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If enough of us used ad blockers, it could help force a systemic shift away from the attention economy altogether It's worth putting serious thought into wheth
by jefftk 4y ago
If enough of us used ad blockers, it could help force a systemic shift away from the attention economy altogether
It's worth putting serious thought into whether this would actually be a better web; I think it would likely be worse. Most sites today are supported by ads, and if that weren't an option we'd see some combination of paywalls, sponsored content, and sites shutting down.
(I used to work on ads)
- jgilias 4y agoI really like the solution put forth by Brave. Basically reify the attention economy and make it explicit so that you, as the producer of your attention get a say and a monetary stake in it.
- jefftk 4y agoIf you think the attention economy is legitimate, a browser that removes the ads publishers have put on their sites and instead serves different ads to the users is pretty shady.
- jgilias 4y agoI was referring more to the mechanism of paying content providers directly in proportion to the time I spend on their site. Without getting tracked all over the place and being shown intrusive ads. And without an opaque middleman taking most of the cut.
- jefftk 4y agoContent providers would push back pretty hard on the idea that a second on every site is worth the same. A high quality news article and a listicle cost very different amounts to produce, and we don't want even more of a race to the bottom here.
- timokoesters 4y agoPaywalls are annoying because it forces you onto the few websites you pay for. Maybe we need a platform where you pay some fixed amount of money per month and get access to many websites. At the end of the month you can decide how to split your money among the websites you used, defaulting to proportional to the amount of time you spent on the site. The platform should be open so that anyone can add their website.
- jefftk 4y agoLots of people have played around with ideas like this, but nothing especially successful. One problem you'll run into is that people have vastly different amounts of money. While I might be content paying $50/month for unlimited internet, someone less well off might balk at $5/month. So either you set your price high enough that many people can't afford it, or you miss out on the ability to draw more money from people who can afford it. Additionally, different sites will have different views, often correctly, on how valuable their content is. An NYT article is much more expensive to produce than a Buzzfeed one, but your system compensates them the same (while the NYT is able to charge a premium for advertising today, plus runs their own paywall). Your proposal is also pretty exploitable: submit your own website and set the platform to always send 100% of your money to your own site.
- mcv 4y agoThat doesn't have to be bad at all. Most sites may be supported by ads, but most sites are also crap. This might clean a lot of low-quality distraction from the web and get us back to websites that are about stuff that people love or care about, which is already what the best websites are.
- Hamcha 4y agoI feel anyone who drives enough traffic to get consistent and valuable ad paychecks could just as well make exclusive paywalled content through Patreon and whatnot. If you can convince 0.1% of your viewership to fork over 1$/mo, wouldn't that match or exceed what you'd get from ads anyway? Of course this system doesn't benefit the many websites that rely on clickbait and quantity>quality content (since they are direct consequences of how the ad market works), but would anyone miss those?
- JohnFen 4y ago> It's worth putting serious thought into whether this would actually be a better web; I think it would likely be worse. Most sites today are supported by ads I think it would be better. Most ad-supported sites today are pretty much garbage, in large part because they're ad-supported.