5 ms·

Sure. And it’s my choice to block them. Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly.

by drb91 8y ago

mythz 8y ago
Sure, you can technically starve them of micro ad revenue if you want, but if you're not going to abide by Content creators implicit contract of having their content served with supporting ads then IMO it's best for all involved that you either subscribe for ad-free content directly from them or just stop consuming their content altogether. There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  That's more like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Ad driven "free" material is chosen because it was (and mostly still is) seen to be more profitable than subscription based models. If it's not then the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is. I'm extremely satisfied that ad blocking is spreading ever more rapidly simply because I think that's the most direct way to get out of this current model of profit that leads to so many awful things. The fundamental problem is that with ad based model your customer is no longer the person actually consuming your material, but the advertiser. That, in turn, introduces 'sponsored' content, ads misleadingly ran as actual content, bias in views presented, external censorship of content to remain in the spirit of the advertiser, extensive tracking and data mining of users, and all these other lovely things. Good riddance.
  - mythz 8y ago
    > That's more like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads. > the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is. Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads? The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon, consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for And I want to be compensated for writing HN comments. Alas, just because I want to be compensated for something, doesn't mean I will be. Content producers feeling entitled to compensation for their free and public content are kind of forgetting the content consumers have agency too. > and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads. Just because it works, doesn't mean it's not wrong. Just because it worked for now, doesn't mean it'll keep on working. Nobody is entitled to their business model working forever, or at all. > Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads? Yes. They have the content, and want to exchange it for money. It's literally their job to figure out how to do this. > The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon Good. As it should be. > consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source. Again, not my responsibility. Especially given that the social contract of the Web is, by design, that if your server responds with 200 OK + data, I get to render that data however I like.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do. They have a right to ask for compensation, and a right to require it. They have no right to be compensated, if they choose to give away the content for free. That would be saying they have a right to force people to be generous. Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free. The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking. Browsers are user agents, and what you send in response to a HTTP request is mine to render how I like. Publishers have a proper, correct way to ensure compensation on the Web - it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content. But they prefer ads, because it's easier. It's easier to bleed people out of their sanity (and privacy) than to ask for money. It's easier not having to write quality content that would be worth paying for. But that's a choice publishers make. This is the most important point: nobody is entitled to their business model working. If ads aren't working for you, change your business model.
  - mythz 8y ago
    > Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free. Your attestation usage of "manipulative" is attempting to manipulate in itself. Like I said everyone is technically free to do what they want, but it doesn't change the fact that starving content producers of micro ad revenue goes against their wishes which in most cases deprives them of their sole revenue source. > The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking. No the web is not a social contract, it's a combination of technologies. The social contract exists between Content Producers and Consumers and the Web is the platform to enable delivery of that content. The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served. A "blocker" by definition blocks supporting resources that producers wanted their content served with - which in most cases is their primary revenue source for producing that content. > it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content. Great, then use it when that option is available, as a benefit you wont see ads and producers get compensated. But I hope you're not naive enough to think that a paywall works for all content and all audiences? It's great when it does, content producers get a reliable and predictable source of revenue but there's a reason why ad-supported free content is used, it's not because it's easier, it's because it's viable.
- sgustard 8y ago
  I don't "know" as a viewer how ad-based business models work. In fact I generally assume that ads have to be clicked on to make money. Since I haven't clicked on an ad in years, does that make me a freeloader? I'll assume that once eye-tracking is commonplace then publishers will get paid only when viewers look at their ads. If I avert my eyes, am I stealing? On the other hand: why can't an ad-blocker plugin still trigger a payment for the ad view, while preventing me from seeing it?
  - poooogles 8y ago
    >In fact I generally assume that ads have to be clicked on to make money. Not at all. Most of the industry moved away from CPC a while ago due to how dodgy it skews data. Most clicks end up being bots on shady websites Vs actual people. Viewabilty is what the good agencies are advertising against now; with the hope that you'll navigate to the advertiser's site down the line.
  - Reelin 8y ago
    > why can't an ad-blocker plugin still trigger a payment for the ad view, while preventing me from seeing it? The ad-blocker won't load the ad at all for two reasons. 1) Performance. Less to load (and process, and render, etc) means faster load times, less bandwidth consumption, lower CPU usage (think about all those extra scripts), etc. 2) Privacy. If your computer contacts the ad network at all, then it could track you. Because the blocker fundamentally can't load the ad or contact the respective network while also doing its job, triggering a payment would seem to be more or less impossible.
- phobosdeimos 8y ago
  I hope you drink fair trade coffee. (I know that stealing from white man is bad, third worlder in a far away land is not bad but I'm too autistic for the hypocrisy our society lives by)
- mathnmusic 8y ago
  Must I also keep the TV un-muted and watch the advertisements?
  - Tor3 8y ago
    I heard an interview with an advertiser where the advertiser actually claimed that you don't have the right to go to the kitchen during advertisting breaks. Some minds are just completely warped.
- drb91 8y ago
  > it's best for all involved that you either subscribe for ad-free content directly from them Most don't offer that choice. > There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do. I think I missed that right in our constitution--you must respect other's wishes to impose ads on the content that is otherwise freely accessible on the internet. A “right” is hardly the right word—“social courtesy” may be better.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Content creators lost all support or concern from me by supporting privacy destroying ad networks. So I block all ads and all trackers. I keep one browser in vanilla condition in case I run into a government site that won't work with the blockers.
bartread 8y ago
> Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly. And that's great if a large volume of your visitors are using Brave, but that's certainly not the case for us. Granted, this is anecdata, but I suspect that it holds true for many other sites. (On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name: I've known plenty of people who are brave, whether it's because of things they've done, or because of terrible suffering they've endured, but I'm afraid I see nothing about that web browser to justify the name.)
- drb91 8y ago
  > On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name I wouldn't blame you. In any case, this is more of an ethical preference than a serious statement about the viability about Brave's specific monetization model... any product that gives the consumer more choice without entirely depriving people of revenue is welcome to me.

Sure. And it’s my choice to block them. Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly.

by drb91 8y ago

Sure. And it’s my choice to block them. Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly.

Sure, you can technically starve them of micro ad revenue if you want, but if you're not going to abide by Content creators implicit contract of having their content served with supporting ads then IMO it's best for all involved that you either subscribe for ad-free content directly from them or just stop consuming their content altogether. There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
That's more like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Ad driven "free" material is chosen because it was (and mostly still is) seen to be more profitable than subscription based models. If it's not then the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is. I'm extremely satisfied that ad blocking is spreading ever more rapidly simply because I think that's the most direct way to get out of this current model of profit that leads to so many awful things. The fundamental problem is that with ad based model your customer is no longer the person actually consuming your material, but the advertiser. That, in turn, introduces 'sponsored' content, ads misleadingly ran as actual content, bias in views presented, external censorship of content to remain in the spirit of the advertiser, extensive tracking and data mining of users, and all these other lovely things. Good riddance.
- mythz 8y ago
  > That's more like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads. > the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is. Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads? The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon, consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for And I want to be compensated for writing HN comments. Alas, just because I want to be compensated for something, doesn't mean I will be. Content producers feeling entitled to compensation for their free and public content are kind of forgetting the content consumers have agency too. > and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads. Just because it works, doesn't mean it's not wrong. Just because it worked for now, doesn't mean it'll keep on working. Nobody is entitled to their business model working forever, or at all. > Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads? Yes. They have the content, and want to exchange it for money. It's literally their job to figure out how to do this. > The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon Good. As it should be. > consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source. Again, not my responsibility. Especially given that the social contract of the Web is, by design, that if your server responds with 200 OK + data, I get to render that data however I like.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do. They have a right to ask for compensation, and a right to require it. They have no right to be compensated, if they choose to give away the content for free. That would be saying they have a right to force people to be generous. Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free. The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking. Browsers are user agents, and what you send in response to a HTTP request is mine to render how I like. Publishers have a proper, correct way to ensure compensation on the Web - it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content. But they prefer ads, because it's easier. It's easier to bleed people out of their sanity (and privacy) than to ask for money. It's easier not having to write quality content that would be worth paying for. But that's a choice publishers make. This is the most important point: nobody is entitled to their business model working. If ads aren't working for you, change your business model.
- mythz 8y ago
  > Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free. Your attestation usage of "manipulative" is attempting to manipulate in itself. Like I said everyone is technically free to do what they want, but it doesn't change the fact that starving content producers of micro ad revenue goes against their wishes which in most cases deprives them of their sole revenue source. > The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking. No the web is not a social contract, it's a combination of technologies. The social contract exists between Content Producers and Consumers and the Web is the platform to enable delivery of that content. The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served. A "blocker" by definition blocks supporting resources that producers wanted their content served with - which in most cases is their primary revenue source for producing that content. > it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content. Great, then use it when that option is available, as a benefit you wont see ads and producers get compensated. But I hope you're not naive enough to think that a paywall works for all content and all audiences? It's great when it does, content producers get a reliable and predictable source of revenue but there's a reason why ad-supported free content is used, it's not because it's easier, it's because it's viable.
sgustard 8y ago
I don't "know" as a viewer how ad-based business models work. In fact I generally assume that ads have to be clicked on to make money. Since I haven't clicked on an ad in years, does that make me a freeloader? I'll assume that once eye-tracking is commonplace then publishers will get paid only when viewers look at their ads. If I avert my eyes, am I stealing? On the other hand: why can't an ad-blocker plugin still trigger a payment for the ad view, while preventing me from seeing it?
- poooogles 8y ago
  >In fact I generally assume that ads have to be clicked on to make money. Not at all. Most of the industry moved away from CPC a while ago due to how dodgy it skews data. Most clicks end up being bots on shady websites Vs actual people. Viewabilty is what the good agencies are advertising against now; with the hope that you'll navigate to the advertiser's site down the line.
- Reelin 8y ago
  > why can't an ad-blocker plugin still trigger a payment for the ad view, while preventing me from seeing it? The ad-blocker won't load the ad at all for two reasons. 1) Performance. Less to load (and process, and render, etc) means faster load times, less bandwidth consumption, lower CPU usage (think about all those extra scripts), etc. 2) Privacy. If your computer contacts the ad network at all, then it could track you. Because the blocker fundamentally can't load the ad or contact the respective network while also doing its job, triggering a payment would seem to be more or less impossible.
phobosdeimos 8y ago
I hope you drink fair trade coffee. (I know that stealing from white man is bad, third worlder in a far away land is not bad but I'm too autistic for the hypocrisy our society lives by)
mathnmusic 8y ago
Must I also keep the TV un-muted and watch the advertisements?
- Tor3 8y ago
  I heard an interview with an advertiser where the advertiser actually claimed that you don't have the right to go to the kitchen during advertisting breaks. Some minds are just completely warped.
drb91 8y ago
> it's best for all involved that you either subscribe for ad-free content directly from them Most don't offer that choice. > There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do. I think I missed that right in our constitution--you must respect other's wishes to impose ads on the content that is otherwise freely accessible on the internet. A “right” is hardly the right word—“social courtesy” may be better.
pnw_hazor 8y ago
Content creators lost all support or concern from me by supporting privacy destroying ad networks. So I block all ads and all trackers. I keep one browser in vanilla condition in case I run into a government site that won't work with the blockers.

bartread 8y ago

> Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly. And that's great if a large volume of your visitors are using Brave, but that's certainly not the case for us. Granted, this is anecdata, but I suspect that it holds true for many other sites. (On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name: I've known plenty of people who are brave, whether it's because of things they've done, or because of terrible suffering they've endured, but I'm afraid I see nothing about that web browser to justify the name.)

drb91 8y ago
> On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name I wouldn't blame you. In any case, this is more of an ethical preference than a serious statement about the viability about Brave's specific monetization model... any product that gives the consumer more choice without entirely depriving people of revenue is welcome to me.