11–20 of 111 posts
>We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons.
If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels).
If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at, what would that look like?
All the more reason we need adblockers and private-by-default browsing. It worries me that I can't use something like Privoxy on Android without rooting the device. An alternative would be a good privacy VPN with blocking/filtering of ads and trackers.
I've switched to using Firefox Focus as my main Android browser. It provides ad blocking and privacy features. For apps, I try to avoid ad-supported ones whenever possible, and am happy to pay for apps that I find useful.
>I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do. >We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels). If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at,…
My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when we encounter it.
Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's reading habits?
>I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do. >We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels). If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at,…
Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when we encounter it. Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's reading habits?
He's ok with subscriptions. However, his particular statement is in context of subscriptions interfering with providing free content.
As far as I can tell, if we want to have websites provide "free" content we have the following choices to that puzzle:
1) sponsored by advertisers
2) sponsored by government taxes (e.g. collect a new "web usage tax" from citizens to fund a CitizenBook as free alternative to Facebook ads and PublicNewsTimes as free alternative to New York Times paid subscription. I doubt that enough voters would support such a tax just to avoid ads.)
3) blockchain? cryptocurrency? (Not sure what Fred has seen with this option.)
Being against government intervention is naive. If the US did what the EU has done with allowing people to avoid being tracked the big tech companies would be nudged toward developing smarter business models. Maybe it's not necessary but it's foolish to dismiss government out of hand. Allowing your largest companies to compete over hijacking your public's attention is precisely the sort of thing that reeks of governm…
I'm thankful that my government has allowed innovation to continue. I'm glad they have represented my interests as a consumer by favoring technological growth over protection I neither want nor need.
All the more reason we need adblockers and private-by-default browsing. It worries me that I can't use something like Privoxy on Android without rooting the device. An alternative would be a good privacy VPN with blocking/filtering of ads and trackers.
I've switched to using Firefox Focus as my main Android browser. It provides ad blocking and privacy features. For apps, I try to avoid ad-supported ones whenever possible, and am happy to pay for apps that I find useful.
Being against government intervention is naive. If the US did what the EU has done with allowing people to avoid being tracked the big tech companies would be nudged toward developing smarter business models. Maybe it's not necessary but it's foolish to dismiss government out of hand. Allowing your largest companies to compete over hijacking your public's attention is precisely the sort of thing that reeks of governm…
I haven't seen any evidence to suggest this is the case. Do you know of any?
There are only two ways to break the duopoly: create your own massive medium like Facebook or work with publishers. Having worked in this industry, I think working with publishers is an impossible battle. The whole publishing world is rife with fraud and desperate attempts to increase page views. Most publishers cram their websites with ads. The number of low-content, click-baity websites is just staggering. Sometime…
We sell our own advertising space, self-host it, and use static jpgs for the graphics.
The ads are also targeted against the content (office design) and tend to be for products like office furniture. In a roundabout way this targets the readers but only because if they are on the site they are likely interested in learning about new products in their field.
Being against government intervention is naive. If the US did what the EU has done with allowing people to avoid being tracked the big tech companies would be nudged toward developing smarter business models. Maybe it's not necessary but it's foolish to dismiss government out of hand. Allowing your largest companies to compete over hijacking your public's attention is precisely the sort of thing that reeks of governm…
If the US did what the EU has done, I would probably have to wait another 50 years for products I use every day like - Google Maps - Google Speech Recognition - Google Photos Search - Google Home I'm thankful that my government has allowed innovation to continue. I'm glad they have represented my interests as a consumer by favoring technological growth over protection I neither want nor need.
You're welcome, by the way.
These people project that we'll be setting $105 billion on fire for digital ads by 2019. To put that in perspective, it's more than 10% of what we spend to provide health care to seniors and poor people via a mostly dysfunctional health care system: https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cms/...