6 ms·

There was advertising before banner ads too, so is your issue about ads on the internet? That was a tiny web that barely anyone used and even less created for.

There was advertising before banner ads too, so is your issue about ads on the internet? That was a tiny web that barely anyone used and even less created for. It's really not the same. Also you don't have the same needs and wants as the billions of other people who spend time online to make a judgement that most content isn't worth paying for.

Terretta 7y ago
> There was advertising before banner ads too, so is your issue about ads on the internet? This thread is about your grandparent comment, ”The biggest barrier is that people don’t want to pay for content.” Billions of people are the market, your remark opens with the judgment that people don’t want to pay for content. In other words, the market has judged most content isn’t worth paying for. > That was a tiny web that barely anyone used and even less created for. It's really not the same. On the contrary, today, certainly a higher number have their words preserved online, as persistent conversations such as this one or perhaps Likes on Instagram. But a far lower percentage of those who are online today “have a home page” for example. In the mid to late 90s a higher proportion of “web pages” were meaningful, and a much higher percentage of users were also publishers of their own web sites. Amateur web sites unofficially organized around topics of interest were a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring That content is still getting created, and still getting self-published, it’s just much harder to find. Self-published home pages like this are still cool: https://www.gwern.net/ https://www.gwern.net/ This one uses a kind of ethical advertising: https://slatestarcodex.com/about/ https://slatestarcodex.com/about/ Note the author invites patronage but says don’t worry about it: ”I have a day job and SSC gets free hosting, so don't feel pressured to contribute. But extra cash helps pay for contest prizes, meetup expenses, and me spending extra time blogging instead of working.” People with things to say will say them. While it’s still being experimented with, it seems that quality content is worth paying for, even worth patronage: https://patrons.theguardian.com/ https://patrons.theguardian.com/ This goes into more detail about content mill versus patronage model for higher value content: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-democratize-p_b_4298310 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-democratize-p_b_4... // Irony of HuffPo well noted.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Not worth paying for directly does not mean worthless. Nothing is free. Let me summarize is this way. - Option 1 is to work, turn effort into cash, then spend that cash on the internet. - Option 2 is to just go to the internet and view ads which turn your attention into cash behind the scenes in real-time. You're still paying but advertising is a much more seamless, passive, and equally available system, and can quickly scale on-demand. So to rephrase the argument, people want the content, and they pay for it, but they mostly don't choose option 1.
  - Terretta 7y ago
    Neither of those are the option I described.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      For paid content, it's either cash or attention-via-ads. Yes there's a tiny bit that's provided for free by creators who pay for it themselves, but it's so miniscule that it doesn't matter.
      - Terretta 7y ago
        How much do you pay to read Wikipedia? How much for Arxiv with ”open access to 1,580,815 e-prints in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics”? For huge amounts of valuable content — ideas and knowledge some people want to share and some people want to absorb — self-publishing, patronage, and private or public funding work, at scale. The “amateur web” is still here, it only seems “miniscule” thanks to being buried under the content mills trying to generate placeholder pages for ads. The web wasn’t born as either subscriptions (pay with cash) or ads (pay with attention), it was a knowledge linking and sharing platform. Huge amounts of content continue to be produced other ways. There are more options (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma). > ”Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting 374 million unique visitors monthly as of September 2015. There are about 72,000 active contributors working on more than 48,000,000 articles in 302 languages. As of today, there are 5,913,176 articles in English. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles.” — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About That’s not so minuscule it doesn’t matter.

Terretta 7y ago

> There was advertising before banner ads too, so is your issue about ads on the internet? This thread is about your grandparent comment, ”The biggest barrier is that people don’t want to pay for content.” Billions of people are the market, your remark opens with the judgment that people don’t want to pay for content. In other words, the market has judged most content isn’t worth paying for. > That was a tiny web that barely anyone used and even less created for. It's really not the same. On the contrary, today, certainly a higher number have their words preserved online, as persistent conversations such as this one or perhaps Likes on Instagram. But a far lower percentage of those who are online today “have a home page” for example. In the mid to late 90s a higher proportion of “web pages” were meaningful, and a much higher percentage of users were also publishers of their own web sites. Amateur web sites unofficially organized around topics of interest were a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring That content is still getting created, and still getting self-published, it’s just much harder to find. Self-published home pages like this are still cool: https://www.gwern.net/ https://www.gwern.net/ This one uses a kind of ethical advertising: https://slatestarcodex.com/about/ https://slatestarcodex.com/about/ Note the author invites patronage but says don’t worry about it: ”I have a day job and SSC gets free hosting, so don't feel pressured to contribute. But extra cash helps pay for contest prizes, meetup expenses, and me spending extra time blogging instead of working.” People with things to say will say them. While it’s still being experimented with, it seems that quality content is worth paying for, even worth patronage: https://patrons.theguardian.com/ https://patrons.theguardian.com/ This goes into more detail about content mill versus patronage model for higher value content: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-democratize-p_b_4298310 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-democratize-p_b_4... // Irony of HuffPo well noted.

manigandham 7y ago
Not worth paying for directly does not mean worthless. Nothing is free. Let me summarize is this way. - Option 1 is to work, turn effort into cash, then spend that cash on the internet. - Option 2 is to just go to the internet and view ads which turn your attention into cash behind the scenes in real-time. You're still paying but advertising is a much more seamless, passive, and equally available system, and can quickly scale on-demand. So to rephrase the argument, people want the content, and they pay for it, but they mostly don't choose option 1.
- Terretta 7y ago
  Neither of those are the option I described.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    For paid content, it's either cash or attention-via-ads. Yes there's a tiny bit that's provided for free by creators who pay for it themselves, but it's so miniscule that it doesn't matter.
    - Terretta 7y ago
      How much do you pay to read Wikipedia? How much for Arxiv with ”open access to 1,580,815 e-prints in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics”? For huge amounts of valuable content — ideas and knowledge some people want to share and some people want to absorb — self-publishing, patronage, and private or public funding work, at scale. The “amateur web” is still here, it only seems “miniscule” thanks to being buried under the content mills trying to generate placeholder pages for ads. The web wasn’t born as either subscriptions (pay with cash) or ads (pay with attention), it was a knowledge linking and sharing platform. Huge amounts of content continue to be produced other ways. There are more options (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma). > ”Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting 374 million unique visitors monthly as of September 2015. There are about 72,000 active contributors working on more than 48,000,000 articles in 302 languages. As of today, there are 5,913,176 articles in English. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles.” — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About That’s not so minuscule it doesn’t matter.