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From TFA: > If anything, the need has increased as social media and changing advertising landscapes have made shallow, sensationalistic reporting all the more

From TFA: > If anything, the need has increased as social media and changing advertising landscapes have made shallow, sensationalistic reporting all the more lucrative. And your comment: > There were people among us who would gladly pay for this kind of coverage It's Friday so I'm going to be optimistic. I'd like to think (maybe fantasise) that we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content. There are some promising shoots, from paid newsletters (e.g. stratechery plus [0]) to search (e.g. Kagi [1]). There are early signs that Browsers are coming back as a topic with Chrome's inexorable slide into increasingly obfuscated ways to slurp data [2] and the (very) early promise of e.g. ladybird [3] as the first genuinely new, ground-up browser for years. It's never going to be mainstream. As someone once wrote here, the economy is a machine that incessantly drives cost down. Orthodoxy says you can't get cheaper than free - but that presumes measuring cost solely in monetary terms. Widen the definition of "cost" though and what we have now is definitely not free: we pay with loss of privacy, social disfunction and mental health degradation among others. Challenging the commercial behemoths who benefit from the "free internet" myth is a massive task. Perhaps unassailable. If there's an upside, it's that the long tail - where quality, paid for content and services might thrive - is simultaneously meaningful enough to support a small but thriving industry, and small enough to be uninteresting to the 1000lb gorillas. That may be fantasy per above. But I'd rather cling to something hopeful. [0] https://stratechery.com/stratechery-plus/ https://stratechery.com/stratechery-plus/ [1] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41391412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41391412 [3] https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/ -- EDIT: fixed grammar.

wickedsight 2y ago
> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content I'm a bit more pessimistic I guess. Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform. Now, Netflix is starting to fill up with 'sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content' and they really seem to want to become ad-fuelled. I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. For a while I thought that blockchain/crypto might be a good way to fix this. But nobody seems to be building blockchain stuff to do the right thing, they only do it to rip people off.
- throwaway237289 2y ago
  > I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. > I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. You mean you want... the cable TV bundle again? Literally the thing that the article rails against, because cable TV inherently produces "sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o'clock-news reporting." Amazing.
  - wickedsight 2y ago
    > the cable TV bundle again? No, that's why I didn't write that. Spotify allows nearly everyone to put their music on the platform. Just this week I listened to some music with <1000 plays that I found in a random video somewhere. I choose what I want to listen to and a part of the fee I pay gets transferred to the creator. I don't need to buy 100 different subscriptions to labels and musicians, it's centralized. (Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I'm not using it as an example of a perfect end goal, I'm using it as an example of the only thing right now that gets somewhat in the neighborhood. And in the industry there are multiple platforms who distribute mostly the same content with only some 'exclusive' releases. Which is what I'd like to see for the web.)
    - alisonatwork 2y ago
      Is that really how Spotify works? What if you listened only to that one creator, would all of the artists' portion of your subscription go to that creator? I was under the impression that with Spotify everybody's subscription goes into a big pool of money which is then distributed between all of the artists based on total plays. So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to and who don't need my support anyway. This is why I prefer to use Bandcamp, where I know there is a direct relationship between what I buy and who gets the money for that.
Buttons840 2y ago
I've wondered if things might get bad enough to enable a fork of the web. It could happen 2 ways: 1) A truly user focused browser is created, the fabled "user agent". The ad-focused web doesn't support that browser, but websites that care about users do support it. Thus, people who want more than ad-drivel use the niche browser and have access to a web full of weird and non-profit-focused content. 2) Possibly a fork of the underlying technologies. Maybe the browser mentioned uses incompatible technologies or protocols. Maybe this new web is based on something other than HTML and JavaScript. Probably not. It's a wild idea. It's probably too hard to do better than the existing technologies, and the effort required for such a fork seems ever less likely in this time of dissipating focus and hobbies.
- krapp 2y ago
  It already exists, it's called Geminispace: https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
  - eikenberry 2y ago
    Gemini is still client/server, so it encourages the same problems of scale that HTTP has where you can't afford to run a server unless you have a source of income. IE. it would get infested by adtech the same as HTTP if it got popular enough. IMO the only way to get something that wouldn't suffer the same fate would be to make it a peer-to-peer application where everyone using the client application was also hosting a server.
- codersfocus 2y ago
  web3 is that. Pay for content / services you use through micro transactions.
  - nullsmack 2y ago
    "web3" is nothing but another crypto-scam.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
phendrenad2 2y ago
I never believed that internet advertising was worth what it supposedly is. Stuff like this seems to confirm it for me: https://www.adexchanger.com/on-tv-and-video/googles-second-worse-wave-of-alleged-ad-fraud-means-advertisers-need-full-transparency/ https://www.adexchanger.com/on-tv-and-video/googles-second-w... I think internet advertising is massively overvalued, the initial bubble happened when the click fraud detection tools were nonexistent, and because Google hasn't been changed, everyone assumes their valuation is right and correct.
- autoexec 2y ago
  internet advertising as a means to sell garbage is overvalued, but it enables a system of pervasive surveillance that allows governments and companies to exploit your data offline too. As long as the tracking continued, the buying and selling of the most intimate details of your life would still be a massive and growing industry even if no one ever put an ad on a webpage again. Advertising is also effective at manipulating public perception/opinion though so it's not going anywhere either way.
widowlark 2y ago
++++++ to Kagi.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
I kind of like the OutsideOnline model where I pay for the apps (trailforks gaiagps) but also get access to decent content. Though I guess that is close to the old cable TV bundle model that sucked. I pay for Kagi, NextDNS, Youtube to keep ads at bay. If there was a bundled content network beyond just Youtube infomercials posing as content it would be even more appealing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Terretta 2y ago
People would pay for far more if charged a nominal markup over what their readership is considered worth when subsidized by ads. But no, when subscribing, they're expected to pay 10x or 100x or 1000x their ad-impression worth. Subscription aggregation (a Hulu of things to read, like the firm Apple purchased* and made into Apple News+) is one answer. Another would be a IWP (In-Web Purchase) browser standard like DNT except its an "I'm willing to buy the ad slots on this page at the median CPM" token, coupled to something like the mythical micro-transactions settlement schemes of yore that would now actually be possible on top of systems handling IAP. * Next Issue aka Texture. I was a subscriber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_(app)
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Is it that different once all the additional costs are taken into account? Payment processing / refunds / customer service etc etc that you need when you're taking payments, vs just pasting some Javascript on a page and giving Google your bank account details?

wickedsight 2y ago

> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content I'm a bit more pessimistic I guess. Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform. Now, Netflix is starting to fill up with 'sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content' and they really seem to want to become ad-fuelled. I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. For a while I thought that blockchain/crypto might be a good way to fix this. But nobody seems to be building blockchain stuff to do the right thing, they only do it to rip people off.

throwaway237289 2y ago
> I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. > I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. You mean you want... the cable TV bundle again? Literally the thing that the article rails against, because cable TV inherently produces "sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o'clock-news reporting." Amazing.
- wickedsight 2y ago
  > the cable TV bundle again? No, that's why I didn't write that. Spotify allows nearly everyone to put their music on the platform. Just this week I listened to some music with <1000 plays that I found in a random video somewhere. I choose what I want to listen to and a part of the fee I pay gets transferred to the creator. I don't need to buy 100 different subscriptions to labels and musicians, it's centralized. (Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I'm not using it as an example of a perfect end goal, I'm using it as an example of the only thing right now that gets somewhat in the neighborhood. And in the industry there are multiple platforms who distribute mostly the same content with only some 'exclusive' releases. Which is what I'd like to see for the web.)
  - alisonatwork 2y ago
    Is that really how Spotify works? What if you listened only to that one creator, would all of the artists' portion of your subscription go to that creator? I was under the impression that with Spotify everybody's subscription goes into a big pool of money which is then distributed between all of the artists based on total plays. So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to and who don't need my support anyway. This is why I prefer to use Bandcamp, where I know there is a direct relationship between what I buy and who gets the money for that.

Buttons840 2y ago

I've wondered if things might get bad enough to enable a fork of the web. It could happen 2 ways: 1) A truly user focused browser is created, the fabled "user agent". The ad-focused web doesn't support that browser, but websites that care about users do support it. Thus, people who want more than ad-drivel use the niche browser and have access to a web full of weird and non-profit-focused content. 2) Possibly a fork of the underlying technologies. Maybe the browser mentioned uses incompatible technologies or protocols. Maybe this new web is based on something other than HTML and JavaScript. Probably not. It's a wild idea. It's probably too hard to do better than the existing technologies, and the effort required for such a fork seems ever less likely in this time of dissipating focus and hobbies.

krapp 2y ago
It already exists, it's called Geminispace: https://geminiprotocol.net/ https://geminiprotocol.net/
- eikenberry 2y ago
  Gemini is still client/server, so it encourages the same problems of scale that HTTP has where you can't afford to run a server unless you have a source of income. IE. it would get infested by adtech the same as HTTP if it got popular enough. IMO the only way to get something that wouldn't suffer the same fate would be to make it a peer-to-peer application where everyone using the client application was also hosting a server.
codersfocus 2y ago
web3 is that. Pay for content / services you use through micro transactions.
- nullsmack 2y ago
  "web3" is nothing but another crypto-scam.
- Dylan16807 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

phendrenad2 2y ago

I never believed that internet advertising was worth what it supposedly is. Stuff like this seems to confirm it for me: https://www.adexchanger.com/on-tv-and-video/googles-second-worse-wave-of-alleged-ad-fraud-means-advertisers-need-full-transparency/ https://www.adexchanger.com/on-tv-and-video/googles-second-w... I think internet advertising is massively overvalued, the initial bubble happened when the click fraud detection tools were nonexistent, and because Google hasn't been changed, everyone assumes their valuation is right and correct.

autoexec 2y ago
internet advertising as a means to sell garbage is overvalued, but it enables a system of pervasive surveillance that allows governments and companies to exploit your data offline too. As long as the tracking continued, the buying and selling of the most intimate details of your life would still be a massive and growing industry even if no one ever put an ad on a webpage again. Advertising is also effective at manipulating public perception/opinion though so it's not going anywhere either way.

widowlark 2y ago

++++++ to Kagi.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

I kind of like the OutsideOnline model where I pay for the apps (trailforks gaiagps) but also get access to decent content. Though I guess that is close to the old cable TV bundle model that sucked. I pay for Kagi, NextDNS, Youtube to keep ads at bay. If there was a bundled content network beyond just Youtube infomercials posing as content it would be even more appealing.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Terretta 2y ago

People would pay for far more if charged a nominal markup over what their readership is considered worth when subsidized by ads. But no, when subscribing, they're expected to pay 10x or 100x or 1000x their ad-impression worth. Subscription aggregation (a Hulu of things to read, like the firm Apple purchased* and made into Apple News+) is one answer. Another would be a IWP (In-Web Purchase) browser standard like DNT except its an "I'm willing to buy the ad slots on this page at the median CPM" token, coupled to something like the mythical micro-transactions settlement schemes of yore that would now actually be possible on top of systems handling IAP. * Next Issue aka Texture. I was a subscriber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_(app)

robertlagrant 2y ago
Is it that different once all the additional costs are taken into account? Payment processing / refunds / customer service etc etc that you need when you're taking payments, vs just pasting some Javascript on a page and giving Google your bank account details?