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The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

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Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#171

Post by skydhash »

zer8k wrote: post #150
skydhash wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's free in the sense, ideally, you should contribute something. In the case of ads - it's your eyes. No, it's not. Either something is free or is not. Either I chose to pay or I don't. If it's not free and I choose to pay, I can enjoy the service. If I choose not to pay, they can refuse me. If it's free, and I pay (donate), good. If I decide not to pay, it's on you to bear the cost. I don't have any obligation to…

> If I decide not to pay, it's on you to bear the cost. I don't have any obligation to you. That is not how the actual world functions. This sort of anarcho-primitivism does not lead itself to large scale, widely available, systems. In society you pay taxes for services you perceive as (locally) free. On the internet you pay with ads (at least for now). You are correct that you can exploit a free service. In some ser…

> In society you pay taxes for services you perceive as (locally) free. On the internet you pay with ads (at least for now).

The government also knows that it's the working part of society that pays taxes. And it has the incentive to make that part the biggest percentage of the population. I don't see the same trend with these big platforms. They don't want to provide a service, they want to sell ads. And as such, I'm not their clientele.

If you really wish to provide something for free, but you don't have the means to do so, you can ask for donations or provide extra benefits for people that are willing to pay for it. If no one is willing, then that just means it's not valuable for anyone at the price it costs.

The moment you start selling ads, your priority is to grow your audience, so you can sell more ads. Not to provide a better service or product, in exchange for money. Because the former is easy (add dark patterns) while the latter is more difficult.

IMO, Apple has the right strategy. Provide a good ecosystem, that you can use by buying the hardware. If you don't and try to use other means of access (Hackintosh) don't blame them for stuff not working. Microsoft could have done the same and only supported valid Windows licenses, but they wanted to capture the market. And now they're showing ads driving down the quality.

> Nothing is stopping you from driving these services into the ground. And you will.

Nothing is eternal. If you grow beyond what is sustainable because of investors' money and then find out your product is not so valuable, and you pivot to dark patterns and ads, then yes, it's a failure. And if YouTube did not exist, maybe we would have something similar to Wikipedia for videos, with a drastic improvement in quality.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#172

Post by breakingrules »

gleenn wrote: post #5

His two examples are Twitter and Reddit whose ad revenue is dying because those two companies have made huge blunders. Elon seems to almost actively be killing Twitter (which the poster even states). Reddit screwed Apollo and then many of the most popular subreddits protested and did things like show porn on otherwise usually SFW content to prevent Reddit from showing ads and thus killing their profits. Those are big…

[dead]

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#173

Post by andreygrehov »

warbeforepeace wrote: post #165
andreygrehov wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think Hackernews would do better or worse if they introduced a paid tier that put your comment above others every time? If a paid tier alone puts your comment above others, then the result is negative. However, I do not believe Twitter's algorithm simply ranks by the presence of a blue checkmark. It is a signal amongst other signals and not a sole criteria. My feed has improved after all the changes, which i…

Truth social exists to spread propaganda from china and russia.

I'm not saying or asking what Truth social is doing today (this is subjective), I'm explaining what was the driving force to create Truth social in the first place.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#174

Post by andreygrehov »

croes wrote: post #157
andreygrehov wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Elon is still the richest person on the planet. If you thought otherwise, you might want to reconsider your understanding of how wealth is both preserved and accumulated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> how wealth is both preserved and accumulated By shifting your debts on the company you bought with that debt, so other people take the risks of his failures.

Honestly, it sounds like you are cheering and rooting for him to fail with Twitter.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#175

Post by paulryanrogers »

andreygrehov wrote: post #130
paulryanrogers wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving away lucrative advertising, replacing with much less sustainable premium subscriptions. Then there's cutting the moderation and safety teams to the bone.

I thought everybody hates advertising, no? Let's do a thought experiment and imagine Elon brought more advertising on Twitter. Everyone would bullshit on him for that. In reality, we have the opposite situation. There is less advertising. On top of that, ad revenue is now being shared with creators. What's bad about it?

My day job is helping sell ad-free, subscriptions, so I'm a fan of the idea. That said, Elon is driving away the lucrative advertisers and not dropping ads entirely. Even Blue subscribers still get ads, albeit fewer.

At their scale and in their market the premium subscriptions model doesn't appear to work, unless their costs can be reduced much, much further.

Sharing revenue with creators is great. Not everything being done is bad. On the whole it just doesn't seem sustainable and sometimes even petty and foolish. Almost appears as if he's trying to bankrupt the company.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#176

Post by rchaud »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #113
makeitdouble wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of ad based rising companies do you see ? My first thought was Google, and it's started to plateau in the recent years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOGL/alphabet/rev... . Meta also took a dive, and while it was from a sharp turn of the business focus, I'd argue it comes from an attempt to avoid staying on a stagnating market.

YouTube has its own internal micro economy of channels, networks of channels, etc that is thriving from ad revenue. Binging with Babish was “a guy cooking food from tv” a few years ago and is now an entire platform of channels. I think those companies can all be considered separately from the operator of the marketplace.

That's just syndication, though, is it different from having a bunch of blogs that cross-promote content but are ultimately reliant on Google Search and Google Ads to bring in traffic and revenue?

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#177

Post by andreygrehov »

warbeforepeace wrote: post #163
lettergram wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep asking this because I don’t understand - how is Elon “killing” twitter? I’ve frankly not seen any difference, at all. If anything there’s slightly more activity

Its becoming a far right cesspool. And its making even less money than the little that it did before. Most people i know don't use it anymore.

Due to an excessive censorship prior to the acquisition, Twitter was a far left cesspool. All these users are still active after the acquisition, however many right-wing accounts were reinstated. Consequently, from the political perspective, Twitter is now more balanced than ever. One can be sure of this by tuning their feed – follow a politically diverse groups of people.

> Most people i know don't use it anymore.

Twitter hasn't really changed much. If you know people who no longer want to use the platform, then their decision is likely driven by the propaganda. In a way, it's not their personal decision, but the result of influence from elsewhere.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#178

Post by rchaud »

jhaenchen wrote: post #99
gleenn wrote: post #5

His two examples are Twitter and Reddit whose ad revenue is dying because those two companies have made huge blunders. Elon seems to almost actively be killing Twitter (which the poster even states). Reddit screwed Apollo and then many of the most popular subreddits protested and did things like show porn on otherwise usually SFW content to prevent Reddit from showing ads and thus killing their profits. Those are big…

The real issue IMO is that users do not understand that ads pay for their apps. They don't want to see ads and the ads they do see they want them to be uninformed and general. They want everything free. This just encourages subscriptions. Which we're seeing become more and more common.

> The real issue IMO is that users do not understand that ads pay for their apps.

Users understand this just fine. They pay for Netflix, Disney and others.

It's Google that has failed to position Youtube as something worth paying for. Youtube is free because it is basically a public access tv channel full of amateur content --- consumers don't pay for public access, so they're not going to pay for Youtube. It's on Google to change people's minds about that.

Google could have carved out obviously premium content and put that behind a paywall, but instead they built this ad-based revenue system, thereby positioning its content library as commoditized and interchangeable. The only upsell they provide is to pay to get rid of the ads. It's a terrible offering.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#179

Post by nness »

dpig_ wrote: post #93
barbariangrunge wrote: post #46

Good. The internet was really fun before the ads and monetization came. We had forums and personal web sites. Weird blogs everywhere you looked. Some semblance of anonymity. A sense of community that wasn't about growing a following.

The toothpaste is out of the tube though, sorry to say.

Things get worse once someone realises how it can be monetised...

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#180

Post by AndyMcConachie »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #146
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please resist the urge to go that direction with it Genuinely, and I’m horrified of all of this, but it’s really something we can change, it’s not hopeless don’t give up humanity.

I don’t think Ayn Rand gave up on humanity at all. Just the worthless nonsense and the people endlessly consume it.

Aynd Rand criticized the welfare state and then went on welfare. She was a complete fraud.
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