4 ms·

If you shit in my well, you don't get to complain that bottled water is killing your industry. And you don't get to complain when they stop making their "water

If you shit in my well, you don't get to complain that bottled water is killing your industry. And you don't get to complain when they stop making their "water" free because they can no longer afford to do so, and the internet returns to the days of AOL and Compuserve.

worble 2y ago
>and the internet returns to the days of AOL and Compuserve. Please don't tempt me with a good time like that
ncruces 2y ago
That too. Nor do we get to complain when searching for a place on Google shows a map, but no way to go from that map to Google Maps because that'd be a tie in.
aziaziazi 2y ago
Perhaps a better analogy would be advertiser stop giving you coke for free so you only have water. Water and moneyless-internet doesn’t give you dopamine but you’ll be in better shape physically and mentally to build the future. Coke and ad-financed-web create wish in your hearth but only lead you to a couch.
advael 2y ago
Yes please Vastly prefer commercial enterprises that are upfront about how they make money. It would be so sweet if internet businesses charged money for things instead of creating a massive surveillance machine that is also the most advanced annoyance generator ever conceived by mankind, and slowing down every goddamn website to a crawl despite being able to fit a processor that eats anything I could get my hands on in the 90s for breakfast in my thermostat due to all the telemetry devs mindlessly cram into their frontends I want free to be a usable signal for something being not intended to directly make money from me. I would love to have my interactions with businesses announce themselves by charging me money and turning me away if I can't or won't pay, as I'm used to in meatspace. I would love anything that makes the strategy of trying to relentlessly insert itself into every genuine engagement I have with other human beings, including trying to flood channels with ads that mimic them Free can still be a good strategy for drawing business if you can entice people with, for example, a freemium product, and as this article mentions businesses will still go try to advertise in embedded ways by actually thinking about where their potential customers are, so sadly my dream of being able to avoid businesses hijacking social interactions by simply refusing to pay them so that they go fuck off to find someone who will is not very realistic, but I wish you were right, that would be amazing
- robotnikman 2y ago
  Paying for the technology also means you are the customer rather than the product, like how most free services work. This means the company is enticed to make the service better for the user, rather than viewing the customer as an annoyance and just plowing ahead with changes that upset customers.
  - TheBozzCL 2y ago
    I’m ambivalent on this. On one hand, I want to believe so. I started using Kagi just because I want to put my money where my mouth is. On the other hand, there’s cases like Amazon Prime adding ads to Video, and then charging extra to remove them. Corpos are greedy, and to them ads are free money.
    - jart 2y ago
      On the other end of the spectrum there's companies like Ford that track and sell the driving data of every user for $1 per user per year when that user paid them $1000s of dollars. Then there's Microsoft, which charges you for Windows, and then turns around and remotely configures your system to upload your hard disk to them without your consent. Free market principles won't save us, nor will rationality, and it's because these things are actually governed by the will of technology. Since something it possible, it happens. It's not worth feeling bad about or trying to change. Instead count your lucky stars it all hasn't been integrated directly in human biology yet, since if you're afraid of this now, it'll be much much worse.
      - robotnikman 2y ago
        One thing in common between the companies mentioned in these comments is they are all publicly owned, and they are always looking to increase shareholder and investor value no matter what. In these cases I can see where paying for the product might not actually result in a better experience for the customer. In the case of privately owned companies with no responsibilities to shareholders and investors, it is more likely they will respect the customers.
vundercind 2y ago
Most of the stuff that’s worth a damn is free and ad-free anyway. Plenty of hobbyists and truly-free projects would get more attention and put more work into free things if the competition weren’t “free” and funded by crazy amounts of ad dollars. This is the least-threatening threat ever. If a site must have ads, cool, please leave, we’ll all be fine.
stavros 2y ago
This future can't come fast enough.
vunderba 2y ago
I think that's perfectly fine, do we really need more media at this point? If something isn't sustainable from a more conventional monetary model, then the solution is not shoving ads in people's faces, it's that it doesn't really need to exist in the first place.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I’d venture to say that most ad-supported content on the web (we YouTube being a notable exception) is low quality so I’m Happy if all those shitty website go away. I’m willing to pay for good stuff, and there’s also lots of good stuff that’s truly free because the creators have other sources of income.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
That would be excellent. I want the incentives of sites to be aligned with me, the reader, than that of advertisers. Anything that wrecks the advertising based model of the internet will be in the long run good for the public, despite the short term pain of losing free ("free" as in "we vomit ads into your face 24/7") access.
JohnFen 2y ago
> and the internet returns to the days of AOL and Compuserve. I genuinely think that would be an improvement. It would get a ton of this stuff off the open internet and still leave the good stuff on the internet for the rest of us, like it was in those days.
yoyohello13 2y ago
If the content is worth it, I will happily pay. Most content is not worth it however and I'd be even happier for that content to stop clogging up my search.

worble 2y ago

>and the internet returns to the days of AOL and Compuserve. Please don't tempt me with a good time like that

ncruces 2y ago

That too. Nor do we get to complain when searching for a place on Google shows a map, but no way to go from that map to Google Maps because that'd be a tie in.

aziaziazi 2y ago

Perhaps a better analogy would be advertiser stop giving you coke for free so you only have water. Water and moneyless-internet doesn’t give you dopamine but you’ll be in better shape physically and mentally to build the future. Coke and ad-financed-web create wish in your hearth but only lead you to a couch.

advael 2y ago

Yes please Vastly prefer commercial enterprises that are upfront about how they make money. It would be so sweet if internet businesses charged money for things instead of creating a massive surveillance machine that is also the most advanced annoyance generator ever conceived by mankind, and slowing down every goddamn website to a crawl despite being able to fit a processor that eats anything I could get my hands on in the 90s for breakfast in my thermostat due to all the telemetry devs mindlessly cram into their frontends I want free to be a usable signal for something being not intended to directly make money from me. I would love to have my interactions with businesses announce themselves by charging me money and turning me away if I can't or won't pay, as I'm used to in meatspace. I would love anything that makes the strategy of trying to relentlessly insert itself into every genuine engagement I have with other human beings, including trying to flood channels with ads that mimic them Free can still be a good strategy for drawing business if you can entice people with, for example, a freemium product, and as this article mentions businesses will still go try to advertise in embedded ways by actually thinking about where their potential customers are, so sadly my dream of being able to avoid businesses hijacking social interactions by simply refusing to pay them so that they go fuck off to find someone who will is not very realistic, but I wish you were right, that would be amazing

robotnikman 2y ago
Paying for the technology also means you are the customer rather than the product, like how most free services work. This means the company is enticed to make the service better for the user, rather than viewing the customer as an annoyance and just plowing ahead with changes that upset customers.
- TheBozzCL 2y ago
  I’m ambivalent on this. On one hand, I want to believe so. I started using Kagi just because I want to put my money where my mouth is. On the other hand, there’s cases like Amazon Prime adding ads to Video, and then charging extra to remove them. Corpos are greedy, and to them ads are free money.
  - jart 2y ago
    On the other end of the spectrum there's companies like Ford that track and sell the driving data of every user for $1 per user per year when that user paid them $1000s of dollars. Then there's Microsoft, which charges you for Windows, and then turns around and remotely configures your system to upload your hard disk to them without your consent. Free market principles won't save us, nor will rationality, and it's because these things are actually governed by the will of technology. Since something it possible, it happens. It's not worth feeling bad about or trying to change. Instead count your lucky stars it all hasn't been integrated directly in human biology yet, since if you're afraid of this now, it'll be much much worse.
    - robotnikman 2y ago
      One thing in common between the companies mentioned in these comments is they are all publicly owned, and they are always looking to increase shareholder and investor value no matter what. In these cases I can see where paying for the product might not actually result in a better experience for the customer. In the case of privately owned companies with no responsibilities to shareholders and investors, it is more likely they will respect the customers.

vundercind 2y ago

Most of the stuff that’s worth a damn is free and ad-free anyway. Plenty of hobbyists and truly-free projects would get more attention and put more work into free things if the competition weren’t “free” and funded by crazy amounts of ad dollars. This is the least-threatening threat ever. If a site must have ads, cool, please leave, we’ll all be fine.

stavros 2y ago

This future can't come fast enough.

vunderba 2y ago

I think that's perfectly fine, do we really need more media at this point? If something isn't sustainable from a more conventional monetary model, then the solution is not shoving ads in people's faces, it's that it doesn't really need to exist in the first place.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

I’d venture to say that most ad-supported content on the web (we YouTube being a notable exception) is low quality so I’m Happy if all those shitty website go away. I’m willing to pay for good stuff, and there’s also lots of good stuff that’s truly free because the creators have other sources of income.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

That would be excellent. I want the incentives of sites to be aligned with me, the reader, than that of advertisers. Anything that wrecks the advertising based model of the internet will be in the long run good for the public, despite the short term pain of losing free ("free" as in "we vomit ads into your face 24/7") access.

JohnFen 2y ago

> and the internet returns to the days of AOL and Compuserve. I genuinely think that would be an improvement. It would get a ton of this stuff off the open internet and still leave the good stuff on the internet for the rest of us, like it was in those days.

yoyohello13 2y ago

If the content is worth it, I will happily pay. Most content is not worth it however and I'd be even happier for that content to stop clogging up my search.