5 ms·

So does that mean that the free (as in beer) internet is dying and ad-tech killed it?

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
The free Internet was only free because corporate interests didn't see it as an avenue worth pursuing, yet. It was a niche curiosity full of nerds talking about their interests, in boring text of all things, and nobody was shopping. Now that's flipped. Now everyone is on the Internet, and everybody's got built-in payment methods, so corporations have leveraged their power in the space. And like every other third space we had, it's been commodified to piss and back so you can't so much as walk down an e-street anymore without being screamed at by 900 assholes selling drop-shipped watches, pills to make your dick hard, mobile games that are 90% softcore porn by volume, and of course, weight loss drugs. I hate the way we ruin everything.
- klondike_klive 3y ago
  IncidentLly I've noticed a disturbing uptick in borderline sketchy ads on YouTube recently, things that used to be subliminal in those "doctors hate her" banners are now overt and unskippable.
wharvle 3y ago
1) No truly-free search can do a good job on the modern Internet. It's too hard. "Free" search must be ad-supported to have any hope of achieving good-enough utility. 2) ... But that's because the incentives of ads (and affiliate programs, which are also just advertising) cause that to be the case. (And of course ad-supported search is also doomed to "enshittification", for reasons that Google explained back at the beginning, then years later ignored to make Line Go Up—so yes, paid is the only kind that can be good, now, and yes, that's because of ad-tech, on multiple fronts)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- stcredzero 3y ago
  I remember when the angry mob, lead by the Penny Arcade guys came after Scott McCloud for advocating the end of the ad funded Internet in favor of a micropayment driven one. Turns out, he was right!
  - wharvle 3y ago
    I don't think micropayments can work, either. The vast majority of Internet content—and I mean stuff that does get seen, not obscure sites with a dozen visits a years—isn't even worth a penny to most (not all, but most) of the people who "consume" it, but is worth a lot more than micropayment-amounts to some smaller set of people. Enforcing micropayments wouldn't, for nearly all sites that rely on ad revenue now, result in direct monetization of their reader/viewership, but in a large drop in audience (and then a scramble to better-monetize those who remain). For most people, the alternative to browsing most of what they look at on, say, their phone day-to-day, if it vanished, isn't to pay for more content (maybe a little... but mostly it won't be the same content) but to, IDK, play the Nokia Snake Game. The value is nearly nonexistent, for most visitors.
    - stcredzero 3y ago
      I don't think micropayments can work, either. What I meant, was that Scott McCloud was right, in the sense that ad supported content had some serious problems.
      - wharvle 3y ago
        Ah. Yes, that's certainly true, both due to the nature of what ads are, and how that business model affects the relationship between creator and audience.
    - worldsayshi 3y ago
      I think micro-payments could work in many different ways and with much different results depending on which model becomes prevalent. But the issue is mostly that it has to both "work" once there's enough users and it has to have a mechanism for adoption even before it is "big enough". Example of alternative for micro-payment model: You pay $20 to an intermediary each month. You upvote web pages/domains. Pages you visit knows you pay $20 each month but not whether you upvote them. At the end of the month, the $20 gets equal split between web pages you upvoted. It's a very imperfect model that probably wouldn't get spontaneously adopted. But there's many ways it could be varied. And saying it won't work feels a bit too categorical because are we really saying no possible variant of this will ever work?

The free Internet was only free because corporate interests didn't see it as an avenue worth pursuing, yet. It was a niche curiosity full of nerds talking about their interests, in boring text of all things, and nobody was shopping. Now that's flipped. Now everyone is on the Internet, and everybody's got built-in payment methods, so corporations have leveraged their power in the space. And like every other third space we had, it's been commodified to piss and back so you can't so much as walk down an e-street anymore without being screamed at by 900 assholes selling drop-shipped watches, pills to make your dick hard, mobile games that are 90% softcore porn by volume, and of course, weight loss drugs. I hate the way we ruin everything.

klondike_klive 3y ago
IncidentLly I've noticed a disturbing uptick in borderline sketchy ads on YouTube recently, things that used to be subliminal in those "doctors hate her" banners are now overt and unskippable.

wharvle 3y ago

1) No truly-free search can do a good job on the modern Internet. It's too hard. "Free" search must be ad-supported to have any hope of achieving good-enough utility. 2) ... But that's because the incentives of ads (and affiliate programs, which are also just advertising) cause that to be the case. (And of course ad-supported search is also doomed to "enshittification", for reasons that Google explained back at the beginning, then years later ignored to make Line Go Up—so yes, paid is the only kind that can be good, now, and yes, that's because of ad-tech, on multiple fronts)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
stcredzero 3y ago
I remember when the angry mob, lead by the Penny Arcade guys came after Scott McCloud for advocating the end of the ad funded Internet in favor of a micropayment driven one. Turns out, he was right!
- wharvle 3y ago
  I don't think micropayments can work, either. The vast majority of Internet content—and I mean stuff that does get seen, not obscure sites with a dozen visits a years—isn't even worth a penny to most (not all, but most) of the people who "consume" it, but is worth a lot more than micropayment-amounts to some smaller set of people. Enforcing micropayments wouldn't, for nearly all sites that rely on ad revenue now, result in direct monetization of their reader/viewership, but in a large drop in audience (and then a scramble to better-monetize those who remain). For most people, the alternative to browsing most of what they look at on, say, their phone day-to-day, if it vanished, isn't to pay for more content (maybe a little... but mostly it won't be the same content) but to, IDK, play the Nokia Snake Game. The value is nearly nonexistent, for most visitors.
  - stcredzero 3y ago
    I don't think micropayments can work, either. What I meant, was that Scott McCloud was right, in the sense that ad supported content had some serious problems.
    - wharvle 3y ago
      Ah. Yes, that's certainly true, both due to the nature of what ads are, and how that business model affects the relationship between creator and audience.
  - worldsayshi 3y ago
    I think micro-payments could work in many different ways and with much different results depending on which model becomes prevalent. But the issue is mostly that it has to both "work" once there's enough users and it has to have a mechanism for adoption even before it is "big enough". Example of alternative for micro-payment model: You pay $20 to an intermediary each month. You upvote web pages/domains. Pages you visit knows you pay $20 each month but not whether you upvote them. At the end of the month, the $20 gets equal split between web pages you upvoted. It's a very imperfect model that probably wouldn't get spontaneously adopted. But there's many ways it could be varied. And saying it won't work feels a bit too categorical because are we really saying no possible variant of this will ever work?