the OP referred solely to newspapers, and Fox is a TV channel. Noting that the parent did say "papers and media outlets", which is definitely less true, because of Fox. Note that Fox is likely so popular because of how few strongly conservative-biased media options there are.
- hga 10y ago
  Looks like #1 for cable news right now, but compare e.g. http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/scoreboard-wednesday-october-5/307022 http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/scoreboard-wednesday-october-... and http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/evening-news-ratings-week-of-sept-19/305713 http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/evening-news-ratings-week-of-... and you'll see that broadcast news totally crushes cable news.
Alex3917 10y ago
> Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum? How many active communist newspapers are there left in the U.S.? As far as I know zero, but I could be mistaken. And yet those are what gave us our labor laws, integrated workplaces, women's rights, etc.

susurrus 10y ago

Newspapers have always been ad supported. They charged for the paper, yes, but they always depended on ad revenue to survive.

johannes1234321 10y ago
In fact ads, job ads and classified ads had always (well at least last 50 years) the main revenue source. Sale prices are often a smaller, but still relevant, factor. The newspaper crisis actually is caused by job and classified ads going away.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Actually, not so much. There was some but largely limited advertising in the 19th century, but the start date was February of 1860, when The Atlantic accepted its first print ad. The practice exploded in the late 19th and early 20th century, with the rise of the factory process and widespread distribution networks, such that goods could be centrally produced and sold in distant markets. Alexander Holt discussed this in a 1909 lecture, "Commercialism and Journalism", presented at the University of California and published as a small book. It's available on the Internet Archive, and the first section has a considerable overview of advertising practices and statistics: https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n8/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n... Quoting: In olden times the dailies carried only a very little advertising --- a few legal notices, an appeal for the return of a strayed cow, or a house for sale. It is only within the past fifty years that advertising as a means of bringing together the producer and consumer began. And, curiously enough, the men who first began to appreciate the immense selling-power that lay in the printed advertisment were "makers", or "fakirs", of patent medicines. The beginning of modern advertising is in fact synchronous with the beginnings of the patent-medicine business. The remainder of the essay is mostly a cautionary exploration of the consequences of commercially-financed press.
- jasode 10y ago
  >, but the start date was February of 1860, when The Atlantic accepted its first print ad Can you explain the criteria for "advertising" such that 1860 is marked as the significant date? There were paid ads in newspapers/pamphlets in the 1600s: https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/387509/Newspaper_advertising_article_2011.pdf https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/387509/Newspaper_advertising_... That said, I think it's reasonable to set boundary date of when newspapers switched the majority of their sustainable revenue from subscriptions to ads. However, I'm not sure The Atlantic in 1860 is an example of that.

dcposch 10y ago

> The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content The First Amendment guarantees that I can publish freely, with or without charging for access

johannes1234321 10y ago

> At the very least people need to be trained that it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker. It's also unethical that ad Networks spread malware (that happened multiple times) and cause costs from my mobile company due to all those auto playing videos. It's also unethical that they track me all over the web. In a newspaper I'm not tracked and no ads jump at me and I get to throw away all those stupid flyers without anybody judging my ethics.

marcosdumay 10y ago
Eh, you are not the one with problems noticing the without part. Pattern matching is powerful.

apetrovic 10y ago

I lived in one totalitarian society, in Eastern Europe, which started on a good principles of general equality, but with caveat that people aren't really ready for the bright future, so we should train them to do the right thing, and make illegal to do things that leaders don't like. Why we don't, instead, make that free, decentralized Web 3.0 better than the current one, so the people will willingly use it? To borrow the example from the article, people are using git over subversion not because it's more ethical, but because it's more convenient. It's easy sitting on a high horse and preaching about freedom and liberty. Making something that ordinary people, who don't give a flying fuck about ethical implication of software use but just want to see the picture of the grandchild or want to share the pie recipe on the internet would want to use without being "trained" or marked as "illegal" - well, that's the hard part.

tdkl 10y ago
The time spent making it better isn't free.

icebraining 10y ago

You realize that your own post would have been deemed illegal under that rule? We don't need more censorship, thanks. If you want to abolish advertising, then target it specifically.

kowdermeister 10y ago

Ad supported business is a side effect of business / marketing guys taking existing business model to a new medium. There's nothing wrong with it, it's the dumbest model ever to generate revenue. That's not the current web's or law system's fault that people can't come up with a better alternative and bigger newspapers are so clueless how to make money by other means. I think the real issue is that 99.9% of internet users are not tech savvy and don't really care how the content pops up on their screen. The internet and content is now an utility, like tap water. It's a hard sell to tell everybody to drill their own wells.

witty_username 10y ago

How is it dumping? Dumping means artificially reducing the price, i.e. running at a loss. Aside, this destroys free speech.