8 ms·

So basically ad blockers? For all the evil ads are, they do keep a lot of such small businesses running too. Now that we've reached a point where every person

• nashashmi 4y ago
  There is a way out of this. Don’t use third party ad service networks. OTOH, CNN also includes ads that are not JS driven. That is fine but the ads are just terrible quality (lending tree!).
• pif 4y ago
  Ethical ad-blockers exist. Do ethical advertisers exist?
  • abatilo 4y ago
    There's https://www.ethicalads.io/ https://www.ethicalads.io/ if you're only targeting developers
  • wongarsu 4y ago
    Plenty, usually in the form of individual websites selling ad space on their website, just like newspapers sell ads in their paper issues. No user tracking necessary, and if you sell based on time you don't even have to track impressions or clicks. But that doesn't fit the "apply to our whitelist" model of many "ethical" ad-blockers.
    • pif 4y ago
      > No user tracking necessary Have that switched to "No user tracking possible", or better still to "static images only", and no whitelist will refuse them.
  • huhtenberg 4y ago
    Even if ethical ad networks exist, they most likely wouldn't want entangle themselves with a file dump like ZippyShare.
• breakingrules 4y ago
  looks more like lack of effort since drop box exists.
• tiffanyh 4y ago
  photopea.com does about $1M/year mostly from ads (and is a 1-person business) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26769141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26769141 I hope people don't use adblocker on that site since it provides so much value.
  • arbuge 4y ago
    That information is now 2 years old. With the greater prevalence of ad blockers since then, I wonder how that revenue stream is doing now.
    • luckylion 4y ago
      Probably okay, I think the overlap between adblock users and obscure filesharing site is much larger than between adblock users and people who use online photo editors.
    • Scoundreller 4y ago
      I think as blocker prevalence is a lot lower on mobile, especially iPhone, but that’s less helpful for a bulk file sharing service where I’d expect a lot of desktop users.
      • musictubes 4y ago
        Blockers are easy to install on iPhone. Why would it be less?
      • JCharante 4y ago
        The thing that made me switch from Chrome on iOS to Safari was that I could easily install an adblocking extension through the app store onto vanilla safari.
  • nashashmi 4y ago
    I think the owner uses adblocker on photopea. https://www.reddit.com/r/photopea/comments/11wf70z/comment/jcy416v/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/photopea/comments/11wf70z/comment/j...
• jandrese 4y ago
  The article seems to place more blame on skyrocketing energy costs.
• smeagull 4y ago
  Browsing the internet without ad-blocking is like raw-dogging a prostitute. Why would you?
  • dang 4y ago
    Please don't do this here.
• sushibowl 4y ago
  > Now that we've reached a point where every person has some form of adblock from abp to brave, I think this we're gonna be seeing more and more of this. On the upside of this, there is an insane amount of flat-out terrible web content that would become unprofitable if ads truly become no longer viable. Blog spam, content farms, click bait, etc.
  • sct202 4y ago
    Blog spam will continue to be profitable since all the LLMs have reduced the cost to churn out ok quality texts very quickly. Previously they'd have to hire freelance writers at like $0.05 per word on the low end.
    • sharemywin 4y ago
      forcing everyone to use LLMs. until LLM companies start injecting subtle ad content into the answers. See it already knows how to do it. By the way it recommends against it. Contextual Advertising: Chatbots can use contextual advertising by analyzing the conversations to understand what users are discussing, and then provide ads that relate to the topic. For example, if a user is discussing travel, a chatbot could provide them with ads for travel packages. Personalized Recommendations: Chatbots can use machine learning algorithms to understand user preferences and recommend products that the user is likely to be interested in. For example, if a user frequently talks about health and wellness, a chatbot could provide them with ads for vitamins or supplements. **Product Placement: Chatbots can subtly promote products or services within the conversation itself. For example, if a user is discussing a particular product or service, the chatbot could mention a related product or service as a suggestion. The last one being the most insidious.
    • chongli 4y ago
      I predict that LLMs will kill off search engines, taking blogspam with them. Blogspam has been steadily eroding the value of search results for decades, choking out genuine websites like garden overrun with weeds. When people finally stop using search engines entirely all of those blogspam sites will cease to be profitable, unable to even pay for their hosting, they’ll disappear from the internet.
• aka878 4y ago
  > every person has some form of adblock Is there any data to support this? Doesn't seem real, even 10% of all users having some kind of adblock would be suprising to me. Edit: wow, I'm way off, 42% according to https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users.
  • sbarre 4y ago
    would bet if you looked only at users who use these kinds of free filesharing services, the percentage who use an ad blocker would be even higher.
  • Swizec 4y ago
    Even my completely non-technical SO has switched to using Brave for recipe sites. She can handle ads everywhere else, but recipes have gotten so egregious her hand was forced and she now uses Brave exclusively as a recipe browser.
    • joshstrange 4y ago
      Look into something like Paprika [0]. Nowadays I barely look at the website, I just import it to Paprika (works automatically 99.9% of the time, no input needed from me) and then never visit the site again. It has the added benefit of having all your recipes being consistent and the ability to make edits. [0] https://www.paprikaapp.com/ https://www.paprikaapp.com/
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• Zurrrrr 4y ago
  That's the way it should be. If you can't make money without spamming ads from third parties, then you never had much of a business model. More ad blockers means less sleazy predatory businesses.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    It's a perfectly valid position to take that we'd all be better off if people weren't allowed to effectively pay for things with their attention. You just need to be OK with the corollary that if you can't/won't pay money for a lot of content/services/etc. you'll just have to do without. I suspect we'd see more innovative payment services but I also suspect that a lot of things would just go away and the Internet would be much more the domain of people who could afford to pay lots of money.
    • Zurrrrr 4y ago
      Oh, I'm not against advertising, and never claimed to be. Nothing wrong with people or companies letting me know about things they are selling that I might even like. But a) the majority of advertising we see for big companies is not needed and b) my point still stands that if you can't make money except through web ads, you don't have a solid business model.
      • ghaff 4y ago
        >if you can't make money except through web ads, you don't have a solid business model It's probably true that a huge number of sites providing online content without a paywall don't have a solid business model. They'd probably mostly go away absent ads though and subscriptions for those with a paywall would increase.
        • Zurrrrr 4y ago
          Yup I agree. Most people can afford a dollar or two a month to subscribe to a site they think is worthwhile.
• czx4f4bd 4y ago
  Sometimes I feel guilty about using an ad blocker on sites I like. A few times, I've felt guilty enough to turn it off for a site I use a lot and trust, only to find the page completely clogged with ads that block the UI and generally make an awful experience. At this point, I've learned my lesson. Not to mention that malvertising is still an issue that affects even major sites. In my view, browsing the web without an ad blocker is like hooking up with strangers without using PrEP - it's just not a good idea.
  • Dalewyn 4y ago
    I'm willing to unblock ads for a site if all the following are true: * I like the site. * The ads are static images or text. * The ads are hosted locally. * The ads are not malicious. If any of the above is not true, the blocking stays.
    • bbor 4y ago
      What would you do if all of your favorite sites switched to subscription models? Would that be a win in your book? Always honestly intrigued by such world views.
      • petodo 4y ago
        Not parent, but I would just find different favorite sites.
        • TylerE 4y ago
          I'll give you credit for being honest about being cheap, instead of advancing some bad faith "muh information wants to be fr33" argument.
          • dale_glass 4y ago
            I always took "information wants to be free" as a "water flows downhill" kind of statement -- it describes the natural tendency and that you need to do a lot of work against it to contain it, and even then it's probably not going to be fully successful. It's not about what "ought" or any sort of morality, more of a factual statement of how the world works.
• Terretta 4y ago
  > I recently cancelled my Kagi subscription too after their recent price hike and search restrictions. Surprised something as fundamental as search uncorrupted by advertising isn't, on principle, worth paying for. It's worth telling friends and family: stop being the product sold to advertisers, start paying companies that serve users.
  • jgilias 4y ago
    They really don’t care enough about that.
• cuddlyogre 4y ago
  Ad networks have no one to blame but themselves. For years, they have served up all sorts of malware, autoplaying media, and browser crashers. The very reason I started using Firefox way, way back when is to get access to an adblocker because I was sick of my system being compromised by just going to a website. Even now, with my adblocker off I would have a hard time finding the real search result or the real download button. Usually, the most prominent element on a page without an adblocker on leads to spam or malware. And I'm just not interested in figuring out what is real and what is not when an adblocker solves the entire problem for me.
• varispeed 4y ago
  From my experience from years ago, once the ad revenue reached certain threshold, it was limited or reduced afterwards to never reach that threshold again. For instance, website of someone I know was growing and at one point got £1500 from ads in a month. The next month it has dropped to £500 and never gone over £600, no matter how big of the traffic was hitting the site. That was revenue for about 500k monthly unique users (EU, UK, US, no dodgy traffic). It's like an artificial cap was placed on that account. Finding companies to advertise directly was difficult, because they already used established platforms and were reluctant to deal directly. And so small business eventually died.
• bdcravens 4y ago
  Ads that are rendered server-side and don't have client-side tracking would be fairly resistant to blocking. Either seek out their own advertisers like it's 1998, or proxy ad networks so the content looks indistinguishable from their content.
• eptcyka 4y ago
  Much of the mobile web will still remain profitable because there are no good adblockers on iOS.
• timmg 4y ago
  > Now that we've reached a point where every person has some form of adblock from abp to brave I don't. I've never used an ad blocker. If I don't like the ads on a site, I don't visit it. In a lot of cases, ads are a minor annoyance. Most of the time they are fine (to me). In some cases (Youtube, for example) I pay to not see ads. That seems fair all around. I have never had malware or any of the other stuff people claim to be the reason for using ad blockers. I feel like I just live in a different world from everyone else.
• rchaud 4y ago
  Ads are bad for many reasons, but one thing that does unmentioned is that Google's actual payouts have declined enormously since 2010 or so. Advertisers ramping up the number of ads you see are doing so because Google got greedy.
• hinkley 4y ago
  At this point I don't understand why there isn't a "PBS for web sites". Group funding sources, very, very reserved allowances for advertising.
• ipaddr 4y ago
  Kagi charges 5 dollars a month for 200 searches and 1.5 cents after that. You end up paying to use 10 different search engines api fees plus give Kagi a fee. Crazy pricing for the value offered.
  • jlokier 4y ago
    Hmm. I do about 200 searches a day on Google, so that would be $92/month. I'd pay for the service if all search engines charged that much, because search is so useful. But in that world, I'd be more cautious about searching casually, for the same reason I limited online time back when the main cost was per-minute dialup phone bill. (Not in the USA.) I don't like the ads on Google, but unlimited casual searches any time of day is very appealing.
• matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Good. If if needs advertising to stay afloat, it probably shouldn't even exist in the first place. I'd block ads in real life too if I could get uBlock Origin into my glasses.