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We’re dropping Google Ads
141–150 of 617 posts
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument boils down to "I feel entitled to something so I'll take it." I call it as I see it and am not falling for, "I didn't sign anything. I'm just going by what I signed up for years ago."
What was the agreement? Access for losing privacy and risking malware?
The point is that if you don’t like an ad-supported website, you should simply not read it, not strip the ads and read it anyway.
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Google tried that with Google Contributor [1], which they shut down mid-January, promising a replacement. I was on that program, paying $10 a month. They refunded anything that was left over. IIRC think they habitually refunded $5+. They also showed stats, and IIRC the websites I frequented the most frequently (Ars Technica, multiple times a day), still received only pennies. That's how cheap ads are. I started b…
> the websites I frequented the most frequently [...] still received only pennies. And what I don't understand is when I decide I want to subscribe to a newspaper, it's hundreds of dollars a year. They take pennies to serve me spam and malware, but if I want to pay them, it's 1000x the price. And don't get me started on how the Washington Post gives a $70 annual discount on a digital subscription if you agree to rece…
I think we might need to call that the Netflix theorem at some point:
"If you just ask for the fucking right price, people will pay and great original content can arise"
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have the right to render your bits and bytes however I wish. Legally I have no idea. But ethically/morally, I'd argue you don't. By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement to exchange your ad views for content and you're breaking that agreement. Doesn't feel right to me.
I'm more frustrated they're wasting my bandwidth, slowing down load times. If their ads were text-only and not running trackers to follow me on the internet I wouldn't bother with ad-blockers/tracker-blockers.
They have to waste your bandwidth in order to pay for the content you came to read. If you’re not happy with that, don’t read it.
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society has many unwritten agreements. You don't like ads, I get it. You take without compensating because you want to. Don't just shrug and say, "no notice was posted." Own it. Say, "I felt like taking this so I took it."
And this isn't an unwritten agreement that this member of society is even aware of so... so much for that aspect of society. Or as my grandfather used to say, you can wish in one hand and crap in the other, one of them will fill up faster. That unwritten agreement is worth everything its written on. What exactly am I taking by not viewing ads? I view it the opposite, ads take away my attention and time and worst of a…
I hate the ad model too, but you're stealing bandwidth and hosting. Delivering those pictures and text comes from somewhere, and ads are how they're hoping to pay for it. Justify it to yourself how you want, but it's true.
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Google tried that with Google Contributor [1], which they shut down mid-January, promising a replacement. I was on that program, paying $10 a month. They refunded anything that was left over. IIRC think they habitually refunded $5+. They also showed stats, and IIRC the websites I frequented the most frequently (Ars Technica, multiple times a day), still received only pennies. That's how cheap ads are. I started b…
I used to work on that project. I'm sad that this happened, but mostly I'm annoyed at the public -- the problem turns out to be, people don't want to pay, not even that tiny amount. It's definitely coming back, though. Just not in quite the same form.
> the problem turns out to be, people don't want to pay, not even that tiny amount.
No, the problem is it didn't work with adblockers. I really want to pay for the content I read, I just am not willing to risk being outbid on the chance to view a page without spam by someone trying to deliver malware.
My current solution is to buy pre-paid visa cards to pay for online news subscriptions, which is a huge pain, but necessary after finding out that newspapers will continue to charge even expired or cancelled credit cards. Even after I explicitly cancelled a credit card to try to stop recurring billing, the credit card company will helpfully keep accepting those charges.
I'm desperately looking for a solution to support journalism that simply lets me pay to read articles for exactly what advertisers would pay to bombard me with crap.
Google Contributor was SO close to being a solution. All it had to do was work with ad blockers.
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#147You're the first armchair philosopher to reply with a non-equivalent real world analogy looking to trip me up! Congratulations.
Here's a digital analogy for you. Suppose I: 1) Disable my ad blocker. 2) "Open Link in New Tab" 3) Wait for my browser to finish requesting that data from the server 4) Close the tab without ever looking at it. Is that unethical? Is it unethical for me to decide I don't want to read a webpage after requesting it? Should the "open in new tab" feature always force a tab switch against my wishes, so ensure I'm not ripp…
If you're doing it for the sole purpose of wasting their money then it's pretty unethical. That's why in law they always talk about intent.
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#148For smaller websites (also referred to the democratization of the internet), I am sure many people may (or have) feel (felt) guilty for using an ad-blocker. Then you see all those shitty ads for: - finding a russian bride - getting rich through some millionaires secret - anti-aging remedies - adware and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is los…
With the notable exception of AdBlock Plus (which has its own problems) the big ad block plugins tend to be philosophically opposed to all ads of any type, quality or quantity. This is a bummer for sites like ours where the ads are sold directly to advertisers (no network) and are relevant to the audience and subject matter.
If you are already directly selling the ads, why not host them on your own domain? Then they won't be blocked automatically. If you still see people going out of their way to add site-specific rules to their ad blocker, the ads probably weren't as relevant or unintrusive as you thought.
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#149Off topic: this is the first time I've heard of GroundUp, and I really like the "Dear Editor" format of the comment page on this site.
I'm used to seeing mainstream newspaper websites with downright toxic commenting environments, so seeing "Dear Editor" followed by a thought-out response is very refreshing. Maybe they have a "better" readership/screening process/whatever, but I think this higher quality commenting behavior is in part due to how GroundUp has simply tweaked the wording of the comment box interface - by framing the comment with "Dear Editor".
Re: We’re dropping Google Ads
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Google tried that with Google Contributor [1], which they shut down mid-January, promising a replacement. I was on that program, paying $10 a month. They refunded anything that was left over. IIRC think they habitually refunded $5+. They also showed stats, and IIRC the websites I frequented the most frequently (Ars Technica, multiple times a day), still received only pennies. That's how cheap ads are. I started b…
I remember the pirate Bay team pushing something like that way back when.