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The problem is systematic: There is currently no realistic way to pay and be done with the medium; there is no spotify or netflix for websites. Those services k

The problem is systematic: There is currently no realistic way to pay and be done with the medium; there is no spotify or netflix for websites. Those services kinda prove that people are willing to pay after a decade of torrenting and burning DVDs. HN readers typically know how to deal with ad blockers, our less technical fellows don't, and we ultimately owe them to work against this bullshit, like we expect them to steer their respective fields and professions to the common benefit, that they make their products and services healthy and safe. A computer literally heating up due to who knows what arbitrary javascript is executed on that person's computer is notable, and the advertising-tech-complex is very much on topic for HN. Finally, there can be NO DEAL between a website visitor and a bunch of third party javascript that cannot be understood or audited, and if the operation is not profitable, tough. There were cool websites on the internet before ads and we will have websites in the future.

Alupis 6y ago
> there is no spotify or netflix for websites. Those services kinda prove that people are willing to pay The overwhelming majority of Spotify accounts are Free Accounts, supported by... you guessed it... Ads. People don't torrent music because Spotify is easier. Spotify earns money through advertisers paying them to advertise on their platform. Spotify pays part of that to artists who put music on their platform. Everyone is getting paid, and it costs the user nothing. That's why Spotify is so popular. > There were cool websites on the internet before ads and we will have websites in the future What is it your are arguing for? Charging $0.35 per every single page view? Or people running websites should just foot the bill out of the goodness of their hearts? Someone has to pay the hosting bill... Some of the tech-elites on HN will pay this out of principle, but the overwhelming majority of people will not. Be realistic. A world where you must pay for every page view is effectively antithetical to everything the web stood for. The _free_ distributions of knowledge to everyone simply would cease to exist. It's actually amazingly clever. We've tricked 3rd party advertisers into footing the bill for literally _everything_ on the internet. You are free to consume content without paying a single penny - someone else is paying it for you. The trade? You gotta look at some ads once in a while. Oh the humanity! If someone is this principled - they should run an Ad Blocker. Most people simply don't care. You can make a case that they should care, but then you'll need to come with with a robust system to pay content creators to ensure they aren't buried in expenses of running a website for a bunch of freeloaders.
- UweSchmidt 6y ago
  Advertising is not free lunch. We pay by being manipulated into spending more. Would have been nice if there was a free source of money, but clearly this cannot possibly be true. Even if advertisements wouldn't work, the cost of advertisement is still baked into prices. There is also no contract, no trade. People go on a website, ignore any and all terms of services and privacy notes and try to read what's up. Presenting such terms of services etc. is acting in bad faith (as no layperson is able to understand it and no lawyer has time to read all of it). Third party code is executed on their computer. Could be bitcoin miners or even ransomware. Your example with spotify may be true, but you can't ignore that Netflix and others are raking in a lot of money and provide a really expensive product (compared to website articles which yes, were produced for free by many people for years, on some level). I used to subscribe to The Athletic and will probably do so again if there's football in autumn. I really wouldn't mind seeing some ads. On a shoe website, see a banner ad for shoes, with a hyper link to another shoe website. No tracking, no code, just a link.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    > No tracking, no code, just a link. I think the problem there is those types of ads aren't effective. And therefore, advertisers won't pay for them, which then goes back to the original problem of "who's paying the hosting bill"? Let alone paying the salaries of a dozen journalists or content creators. If tastefully done, ads can be discrete and effective. There are bad apples out there, who plaster every pixel of page space with ads and more ads and more ads. I don't think anyone enjoys that experience - but that's not the ads fault, it's the webmaster who did it! Eventually, that strategy won't pay for itself anymore as people stop using the website. Netflix is a strange thing to relate to here, I think. People have always paid for movies - so I think it was a natural progression to pay for a movie streaming service. Websites have mostly always been free - and the ones that successfully run a subscription model absolutely limit their market appeal and userbase. Making people pay for every page view (the effective equivalence of running impression-based ads) is simply not going to work; you'll have an immense challenge to convince people what was previously "free" is now going to cost them actual money directly from their bank account. At the end of the day, there's two arguments going on here. 1) Tracking is a violation of expected privacy, and should not be done. 2) Ads are bad and should go away. Number 1 is true! However, the result of stopping would be unrelated ads being shown to people with practically zero percent chance of converting into a transaction for the advertiser (showing diaper ads to a single man that lives by their self, for example). That could be fine, but again, reduces advertising effectiveness which means advertisers will pay less for the ad space. This could work... but will have ramifications that are potentially not great (more paywalls, for example). Number 2, in my opinion, isn't true, and isn't realistic for the reasons laid out above.

Alupis 6y ago

> there is no spotify or netflix for websites. Those services kinda prove that people are willing to pay The overwhelming majority of Spotify accounts are Free Accounts, supported by... you guessed it... Ads. People don't torrent music because Spotify is easier. Spotify earns money through advertisers paying them to advertise on their platform. Spotify pays part of that to artists who put music on their platform. Everyone is getting paid, and it costs the user nothing. That's why Spotify is so popular. > There were cool websites on the internet before ads and we will have websites in the future What is it your are arguing for? Charging $0.35 per every single page view? Or people running websites should just foot the bill out of the goodness of their hearts? Someone has to pay the hosting bill... Some of the tech-elites on HN will pay this out of principle, but the overwhelming majority of people will not. Be realistic. A world where you must pay for every page view is effectively antithetical to everything the web stood for. The _free_ distributions of knowledge to everyone simply would cease to exist. It's actually amazingly clever. We've tricked 3rd party advertisers into footing the bill for literally _everything_ on the internet. You are free to consume content without paying a single penny - someone else is paying it for you. The trade? You gotta look at some ads once in a while. Oh the humanity! If someone is this principled - they should run an Ad Blocker. Most people simply don't care. You can make a case that they should care, but then you'll need to come with with a robust system to pay content creators to ensure they aren't buried in expenses of running a website for a bunch of freeloaders.

UweSchmidt 6y ago
Advertising is not free lunch. We pay by being manipulated into spending more. Would have been nice if there was a free source of money, but clearly this cannot possibly be true. Even if advertisements wouldn't work, the cost of advertisement is still baked into prices. There is also no contract, no trade. People go on a website, ignore any and all terms of services and privacy notes and try to read what's up. Presenting such terms of services etc. is acting in bad faith (as no layperson is able to understand it and no lawyer has time to read all of it). Third party code is executed on their computer. Could be bitcoin miners or even ransomware. Your example with spotify may be true, but you can't ignore that Netflix and others are raking in a lot of money and provide a really expensive product (compared to website articles which yes, were produced for free by many people for years, on some level). I used to subscribe to The Athletic and will probably do so again if there's football in autumn. I really wouldn't mind seeing some ads. On a shoe website, see a banner ad for shoes, with a hyper link to another shoe website. No tracking, no code, just a link.
- Alupis 6y ago
  > No tracking, no code, just a link. I think the problem there is those types of ads aren't effective. And therefore, advertisers won't pay for them, which then goes back to the original problem of "who's paying the hosting bill"? Let alone paying the salaries of a dozen journalists or content creators. If tastefully done, ads can be discrete and effective. There are bad apples out there, who plaster every pixel of page space with ads and more ads and more ads. I don't think anyone enjoys that experience - but that's not the ads fault, it's the webmaster who did it! Eventually, that strategy won't pay for itself anymore as people stop using the website. Netflix is a strange thing to relate to here, I think. People have always paid for movies - so I think it was a natural progression to pay for a movie streaming service. Websites have mostly always been free - and the ones that successfully run a subscription model absolutely limit their market appeal and userbase. Making people pay for every page view (the effective equivalence of running impression-based ads) is simply not going to work; you'll have an immense challenge to convince people what was previously "free" is now going to cost them actual money directly from their bank account. At the end of the day, there's two arguments going on here. 1) Tracking is a violation of expected privacy, and should not be done. 2) Ads are bad and should go away. Number 1 is true! However, the result of stopping would be unrelated ads being shown to people with practically zero percent chance of converting into a transaction for the advertiser (showing diaper ads to a single man that lives by their self, for example). That could be fine, but again, reduces advertising effectiveness which means advertisers will pay less for the ad space. This could work... but will have ramifications that are potentially not great (more paywalls, for example). Number 2, in my opinion, isn't true, and isn't realistic for the reasons laid out above.