Problems coming for online publishing
blogs.harvard.edu
Problems coming for online publishing
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Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#2Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal had an Editorial piece yesterday that Facebook should pay for news and media content to increase its trust. There is a lot of self-interest in much of the the commercial-scale hating on Facebook. This is the article although it may be paywalled (WSJ uses variable restriction based on user prediction ironically enough): https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-public-reckoning-1521...
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#3Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal had an Editorial piece yesterday that Facebook should pay for news and media content to increase its trust. There is a lot of self-interest in much of the the commercial-scale hating on Facebook. This is the article although it may be paywalled (WSJ uses variable restriction based on user prediction ironically enough): https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-public-reckoning-1521…
Media is definitely taking the chance to try and kick Facebook to death, and often for selfish reasons. That shouldn’t distract us from the very real fact that Facebook is a terrible value proposition for users of their service, untrustworthy, and even dangerous. Facebook deserves to be kicked to death, even if the media wants it for their own reasons.
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#4This is a rather asinine line of argumentation.
(a) The New York Time's newsroom and editorial staff are rather well-separated from their business department which makes decision about ad tech on their website. If you don't believe me, see this paragraph from a recent article at The Atlantic, which operates by the same principle:
As you read this article on The Atlantic, roughly three dozen ad trackers are watching you, adding your interest in this story to profiles they maintain on your online behavior. (If you want to know more about who’s watching you, download Ghostery, a browser extension that tracks and can block these “third-party” trackers.)[0]
That's a reporter arguing against the financial interests of his employer. And they are not going to fire him.
(b) There's one big difference between Facebook and generic advertising technology: the New York Times doesn't require you to sign up. Every time you change devices or delete cookies, the ad targeting starts from a blank slate. And while some websites try to get you to sign up, it's trivially easy to switch to a new account every once in a while.
(c) Ad tracking knows which websites I visit. Facebook knows which nude parties I attended in 2005
(d) The New York Times has actually turned to subscription revenue as its main source of income. While the split used to be 50/50, it is not much closer to 75/25 (subscriptions/ads). The "if you're not paying, you're the product..." cliché is getting tired anyway. But its premise simply doesn't apply to the New York Times.
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/data-...
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#5The title should end with "publishers", not "pubs".
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#6The title should end with "publishers", not "pubs".
There is an 80 character title field limit on the HN input field so the title had to be shortened.
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#7If the backlash lasts long enough to really change the landscape of non explicit permission data gathering then an opportunity for hacker news one million jobs may arise.
How much is my data worth? I’ll sign a buncb of revenue sharing agreements with YouTube, Google, Mozilla, Facebook etc if the price is right. I know that HN has a lot of really heavy pro privacy advocates but I hope you can recognize a lot of people don’t share those concerns and would happyily welcome a little passive income stream in their lives.
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#8This is a rather asinine line of argumentation. (a) The New York Time's newsroom and editorial staff are rather well-separated from their business department which makes decision about ad tech on their website. If you don't believe me, see this paragraph from a recent article at The Atlantic, which operates by the same principle: As you read this article on The Atlantic, roughly three dozen ad trackers are watching y…
> While the split used to be 50/50, it is not much closer to 75/25 (subscriptions/ads).
Thank Trump for that. This didn't happen naturally for them and was only made possible by the election of Trump. Its unlikely that this is going to sustainable for them beyond trump presidency.
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#9I think adtech companies are at greater risk than publishers. Publishers will move to a subscription model and most of them will be okay. A whole lot of adtech companies’ entire business model is sleazy at best and outright criminal at worst.
Re: Problems coming for online publishing
#10I am rather skeptical of the effectiveness of online advertising, despite all the tracking and profiling. I see companies like Google and Facebook post bumper profits, yet I see users becoming smarter at avoiding ads. Something doesn't quite add up, and because the validity of clicks is shrouded in mystery, it's not difficult for the platform owners to play dirty. I have had very little success with online ads for my app (https://usebx.com/app), yet what worked really well for acquiring users was releasing a JS library for free (https://osrec.github.io/currencyFormatter.js/)