5 ms·

The hard truth is someone has to pay for content in the end. It's either ads or some kind of paywall or micropayment. It's okay to say no to ads, but then we s

The hard truth is someone has to pay for content in the end. It's either ads or some kind of paywall or micropayment. It's okay to say no to ads, but then we shouldn't circumvent paywalls. Free content is free only as long as someone somehow still pays for it.

Lazare 8y ago
I don't disagree, but that's a normative argument about what addons we should choose to use. My concern, however, is Mozilla putting themselves in the position of making that judgement for their users. Even if we agree that this isn't a good addon, does that mean it's fine for it to be censored by Mozilla?
- jcranmer 8y ago
  The guidelines outright state that "Any add-ons, or add-on content, hosted on Mozilla site(s) must conform to the laws of the United States." The issue is that this addon falls in the murky category of neither being clearly legal nor clearly illegal. I suspect that the addon reviewer (who most likely does not work for Mozilla and is only a community volunteer!) felt that an addon advertising its purpose to get around copyright controls would have pushed it over the edge to illegal, even if it's only taking actions that are themselves legal.
gpvos 8y ago
Publishers should take some basic control of the ads on their site, just like it used to be with newspapers and broadcast. Serve them from their own domain, restrict their format (no moving parts or sound, no Javascript at all), vet them for basic decency before publishing. My uBlock Origin setup wouldn't block that.
- dmortin 8y ago
  The problem is there are many smaller publishers on the net where a handful or only one or two people maintain a site. They don't have the capacity to look for advertisers or vet individual ads. That's why they use an ad provider which does this for them. What you say may work for big news portals and stuff, but if this becomes the norm then it will kill the small publishers resulting in further concentration of net content in the hands of the big guys. So this direction would hurt the little guys and help the big guys, because they have the resources to adapt.
  - gpvos 8y ago
    It is indeed unfortunate, although in general the internet will still have lowered the barrier to publish.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so. I guess they could upscale in tech, but how would they pay for it when they can barely earn enough money to fulfill their primary function? I don’t think publishers have a problem. I think users do. I hate online news as much as everyone, but I still want deep, intelligent and critical journalism, so I subscribed to a paper which sells it. It’s one of the most successful news papers of my country, financially, and up until April this year they didn’t have a website. They do now, but it’s basically just a digital version (also available in audio from apps) that you can still only access if you subscribe. I couldn’t be happier, and they earn money. So maybe the whole free content thing isn’t really a good way to go for either the user or the publisher?
  - einr 8y ago
    Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so. They'd best gain the ability, then, or fade into irrelevance and die. And honestly, we're talking about serving a few images from their own webserver. It's not rocket science.
    - vetinari 8y ago
      Technically, serving few images is not a problem. The question arises, what images to serve. Someone has to sell advertisement, find clients, persuade them to advertise with the given site, etc. That's something they are getting with ad networks for free.
      - einr 8y ago
        You could easily outsource ad sales while still serving the images unobtrusively from your own server.
        imhoguy 8y ago
        Who owns a server today? Even publishing platforms are outsourced or behind nicely packaged SaaS today, not to mention infrastructure services. There is no more "FTP your site to XYZ".
- buboard 8y ago
  actually, google should do that. Review all their ads and give them a rating, then allow publishers to pick only high quality ones. But i guess they don't have the money to do that (/s)
  - gpvos 8y ago
    Google will continue to try to track me across unrelated websites, so I'll keep blocking them. I crucially specified "serve the ads from the website's own domain".
anoncake 8y ago
What if I accept ads but reject paywalls?

Lazare 8y ago

I don't disagree, but that's a normative argument about what addons we should choose to use. My concern, however, is Mozilla putting themselves in the position of making that judgement for their users. Even if we agree that this isn't a good addon, does that mean it's fine for it to be censored by Mozilla?

jcranmer 8y ago
The guidelines outright state that "Any add-ons, or add-on content, hosted on Mozilla site(s) must conform to the laws of the United States." The issue is that this addon falls in the murky category of neither being clearly legal nor clearly illegal. I suspect that the addon reviewer (who most likely does not work for Mozilla and is only a community volunteer!) felt that an addon advertising its purpose to get around copyright controls would have pushed it over the edge to illegal, even if it's only taking actions that are themselves legal.

gpvos 8y ago

Publishers should take some basic control of the ads on their site, just like it used to be with newspapers and broadcast. Serve them from their own domain, restrict their format (no moving parts or sound, no Javascript at all), vet them for basic decency before publishing. My uBlock Origin setup wouldn't block that.

dmortin 8y ago
The problem is there are many smaller publishers on the net where a handful or only one or two people maintain a site. They don't have the capacity to look for advertisers or vet individual ads. That's why they use an ad provider which does this for them. What you say may work for big news portals and stuff, but if this becomes the norm then it will kill the small publishers resulting in further concentration of net content in the hands of the big guys. So this direction would hurt the little guys and help the big guys, because they have the resources to adapt.
- gpvos 8y ago
  It is indeed unfortunate, although in general the internet will still have lowered the barrier to publish.
eksemplar 8y ago
Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so. I guess they could upscale in tech, but how would they pay for it when they can barely earn enough money to fulfill their primary function? I don’t think publishers have a problem. I think users do. I hate online news as much as everyone, but I still want deep, intelligent and critical journalism, so I subscribed to a paper which sells it. It’s one of the most successful news papers of my country, financially, and up until April this year they didn’t have a website. They do now, but it’s basically just a digital version (also available in audio from apps) that you can still only access if you subscribe. I couldn’t be happier, and they earn money. So maybe the whole free content thing isn’t really a good way to go for either the user or the publisher?
- einr 8y ago
  Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so. They'd best gain the ability, then, or fade into irrelevance and die. And honestly, we're talking about serving a few images from their own webserver. It's not rocket science.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Technically, serving few images is not a problem. The question arises, what images to serve. Someone has to sell advertisement, find clients, persuade them to advertise with the given site, etc. That's something they are getting with ad networks for free.
    - einr 8y ago
      You could easily outsource ad sales while still serving the images unobtrusively from your own server.
      - imhoguy 8y ago
        Who owns a server today? Even publishing platforms are outsourced or behind nicely packaged SaaS today, not to mention infrastructure services. There is no more "FTP your site to XYZ".
buboard 8y ago
actually, google should do that. Review all their ads and give them a rating, then allow publishers to pick only high quality ones. But i guess they don't have the money to do that (/s)
- gpvos 8y ago
  Google will continue to try to track me across unrelated websites, so I'll keep blocking them. I crucially specified "serve the ads from the website's own domain".

anoncake 8y ago

What if I accept ads but reject paywalls?