Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can't even buy appliances designed perform their function well You can't research good appliances either online, because the SERPs are stuffed with SEO-ed blogs and sometimes industry magazines, monetized with Amazon affiliates or other networks, with titles like "5 best dishwashers in 2022". Unless you know someone in the industry or offline with knowledge you don't know what to buy. This is noticeable in many…
One market where this has always been a problem is tools. So almost 20 years ago we were told in shop class that the industry magazines and reviews were basically all paid for by manufacturers. The solution we learned was to always buy the cheapest option first. If it breaks or fails to meet your needs understand how and why and then move on to a more costly tool that you can demonstrate is better in the specific way…
Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
261–270 of 844 posts
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons was that people actually liked ads and wanted them. This line of reasoning has completely disappeared from the mainstream. I think that's a problem for the ad companies. They have not yet lost the war, but it seems they have lost the argument.
The funny part is I remember a time when even on HN the majority defended ads for a myriad of reasons.. There's quite a lot of HN readers who work for businesses that derive most of their revenue from ads (Google, Facebook, content companies, etc) so there's always going to be people here who are willing to stand up for ads. The famous Upton Sinclair quote is quite appropriate - "It is difficult to get a man to under…
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#263Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? Do I owe you for your reply? Do you owe me for this reply? You work out how we commoditize every interaction into tiny micropayments so MBAs are happy with our time allocations and let me know. Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster.
> Why don't I get paid for my HN posts? That's between you and HN and has nothing to do with my consumption of your comment. > Ads were tried, and it's been an absolute fucking disaster. No one likes ads, but expecting free content is silly.
Oh the irony! Likewise, the agreement between the content company and the ad company has nothing to do with my consumption of the content. The content company agrees to show ads for the ad company. The ad company agrees to make ads for the content company to show and pay them to show the ads. I make no agreement with either. I download the content and choose not to download the ad. It’s my bandwidth.
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about making content that people actually feel like they obtain value in their lives from. They'd pay for that. Instead we have the majority of content creators engaged in an arms race to hijack your attention and produce the most outrageous, rather than best, content possible because more outrage = more eyeballs = more ads.
> How about making content that people actually feel like they obtain value in their lives from. Not believing the content has value does not actually give you the right to get it for free.
My point is that content has evolved steadily into becoming something that a great deal of the population actually feels bad about consuming. They feel bad about losing hours on Youtube clicking video after video, but they can't stop because their brains have been hijacked by the fine interplay between algorithm and content creator driving this madness. Nobody would pay for this content if they had to. They don't event _want_ to watch it really.
If content platforms were forced to have a subscriber model. People would only pay for what they actually _want_ access to.
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#266Firefox+addons seem to work best for blocking ads which is why I am increasingly concerned about that browser being marginalized.
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#267Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#268No one likes ads, but the belief that you're owed content for free is absurd.
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#269I've had YouTube Premium since its inception. Whenever I'm around someone else who puts on a free-tier version of YouTube its rather shocking how frequent and intrusive the commercial ads are.
Also, when I accidentally open a video in a private browsing window where I'm not logged in. DAMN IT WHY IS ALL THESE ADS.
Although, I have to say that the ads on YouTube were some of the most targeted of any site, and I would often sit through them.
Re: Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web
#270>autoplaying videos I'm still looking for a block list that simply removes all video content from various franchise and local news sites. It is rarely actually relevant to the article, and is often vastly less information dense.