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This is a more concise repost of a previous comment that I posted too hastily. It's fair to believe that ads are 'ok' - it's also possible that people in gener
by jka 6y ago
This is a more concise repost of a previous comment that I posted too hastily.
It's fair to believe that ads are 'ok' - it's also possible that people in general don't want them. Hosting low-traffic websites on a smartphone with cellular data is just-about-feasible now.
Rather than inventing very technically clever ways to continue on our existing path, as Apple and Google are doing, I think it'd be pleasant to simply move beyond the advertising model of content on the internet.
If asked, I don't believe people would want to be tracked or have ads mixed into their content.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoI don’t know that’s the whole question, though: I know that I, personally, would be unwilling to pay a subscription fee for every site I’ve gotten information from. I wonder how many people would choose advertising if the choice is posed as ads or content subscriptions/micropayments.
- jka 6y agoThis assumes that most of the content would require much funding to operate. Could we make it cheap enough to host a personal blog and/or wiki on a smartphone for, say, $10 a year? The economics would be very different as sites scale up their traffic (compare with, for example, The New York Times). I think the (relatively) small number of high-traffic sites would be able to find revenue streams to support their hosting - perhaps those would be where subscriptions would be effective.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoIt’s not just that, removing ads as a funding source make the barrier to entry higher for someone who wants to launch a competitor to the platforms: medium, substack, NYT, etc. This may of may not be good, but I’m a bit concerned that destroying the adtech industry may have ripple effects that end up being worse than some middle way like FLoC