3 ms·

> 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

by bmacho 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. I don't get it. The sites that you like will go bankrupt, and you won't be able to read them anymore. Or do you have an agenda, and you are okay to sacrifice the sites that you like? If I like a site, and I want it to exist* I disable my ad blocker, and bear with the ads. But probably we visit different sites, or I have a higher tolerance against ads. * my morals have gotten so low I would happily steal from the people that provide me value, but I won't do that because I am afraid they will close their businesses

lelanthran 4y ago
> I don't get it. The sites that you like will go bankrupt, and you won't be able to read them anymore. Well, if I turn off the adblocker, the resulting deluge of ads makes that site a site I that I don't like, so it doesn't really matter to me whether I can read them anymore because it won't be in the set of "Sites I Like To Read". There are many more people who want their content be read, even for free, than there are people available to read that content. Because we have have oversupply of content, a significant quantity being good, is there any reason to expect that the price for that content will not be driven downwards? It's why the majority of competent artists don't make much money from their art and have a job in addition to their art: there's an oversupply of guitarists, painters, sculptors, poets, authors, singers, dancers, songwriters. Currently there's also an oversupply of blog sites, news sites, news aggregators, learning resources (How to code sites, recipe sites, etc), with the most popular ones being the ones which had the most capital (for SEO, blog-spamming, etc) to get the most visitors, and that capital is grown by degrading the quality of the site with ads. I imagine a net where the amount of capital you have means nothing because ads don't make a difference to the bottom line, and every site is a net expense. This would result in only very cheap sites, which means mostly static hosting (because it's cheap). If the people who care to make money of the site but don't care about the content can't make any money, the only ones who are left are those who care enough about the content to take a small hit to publish that content.

by bmacho 4y ago

lelanthran 4y ago

> I don't get it. The sites that you like will go bankrupt, and you won't be able to read them anymore. Well, if I turn off the adblocker, the resulting deluge of ads makes that site a site I that I don't like, so it doesn't really matter to me whether I can read them anymore because it won't be in the set of "Sites I Like To Read". There are many more people who want their content be read, even for free, than there are people available to read that content. Because we have have oversupply of content, a significant quantity being good, is there any reason to expect that the price for that content will not be driven downwards? It's why the majority of competent artists don't make much money from their art and have a job in addition to their art: there's an oversupply of guitarists, painters, sculptors, poets, authors, singers, dancers, songwriters. Currently there's also an oversupply of blog sites, news sites, news aggregators, learning resources (How to code sites, recipe sites, etc), with the most popular ones being the ones which had the most capital (for SEO, blog-spamming, etc) to get the most visitors, and that capital is grown by degrading the quality of the site with ads. I imagine a net where the amount of capital you have means nothing because ads don't make a difference to the bottom line, and every site is a net expense. This would result in only very cheap sites, which means mostly static hosting (because it's cheap). If the people who care to make money of the site but don't care about the content can't make any money, the only ones who are left are those who care enough about the content to take a small hit to publish that content.