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Most professionally-produced content on the web is ad-fianced. Quality journalism, for example, is necessary for a functioning democracy. And no, bloggers and o

Most professionally-produced content on the web is ad-fianced. Quality journalism, for example, is necessary for a functioning democracy. And no, bloggers and other hobbyist cannot replace The New York Times. While (some) publishers may be able to survive behind a paywall, the average citizen is unlikely to subscribe to more than maybe one or two. Where currently they may get their news from dozens of independent outlets, they will inevitably be restricted to far less diverse set. You can easily do the following experiment: try not visiting any websites that have advertising for a month or so. Almost by definition, this is will be a loss for you (because otherwise you would not visit any such sites now). Now, some people will argue that all these creates should simply adopt some other business model. I think that's obviously foolish, considering the sizeable number of failed attempts. But if you believe that, say, half of all publishers can somehow pull it off, the question becomes: Is avoiding ads worth cutting the amount of professionally-produced content in half? And, if you are wrong and 90%+ of newspapers, literary platforms, trade publications etc. actually die in the process: would we not lose something far more essential than what we gained?

tomc1985 9y ago
Your response says nothing about the advertisers themselves, which is who the original question is being asked of. We have all heard this explanation countless times, and repeatedly the answer is NOT a nice analogy about how businesses I know and love absolutely must use advertising to survive. The problem is with the advertisers, and the rotten business culture that has developed around that field. A culture of rent-seeking, as another comment alluded, that cares little for how much it may bother, annoy, rankle, fuck with, or otherwise manipulate the people it seeks to spread its message to. And it truly is rotten culture: marketeers liken to these daily, unending intrusions as storytelling, and then they couch it in 'love' and 'empathy' not because the message actually contains or needs that, but because it affects viewers' emotional states in a way that makes them more suggestive to 'storytelling'. And this is to say nothing of all the other nefarious things we all know they do! How can you possibly support such a rotten and corrupt collective of individuals and organizations? Today's marketing gospel/culture/practitioners are one of those things that not only needs the baby thrown out with the bathwater, but also the bathtub, the sink, the toilet -- and everything else 'digital advertising' may have touched.
- shaki-dora 9y ago
  It's not like I enjoy advertisement. But this description seems extremely hyperbolic. It's a few images. Some of them move, which is annoying. Rarely, they have sound, which is unacceptable. There's apparently a lot of tracking going on in the background, yet I haven't seen any creepy personal ads, nor do I know of any effects outside of the ads themselves this tracking could have on my life. People often mention security problems, and those may sometimes have occurred. Yet I haven't had any malware infection in 15 years+, and have never installed any antivirus software that didn't come with the OS. If advertisement is nefariously "manipulating our emotions" I guess we're lucky in that they suck at it. Personally, I'm far more annoyed by TV advertisement. It's also nothing like "rent seeking", as I pointed out in a reply to that comment. "Rent seeking" doesn't just mean "economic activity I don't like". I'm not denying that I would enjoy the world slightly more without ads, all other things being equal. But denying that there's something of a trade-off to be considered is simply intellectually dishonest. And once you take stock of these competing interests, I believe there's a "bad case scenario" that is more likely than not to become reality, in which the loss far outweighs any gains.
  - nathanaldensr 9y ago
    Reductio ad absurdum. "It's just a bullet obeying the laws of physics. The fact you die is of secondary importance." See what I did there?
zolthrowaway 9y ago
I'm not sure that diversity is what we should be striving for in our reporting. Right now, you can get 50 hot takes from a million different outlets. The vast majority are optimizing their headlines and writing for clicks. They manufacture outrage because it is what will bring people to their site. You can easily find an article to confirm whatever views you have on a particular news event. I'm not sure this is a good thing. There is nothing that requires a digital news outlet to have any journalistic integrity. There are plenty that have had stories thoroughly discredited but are still spread around on social media. I'm not saying that centralized news is better. I don't remember much of that. I am saying that people have a very difficult time determining what is factual and what is not. Diversity in news may not be a good thing for democracy when we bombard people with information and options and tell them to sort it out.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> And no, bloggers and other hobbyist cannot replace The New York Times. ...because?
- tomc1985 9y ago
  At minimum, they probably aren't trained in journalistic integrity?
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    Would you be more worried about whether a reporter was formally "trained" in journalistic integrity, or about whether their reporting was accurate?
    - tomc1985 9y ago
      The former helps ensure the latter (minus the quotes, of course)
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    Looking at most of the popular ad-based news sites today, I'm not sure that I can say they are either.
- dlp211 9y ago
  Because quality investigative journalism costs a whole lot of money and time and we need more of it.
alkonaut 9y ago
It’s not possible to survive behind a paywall because the next site provides similar content “for free”. I think it’s hard to say how the competitive landscape in e.g news would look if ad revenue was drastically cut online. If ads don’t pay the next site’s bills either, then sites would have to compete for paywall customers with quality. Even if a large fraction of news sites died I don’t see a big problem since the quality of the remaining outlets would be higher, and prices lower as more customers choose among more paid services. Clickbait would almost completely be a thing of the past, if there as no revenue in ads, for example.

tomc1985 9y ago

Your response says nothing about the advertisers themselves, which is who the original question is being asked of. We have all heard this explanation countless times, and repeatedly the answer is NOT a nice analogy about how businesses I know and love absolutely must use advertising to survive. The problem is with the advertisers, and the rotten business culture that has developed around that field. A culture of rent-seeking, as another comment alluded, that cares little for how much it may bother, annoy, rankle, fuck with, or otherwise manipulate the people it seeks to spread its message to. And it truly is rotten culture: marketeers liken to these daily, unending intrusions as storytelling, and then they couch it in 'love' and 'empathy' not because the message actually contains or needs that, but because it affects viewers' emotional states in a way that makes them more suggestive to 'storytelling'. And this is to say nothing of all the other nefarious things we all know they do! How can you possibly support such a rotten and corrupt collective of individuals and organizations? Today's marketing gospel/culture/practitioners are one of those things that not only needs the baby thrown out with the bathwater, but also the bathtub, the sink, the toilet -- and everything else 'digital advertising' may have touched.

shaki-dora 9y ago
It's not like I enjoy advertisement. But this description seems extremely hyperbolic. It's a few images. Some of them move, which is annoying. Rarely, they have sound, which is unacceptable. There's apparently a lot of tracking going on in the background, yet I haven't seen any creepy personal ads, nor do I know of any effects outside of the ads themselves this tracking could have on my life. People often mention security problems, and those may sometimes have occurred. Yet I haven't had any malware infection in 15 years+, and have never installed any antivirus software that didn't come with the OS. If advertisement is nefariously "manipulating our emotions" I guess we're lucky in that they suck at it. Personally, I'm far more annoyed by TV advertisement. It's also nothing like "rent seeking", as I pointed out in a reply to that comment. "Rent seeking" doesn't just mean "economic activity I don't like". I'm not denying that I would enjoy the world slightly more without ads, all other things being equal. But denying that there's something of a trade-off to be considered is simply intellectually dishonest. And once you take stock of these competing interests, I believe there's a "bad case scenario" that is more likely than not to become reality, in which the loss far outweighs any gains.
- nathanaldensr 9y ago
  Reductio ad absurdum. "It's just a bullet obeying the laws of physics. The fact you die is of secondary importance." See what I did there?

zolthrowaway 9y ago

I'm not sure that diversity is what we should be striving for in our reporting. Right now, you can get 50 hot takes from a million different outlets. The vast majority are optimizing their headlines and writing for clicks. They manufacture outrage because it is what will bring people to their site. You can easily find an article to confirm whatever views you have on a particular news event. I'm not sure this is a good thing. There is nothing that requires a digital news outlet to have any journalistic integrity. There are plenty that have had stories thoroughly discredited but are still spread around on social media. I'm not saying that centralized news is better. I don't remember much of that. I am saying that people have a very difficult time determining what is factual and what is not. Diversity in news may not be a good thing for democracy when we bombard people with information and options and tell them to sort it out.

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> And no, bloggers and other hobbyist cannot replace The New York Times. ...because?

tomc1985 9y ago
At minimum, they probably aren't trained in journalistic integrity?
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Would you be more worried about whether a reporter was formally "trained" in journalistic integrity, or about whether their reporting was accurate?
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    The former helps ensure the latter (minus the quotes, of course)
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Looking at most of the popular ad-based news sites today, I'm not sure that I can say they are either.
dlp211 9y ago
Because quality investigative journalism costs a whole lot of money and time and we need more of it.

alkonaut 9y ago

It’s not possible to survive behind a paywall because the next site provides similar content “for free”. I think it’s hard to say how the competitive landscape in e.g news would look if ad revenue was drastically cut online. If ads don’t pay the next site’s bills either, then sites would have to compete for paywall customers with quality. Even if a large fraction of news sites died I don’t see a big problem since the quality of the remaining outlets would be higher, and prices lower as more customers choose among more paid services. Clickbait would almost completely be a thing of the past, if there as no revenue in ads, for example.