4 ms·

The trouble is: given how much of the web relies on advertising, how would things fare once ads are gone?

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
All the click bait bullshit would disappear pretty fast that's for sure.
toyg 9y ago
Well, the Internet existed before web ads were a thing, and it was a better place in many ways. I wouldn't mind losing a lot of the current noise (twitter, facebook...) to end up with a network of public services, subscription-supported businesses, and fan/volunteer-powered resources.
- Andrenid 9y ago
  I've always loved the idea of a back-to-basics www2 project. Not enough people care about this stuff for it to ever work though. 99% of people are perfectly happy with the FB/Google/etc world.
petra 9y ago
When i use Google news , there's so much waste in web journalism: a million journalists rewriting the same article, and often a useless and low quality article, at that. So maybe there's a better way.
- briandear 9y ago
  I agree. It’s really old fashioned supply and demand. When the price drops below the price of providing something, you get a shortage. We need a shortage of some of the nonsense that passes for “news” these days! In the heyday of the wires, Reuters, AP and to a lesser extent UPI and AFP were the syndicated news sources of choice – now every “digital marketing” intern from here to Jakarta suddenly is their own “wire” service. I am all for diverse reporting, but the same story written 800 different ways at a quality approaching trained monkeys on typewriters – I’m kind of over it.
- gaius 9y ago
  So maybe there's a better way. There's a reason those articles are so bad https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/06/robo_journalism_google/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/06/robo_journalism_goo...
  - petra 9y ago
    This isn't the reason(although it could add to it). This is for local news, not the stuff we are talking about.
amptorn 9y ago
The web will be for people who are willing to pay to say something, I guess.
- quakenul 9y ago
  Also it will be for people who are able to pay for everything.
taurath 9y ago
If people built more things instead of sold them to people maybe there'd be less need for advertising (or politicians). When the value is actually clear there is far less need to convince people. Make things that work, sell your vision not the product. People will buy into your vision, and accept more product shortcomings and cheer you on as you improve.
flohofwoe 9y ago
Since ads on the web are mostly produced by bots for bots, and distributed through shady borderline-criminal ad-networks I think we've already reached rock bottom years ago and it can only get better.
- smhost 9y ago
  Wasn't that always true though? The earliest internet I knew was through AOL cd's, but it still seems like the internet as we know it was born of cancerous (mostly pornographic) ads.
  - _jal 9y ago
    The first spam campaign that looked like the spam we know and love today way a "green card lottery[1]" campaign on Usenet by a couple of lawyers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...
kuschku 9y ago
We can ask ourselves what could exist without ads. Most newspapers could make old-style ad deals, like they do for print. A few newspapers also still finance their sites almost entirely through subscriptions, and those would continue to exist (e.g. Süddeutsche, SPIEGEL). As would obviously publicly financed sites (BBC, ARD, ZDF, NPR). Also products financed via paying customers, such as imgur used to be, or possibly reddit if they change the way reddit gold works. Also, most people's blogs would continue to exist, as many self-host or use services where the free users are subsidized by the paying ones. Even WhatsApp used to be profitable with that model. We'd be going back to a 2010 era web, and I'm not so sure that's actually bad. We'd lose the corporate dominance over the web, Google, Facebook, etc. Now, there is one part where paying user subsidizing doesn't work, but where ads are currently the only model of financing, and that's search engines. But considering those act as a public service, maybe after advertisers leave the web and Google goes down crashing, a government could just buy Google (as the German government bought DHL, or major shares in VW, they could probably just outright buy Google).
- majewsky 9y ago
  If Google were to ask for a monthly fee for the search engine (and hopefully cut down on the data collection a not), I'd totally pay them.
  - Filligree 9y ago
    You might, but not very many people would. Realistically we'd lose Google.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    You are worth ~26€ to Google. On average, only ~5% of users are willing to pay, so each paying user would have to subsidize ~19 non-paying users for such a model to be profitable. This would result in you paying around 600€ to use Google. Alternatively, in a paid-only scenario (where you just pay the 26€), Google would become such a niche product that it'd become irrelevant.
    - 9y ago
na85 9y ago
The quality publications will remain, under alternative funding models. Many sites will perish, and little of value will be lost.

All the click bait bullshit would disappear pretty fast that's for sure.

toyg 9y ago

Well, the Internet existed before web ads were a thing, and it was a better place in many ways. I wouldn't mind losing a lot of the current noise (twitter, facebook...) to end up with a network of public services, subscription-supported businesses, and fan/volunteer-powered resources.

Andrenid 9y ago
I've always loved the idea of a back-to-basics www2 project. Not enough people care about this stuff for it to ever work though. 99% of people are perfectly happy with the FB/Google/etc world.

petra 9y ago

When i use Google news , there's so much waste in web journalism: a million journalists rewriting the same article, and often a useless and low quality article, at that. So maybe there's a better way.

briandear 9y ago
I agree. It’s really old fashioned supply and demand. When the price drops below the price of providing something, you get a shortage. We need a shortage of some of the nonsense that passes for “news” these days! In the heyday of the wires, Reuters, AP and to a lesser extent UPI and AFP were the syndicated news sources of choice – now every “digital marketing” intern from here to Jakarta suddenly is their own “wire” service. I am all for diverse reporting, but the same story written 800 different ways at a quality approaching trained monkeys on typewriters – I’m kind of over it.
gaius 9y ago
So maybe there's a better way. There's a reason those articles are so bad https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/06/robo_journalism_google/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/06/robo_journalism_goo...
- petra 9y ago
  This isn't the reason(although it could add to it). This is for local news, not the stuff we are talking about.

amptorn 9y ago

The web will be for people who are willing to pay to say something, I guess.

quakenul 9y ago
Also it will be for people who are able to pay for everything.

taurath 9y ago

If people built more things instead of sold them to people maybe there'd be less need for advertising (or politicians). When the value is actually clear there is far less need to convince people. Make things that work, sell your vision not the product. People will buy into your vision, and accept more product shortcomings and cheer you on as you improve.

flohofwoe 9y ago

Since ads on the web are mostly produced by bots for bots, and distributed through shady borderline-criminal ad-networks I think we've already reached rock bottom years ago and it can only get better.

smhost 9y ago
Wasn't that always true though? The earliest internet I knew was through AOL cd's, but it still seems like the internet as we know it was born of cancerous (mostly pornographic) ads.
- _jal 9y ago
  The first spam campaign that looked like the spam we know and love today way a "green card lottery[1]" campaign on Usenet by a couple of lawyers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...

kuschku 9y ago

We can ask ourselves what could exist without ads. Most newspapers could make old-style ad deals, like they do for print. A few newspapers also still finance their sites almost entirely through subscriptions, and those would continue to exist (e.g. Süddeutsche, SPIEGEL). As would obviously publicly financed sites (BBC, ARD, ZDF, NPR). Also products financed via paying customers, such as imgur used to be, or possibly reddit if they change the way reddit gold works. Also, most people's blogs would continue to exist, as many self-host or use services where the free users are subsidized by the paying ones. Even WhatsApp used to be profitable with that model. We'd be going back to a 2010 era web, and I'm not so sure that's actually bad. We'd lose the corporate dominance over the web, Google, Facebook, etc. Now, there is one part where paying user subsidizing doesn't work, but where ads are currently the only model of financing, and that's search engines. But considering those act as a public service, maybe after advertisers leave the web and Google goes down crashing, a government could just buy Google (as the German government bought DHL, or major shares in VW, they could probably just outright buy Google).

majewsky 9y ago
If Google were to ask for a monthly fee for the search engine (and hopefully cut down on the data collection a not), I'd totally pay them.
- Filligree 9y ago
  You might, but not very many people would. Realistically we'd lose Google.
- kuschku 9y ago
  You are worth ~26€ to Google. On average, only ~5% of users are willing to pay, so each paying user would have to subsidize ~19 non-paying users for such a model to be profitable. This would result in you paying around 600€ to use Google. Alternatively, in a paid-only scenario (where you just pay the 26€), Google would become such a niche product that it'd become irrelevant.
  - 9y ago

na85 9y ago

The quality publications will remain, under alternative funding models. Many sites will perish, and little of value will be lost.