5 ms·

Yeah nothing wrong with that. This is how it goes for me though: 1. Company stuffs ads down my throat. 2. I use adblocker 3. Company blocks me 4. I ignore c

by baz00 3y ago

Yeah nothing wrong with that. This is how it goes for me though: 1. Company stuffs ads down my throat. 2. I use adblocker 3. Company blocks me 4. I ignore company. The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all.

herodotus 3y ago
> That says your actual product is worth fuck all. Look I use ad blockers and a pi-hole. And I don't bother reading paywalled sites that I don't pay for. But your comment is a little harsh. It is a sad reality of the internet that there are so few options for generating revenue. I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. That way niche websites (like, for example, hobby sites or local sites) could get some income without having to resort to ads or fundraising. In my view the real ripoff are the exorbitant monthly fees I pay to my ISP.
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  The fact that even in Silicon Valley, the Comcast monopoly is very strong for both single-family and multi-tenant housing tells you everything you need to know about the viability of anyone actually solving this problem. They’re simply making far too much profit from bad service and terrible business practices, and they’ve paid for all the regulators they need to ensure they’ll never have to change or have any meaningful competition. That they and others in the ISP and mobile ISP cartel have been handed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build out FTTH and rural areas that they instead pocketed is just the cherry on top of the turd banana split that is consumer protection in the USA. Check out “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal” for more on this.
- baz00 3y ago
  It's brutal but true. Either have a revenue model or expect no income. That is the reality. The fuzzy grey bit in the middle is where all the garbage is. Your idea sounds a fantastic way to make a system incredibly complicated with no actual gain other than a billing dystopia.
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  > I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. something like that already exists: https://www.contentpass.net/en https://www.contentpass.net/en
seanp2k2 3y ago
100% this. If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. Sometimes Reader works on iOS in those situations, sometimes not. Between crap like Admiral, GDPR nag screens that help no one, incessant useless live chat boxes, large banners on mobile that are pinned to the tops and bottoms of views (doubly so if they’re simply cosmetic), “spin the wheel for a discount” modals, and SMS spam signup schemes, many websites are quite annoying to use and very user-hostile on the modern internet.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. The most asinine part of that is the fucking site has already delivered the content. They incurred whatever costs their multi-megabyte bloated JavaScript monstrosity requires and only then blocks it with a stupid blocking banner. They'd incur the same (or less) costs if they just sent a static HTML page with the content. Doing this they could still make advertising money with a simple text add saying "this content brought to you by Slurm" inline with the content. Just log analysis will get them a ton of visitor information some overwrought AdTech product promises will revolutionize their synergies. A $5 VPS with its included terabyte of data transfer can serve so many fucking web pages in a month. Loading that down with autoplaying videos, megabytes of uncompressed PNGs, and a dozen copies of Doom worth of JavaScript is just a ludicrous pointless cost. A sprinkle of CSS can make those basic pages look amazing.
squarefoot 3y ago
> The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all. It's a bit more complex than that as the market is long oversaturated with products and services, that is, there are not enough buyers compared to the number of products and services, but that awful thing called consumerism calls for more and more production anyway to keep the machine going and prices down, therefore companies need to fight hard for potential customers attention, and one way to achieve that goal is to put their names on every possible free spot where one's eyes might look. There's nothing wrong in being dependent on advertising, but at the level necessary today it simply doesn't scale anymore, and on the web a lot more than half of the (sometimes metered) traffic is already made of advertising, and is growing steadily. We already know where this thing is leading: more and more advertising, coupled with less and less attention which in turn will generate the need for even more advertising. It doesn't scale and it doesn't work anymore like it should. I would rather start looking right now for alternatives, for example one where (local) governments convert a tax collected from all registered companies to a system of unobtrusive advertising which by rotating equally, still being weighted according to the amount of investment in research, production, personnel, etc. would guarantee fair exposure to all businesses. That would be however deeply against current idea of uncontrolled capitalism, though, therefore we likely will have to wait for the day the world will be ready for a more mature, harmless way of doing business.

by baz00 3y ago

herodotus 3y ago

> That says your actual product is worth fuck all. Look I use ad blockers and a pi-hole. And I don't bother reading paywalled sites that I don't pay for. But your comment is a little harsh. It is a sad reality of the internet that there are so few options for generating revenue. I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. That way niche websites (like, for example, hobby sites or local sites) could get some income without having to resort to ads or fundraising. In my view the real ripoff are the exorbitant monthly fees I pay to my ISP.

seanp2k2 3y ago
The fact that even in Silicon Valley, the Comcast monopoly is very strong for both single-family and multi-tenant housing tells you everything you need to know about the viability of anyone actually solving this problem. They’re simply making far too much profit from bad service and terrible business practices, and they’ve paid for all the regulators they need to ensure they’ll never have to change or have any meaningful competition. That they and others in the ISP and mobile ISP cartel have been handed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to build out FTTH and rural areas that they instead pocketed is just the cherry on top of the turd banana split that is consumer protection in the USA. Check out “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal” for more on this.
baz00 3y ago
It's brutal but true. Either have a revenue model or expect no income. That is the reality. The fuzzy grey bit in the middle is where all the garbage is. Your idea sounds a fantastic way to make a system incredibly complicated with no actual gain other than a billing dystopia.
tcfhgj 3y ago
> I wish there was a micro-payment model where part of my monthly ISP payment was divvied up and paid to websites based on volume of content read by me. something like that already exists: https://www.contentpass.net/en https://www.contentpass.net/en

seanp2k2 3y ago

100% this. If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. Sometimes Reader works on iOS in those situations, sometimes not. Between crap like Admiral, GDPR nag screens that help no one, incessant useless live chat boxes, large banners on mobile that are pinned to the tops and bottoms of views (doubly so if they’re simply cosmetic), “spin the wheel for a discount” modals, and SMS spam signup schemes, many websites are quite annoying to use and very user-hostile on the modern internet.

giantrobot 3y ago
> If companies use Admiral to block Adblock and don’t have the tiny “heck off” link at the bottom of the modal, I just hit back and don’t read their article. The most asinine part of that is the fucking site has already delivered the content. They incurred whatever costs their multi-megabyte bloated JavaScript monstrosity requires and only then blocks it with a stupid blocking banner. They'd incur the same (or less) costs if they just sent a static HTML page with the content. Doing this they could still make advertising money with a simple text add saying "this content brought to you by Slurm" inline with the content. Just log analysis will get them a ton of visitor information some overwrought AdTech product promises will revolutionize their synergies. A $5 VPS with its included terabyte of data transfer can serve so many fucking web pages in a month. Loading that down with autoplaying videos, megabytes of uncompressed PNGs, and a dozen copies of Doom worth of JavaScript is just a ludicrous pointless cost. A sprinkle of CSS can make those basic pages look amazing.

squarefoot 3y ago

> The whole problem starts at (1) which is "create a business supported only by advertising revenue". That says your actual product is worth fuck all. It's a bit more complex than that as the market is long oversaturated with products and services, that is, there are not enough buyers compared to the number of products and services, but that awful thing called consumerism calls for more and more production anyway to keep the machine going and prices down, therefore companies need to fight hard for potential customers attention, and one way to achieve that goal is to put their names on every possible free spot where one's eyes might look. There's nothing wrong in being dependent on advertising, but at the level necessary today it simply doesn't scale anymore, and on the web a lot more than half of the (sometimes metered) traffic is already made of advertising, and is growing steadily. We already know where this thing is leading: more and more advertising, coupled with less and less attention which in turn will generate the need for even more advertising. It doesn't scale and it doesn't work anymore like it should. I would rather start looking right now for alternatives, for example one where (local) governments convert a tax collected from all registered companies to a system of unobtrusive advertising which by rotating equally, still being weighted according to the amount of investment in research, production, personnel, etc. would guarantee fair exposure to all businesses. That would be however deeply against current idea of uncontrolled capitalism, though, therefore we likely will have to wait for the day the world will be ready for a more mature, harmless way of doing business.