9 ms·

I personally don't care if 90% of websites which rely on advertising disappear or replace their monetization strategy with gated, paid access. I even think this

I personally don't care if 90% of websites which rely on advertising disappear or replace their monetization strategy with gated, paid access. I even think this is a good thing. As such, I will fight the ability of websites to monetize by tracking wherever I can.

LunaSea 2y ago
This means that people without means will automatically be excluded from the internet. Also most people don't want to pay for content. This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > This means that people without means will automatically be excluded from the internet. No, they'll be relegated to the charitable internet, the advocacy internet, the nerdy obsessive internet, the public science internet, the FOSS internet, the public domain internet, and the piracy internet. And whenever any of these groups come up with a project they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of broke users looking for alternatives. > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear. I think the only risk of this happening is if free alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or of running a server in general, or alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments to do their dirty work for them. The US seems like it's on the verge of state licensing of speech and journalism, and that sentiment is easily moved to any sort of internet hosting of any service.
  - LunaSea 2y ago
    > And whenever any of these groups come up with a project they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of broke users looking for alternatives. They absolutely will have to since they won't have the means to serve the content to the community otherwise. Niche websites won't stay niche for very long if they are the only free option. > I think the only risk of this happening is if free alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or of running a server in general, or alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments to do their dirty work for them. I don't see most of these free alternatives even existing in the first place. For example: free news reporting (not even talking about foreign correspondents & co).
  - bugtodiffer 2y ago
    > the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow This is already happening. They wanted to make us pay more because we are using netflix and other streaming services so much. Everything important like internet and streets should be built and maintained by the gov and not some random companies, f*ck Telekom.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      The issue is our government doesn’t function anything like that. We don’t build roads. We write checks to for profit contractors to build our roads. What would government internet look like? A massive check to meta and more or less the same environment we have today.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Going back to 90s internet is a very good thing.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - LunaSea 2y ago
    Which site from the 90s are you still visiting regularly in it's 90s form?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      /.
      - LunaSea 2y ago
        The same Slashdot that is monetised through advertisement with 500M monthly ad impressions? Source: https://slashdotmedia.com/advertising-and-marketing-services/display-advertising/#sdm-by-the-numbers https://slashdotmedia.com/advertising-and-marketing-services...
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        I mean, they still don't/can't handle Unicode.
    - layer8 2y ago
      Personal blogs. Smaller online retailers. Not a web site, but Usenet and mailing lists.
- blueflow 2y ago
  > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear. 99.99% of your web.
  - LunaSea 2y ago
    99.99% of the web, full stop.
    - blueflow 2y ago
      What about HN? What about make-firefox-private-again.com? Go through the HN frontpage and the links. Thats why i'm sure you are wrong.
      - LunaSea 2y ago
        > What about HN? The same HN that is heavily moderated by a paid employee and paid for by a multi-billion dollars net worth company called YCombinator?
        lolinder 2y ago
        Y Combinator will continue to exist in a post-attention-economy world. They have proven themselves to be quite adaptable.
        LunaSea 2y ago
        > Y Combinator will continue to exist in a post-attention-economy world. They have proven themselves to be quite adaptable. That's not the question. Hacker News was used as an example of an old-school site that worked without monetisation. Which is clearly not the case.
        cml123 2y ago
        Surely HN doesn't require the existence of YC as a startup accelerator to exist, right? HN has to me survived because of its community and shared values wrt discussion. The moderation probably plays a role in it, but that's also easily decoupled from big money.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear. Fine by me. I'll browse the remaining 0.01%, search engines will be useful again and people won't be doom-scrolling all the time to see morons eating.
marcinzm 2y ago
That's not the alternative. The alternative is the death of most sites other than walled gardens like Meta and Amazon that own their own advertising end-to-end. Do you want the internet to be even more Meta controlled?
- staplers 2y ago
  The internet and humanity would exist fine without advertisers. History has proven this to be true.
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    History doesn't move backward and the internet users of the mid 90s are not the internet users of now. Give the vast majority of internet users a choice between the internet of mid 90s (after that ads powered it all) and having nothing but large tech owned sites to browse I think you're delusional if you think they'd actually pick the former.
    - staplers 2y ago
      after that ads powered it all You must be browsing too many social media and news sites.
      - marcinzm 2y ago
        Of the top 100 sites in the US the only ones I see that don't have ads are corporate (ie: Microsoft, Capital One, etc.) and Wikipedia. Arguably the corporate ones are nothing but an ads for that brand. Even Home Depot has ads on its site. I don't think a 1% rate of no ads is selling your point. Even most of the smaller sites have Google ads on them in massive quantities.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Who is using tracking? Its not mom and pop websites. Its big corporations. I could care less if they lost money. The internet would be a healthier place without corporations trying to shift public discourse in their favor.

LunaSea 2y ago

This means that people without means will automatically be excluded from the internet. Also most people don't want to pay for content. This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear.

pessimizer 2y ago
> This means that people without means will automatically be excluded from the internet. No, they'll be relegated to the charitable internet, the advocacy internet, the nerdy obsessive internet, the public science internet, the FOSS internet, the public domain internet, and the piracy internet. And whenever any of these groups come up with a project they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of broke users looking for alternatives. > This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear. I think the only risk of this happening is if free alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or of running a server in general, or alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments to do their dirty work for them. The US seems like it's on the verge of state licensing of speech and journalism, and that sentiment is easily moved to any sort of internet hosting of any service.
- LunaSea 2y ago
  > And whenever any of these groups come up with a project they want to do, they won't have to ramp it up to billion dollar scale in order not to be drowned out by a terrible and loud commercial product. There will be plenty of broke users looking for alternatives. They absolutely will have to since they won't have the means to serve the content to the community otherwise. Niche websites won't stay niche for very long if they are the only free option. > I think the only risk of this happening is if free alternatives get so generous and useful that the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow, or of running a server in general, or alternatively by lobbying for expensive regulatory stuff to get governments to do their dirty work for them. I don't see most of these free alternatives even existing in the first place. For example: free news reporting (not even talking about foreign correspondents & co).
- bugtodiffer 2y ago
  > the commercial internet tries to raise the price of bandwidth somehow This is already happening. They wanted to make us pay more because we are using netflix and other streaming services so much. Everything important like internet and streets should be built and maintained by the gov and not some random companies, f*ck Telekom.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    The issue is our government doesn’t function anything like that. We don’t build roads. We write checks to for profit contractors to build our roads. What would government internet look like? A massive check to meta and more or less the same environment we have today.
Dalewyn 2y ago
Going back to 90s internet is a very good thing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- LunaSea 2y ago
  Which site from the 90s are you still visiting regularly in it's 90s form?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    /.
    - LunaSea 2y ago
      The same Slashdot that is monetised through advertisement with 500M monthly ad impressions? Source: https://slashdotmedia.com/advertising-and-marketing-services/display-advertising/#sdm-by-the-numbers https://slashdotmedia.com/advertising-and-marketing-services...
      - Dalewyn 2y ago
        I mean, they still don't/can't handle Unicode.
  - layer8 2y ago
    Personal blogs. Smaller online retailers. Not a web site, but Usenet and mailing lists.
blueflow 2y ago
> This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear. 99.99% of your web.
- LunaSea 2y ago
  99.99% of the web, full stop.
  - blueflow 2y ago
    What about HN? What about make-firefox-private-again.com? Go through the HN frontpage and the links. Thats why i'm sure you are wrong.
    - LunaSea 2y ago
      > What about HN? The same HN that is heavily moderated by a paid employee and paid for by a multi-billion dollars net worth company called YCombinator?
      - lolinder 2y ago
        Y Combinator will continue to exist in a post-attention-economy world. They have proven themselves to be quite adaptable.
        LunaSea 2y ago
        > Y Combinator will continue to exist in a post-attention-economy world. They have proven themselves to be quite adaptable. That's not the question. Hacker News was used as an example of an old-school site that worked without monetisation. Which is clearly not the case.
        cml123 2y ago
        Surely HN doesn't require the existence of YC as a startup accelerator to exist, right? HN has to me survived because of its community and shared values wrt discussion. The moderation probably plays a role in it, but that's also easily decoupled from big money.
lelanthran 2y ago
> This just means that 99.99% of the web will instantly disappear. Fine by me. I'll browse the remaining 0.01%, search engines will be useful again and people won't be doom-scrolling all the time to see morons eating.

marcinzm 2y ago

That's not the alternative. The alternative is the death of most sites other than walled gardens like Meta and Amazon that own their own advertising end-to-end. Do you want the internet to be even more Meta controlled?

staplers 2y ago
The internet and humanity would exist fine without advertisers. History has proven this to be true.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  History doesn't move backward and the internet users of the mid 90s are not the internet users of now. Give the vast majority of internet users a choice between the internet of mid 90s (after that ads powered it all) and having nothing but large tech owned sites to browse I think you're delusional if you think they'd actually pick the former.
  - staplers 2y ago
    after that ads powered it all You must be browsing too many social media and news sites.
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      Of the top 100 sites in the US the only ones I see that don't have ads are corporate (ie: Microsoft, Capital One, etc.) and Wikipedia. Arguably the corporate ones are nothing but an ads for that brand. Even Home Depot has ads on its site. I don't think a 1% rate of no ads is selling your point. Even most of the smaller sites have Google ads on them in massive quantities.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Who is using tracking? Its not mom and pop websites. Its big corporations. I could care less if they lost money. The internet would be a healthier place without corporations trying to shift public discourse in their favor.