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They argue that the centralization of advertising forces almost all companies to offer paid services and that those services lead to the overall online experien

by fwn 6y ago

They argue that the centralization of advertising forces almost all companies to offer paid services and that those services lead to the overall online experience being more expensive. They conclude that "we should recognize the trade we’ve made from ad-subsidized media to ad-subsidized search and social networking", which I guess is a well-intended statement but somewhat obvious, right? Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. Their last sentence > Perhaps now we can forge a better understanding of the value of content. It costs money to produce, so it should also cost money to consume. I think is important, but maybe not for their reasons. Current paid services are sometimes very overpriced, which is partly caused by the lack of easy and scalable micro-transactions and a missing understanding of what a specific service might be worth. On the other hand there are some great services that get underused because users don't think the up-front cost are justified. The turn to subscriptions that we see in random tiny auxiliary applications is a great example of that. The developers of a small CBT-App I used for a bit thought they were worth 8 euro a month. They tried it a few months and then gave up, largely because they apparently failed to find a shared understanding of their value with their users.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Incidentally I started paying $5/ month each to two micropayment platforms. The first Coil[1] uses Interledger micropayments protocol, which is cool because it is easy to both monetise your content, and is decentralized in terms of payment providers and receivers. I get payed into an uphold wallet, in Fiat currency. It pays out based on time on page mostly and has Imgur, Newgrounds and Twitch using it, and lots of blogs. Downside is for mobile where you can't run browser plugins you have to use their custom FF fork browser Puma. The second one Scroll[2] is a centralised one. That has bigger names attached and removes ads from things like The Atlantic and Bloomberg. It shows you a breakdown of where your monthly fee is split. I love not receiving ads, and I hope that this tech pans out, but I am only doing it as an experiment so far. Personally I would prefer Coil and its underlying protocol to succeed. But it is highly possible these all fail. At least I am avoiding ads, while still funding content. It shows promise. - [1] https://coil.com/ https://coil.com/ - [2] https://scroll.com/ https://scroll.com/
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  I've written more about it here: https://sammorrowdrums.com/going-ad-free-with-micropayments https://sammorrowdrums.com/going-ad-free-with-micropayments
yoz-y 6y ago
> Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. It is also filled with comments gist of which is “paywalled, didn’t read”. I think both models have their strengths and ultimately are not meant for the same audiences. Which is also why mixing the two in the same product is tricky.
- bsder 6y ago
  > It is also filled with comments gist of which is “paywalled, didn’t read”. I object mostly due to "free for me(FAANGS) but not for thee. Said article is available to the Googlebot or to Facebook but not normal mortals. If you want to be behind a wall, fine, be behind the wall--that is your prerogative. But the problem is that these articles clutter up my search results and I can't remove them.
- bollorior 6y ago
  I mean, you've just outlined the way that newspapers' business model is delusional and broken. Lots of people are prepared to pay them for something they make, but they have decided that they're only prepared to accept money in a specific way and on specific terms. In fact, most paywalls assume that that specific news outlet is the most important one in your life. None of them are prepared to offer you a plan based on the more realistic scenario that you occasionally want to read something of theirs of particular interest, but don't want their take on every story, nor their particular curation of what to read on a given day.
  - jeremyjh 6y ago
    Great point. If there were a service I could subscribe to that would give revenue to content producers in a common network based on page views I'd be interested. I like to be able to follow links in news feeds to read particular articles but since they may be in dozens of different publications there is no way I'm going to subscribe to just any one of them. edit: maybe this is what Apple News is? I can read lots of articles but have to go in through that portal, I can't click links on Reddit. Sometimes I do go into Apple News and find the same article but that is time consuming and inconvenient and often it isn't there.
dividedbyzero 6y ago
> Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. In my experience, quite a few people say such things elsewhere as well, but if you actually give them the opportunity to do so (even if it's not "a lot", but actually a pretty small fee), such offers tend to perform badly, even among the people who initially requested such a tier, unless ads are very, very intrusive (Youtube of late might be such a case) or it's bundled with other, actually useful functionality, more content etc., or rolled out as an increase of existing pricing instead of a separate offer people have to actively pick (risky in itself). People in general appear to be much more price-conscious when it comes to such things than they themselves seem to realize.
- orange_tee 6y ago
  It's probably psychology. For example, myself quite frugal, I would probably not pay explicitly to remove ads. But if you raised my internet subscription by $1.50/month, with the same intent, I wouldn't bat an eyelid. It's all about putting the price in context.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I also just don't want the mental overhead of deciding which of my 20 subscriptions I'm getting value from. Yes, I used to have that to some degree with magazine subscriptions. But most Internet subscriptions actually tend to be pricier for less content--probably in part because so few people pay you need to charge those who will a fair bit to make it work. I also observe that I do get some free newsletters and my usual pattern is I read them regularly for a bit and then they go into being read less and less frequently. (Which was admittedly often my pattern with magazines as well.)
- nindalf 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm that guy. I would prefer not to see ads and claim that I would pay for the privilege. Ads on YouTube didn't used to bother me but as they ramped up the number of ads on each video I couldn't take it anymore ... until I saw the price of the Youtube Premium subscription. I balked at paying so much for the "minor inconvenience" of seeing 5 ads with each video. I figured I'd just watch less video instead. Side note, Youtube Premium includes music that I wouldn't have used, so maybe the cost of the service makes sense for people who use that.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
> Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. True, and I did before. I had a subscription to Ars Technica and a few other sites like Tweakers in the Netherlands (a big local tech site). But, what I found lately was that these tech platforms were alienating me. They're trying to reach a wider audience and as such are delivering much less of interest to me. Much less 'deep dives' than before and more 'phoned in' articles and press release copy/pastes. And in the case of Tweakers are still delivering trackers like Google Analytics and Scorecard Research even to paid subscribers. Both sites also changing their design to be more visual and thus reducing content on the screen, which forces even more scrolling to see everything. So I actually dropped my subscriptions. I still have the lowest tier with Tweakers but they're dropping that soon so I won't renew. I still adblock anyway because I don't want to be tracked (and yes I know it's not fully effective). It just feels like every site wants to grow too big and widen their audience. They're no longer happy with being a small niche outfit, which waters down their value to me. I notice this especially because of Hacker News. Because it's still a niche site. Every day I find a few 'pearls' here that I don't see anywhere else. Whereas the other sites are forcing me to dredge through crap I'm not interested in with less and less interesting pieces in between.
aahortwwy 6y ago
> It costs money to produce, so it should also cost money to consume. An awfully strange perspective from a business-oriented news organization.

by fwn 6y ago

sammorrowdrums 6y ago

Incidentally I started paying $5/ month each to two micropayment platforms. The first Coil[1] uses Interledger micropayments protocol, which is cool because it is easy to both monetise your content, and is decentralized in terms of payment providers and receivers. I get payed into an uphold wallet, in Fiat currency. It pays out based on time on page mostly and has Imgur, Newgrounds and Twitch using it, and lots of blogs. Downside is for mobile where you can't run browser plugins you have to use their custom FF fork browser Puma. The second one Scroll[2] is a centralised one. That has bigger names attached and removes ads from things like The Atlantic and Bloomberg. It shows you a breakdown of where your monthly fee is split. I love not receiving ads, and I hope that this tech pans out, but I am only doing it as an experiment so far. Personally I would prefer Coil and its underlying protocol to succeed. But it is highly possible these all fail. At least I am avoiding ads, while still funding content. It shows promise. - [1] https://coil.com/ https://coil.com/ - [2] https://scroll.com/ https://scroll.com/

sammorrowdrums 6y ago
I've written more about it here: https://sammorrowdrums.com/going-ad-free-with-micropayments https://sammorrowdrums.com/going-ad-free-with-micropayments

yoz-y 6y ago

> Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. It is also filled with comments gist of which is “paywalled, didn’t read”. I think both models have their strengths and ultimately are not meant for the same audiences. Which is also why mixing the two in the same product is tricky.

bsder 6y ago
> It is also filled with comments gist of which is “paywalled, didn’t read”. I object mostly due to "free for me(FAANGS) but not for thee. Said article is available to the Googlebot or to Facebook but not normal mortals. If you want to be behind a wall, fine, be behind the wall--that is your prerogative. But the problem is that these articles clutter up my search results and I can't remove them.
bollorior 6y ago
I mean, you've just outlined the way that newspapers' business model is delusional and broken. Lots of people are prepared to pay them for something they make, but they have decided that they're only prepared to accept money in a specific way and on specific terms. In fact, most paywalls assume that that specific news outlet is the most important one in your life. None of them are prepared to offer you a plan based on the more realistic scenario that you occasionally want to read something of theirs of particular interest, but don't want their take on every story, nor their particular curation of what to read on a given day.
- jeremyjh 6y ago
  Great point. If there were a service I could subscribe to that would give revenue to content producers in a common network based on page views I'd be interested. I like to be able to follow links in news feeds to read particular articles but since they may be in dozens of different publications there is no way I'm going to subscribe to just any one of them. edit: maybe this is what Apple News is? I can read lots of articles but have to go in through that portal, I can't click links on Reddit. Sometimes I do go into Apple News and find the same article but that is time consuming and inconvenient and often it isn't there.

dividedbyzero 6y ago

> Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. In my experience, quite a few people say such things elsewhere as well, but if you actually give them the opportunity to do so (even if it's not "a lot", but actually a pretty small fee), such offers tend to perform badly, even among the people who initially requested such a tier, unless ads are very, very intrusive (Youtube of late might be such a case) or it's bundled with other, actually useful functionality, more content etc., or rolled out as an increase of existing pricing instead of a separate offer people have to actively pick (risky in itself). People in general appear to be much more price-conscious when it comes to such things than they themselves seem to realize.

orange_tee 6y ago
It's probably psychology. For example, myself quite frugal, I would probably not pay explicitly to remove ads. But if you raised my internet subscription by $1.50/month, with the same intent, I wouldn't bat an eyelid. It's all about putting the price in context.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I also just don't want the mental overhead of deciding which of my 20 subscriptions I'm getting value from. Yes, I used to have that to some degree with magazine subscriptions. But most Internet subscriptions actually tend to be pricier for less content--probably in part because so few people pay you need to charge those who will a fair bit to make it work. I also observe that I do get some free newsletters and my usual pattern is I read them regularly for a bit and then they go into being read less and less frequently. (Which was admittedly often my pattern with magazines as well.)
nindalf 6y ago
Yeah, I'm that guy. I would prefer not to see ads and claim that I would pay for the privilege. Ads on YouTube didn't used to bother me but as they ramped up the number of ads on each video I couldn't take it anymore ... until I saw the price of the Youtube Premium subscription. I balked at paying so much for the "minor inconvenience" of seeing 5 ads with each video. I figured I'd just watch less video instead. Side note, Youtube Premium includes music that I wouldn't have used, so maybe the cost of the service makes sense for people who use that.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

> Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising. True, and I did before. I had a subscription to Ars Technica and a few other sites like Tweakers in the Netherlands (a big local tech site). But, what I found lately was that these tech platforms were alienating me. They're trying to reach a wider audience and as such are delivering much less of interest to me. Much less 'deep dives' than before and more 'phoned in' articles and press release copy/pastes. And in the case of Tweakers are still delivering trackers like Google Analytics and Scorecard Research even to paid subscribers. Both sites also changing their design to be more visual and thus reducing content on the screen, which forces even more scrolling to see everything. So I actually dropped my subscriptions. I still have the lowest tier with Tweakers but they're dropping that soon so I won't renew. I still adblock anyway because I don't want to be tracked (and yes I know it's not fully effective). It just feels like every site wants to grow too big and widen their audience. They're no longer happy with being a small niche outfit, which waters down their value to me. I notice this especially because of Hacker News. Because it's still a niche site. Every day I find a few 'pearls' here that I don't see anywhere else. Whereas the other sites are forcing me to dredge through crap I'm not interested in with less and less interesting pieces in between.

aahortwwy 6y ago

> It costs money to produce, so it should also cost money to consume. An awfully strange perspective from a business-oriented news organization.