3 ms·

Good for these news corps , bad for consumers. Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

by maxdo 5mo ago

close04 5mo ago
Isn’t Facebook just as full of ads that can’t even be blocked by uBO? When I log into the FB account I haven’t really been using in more than a decade, it’s 99% “sponsored” stuff, ads and reels. Really I could scroll through pages and pages of things I never chose to have in my feed before I see any post from a friend. At least on a news website I get to read just the news and can block the ads.
- nozzlegear 5mo ago
  My Facebook feed is like 90% posts from local news and radio stations that I don't follow. I rarely see ads, just people posting ragebait comments under those local news articles.
  - close04 5mo ago
    The ads are "Sponsored" posts which are ads for anything you can think of. The rest are posts from pages I never liked or clicked on. Most have stupid names like "This is the best thing I've seen in at least 5 or 6 minutes" and post almost exclusively memes, a few are pages like Wccftech or XDA because FB remembers 15 years ago I clicked on them. The pattern I noticed just now is that for every sponsored post there are exactly 2 "non-ad" posts, usually both from random pages, but occasionally 1 of those posts will be from one of my real connections. Here and there there are some reels. My feed is 98% noise I don't care about nor want to see and no combination of ad and script blocking helps. It's worse than any news site.
    - nozzlegear 5mo ago
      > My feed is 98% noise I don't care about nor want to see and no combination of ad and script blocking helps. It's worse than any news site. I agree. I click on some of the news articles I see, since they're usually local to me, but it's still noise. I didn't actually follow any of those pages so I don't know why Facebook puts them in my feed (well, I do know why: some corporate schmuck A/B tested it and found it eked out more engagement on the level).
0rbiter 5mo ago
What a perverted logic. Like Meta won't bury you in ads and spy the living shit out of you while you're using.
- gruez 5mo ago
  Adding link tax doesn't change any of that.
throw0101c 5mo ago
> Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash . Most folks don't want to pay for news, but how do you pay journalists so you have an informed citizenry/electorate?
- choo-t 5mo ago
  Donation.
  - anigbrowl 5mo ago
    You're gonna have to expand on that. I'm not going to pull out my credit card to subscribe to every random small town paper or TV station that might have a newsworthy story I want to read every 5 years. Also, almost every news site I read is drowned in advertising, visual cruft and dark patterns (eg autoplay video that are deliberately annoying to close in order to maximize play time), and I don't know what a site is going to serve before I click on it.
    - choo-t 5mo ago
      You don't have to donate to all of them, or even donate at all as long as enough people donate. They tend to feature a call to donation instead of advertising, with prominent progress bar about how much they need this month/semester/year instead of advertising. Still visual crust, but much more palatable.
- jpadkins 5mo ago
  In the 90s, the business model was bundle the news with classifieds (classifieds were the main profit source for print newspapers, inline ads only covered the cost of paper, ink and distribution). The web unbundled news and classifieds, and we have been without a working business model ever since.

Good for these news corps , bad for consumers. Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

by maxdo 5mo ago

Good for these news corps , bad for consumers. Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

Isn’t Facebook just as full of ads that can’t even be blocked by uBO? When I log into the FB account I haven’t really been using in more than a decade, it’s 99% “sponsored” stuff, ads and reels. Really I could scroll through pages and pages of things I never chose to have in my feed before I see any post from a friend. At least on a news website I get to read just the news and can block the ads.

nozzlegear 5mo ago
My Facebook feed is like 90% posts from local news and radio stations that I don't follow. I rarely see ads, just people posting ragebait comments under those local news articles.
- close04 5mo ago
  The ads are "Sponsored" posts which are ads for anything you can think of. The rest are posts from pages I never liked or clicked on. Most have stupid names like "This is the best thing I've seen in at least 5 or 6 minutes" and post almost exclusively memes, a few are pages like Wccftech or XDA because FB remembers 15 years ago I clicked on them. The pattern I noticed just now is that for every sponsored post there are exactly 2 "non-ad" posts, usually both from random pages, but occasionally 1 of those posts will be from one of my real connections. Here and there there are some reels. My feed is 98% noise I don't care about nor want to see and no combination of ad and script blocking helps. It's worse than any news site.
  - nozzlegear 5mo ago
    > My feed is 98% noise I don't care about nor want to see and no combination of ad and script blocking helps. It's worse than any news site. I agree. I click on some of the news articles I see, since they're usually local to me, but it's still noise. I didn't actually follow any of those pages so I don't know why Facebook puts them in my feed (well, I do know why: some corporate schmuck A/B tested it and found it eked out more engagement on the level).

0rbiter 5mo ago

What a perverted logic. Like Meta won't bury you in ads and spy the living shit out of you while you're using.

gruez 5mo ago
Adding link tax doesn't change any of that.

throw0101c 5mo ago

> Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash . Most folks don't want to pay for news, but how do you pay journalists so you have an informed citizenry/electorate?

choo-t 5mo ago
Donation.
- anigbrowl 5mo ago
  You're gonna have to expand on that. I'm not going to pull out my credit card to subscribe to every random small town paper or TV station that might have a newsworthy story I want to read every 5 years. Also, almost every news site I read is drowned in advertising, visual cruft and dark patterns (eg autoplay video that are deliberately annoying to close in order to maximize play time), and I don't know what a site is going to serve before I click on it.
  - choo-t 5mo ago
    You don't have to donate to all of them, or even donate at all as long as enough people donate. They tend to feature a call to donation instead of advertising, with prominent progress bar about how much they need this month/semester/year instead of advertising. Still visual crust, but much more palatable.
jpadkins 5mo ago
In the 90s, the business model was bundle the news with classifieds (classifieds were the main profit source for print newspapers, inline ads only covered the cost of paper, ink and distribution). The web unbundled news and classifieds, and we have been without a working business model ever since.