5 ms·

Some services would go the subscription route and survive, but then they're limited to the users that are able and willing to pay. I can't imagine offering a s

Some services would go the subscription route and survive, but then they're limited to the users that are able and willing to pay. I can't imagine offering a search product or wiki product where payment is required. Donations may be a viable option but may not provide enough starting runway. Maybe I've been drinking too much internet capitalism koolaid, but a completely ad-free internet would not have had the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus years.

margalabargala 3y ago
> Maybe I've been drinking too much internet capitalism koolaid, but a completely ad-free internet would not have had the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus years. I completely agree that an ad-free internet would not have seen numbers get big as quickly as what we've experienced, but it doesn't necessarily follow that an internet that makes numbers get big quickly is also the internet offering the best user experience. Usually, user experience gets sacrificed to make the numbers get bigger, faster.
JohnFen 3y ago
> a completely ad-free internet would not have had the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus years. Would that be a bad thing?
- sethhochberg 3y ago
  I’d wager a significant number of people posting here owe their careers to that commercialization - I hate listicles, too, but not so much that I would wish them away and gamble that I ended up with the same standard of living on an Internet reserved mostly for nerds (nerds said lovingly, of course)
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I’d wager a significant number of people posting here owe their careers to that commercialization I'm sure that's true, and it would be a bad thing for those people. But for the world at large? It's not clear to me at all that it would be bad.
  - kevindamm 3y ago
    I'd wager that the pandemic would have gone a bit different too if we hadn't had the internet growth preceding it. I recognize the double-edgedness of that, too, though.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>imagine offering a search product or wiki product where payment is required. I mean, we just called them Encyclopedias back in my day. They won't be as high quality, complete, nor peer reviewed, but there are plenty of fan wikis powered entirely by free labor. no money in nor out. Search is much harder, but I've been keeing an eye on Unlimited Kagi which seems set to do this very thing. Hope it succeeds.
- didntcheck 3y ago
  And most of those wikis are now on Wikia, sorry, "Fandom", which runs some of the most aggressive ads I've seen. The flippant response is to strawman then as evil and greedy, but the less satisfying reality is that web hosting can actually get quite expensive for popular sites, especially with media. And there's the additional cost of defending against abuse, of the DDoS, spambot, or malicious human types
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Yeah, if the users don't care enough to move to ad-free sort of content, there's not much you can do as a passive viewer. Fortunately, Wikis are in theory easy to migrate should such a motivated user comes along. That said, these days more and more guides and tribal knowledge is stored in discord servers. I don't know if that's better or worse. At least there's no ads.

margalabargala 3y ago

> Maybe I've been drinking too much internet capitalism koolaid, but a completely ad-free internet would not have had the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus years. I completely agree that an ad-free internet would not have seen numbers get big as quickly as what we've experienced, but it doesn't necessarily follow that an internet that makes numbers get big quickly is also the internet offering the best user experience. Usually, user experience gets sacrificed to make the numbers get bigger, faster.

JohnFen 3y ago

> a completely ad-free internet would not have had the commercial lift we've enjoyed these past 20-plus years. Would that be a bad thing?

sethhochberg 3y ago
I’d wager a significant number of people posting here owe their careers to that commercialization - I hate listicles, too, but not so much that I would wish them away and gamble that I ended up with the same standard of living on an Internet reserved mostly for nerds (nerds said lovingly, of course)
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I’d wager a significant number of people posting here owe their careers to that commercialization I'm sure that's true, and it would be a bad thing for those people. But for the world at large? It's not clear to me at all that it would be bad.
- kevindamm 3y ago
  I'd wager that the pandemic would have gone a bit different too if we hadn't had the internet growth preceding it. I recognize the double-edgedness of that, too, though.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>imagine offering a search product or wiki product where payment is required. I mean, we just called them Encyclopedias back in my day. They won't be as high quality, complete, nor peer reviewed, but there are plenty of fan wikis powered entirely by free labor. no money in nor out. Search is much harder, but I've been keeing an eye on Unlimited Kagi which seems set to do this very thing. Hope it succeeds.

didntcheck 3y ago
And most of those wikis are now on Wikia, sorry, "Fandom", which runs some of the most aggressive ads I've seen. The flippant response is to strawman then as evil and greedy, but the less satisfying reality is that web hosting can actually get quite expensive for popular sites, especially with media. And there's the additional cost of defending against abuse, of the DDoS, spambot, or malicious human types
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Yeah, if the users don't care enough to move to ad-free sort of content, there's not much you can do as a passive viewer. Fortunately, Wikis are in theory easy to migrate should such a motivated user comes along. That said, these days more and more guides and tribal knowledge is stored in discord servers. I don't know if that's better or worse. At least there's no ads.