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The issue is that I'm generally willing to watch some ads for youtube or such. I get that it's expensive to host that and I get my time/money's worth. But then

The issue is that I'm generally willing to watch some ads for youtube or such. I get that it's expensive to host that and I get my time/money's worth. But then I load a random recipe site or code docs site and get the page 40% covered by shitty ads for near-pornographic content and I install an ad blocker. So many sites just cramming ads into every single square inch of their sites ruins it for almost everyone else. I get a visceral reaction to banner ads now. I totally understand the economics of it, and the fact that you can't bootstrap something like Youtube by charging for it, but that's just how it is. It's a shame that the responsible sites are getting painted with the same brush, but so much of the internet has gotten so insanely greedy with ads that there's just no other choice.

ranger_danger 2y ago
but why are you ok with watching video ads on youtube, but static images on doc sites go too far?
- noirbot 2y ago
  A. Most of the ads on sites aren't static and many are full video embeds now. B. Because I get that the cost to deliver me a 30 minute video is fairly expensive even for Google. Most text websites, the cost in bandwidth to deliver the ads is orders of magnitude more than the site itself. I host text based websites and they cost literally a dollar a month. The overhead of my single visit to a text/image site is a tiny fraction of the cost of me watching even a 5 minute YT video. If you build a blog or generally text-first site in a sensible way, the cost of a single visitor is ~free. Making me see and load 4-5 ads at any time is just abusive. As was said elsewhere, if you think your content is good enough to cost money, then try charging for it, but there really just aren't that many people talented enough to successfully demand living income for writing or recipes or other mundane stuff people put on the internet. We could wish for a world where it's easier to frictionlessly give someone a penny or such for reading their site and let that add up for those who get the views, but that's just not a thing right now. The ability to have a total stranger see your work even once is the outlier that the modern era as brought. People have jumped from that to "and thus I deserve to live off of this" and that just doesn't follow. Even making a pittance is unlikely and that's still better than any of us was likely to get even 20 years ago.

ranger_danger 2y ago

but why are you ok with watching video ads on youtube, but static images on doc sites go too far?

noirbot 2y ago
A. Most of the ads on sites aren't static and many are full video embeds now. B. Because I get that the cost to deliver me a 30 minute video is fairly expensive even for Google. Most text websites, the cost in bandwidth to deliver the ads is orders of magnitude more than the site itself. I host text based websites and they cost literally a dollar a month. The overhead of my single visit to a text/image site is a tiny fraction of the cost of me watching even a 5 minute YT video. If you build a blog or generally text-first site in a sensible way, the cost of a single visitor is ~free. Making me see and load 4-5 ads at any time is just abusive. As was said elsewhere, if you think your content is good enough to cost money, then try charging for it, but there really just aren't that many people talented enough to successfully demand living income for writing or recipes or other mundane stuff people put on the internet. We could wish for a world where it's easier to frictionlessly give someone a penny or such for reading their site and let that add up for those who get the views, but that's just not a thing right now. The ability to have a total stranger see your work even once is the outlier that the modern era as brought. People have jumped from that to "and thus I deserve to live off of this" and that just doesn't follow. Even making a pittance is unlikely and that's still better than any of us was likely to get even 20 years ago.