5 ms·

It’s not “with no ads,” really. It’s become that because ads are so intrusive now. Static ads, stitched into the page at the edge, with zero tracking would be a

by teeray 5y ago

It’s not “with no ads,” really. It’s become that because ads are so intrusive now. Static ads, stitched into the page at the edge, with zero tracking would be acceptable by many. Those kind of ads have been around in print newspapers for decades. Ad blocking is in response to poor user experience in the same way that piracy was in response to the poor experience of physically buying a CD that had just one track you wanted.

CubsFan1060 5y ago
Maybe where I personally land is that someone who produces content has the right to sell it however they like. The deal we can all make is that you can pay the price for the product and consumer it, or not. In the digital age, there are a lot of people who decide that we get to price the content however we want. We decide that because they are trying to use terrible ads to make money, that we can just go around that and take their content for free. That doesn't fly real well with physical products (This loaf of bread is priced at $1, but I only want to pay $0.50, so I'll just give them $0.50 and take it), but seems to be accepted with products that have infinite free reproducibility.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  The analogy is more like they are out on the public road giving away free loaves of bread along with ad flyers. I take the bread and refuse the flyer. They can put themselves behind a fence, without letting anybody in who doesn't take their flyer. That's fine, I'll just skip their bread. They can charge for their bread. That's fine, I'll just skip their bread. No hard feelings on my end, it's all fair. But what they cannot reasonably do is give away free bread and then complain that I won't take their ad flyers.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    Aren't you going to get rather hungry?
    - bialpio 5y ago
      Not if there's another stall handing out slightly different bread but without the flyer. There's a lot of content available for free, depending on your goal there's always something descent to read.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    Is that really what you want? News being locked behind increasingly strict locks?
city41 5y ago
I think the physical limitations of paper ended up causing a finite supply of ad space, allowing price of ads to settle. On the internet, there's basically infinite ad space. You can just make your readers keep scrolling, or chop the article into an arbitrary number of pages. With so much potential ad space, someone will budge a little and allow a few more ads to get a bit more revenue, and after everyone does that it snowballs into what we have today.
- handrous 5y ago
  I have similar feelings about kanban boards and other team-task-trackers. Physical forms are better, because it gets very hard to deal with them when they're too full or overflowing.
- loosetypes 5y ago
  I’m increasingly convinced the endgame here is advertisers hiding content within the ads themselves via steganography.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  I suspect a lot of it comes from the inversion of the ad marketplace. In the pre-internet era, the media property was the centre of the ad universe. You'd call up your local paper to put in an ad, and they'd have control over presentation and pricing, and keep all the revenue. Standards were upheld, and the papers did well. Now, they're farming out boxes on heir page to middlemen networks. They have little or no control over what ends up there, and they're getting a fraction of the revenue. What's worse, their content, being wide in scope and often full of brand-unfriendly news, isn't hugely friendly to algorithmic targeting paths. The only way to try to stay above water is to run more and more aggressively obnoxious ads.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
I agree, the "with no ads" really paints consumers as only being cheap and ignorant. It is almost victim blaming. "Intrusive" doesn't being to describe the modern ad tracking infrastructure, data collection (and attendant leak vulnerabilities), and exploitation. The pop up ad, autoplay video/audio, and epilepsy-triggering flash ads are just the beginning of the predatory nature of this that has been deeply entrenched as the biggest companies that effectively make up the modern consumer web rely on this for their massive revenues. It is orwellian in every sense of the word, not just dangerous for individuals in a data privacy and identity theft perspective, and dangerous at the civilization/society level in that it is a direct threat to a free, liberal, and democratic world. Advertising was already a dangerous psychological influence back in the era of print ads. Now that we are essentially entering the first cybernetic era with our online personas and screen time, it is directly manipulating personality, mental stability, opinion, and belief.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  I think calling yourself the victim here is ridiculous. It's a product. You can accept their deal, or not. There's no victims here. You know how you avoid all those ads? You avoid their site.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    Well, there is the 3rd option... Steal their content and publish it elsewhere, such as in posts on Reddit or HN. Trying to paint anything black or white will just lead to a model that doesn't represent reality and what people are going to do.
    - CubsFan1060 5y ago
      Agreed, and sorry, I wasn't trying to do that. However, in that scenario, I'd claim the news site is the actual victim.
- chucksmash 5y ago
  Good lord. It's nonsensical to equate being shown an ad (even in this third party tracking day and age) with victimhood. Histrionics aren't the answer.
eugeniub 5y ago
Sure, but if there was such a thing as adblock for the physical world, able to get rid of freeway billboards, USA Today's "hybrid babies" front page (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/usatoday-hybrid-babies-ad-wrap/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/usatoday-hybrid-babies-ad-...), etc, it would be extremely popular.
- jfengel 5y ago
  Man, that feels like a big stunt for a good-but-not-great show. It's the kind of thing they only get to pull once, and I'd expect them to save that for something huge that would draw an enormous audience to subscribe (something on the level of Stranger Things or Game of Thrones). Sweet Tooth was nice, but clearly a bit slapped together. They keep the CGI to a minimum, but what's there is pretty cheaply done. The practical effects are nice, but simple in a way that feels like it was done quickly. It's neat that the show was in production before COVID, though I'd be curious to know how much of it was prescient. The acting is great and the writing pretty good. But it's not going to be a breakout hit. So I'm a bit surprised they'd promote it so hard to attract and audience that will surely say, "Hey, that was OK. Glad I'm already subscribed. But I'm not rushing out to tell my friends about it."
weare138 5y ago
I agree. I use an ad-blocker for privacy and because many news sites are almost unreadable without them now. Instead of addressing the core issues with online advertising the industry just doubled down and made ads more intrusive and distracting to the point it's literally driving away consumers. If people can't read the content on your site without having to jump through hoops or feel the privacy trade-off isn't worth it, they're just not going to use your site anymore.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  And that is exactly what should happen. But I don't see people stopping going to these sites. They simply find ways around whatever monetization the paper is trying (archive, ad block, etc...).
tomjen3 5y ago
Those are certainly better, but I would still block them, because they are ultimately still ads that interfere with my focus. So how do I expect the content creators to make money? I assume there are some people who are watching their ads.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Buy a print newspaper then.

by teeray 5y ago

CubsFan1060 5y ago

Maybe where I personally land is that someone who produces content has the right to sell it however they like. The deal we can all make is that you can pay the price for the product and consumer it, or not. In the digital age, there are a lot of people who decide that we get to price the content however we want. We decide that because they are trying to use terrible ads to make money, that we can just go around that and take their content for free. That doesn't fly real well with physical products (This loaf of bread is priced at $1, but I only want to pay $0.50, so I'll just give them $0.50 and take it), but seems to be accepted with products that have infinite free reproducibility.

technothrasher 5y ago
The analogy is more like they are out on the public road giving away free loaves of bread along with ad flyers. I take the bread and refuse the flyer. They can put themselves behind a fence, without letting anybody in who doesn't take their flyer. That's fine, I'll just skip their bread. They can charge for their bread. That's fine, I'll just skip their bread. No hard feelings on my end, it's all fair. But what they cannot reasonably do is give away free bread and then complain that I won't take their ad flyers.
- Angostura 5y ago
  Aren't you going to get rather hungry?
  - bialpio 5y ago
    Not if there's another stall handing out slightly different bread but without the flyer. There's a lot of content available for free, depending on your goal there's always something descent to read.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Is that really what you want? News being locked behind increasingly strict locks?

city41 5y ago

I think the physical limitations of paper ended up causing a finite supply of ad space, allowing price of ads to settle. On the internet, there's basically infinite ad space. You can just make your readers keep scrolling, or chop the article into an arbitrary number of pages. With so much potential ad space, someone will budge a little and allow a few more ads to get a bit more revenue, and after everyone does that it snowballs into what we have today.

handrous 5y ago
I have similar feelings about kanban boards and other team-task-trackers. Physical forms are better, because it gets very hard to deal with them when they're too full or overflowing.
loosetypes 5y ago
I’m increasingly convinced the endgame here is advertisers hiding content within the ads themselves via steganography.
hakfoo 5y ago
I suspect a lot of it comes from the inversion of the ad marketplace. In the pre-internet era, the media property was the centre of the ad universe. You'd call up your local paper to put in an ad, and they'd have control over presentation and pricing, and keep all the revenue. Standards were upheld, and the papers did well. Now, they're farming out boxes on heir page to middlemen networks. They have little or no control over what ends up there, and they're getting a fraction of the revenue. What's worse, their content, being wide in scope and often full of brand-unfriendly news, isn't hugely friendly to algorithmic targeting paths. The only way to try to stay above water is to run more and more aggressively obnoxious ads.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

I agree, the "with no ads" really paints consumers as only being cheap and ignorant. It is almost victim blaming. "Intrusive" doesn't being to describe the modern ad tracking infrastructure, data collection (and attendant leak vulnerabilities), and exploitation. The pop up ad, autoplay video/audio, and epilepsy-triggering flash ads are just the beginning of the predatory nature of this that has been deeply entrenched as the biggest companies that effectively make up the modern consumer web rely on this for their massive revenues. It is orwellian in every sense of the word, not just dangerous for individuals in a data privacy and identity theft perspective, and dangerous at the civilization/society level in that it is a direct threat to a free, liberal, and democratic world. Advertising was already a dangerous psychological influence back in the era of print ads. Now that we are essentially entering the first cybernetic era with our online personas and screen time, it is directly manipulating personality, mental stability, opinion, and belief.

CubsFan1060 5y ago
I think calling yourself the victim here is ridiculous. It's a product. You can accept their deal, or not. There's no victims here. You know how you avoid all those ads? You avoid their site.
- pixl97 5y ago
  Well, there is the 3rd option... Steal their content and publish it elsewhere, such as in posts on Reddit or HN. Trying to paint anything black or white will just lead to a model that doesn't represent reality and what people are going to do.
  - CubsFan1060 5y ago
    Agreed, and sorry, I wasn't trying to do that. However, in that scenario, I'd claim the news site is the actual victim.
chucksmash 5y ago
Good lord. It's nonsensical to equate being shown an ad (even in this third party tracking day and age) with victimhood. Histrionics aren't the answer.

eugeniub 5y ago

Sure, but if there was such a thing as adblock for the physical world, able to get rid of freeway billboards, USA Today's "hybrid babies" front page (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/usatoday-hybrid-babies-ad-wrap/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/usatoday-hybrid-babies-ad-...), etc, it would be extremely popular.

jfengel 5y ago
Man, that feels like a big stunt for a good-but-not-great show. It's the kind of thing they only get to pull once, and I'd expect them to save that for something huge that would draw an enormous audience to subscribe (something on the level of Stranger Things or Game of Thrones). Sweet Tooth was nice, but clearly a bit slapped together. They keep the CGI to a minimum, but what's there is pretty cheaply done. The practical effects are nice, but simple in a way that feels like it was done quickly. It's neat that the show was in production before COVID, though I'd be curious to know how much of it was prescient. The acting is great and the writing pretty good. But it's not going to be a breakout hit. So I'm a bit surprised they'd promote it so hard to attract and audience that will surely say, "Hey, that was OK. Glad I'm already subscribed. But I'm not rushing out to tell my friends about it."

weare138 5y ago

I agree. I use an ad-blocker for privacy and because many news sites are almost unreadable without them now. Instead of addressing the core issues with online advertising the industry just doubled down and made ads more intrusive and distracting to the point it's literally driving away consumers. If people can't read the content on your site without having to jump through hoops or feel the privacy trade-off isn't worth it, they're just not going to use your site anymore.

CubsFan1060 5y ago
And that is exactly what should happen. But I don't see people stopping going to these sites. They simply find ways around whatever monetization the paper is trying (archive, ad block, etc...).

tomjen3 5y ago

Those are certainly better, but I would still block them, because they are ultimately still ads that interfere with my focus. So how do I expect the content creators to make money? I assume there are some people who are watching their ads.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Buy a print newspaper then.