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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]

#251

Post by JohnFen »

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.

Why do you think that people don't understand this?

> This just encourages subscriptions.

Which is the lesser of the two evils.

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

#252

Post by JohnFen »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #214
ndriscoll wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the apps I use are in fact free, and do not have ads to pay for them. Someone wanted something to exist, so they made it, and then they gave it away for free to everyone because computers are magical and there's no marginal cost to do that. The ad based Internet dying would leave hobby and academic content, significantly cleaning up the signal:noise ratio on the web, which would be great. As a bonus, you woul…

Some of the best content I've found on the internet was a result of someone's hobby and desire to share, typically paired with a complete lack of ads on the page. Personal blogs, passion sites filled with resources where they might sell a couple products, open source resources built by a community, etc. I can say its almost rare I get the answer I need on a commercial platform besides reddit, but that's only because…

> Some of the best content I've found on the internet was a result of someone's hobby and desire to share, typically paired with a complete lack of ads on the page.

Yes! I would say 90% of the useful stuff I find on the web is this sort of site.

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

#253

Post by rglullis »

andreygrehov wrote: post #183
paulryanrogers wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bei…

The Twitter acquisition happened 7 months ago, on October 27, 2022 to be precise. 7 months is effectively 3 quarters. Let's take "Elon Musk" name out of the equation for a moment. How much do you think is possible to do with one of the largest social network companies in the world within 3 quarters? I work at AWS and I must say everything is really slow here. What I'm trying to say is it seems like the world is "dema…

Why should we be rooting for his success?

Why would I want to live in a world where "a superapp" is needed?

Why would I want to live in a world where you have one company in control of the "town square"?

Personally, I just wanted Twitter to fail because I think that any ad-funded business is bad for us. But if you tell me that Elon's long term game is to make it something even more dystopian than it ever was, then yes I will do everything in my power to see him fail and fail catastrophically.

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

#254

Post by JeremyNT »

commandlinefan wrote: post #236
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…

> Twitter and Reddit ... have made huge blunders In addition to which - they were never that solid in the first place. They (and Facebook) are mostly just "dumb hosting" for other people's content - if the content producers leave, they don't have anything to offer. They don't even really own the content that was produced on their platform and it wouldn't have any value even if they did. There's a weak value propositi…

I think this is really what we're seeing now.

One can suggest that recent decisions were "blunders" due to the problems they have encountered, but maybe there just was no path forward for them simply because there's not much value to be extracted from this business. Now we just see the entire house of cards collapsing around them.

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

#255

Post by OkayPhysicist »

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #188

I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running. I don't have an issue with paying Youtube Premium Lite. Where I have an issue with the subs model is you're pay subs to so many services, YT Netflix Twitch, etc. It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. Then there's the iss…

I think that will drive a lot more self-funded communities. People talk about how expensive it is to host websites, but they're talking about sites several orders of magnitude larger than what most communities need. A single Discord server could effectively be hosted on a Raspberry Pi, the market price among cloud hosts for which is "free", or at most ~$10 a month.

That's not "We need to charge for access" level pricing that's "One motivated party funds the entire site" level cost.

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

#256

Post by renewedrebecca »

andreygrehov wrote: post #82
croes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also threatened to "thermonuclear name and shame" advertisers who paused spending. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-name-shame-adverti...

That was a sarcasm. I should have stated that he doesn't care as much as other companies. Elon, being the richest person on the planet, is uniquely positioned and has a competitive advantage. He can risk losing ad revenue to achieve his goals - minimize censorship and create a super-app.

The man that literally censors views he doesn't like.

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

#257

Post by tredre3 »

KomoD wrote: post #186
philposting wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently used Axate (www.axate.com) on a news website. You top up credit, and then pay per article.

I don't want to top up, I just want to be charged directly. Also "Which sites are using Axate?", I don't recognize any of the sites on that list.

I don't think it will ever be feasible to be charged directly, transaction fees are just way too high (and it's only marginally better on the crypto side). A postpaid system would work I suppose, ie you pay your total at the end of the month. But postpaid usually involves a credit check (in north america at least), so prepaid is really the only universal option.

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

#258

Post by OkayPhysicist »

commandlinefan wrote: post #240
RandallFlagg wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally prefer to pay for a service with my money as opposed to my information and ads being shoved in my face. Unfortunately many services don't even give an option to pay with money, so I've been trying to find alternatives, for example I've been starting to migrate away from Gmail to Protonmail. I understand things cost money, so let me pay you for your services. I just despise ads with a passion.

> prefer to pay for a service There was a comic (an Oatmeal comic, IIRC) where the guy goes into Starbucks and orders a $5.00 coffee, and then while drinking it picks up his phone and it asks him to pay $1.00 to access a news article and he says, "$1.00! Who do they think I am, Mark Zuckerberg?" (or something like that). While I get the _sentiment_ behind it (especially from a webcomic guy who's producing entertainin…

I think another, bigger, piece is that people have more issue paying for upfront costs than marginal costs. Most people will have some sort of outrage that their medication costs the manufacturer 30c to produce when they're told it'll cost $30 to buy. Sure, there was the whole discovery process that had an upfront cost, but to most people's intuition, the cost of goods should be "cost to make + some small markup".

For a webpage, the marginal cost is approximately zero. Certainly there was an upfront cost, in that somebody had to write the thing, but the cost to pass it from the server to my phone looks like rounding error.

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

#259

Post by standardUser »

midoridensha wrote: post #87
standardUser wrote: post #20

I'm not going to watch this entire video. I just want to ask, what the fuck is going on with those disgusting body horror ads we see all over the internet? Close ups of pimples and wounds and bizzare diagrams of human anatomy that all appear designed specifically to draw the eye (at any cost) but personally just repulse me. There's a whole cross section of websites I won't visit, including some major news sites, beca…

Why aren't you using an ad-blocker?

Because many sites force you to disable it.

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

#260

Post by tornato7 »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #255
AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #188

I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running. I don't have an issue with paying Youtube Premium Lite. Where I have an issue with the subs model is you're pay subs to so many services, YT Netflix Twitch, etc. It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. Then there's the iss…

I think that will drive a lot more self-funded communities. People talk about how expensive it is to host websites, but they're talking about sites several orders of magnitude larger than what most communities need. A single Discord server could effectively be hosted on a Raspberry Pi, the market price among cloud hosts for which is "free", or at most ~$10 a month. That's not "We need to charge for access" level pric…

To make this happen, we need better open source forum software. A group of us have been searching for a good self-hosted forum to replace /r/BuyItForLife and have trialed quite a few, but they are just... Really bad.
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