421–430 of 617 posts
How is that working so far? For all the tracking Google does through Google analytics, Google search, and the Play Android framework, you'd think ads would be a lot better by now.
What's funny is that Google seems quick to fire publishers but it's never so quick to fire advertisers.
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NYT's digital arm has a paywall and their digital revenue is something over a half-billion dollars per year. The group that WSJ is part of, NewsCorp's "news and information services" unit, has annual revenues well over a billion dollars. I'm pretty sure that should cover their server bills.
The point is that it is winners-take-all now. There are a few winners with strong businesses, like the ones you mentioned, but it is not a broadly strong industry. That was not the case with print, where the local paper had some advantages in their home market. This seems to be kind of just how technology industries work (at least right now): you don't have a broadly strong market for "social news feed", you have Fac…
But sure, when you reduce distribution cost to zero, you remove a lot of local advantage. And this isn't new. Improvements in music distribution, starting with the wax cylinder, have been slowly killing the local market for musicians. Why wait until the evening go a few blocks and pay to hear a so-so local band when you can play an amazing one in your house right now?
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Everyone needs to aggressively block ads so that there's more motivation to develop better monitization approaches.
Careful what you wish for. I bet the Verizons and Comcasts of the world have some ideas for monetizing web content. Buy the "sports package" and you get ESPN on your TV and access to sports blogs on the web.
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Again: if they choose one you’re not happy with, you’re free to decide not to read the content. Otherwise I don’t see how the situation is different from not paying for a meal in a restaurant if you’re not happy with the payment methods offered.
Actually, if the restaurant only accepts payment by credit card, you are free to not pay. That's the concept of legal tender - if they want to demand payment of a debt (i.e. after you finish the meal) from you with backing by law, they _must_ accept legal tender. If they only accept credit card payments, they can't use the law to make you pay.
That is a myth; even the US Treasury Department outright says so.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...
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By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement to exchange your ad views for content and you're breaking that agreement. C'mon, you know better. What agreement? If your answer contains the word "unspoken", I'll let you in on the real definition of that word in this context: "non-existent". I didn't sign anything, no notice was posted. The only agreement I have is that I ask for data, and should your server d…
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."
Could you please answer the question: are you accepting actual legal liability for users' computers you infect with malware from ads? If not, you have lost any moral argument.
I think this speaks for 1000s and 1000s of small(er) website publishers. All squeezed by Google. For example, we run a website having millions of page views a month. And similarly frustrated. If we can divide the slot between 10 advertisers directly, we might make much more. Perhaps even double than what Adsense pays. The only reason, why we don't attempt that is time and effort getting directed in an unwanted direct…
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You can't block ads in Facebook's native mobile app. Their communications are probably encrypted and their ads are probably served on the same connection as everything else. Which means that either now or in the future you won't be able to modify your /etc/hosts to solve this problem either (assuming you have a rooted phone or tablet of course). The only option you'll have will be to crack Facebook's client and modif…
> The only option you'll have will be to crack Facebook's client and modify its behavior, which will be copyright infringement. It wouldn't be. You have the right to do whatever you want with the bits on your computer, you just don't have the right to redistribute all of those bits. Copyright is about distribution, not about modification (well, it is in part, such a modified work would be classed as a 'derived work'…
Of course you can't sell your soul in an EULA and there's always this gray area where users might not be held accountable for selling their souls with a single click on "I agree".
But you're saying that copyright law refers to distribution, but well, you can't have that binary distributed legally unless you agreed to that EULA. And if you haven't agreed to that EULA, then by using the app it's copyright infringement.
The other problem is that most users won't be able to crack their own binaries and distributing or even downloading cracked binaries from the Internet will be copyright infringement.
Even so, lets assume that an easy to use tutorial will be provided, such that somehow users aren't violating any laws. Well, this is why the industry is pushing for DRM, which ends up getting used not only for encrypting media, but also for protecting binaries. And in some parts of the world it is already illegal to crack DRM.
And if not, I see the industry winning this argument and pushing for legislation protecting them, because truthfully they can point to people that crack binaries in order to freeload and pirate stuff for free - even if such arguments will be morally and factually wrong, they'll win by those arguments with the right lobbying power being exerted. It has been happening for some time now.
> You have the right to do whatever you want with the bits on your computer
Sure, if you don't like how the Facebook app works, you can choose to not use it.
There's no way you can package this argument as to make it right.
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Actually, if the restaurant only accepts payment by credit card, you are free to not pay. That's the concept of legal tender - if they want to demand payment of a debt (i.e. after you finish the meal) from you with backing by law, they _must_ accept legal tender. If they only accept credit card payments, they can't use the law to make you pay.
> ... they _must_ accept legal tender That is a myth; even the US Treasury Department outright says so. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...