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I think people will find any way to simultaneously not pay for news while lamenting the lack of good news. Things will just be forever "almost there" and "all w

by arjie 9y ago

I think people will find any way to simultaneously not pay for news while lamenting the lack of good news. Things will just be forever "almost there" and "all we need is" but no one's going to do it. Micropayments aren't going to work. People will say "if only it were 10 cents instead of 20" or "if only it were 1 cent instead of 10" until it's "if only this used Bitcoin so they don't know who I am" and so on and so forth until the publisher refuses to bow to some onerous request at which point it'll be this big deal about how they don't really care about their users. I mean, the guy who solves this is going to be rich, but you only have to see about the complaints to Flattr, Patreon, etc. and you know no one else wants to touch this. The audience's Revealed Preferences are significantly different from their Stated Preferences.

rb808 9y ago
Agreed - also see the number of people that block ads to get the news for free. How hard is it to have ads on the page?
- Shikadi 9y ago
  It would be fine if advertisements weren't intrusive and obnoxious. I don't want to start reading a page, then three sentences in have my whole screen jump, then a few more sentences have an overlay pop up, then have some inline text that looks like it's part of the article but is actually an ad, finally to accidently mouse over some text that pops up a video with sound. That's how I experience much of the internet without ad blocking, not to mention how much slower things load. I disable on sites I frequent that don't do that.
- joeblubaugh 9y ago
  I don't block ads to "get the news for free." I do it to marginally protect myself from an increasingly omnipresent surveillance apparatus that's tracking my entire path across the internet, across devices, as well as in the real world.
  - ma2rten 9y ago
    Safari is going to prevent ad tracking by not allowing cross domain cookies. Does that mean you are would use Safari instead when the feature is released? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/ad-industry-deeply-concerned-about-safaris-new-ad-tracking-restrictions/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/ad-industry-deep...
    - Animats 9y ago
      Safari is going to prevent ad tracking by not allowing cross domain cookies. That's been an option in Firefox for years.[1] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cook...
- ouid 9y ago
  they don't get paid for having you look at the ad, they get paid for having you interact with the ad. What you're really asking is "how hard is it to spend money on advertised products?" (after all, the value of advertising is exactly equal to the additional money you spend on advertised products as a result of the advertising, you can't claim to be adding value if that's not the case, by a trivial accounting argument) I think I have a right not to spend money on advertised products as a rule. Some people are happy to spend money on advertised products. So many people, in fact, that the value I add by simply viewing your content and sharing it with society at large, that you still benefit from my interaction with your product with adblock active. Or it used to be before middlemen started sucking an ever increasing percentage of ad revenue away from content producers. Ultimately your complaint is analogous to "some people go see free concerts, but don't buy 8 dollar beers". And, yeah, that's built into the business model.
cphoover 9y ago
People thought that about music services "No one will ever pay!" When we have P2P They said. Facilitating easy access to any available content without needing to think, proved it could be done. The key is variety, quality, and convenience. If I had access to multiple a la cart choices (NYT, WaPo, Baltimore Sun (local), Politico, WSJ... etc. In any different formats (audio podcast, digital). If there was a nice app for curating a playlist of stories, bookmarking, playback controls. I would definitely pay for such a news service.
- krisroadruck 9y ago
  This sorta already exists (Bendle) but I've found it underwhelming.
- ctrl-j 9y ago
  > I would definitely pay for such a news service. I think the question then becomes, how much are you willing to pay vs how much does such a service cost. Does the economy of scale factor in here? Right now most of those services ask for ~$10 a month. Expecting all of it for $10/month seems unlikely. I could see a full service on-demand news service like that would (with the current pricing structure) run at least $50/month, which most people won't pay. I think the music industry transitioned to streaming so well, because the recording companies were already dicking over the artists from the get-go.
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    I don't think the music industry transitioned to streaming well at all. I think they were forced to which is different from your phrasing that implies they wanted to shift.
    - ctrl-j 9y ago
      I'll admit my phrasing gave them more credit than what is actually due. It took about 10 years longer than it should have. I'm also pretty sure that if piracy was something that could be effectively stopped - they'd raise their rates a thousand-fold.

by arjie 9y ago

rb808 9y ago

Agreed - also see the number of people that block ads to get the news for free. How hard is it to have ads on the page?

Shikadi 9y ago
It would be fine if advertisements weren't intrusive and obnoxious. I don't want to start reading a page, then three sentences in have my whole screen jump, then a few more sentences have an overlay pop up, then have some inline text that looks like it's part of the article but is actually an ad, finally to accidently mouse over some text that pops up a video with sound. That's how I experience much of the internet without ad blocking, not to mention how much slower things load. I disable on sites I frequent that don't do that.
joeblubaugh 9y ago
I don't block ads to "get the news for free." I do it to marginally protect myself from an increasingly omnipresent surveillance apparatus that's tracking my entire path across the internet, across devices, as well as in the real world.
- ma2rten 9y ago
  Safari is going to prevent ad tracking by not allowing cross domain cookies. Does that mean you are would use Safari instead when the feature is released? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/ad-industry-deeply-concerned-about-safaris-new-ad-tracking-restrictions/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/ad-industry-deep...
  - Animats 9y ago
    Safari is going to prevent ad tracking by not allowing cross domain cookies. That's been an option in Firefox for years.[1] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cook...
ouid 9y ago
they don't get paid for having you look at the ad, they get paid for having you interact with the ad. What you're really asking is "how hard is it to spend money on advertised products?" (after all, the value of advertising is exactly equal to the additional money you spend on advertised products as a result of the advertising, you can't claim to be adding value if that's not the case, by a trivial accounting argument) I think I have a right not to spend money on advertised products as a rule. Some people are happy to spend money on advertised products. So many people, in fact, that the value I add by simply viewing your content and sharing it with society at large, that you still benefit from my interaction with your product with adblock active. Or it used to be before middlemen started sucking an ever increasing percentage of ad revenue away from content producers. Ultimately your complaint is analogous to "some people go see free concerts, but don't buy 8 dollar beers". And, yeah, that's built into the business model.

cphoover 9y ago

People thought that about music services "No one will ever pay!" When we have P2P They said. Facilitating easy access to any available content without needing to think, proved it could be done. The key is variety, quality, and convenience. If I had access to multiple a la cart choices (NYT, WaPo, Baltimore Sun (local), Politico, WSJ... etc. In any different formats (audio podcast, digital). If there was a nice app for curating a playlist of stories, bookmarking, playback controls. I would definitely pay for such a news service.

krisroadruck 9y ago
This sorta already exists (Bendle) but I've found it underwhelming.
ctrl-j 9y ago
> I would definitely pay for such a news service. I think the question then becomes, how much are you willing to pay vs how much does such a service cost. Does the economy of scale factor in here? Right now most of those services ask for ~$10 a month. Expecting all of it for $10/month seems unlikely. I could see a full service on-demand news service like that would (with the current pricing structure) run at least $50/month, which most people won't pay. I think the music industry transitioned to streaming so well, because the recording companies were already dicking over the artists from the get-go.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  I don't think the music industry transitioned to streaming well at all. I think they were forced to which is different from your phrasing that implies they wanted to shift.
  - ctrl-j 9y ago
    I'll admit my phrasing gave them more credit than what is actually due. It took about 10 years longer than it should have. I'm also pretty sure that if piracy was something that could be effectively stopped - they'd raise their rates a thousand-fold.