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They don't know. They just don't want ads to exist on whatever the Internet looks like in the future. I believe that if you eliminated ads the Internet would b

They don't know. They just don't want ads to exist on whatever the Internet looks like in the future. I believe that if you eliminated ads the Internet would be better for it. Advertising is just so backwards and nonsensical. It is analogous to screaming for attention in an overcrowded market. To think that our future Internet is stuck with this is a depressing thought. Personally I'm okay with the following forms of advertising and would like to see them more widely adopted: Podcast-style ads: getting the narrators and writers of a podcast to promote your product in an amusing way consistent with the theme of their show and in a way the user can skip if desired. (Same applies to YouTube video creators advertising within their show.) Affiliate links: sites like The Wirecutter doing all the research and leg-work on a product category to find the best. Then making money through affiliate links to those products. Small ads that have been vetted by the writer of the article / website are okay too. If I enjoy reading an author's content, and that author has personally approved a product ad on their site because they like it or think it would be good for their readers, then I'm okay with that. Basically, any advertising that is explicitly acknowledged and approved of by the content creators is okay with me. It means they know what their readers will see, they know whether the products are good, and if they start recommending shitty products then they are putting their own reputation on the line.

bigbugbag 10y ago
Basically what you say is that online advertising networks are ruining user experience and you should not rely on a third party to provide ads to your website. There's a couple guy who thought along these lines when time came when costs of running their website grew and investors required ROI and that's how google got into the advertising business. They kinda invented the acceptable online ads and transitioned from being a search engine to being an advertising company specialized into acceptable ads then came the tracking invisibly turning acceptable into unacceptable. What I'm trying to say is that explicitly acknowledging and approving do not scale well. As operation scales up it becomes a time-consuming and tedious process which wears you rather quickly. To be viable long term, the website has to keep a low resources consumption and not draw too much traffic, If your website suddenly gets hugely popular it will cost you money, possibly a lot. Maybe we need to changer how those who owns the internet infrastructure charge for using it so as to avoid this.
- interpol_p 10y ago
  > What I'm trying to say is that explicitly acknowledging and approving do not scale well. Why do we need to scale? Many authors are self-hosting and self-publishing. I love reading, but I don't wan't my favourite content to be aggregated by some huge service which sells ads on-top of it indiscriminately. I'm sure there are hosting services which will handle traffic spikes and charge accordingly. I'm not advocating for no large services on the web. Obviously infrastructure-heavy services will be large (AWS, Google Search, Netflix, and so on). But two of those examples charge directly, and Google Search ads aren't particularly bad because they show up during a search and not on top of content that I want to read.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Basically what you say is that online advertising networks are ruining user experience and you should not rely on a third party to provide ads to your website. There's a couple guy who thought along these lines when time came when costs of running their website grew and investors required ROI and that's how google got into the advertising business. They kinda invented the acceptable online ads and transitioned from being a search engine to being an advertising company specialized into acceptable ads then came the tracking invisibly turning acceptable into unacceptable. What I'm trying to say is that explicitly acknowledging and approving do not scale well. As operation scales up it becomes a time-consuming and tedious process which wears you rather quickly. To be viable long term, the website has to keep a low resources consumption and not draw too much traffic, If your website suddenly gets hugely popular it will cost you money, possibly a lot. Maybe we need to changer how those who owns the internet infrastructure charge for using it so as to avoid this.

interpol_p 10y ago
> What I'm trying to say is that explicitly acknowledging and approving do not scale well. Why do we need to scale? Many authors are self-hosting and self-publishing. I love reading, but I don't wan't my favourite content to be aggregated by some huge service which sells ads on-top of it indiscriminately. I'm sure there are hosting services which will handle traffic spikes and charge accordingly. I'm not advocating for no large services on the web. Obviously infrastructure-heavy services will be large (AWS, Google Search, Netflix, and so on). But two of those examples charge directly, and Google Search ads aren't particularly bad because they show up during a search and not on top of content that I want to read.