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The company I work for has operating costs of $25MM+, we're a news site and would love to not have ads, but that's where 99% of our revenue comes from. We brea

The company I work for has operating costs of $25MM+, we're a news site and would love to not have ads, but that's where 99% of our revenue comes from. We break stories on corruption, injustice, and all kinds of other content. I think that running ads allowing us to do that would constitute as a benefit.

jammygit 7y ago
Running ads, or tracking and selling visitors political views while also showing ads? I pay for ars technica who promises to turn off tracking and ads if you pay to subscribe and I wish other companies would do the same
- harry8 7y ago
  or they could turn off all tracking because they're not evil. Just a thought. I promise to stop punching you in the face if you pay me is not something I think is all that great to be honest. And then I'd have to trust them. But yeah, Ars Technica is not what it used to be since being bought by Conde Nast, right?
  - C4stor 7y ago
    The difference is that you don't have to go on Ars Technica. Whereas you rarely choose to be punched in the face. If the entry to a club was "either be punched in the face, or pay", I bet the majority of patrons would simply pay or go elsewhere. But on the internet, 99% of people either get punched or refuse both options and enter anyway.
    - harry8 7y ago
      Punched in the face, later, at our option or through our incompetence and we kept that secret from you and never got informed consent. The analogy breaks down. You aren't given the option, you wrote the option that websites and their 3rd party providers have to punch you without your knowledge. Stop reading Ars. Does that help you now you wrote that option? Maybe it does. Better is to exercise your option to disrupt evil with uMatrix, pi-hole etc. Prosletyse it. The less money there is in the evil, the less it happens. How we defeated popups, for example.
harry8 7y ago
Sure but what we need is you to be able to be competitive serving ads yourselves from your own domain. Ideally, showing the exact same ads to everyone, just like a newspaper should. It's not a criticism of you if you can't do that. It's where we need to be. Nobody opted in for all this surveillance. And there does also seem to be a lot of fraud in online advertising. Get everyone's phones and home routers running something like pi-hole and the whole advertising lanscape would change for the better. Google would hate it, sure, but so what? You might find your ads are more valuable too because seeing an ad in a genuine news source as context has more influence on a potential purchaser than seeing the exact same ad on john-does-racist-blog. Even if they are the exact same 2 eyeballs seeing both copies of the same ad. Ads, sure. We're all basically fine with ads per se. Just not the current advertising arrangements involving reaming us with surveillance and all the other nasties as well. Didn't agree to it, don't want it, will block it and will prosletyse ad blocking.
- masswerk 7y ago
  Every site owner is free to serve "virtual print ads" from their own domain out of the box and they will pass any ad-blocker there is. Ad-networks are free to provide server side SDKs to their customers. It's high time to accept responsibility for content you're serving! (As it is, high profile sites often deny any liability for 99% of the traffic they are brokering. The ad-and-tracking inflation of recent years is just insane.)
- dorgo 7y ago
  > We're all basically fine with ads per se. Speak for yourself. I'm pretty allergic to ads - stopped watching tv, reading newspapers etc. a decade ago. No way I accept ads on the web just because they are in more traditional formats.
  - harry8 7y ago
    You are fine with it by exercising your option to avoid them in the normal, rational and informed manner. Don't like watching tv ads, don't watch commerical tv. Done. Clear, obvious, simple, rational and all consent is informed.
iamnotacrook 7y ago
Newspapers ads - on paper - are text and graphics. No video, no code, no tracking. I think people are happy with that. But ads on webpages - they're resource sucking privacy invading unvetted proprietary software. If your business requires you run those then you're getting blocked on every device I come into contact with forever.
catoc 7y ago
I don't agree that doing one right thing (reporting on corruption) somehow makes it okay to do a wrong thing (not taking responsibility for the trackers you're exposing your visitors to). The fact that it pays for 99% of your fixed costs just says you are unlikely to start taking that responsibility any time soon. EDIT: I did not actually check your site and cannot confirm you host malicious ads. I wanted to make the general point; not attacking your site or work in any way.

jammygit 7y ago

Running ads, or tracking and selling visitors political views while also showing ads? I pay for ars technica who promises to turn off tracking and ads if you pay to subscribe and I wish other companies would do the same

harry8 7y ago
or they could turn off all tracking because they're not evil. Just a thought. I promise to stop punching you in the face if you pay me is not something I think is all that great to be honest. And then I'd have to trust them. But yeah, Ars Technica is not what it used to be since being bought by Conde Nast, right?
- C4stor 7y ago
  The difference is that you don't have to go on Ars Technica. Whereas you rarely choose to be punched in the face. If the entry to a club was "either be punched in the face, or pay", I bet the majority of patrons would simply pay or go elsewhere. But on the internet, 99% of people either get punched or refuse both options and enter anyway.
  - harry8 7y ago
    Punched in the face, later, at our option or through our incompetence and we kept that secret from you and never got informed consent. The analogy breaks down. You aren't given the option, you wrote the option that websites and their 3rd party providers have to punch you without your knowledge. Stop reading Ars. Does that help you now you wrote that option? Maybe it does. Better is to exercise your option to disrupt evil with uMatrix, pi-hole etc. Prosletyse it. The less money there is in the evil, the less it happens. How we defeated popups, for example.

harry8 7y ago

Sure but what we need is you to be able to be competitive serving ads yourselves from your own domain. Ideally, showing the exact same ads to everyone, just like a newspaper should. It's not a criticism of you if you can't do that. It's where we need to be. Nobody opted in for all this surveillance. And there does also seem to be a lot of fraud in online advertising. Get everyone's phones and home routers running something like pi-hole and the whole advertising lanscape would change for the better. Google would hate it, sure, but so what? You might find your ads are more valuable too because seeing an ad in a genuine news source as context has more influence on a potential purchaser than seeing the exact same ad on john-does-racist-blog. Even if they are the exact same 2 eyeballs seeing both copies of the same ad. Ads, sure. We're all basically fine with ads per se. Just not the current advertising arrangements involving reaming us with surveillance and all the other nasties as well. Didn't agree to it, don't want it, will block it and will prosletyse ad blocking.

masswerk 7y ago
Every site owner is free to serve "virtual print ads" from their own domain out of the box and they will pass any ad-blocker there is. Ad-networks are free to provide server side SDKs to their customers. It's high time to accept responsibility for content you're serving! (As it is, high profile sites often deny any liability for 99% of the traffic they are brokering. The ad-and-tracking inflation of recent years is just insane.)
dorgo 7y ago
> We're all basically fine with ads per se. Speak for yourself. I'm pretty allergic to ads - stopped watching tv, reading newspapers etc. a decade ago. No way I accept ads on the web just because they are in more traditional formats.
- harry8 7y ago
  You are fine with it by exercising your option to avoid them in the normal, rational and informed manner. Don't like watching tv ads, don't watch commerical tv. Done. Clear, obvious, simple, rational and all consent is informed.

iamnotacrook 7y ago

Newspapers ads - on paper - are text and graphics. No video, no code, no tracking. I think people are happy with that. But ads on webpages - they're resource sucking privacy invading unvetted proprietary software. If your business requires you run those then you're getting blocked on every device I come into contact with forever.

catoc 7y ago

I don't agree that doing one right thing (reporting on corruption) somehow makes it okay to do a wrong thing (not taking responsibility for the trackers you're exposing your visitors to). The fact that it pays for 99% of your fixed costs just says you are unlikely to start taking that responsibility any time soon. EDIT: I did not actually check your site and cannot confirm you host malicious ads. I wanted to make the general point; not attacking your site or work in any way.