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Some of us believe that content creators should get paid. It's a pity that ads are the lowest friction method easily available to the general public to accompli

by bcrl 3y ago

Some of us believe that content creators should get paid. It's a pity that ads are the lowest friction method easily available to the general public to accomplish this.

account42 3y ago
Content creators mostly don't get paid in the ad-supported model. Only a few do, and even they only get scraps left over after the middlemen take their cut.
ravenstine 3y ago
Creators can get paid in other ways. It's their choice to rely on something people both (rightfully) hate and are willing to block for revenue. If a creator must make a living by throwing State Farm ads in front of me again and again, I can't say I have much sympathy.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  If you don't agree with creator's reward mechanism Simple then you can simply not consume their content.
  - account42 3y ago
    If you don't agree with people consuming public content in whatever way they like, including stripping unwanted parts, you are free not to make your content public.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    Most "content" is not worth the bytes they are encoded in, so usually I don't.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Since I don't "consume" any "content", job done!
- corymovie 3y ago
  Yeah, this. Term limits for politicians, no expectation of a career escalator for the public. Before world wars 90% of the public were independent workers. 1945-now is an anomaly. Adam Smith’s form of capitalism is one where workers move around constantly. That’s where the activity in the market should be, not Cramer shouting at us through TV. So sad Hollywood stars might have to do local theater rather than have disproportionate buying buyer; but its about their art and craft… right? Aligning our agency to the drum beat of linear productivity is a relic of the world war industrial production machine. Humans need the diversity of experience or reality feels fractal and we go mad over preservation of outdated ideals.
- skilled 3y ago
  Let me guess, your "other ways" include Patreon, maybe writing an eBook, or maybe spending 2 years to promote an affiliate product, or maybe spend 3 years building a product? Maybe creators can add a "Buy me a coffee" button to their site, that should surely fix the problems? There's a thing called stability and reliance on something. Ads is something you can rely on. It does not make you produce content and at the back of your mind think, "Am I going to pay my rent this month?". If you think everyone is out there making big bucks just because they opened a website and put some ads on it, you're wrong. Not only does it take time to build reputation and a following, people just don't out of the blue come and throw money at you. A lot of people have this notion that there is too much SEO spam and too many ads, but what I think a lot of people are really saying is that, "All I want is just free content. Give me a raw white background with a slab of text centered in the middle of it and I will be on my way.". That is not how this world works, and trying to argue about it just makes you look selfish.
  - account42 3y ago
    Selfish is profiting from mass psychological manipulation. Advertising makes the world a worse place. > People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. > You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. > Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. > You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
- chankstein38 3y ago
  Right?! Aternos, a free on-demand minecraft server host, makes your experience trash if you block ads. However, in my experience, it's still better than having ads enabled. The ads continuously pop over things I'm working on, play music and videos, and frequently have no clear way to exit them until they're done. I'd rather just leave my ad blocker on and let them do their weird torture moves it's still better than having the ads shoved into my experience.
coldpie 3y ago
I spend over $100/mo on Patreon. There are other options. IMO online ad-based business models are one of the biggest evils of the current age. Why does social media push the most outrage-bait content? Ads. Why is Google filled with SEO spam? Ads. Why can't non-ad business models get a foot in the door? Ads. We need to destroy online advertising as a viable business model. Using an ad blocker is the ethical choice.
- bcrl 3y ago
  I can't subscribe to Pateron for every single website that I visit. It's just not practical. I'd be more than happy to shell out $100 per month to an aggregator if they could spread it out amongst 50+ websites that I visit in a month, but the only aggregator that does that with meaningful coverage is Google.
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    Leave a one-time tip occasionally. It makes a difference.
    - bcrl 3y ago
      And I do occassionally, but the vast majority of content I stumble upon in a given month doesn't have a Patreon option for support. Patreon is great for what it does, but it is most definitely not a low friction option to support random web content.
      - DoreenMichele 3y ago
        Thank you. Most people don't.
  - zeven7 3y ago
    Brave is trying to do that, but yeah coverage is an issue. Blocking as is a start.
    - 3y ago
drumhead 3y ago
Charge consumers then. If it's good enough they'll pay for it.
- jamespo 3y ago
  There are plenty of options for ad-free paid email, including from Google themselves
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    To be clear, Google does not provide an ad free email service to consumers, and I wouldn't expect the general public to create a Google Workspace account for a personal ad-free mail experience.
    - jamespo 3y ago
      Why not? https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_uk/pricing.html https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_uk/pricing.html
  - hedora 3y ago
    In my experience, ad-free paid email from Google aggressively pipes the content of your email to adsense/doubleclick. They vehemently deny this, but I think the issue is that you can’t run with cookies disabled and also use the gmail web UI, so every time you click a link they track it. Having said that, they seem to do a good job tracking my gmail (and nothing else) even if I use the IMAP gateway. I am an extremely happy fastmail user, btw.
burkaman 3y ago
Me too, but if someone ambushes me on the street and ties a bracelet around my wrist, I'm not going to pay them for that or keep wearing it. That's not an acceptable way to get paid for content you created. Make an offer and get consent.
AlexandrB 3y ago
I sympathize, I really do. Back when privacy respecting ad networks like The Deck were still around I kept them unblocked. But until ad networks stop acting like creepy stalkers and allow me to opt out of tracking it's not going to happen.
hedora 3y ago
Wait. If I send you an email, and Google shows you ads for testostropiod-max-coq10, then I get paid for the content I just created?!? Where do I pick up my check? Seriously though: Just pay the content creators directly. If using patreon/etc is too hard, subscribe to apple news+ (the global market leader in this space). If that is too click-baity, then set up a competitor that doesn’t objectively suck.
- frumper 3y ago
  Wouldn't that mean using a paid email service that doesn't show you ads?
  - hedora 3y ago
    I already do, but in this case, I’m the content creator, not the email user.
- bcrl 3y ago
  I'm explaining my reason for not running ad blockers in general. Every month I see interesting content that people have spend hours or days or weeks to produce, and the main way I have of supporting them is to let the ads on their site or youtube channel be displayed. I get that there are lots of reasons to run ad blockers, and my point is that there are also reasons to not run ad blockers.
  - hedora 3y ago
    Can’t you pay youtube or did they kill that feature? I’ve noticed the “N trackers blocked this week” thingy on my web browser is trending down rapidly now that I only read news here and on apple news+. (Though Apple News+ is turning into 100% clickbait, so apparently the economic incentives are nearly as bad there as they are at FB and ad supported sites.)
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    Those same ad networks that serve up ads that "pay content creators" also serve up ads that contain malicious JavaScript and malware, or links to sites that perform all manner of malicious activity (click-jacking, XSS attacks... etc.). Running an ad blocker is required for safe use of the web these days. The "consequences" of content not getting produced are of far less impact than the consequences of failing to block malicious code contained in ads. You're argument says "me getting paid is more important than you protecting yourself from identity theft and privacy invasion." I don't accept the trade-off.
capableweb 3y ago
You can whitelist specific sites if you feel like supporting them that way. Then you get the best of the two worlds: no ads anywhere except on the sites where you want to support the content creators.
- bcrl 3y ago
  Whitelisting creates friction. Maybe if there's a button in the browser to do that for a site / page it would work, but there really should be a low friction way of supporting content that works across the vast majority of sites one might stumble upon in a given month.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    > Whitelisting creates friction. Maybe if there's a button in the browser to do that for a site / page it would work With uBlock Origin it's trivial, I do this all the time. You click on the extension toolbar button, then on the huge "On/Off" button and it remembers your setting for that particular site forever. Literally two clicks.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Until ads stop coming with tracking, I will whitelist nothing. There are no sites so precious that I'm willing to subject myself to surveillance for them.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    I mean, then I don't see why what I wrote would somehow apply to you? Continue blocking ads everywhere, no need to announce it to the world, just keep on keeping on :)
0zemp2c 3y ago
> Some of us believe that content creators should get paid do you really think ad money flows to creators?
- bcrl 3y ago
  Not all of it, but some of it does. That's better than nothing.
mynameisvlad 3y ago
I'm sure Google is crying over the lost cents of revenue. Aside from the other comments mentioning better ways to support them, yoy can allowlist content crwators you want to see ads from, or alternately just use the extension on certain sites like Gmail. It's not an all or nothing proposition.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
What percentage of online advertising revenue actually lands with content creators? My gut feeling here is that it’s way less than 50% (corporations, not indie creators spend the most on ads) which would mean on average you are looking at or engaging with a corporation not an indie creator
DoreenMichele 3y ago
I removed ads from my blogs years ago. If you are reviewing stereo equipment or something like that, ads can make sense for all parties -- content creator, advertisers and audience. But for a lot of things, if you want your creative content to have real value, ads make no sense. My most successful site is a resource for homeless Americans. They have little to no money to spend. Having ads on the site strikes me as tantamount to fraud because my audience can't reasonably be expected to buy enough stuff to make the ads make business sense for the advertisers.
lynx23 3y ago
Those of "us" which think content creators should be paid buy music on BandCamp, donate to open source projects, follow folks on Patreon, or whatever. I submit nobody is actually consuming ads voluntarily. Its like stockholm syndrome. After a while, you find rationalisations for the weirdest shit.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nimih 3y ago
Which content creator, specifically, is getting paid when I see an ad while trying to find a package tracking notification in my email inbox?
- robjan 3y ago
  In this case it's the service provider. You are consuming a free service, which costs money to run, in return for adverts
  - nimih 3y ago
    The OP I was responding to specifically used the phrase “content creator,” which is popularly understood in the English speaking world to refer to artists, writers, musicians, video creators, and other such pursuits who generally have rather slim prospects at making a living without ads. In contrast to software developers and sysadmins, who seem to be quite good at making money regardless. If the argument is that google workers need to put food on the table and that is why giving you targeted ads in your email web client is necessary (or, rather, why blocking those ads is unacceptable), then don’t hide it behind sympathy for the folks who are much more poorly served by the current economic structure.
bedast 3y ago
Sometimes it's not just about getting rid of an annoyance. I've stuck to my guns with ad blocking to protect myself from malicious ad content. In terms of content creators getting paid, I pay for a Youtube Premium subscription to help with that (which, it's my understanding content creators get paid MORE by Youtube Premium views than ad supported views).
princevegeta89 3y ago
The problem is the ads were abused to the point of users being completely pissed by how misleading, intruding, and annoying and network intensive they have become. I remember not using adblockers a long long time ago to keep supporting content creators - but once I saw the aggressive ad "shove-in-your-face" trend rising up, I could no longer go without an adblocker
amelius 3y ago
> Some of us believe that content creators should get paid. It's a pity that ads are the lowest friction method easily available to the general public to accomplish this. It's also a pity that ads cause people to buy even more stuff, causing needless environmental harm. I have no sympathy for ads as a monetization model.
amelius 3y ago
Because ads are in your face, it's like advertisers having their hands already in your wallet.
antisthenes 3y ago
I support small independent content creators. What I don't support is Pichay's $220 million comp package at the cost of showing ads in the middle of my main productivity tool. If they want to sabotage one of their products in this way - then I have no problem shouting from the rooftops for everyone to ditch google and adblock everything with impunity.

by bcrl 3y ago

Some of us believe that content creators should get paid. It's a pity that ads are the lowest friction method easily available to the general public to accomplish this.

account42 3y ago

Content creators mostly don't get paid in the ad-supported model. Only a few do, and even they only get scraps left over after the middlemen take their cut.

ravenstine 3y ago

Creators can get paid in other ways. It's their choice to rely on something people both (rightfully) hate and are willing to block for revenue. If a creator must make a living by throwing State Farm ads in front of me again and again, I can't say I have much sympathy.

The_Colonel 3y ago
If you don't agree with creator's reward mechanism Simple then you can simply not consume their content.
- account42 3y ago
  If you don't agree with people consuming public content in whatever way they like, including stripping unwanted parts, you are free not to make your content public.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Most "content" is not worth the bytes they are encoded in, so usually I don't.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Since I don't "consume" any "content", job done!
corymovie 3y ago
Yeah, this. Term limits for politicians, no expectation of a career escalator for the public. Before world wars 90% of the public were independent workers. 1945-now is an anomaly. Adam Smith’s form of capitalism is one where workers move around constantly. That’s where the activity in the market should be, not Cramer shouting at us through TV. So sad Hollywood stars might have to do local theater rather than have disproportionate buying buyer; but its about their art and craft… right? Aligning our agency to the drum beat of linear productivity is a relic of the world war industrial production machine. Humans need the diversity of experience or reality feels fractal and we go mad over preservation of outdated ideals.
skilled 3y ago
Let me guess, your "other ways" include Patreon, maybe writing an eBook, or maybe spending 2 years to promote an affiliate product, or maybe spend 3 years building a product? Maybe creators can add a "Buy me a coffee" button to their site, that should surely fix the problems? There's a thing called stability and reliance on something. Ads is something you can rely on. It does not make you produce content and at the back of your mind think, "Am I going to pay my rent this month?". If you think everyone is out there making big bucks just because they opened a website and put some ads on it, you're wrong. Not only does it take time to build reputation and a following, people just don't out of the blue come and throw money at you. A lot of people have this notion that there is too much SEO spam and too many ads, but what I think a lot of people are really saying is that, "All I want is just free content. Give me a raw white background with a slab of text centered in the middle of it and I will be on my way.". That is not how this world works, and trying to argue about it just makes you look selfish.
- account42 3y ago
  Selfish is profiting from mass psychological manipulation. Advertising makes the world a worse place. > People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. > You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. > Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. > You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
- ravenstine 3y ago
chankstein38 3y ago
Right?! Aternos, a free on-demand minecraft server host, makes your experience trash if you block ads. However, in my experience, it's still better than having ads enabled. The ads continuously pop over things I'm working on, play music and videos, and frequently have no clear way to exit them until they're done. I'd rather just leave my ad blocker on and let them do their weird torture moves it's still better than having the ads shoved into my experience.

coldpie 3y ago

I spend over $100/mo on Patreon. There are other options. IMO online ad-based business models are one of the biggest evils of the current age. Why does social media push the most outrage-bait content? Ads. Why is Google filled with SEO spam? Ads. Why can't non-ad business models get a foot in the door? Ads. We need to destroy online advertising as a viable business model. Using an ad blocker is the ethical choice.

bcrl 3y ago
I can't subscribe to Pateron for every single website that I visit. It's just not practical. I'd be more than happy to shell out $100 per month to an aggregator if they could spread it out amongst 50+ websites that I visit in a month, but the only aggregator that does that with meaningful coverage is Google.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  Leave a one-time tip occasionally. It makes a difference.
  - bcrl 3y ago
    And I do occassionally, but the vast majority of content I stumble upon in a given month doesn't have a Patreon option for support. Patreon is great for what it does, but it is most definitely not a low friction option to support random web content.
    - DoreenMichele 3y ago
      Thank you. Most people don't.
- zeven7 3y ago
  Brave is trying to do that, but yeah coverage is an issue. Blocking as is a start.
  - 3y ago

drumhead 3y ago

Charge consumers then. If it's good enough they'll pay for it.

jamespo 3y ago
There are plenty of options for ad-free paid email, including from Google themselves
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  To be clear, Google does not provide an ad free email service to consumers, and I wouldn't expect the general public to create a Google Workspace account for a personal ad-free mail experience.
  - jamespo 3y ago
    Why not? https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_uk/pricing.html https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_uk/pricing.html
- hedora 3y ago
  In my experience, ad-free paid email from Google aggressively pipes the content of your email to adsense/doubleclick. They vehemently deny this, but I think the issue is that you can’t run with cookies disabled and also use the gmail web UI, so every time you click a link they track it. Having said that, they seem to do a good job tracking my gmail (and nothing else) even if I use the IMAP gateway. I am an extremely happy fastmail user, btw.

burkaman 3y ago

Me too, but if someone ambushes me on the street and ties a bracelet around my wrist, I'm not going to pay them for that or keep wearing it. That's not an acceptable way to get paid for content you created. Make an offer and get consent.

AlexandrB 3y ago

I sympathize, I really do. Back when privacy respecting ad networks like The Deck were still around I kept them unblocked. But until ad networks stop acting like creepy stalkers and allow me to opt out of tracking it's not going to happen.

hedora 3y ago

Wait. If I send you an email, and Google shows you ads for testostropiod-max-coq10, then I get paid for the content I just created?!? Where do I pick up my check? Seriously though: Just pay the content creators directly. If using patreon/etc is too hard, subscribe to apple news+ (the global market leader in this space). If that is too click-baity, then set up a competitor that doesn’t objectively suck.

frumper 3y ago
Wouldn't that mean using a paid email service that doesn't show you ads?
- hedora 3y ago
  I already do, but in this case, I’m the content creator, not the email user.
bcrl 3y ago
I'm explaining my reason for not running ad blockers in general. Every month I see interesting content that people have spend hours or days or weeks to produce, and the main way I have of supporting them is to let the ads on their site or youtube channel be displayed. I get that there are lots of reasons to run ad blockers, and my point is that there are also reasons to not run ad blockers.
- hedora 3y ago
  Can’t you pay youtube or did they kill that feature? I’ve noticed the “N trackers blocked this week” thingy on my web browser is trending down rapidly now that I only read news here and on apple news+. (Though Apple News+ is turning into 100% clickbait, so apparently the economic incentives are nearly as bad there as they are at FB and ad supported sites.)
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Those same ad networks that serve up ads that "pay content creators" also serve up ads that contain malicious JavaScript and malware, or links to sites that perform all manner of malicious activity (click-jacking, XSS attacks... etc.). Running an ad blocker is required for safe use of the web these days. The "consequences" of content not getting produced are of far less impact than the consequences of failing to block malicious code contained in ads. You're argument says "me getting paid is more important than you protecting yourself from identity theft and privacy invasion." I don't accept the trade-off.

capableweb 3y ago

You can whitelist specific sites if you feel like supporting them that way. Then you get the best of the two worlds: no ads anywhere except on the sites where you want to support the content creators.

bcrl 3y ago
Whitelisting creates friction. Maybe if there's a button in the browser to do that for a site / page it would work, but there really should be a low friction way of supporting content that works across the vast majority of sites one might stumble upon in a given month.
- capableweb 3y ago
  > Whitelisting creates friction. Maybe if there's a button in the browser to do that for a site / page it would work With uBlock Origin it's trivial, I do this all the time. You click on the extension toolbar button, then on the huge "On/Off" button and it remembers your setting for that particular site forever. Literally two clicks.
JohnFen 3y ago
Until ads stop coming with tracking, I will whitelist nothing. There are no sites so precious that I'm willing to subject myself to surveillance for them.
- capableweb 3y ago
  I mean, then I don't see why what I wrote would somehow apply to you? Continue blocking ads everywhere, no need to announce it to the world, just keep on keeping on :)

0zemp2c 3y ago

> Some of us believe that content creators should get paid do you really think ad money flows to creators?

bcrl 3y ago
Not all of it, but some of it does. That's better than nothing.

mynameisvlad 3y ago

I'm sure Google is crying over the lost cents of revenue. Aside from the other comments mentioning better ways to support them, yoy can allowlist content crwators you want to see ads from, or alternately just use the extension on certain sites like Gmail. It's not an all or nothing proposition.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

What percentage of online advertising revenue actually lands with content creators? My gut feeling here is that it’s way less than 50% (corporations, not indie creators spend the most on ads) which would mean on average you are looking at or engaging with a corporation not an indie creator

DoreenMichele 3y ago

I removed ads from my blogs years ago. If you are reviewing stereo equipment or something like that, ads can make sense for all parties -- content creator, advertisers and audience. But for a lot of things, if you want your creative content to have real value, ads make no sense. My most successful site is a resource for homeless Americans. They have little to no money to spend. Having ads on the site strikes me as tantamount to fraud because my audience can't reasonably be expected to buy enough stuff to make the ads make business sense for the advertisers.

lynx23 3y ago

Those of "us" which think content creators should be paid buy music on BandCamp, donate to open source projects, follow folks on Patreon, or whatever. I submit nobody is actually consuming ads voluntarily. Its like stockholm syndrome. After a while, you find rationalisations for the weirdest shit.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nimih 3y ago

Which content creator, specifically, is getting paid when I see an ad while trying to find a package tracking notification in my email inbox?

robjan 3y ago
In this case it's the service provider. You are consuming a free service, which costs money to run, in return for adverts
- nimih 3y ago
  The OP I was responding to specifically used the phrase “content creator,” which is popularly understood in the English speaking world to refer to artists, writers, musicians, video creators, and other such pursuits who generally have rather slim prospects at making a living without ads. In contrast to software developers and sysadmins, who seem to be quite good at making money regardless. If the argument is that google workers need to put food on the table and that is why giving you targeted ads in your email web client is necessary (or, rather, why blocking those ads is unacceptable), then don’t hide it behind sympathy for the folks who are much more poorly served by the current economic structure.

bedast 3y ago

Sometimes it's not just about getting rid of an annoyance. I've stuck to my guns with ad blocking to protect myself from malicious ad content. In terms of content creators getting paid, I pay for a Youtube Premium subscription to help with that (which, it's my understanding content creators get paid MORE by Youtube Premium views than ad supported views).

princevegeta89 3y ago

The problem is the ads were abused to the point of users being completely pissed by how misleading, intruding, and annoying and network intensive they have become. I remember not using adblockers a long long time ago to keep supporting content creators - but once I saw the aggressive ad "shove-in-your-face" trend rising up, I could no longer go without an adblocker

amelius 3y ago

> Some of us believe that content creators should get paid. It's a pity that ads are the lowest friction method easily available to the general public to accomplish this. It's also a pity that ads cause people to buy even more stuff, causing needless environmental harm. I have no sympathy for ads as a monetization model.

amelius 3y ago

Because ads are in your face, it's like advertisers having their hands already in your wallet.

antisthenes 3y ago

I support small independent content creators. What I don't support is Pichay's $220 million comp package at the cost of showing ads in the middle of my main productivity tool. If they want to sabotage one of their products in this way - then I have no problem shouting from the rooftops for everyone to ditch google and adblock everything with impunity.