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Welcome to the ad-free internet

economist.com

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Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#91

Post by pbhjpbhj »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #27
littlefish444 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed -- my concern is that subscriptions are really negative in long-term expectation for the consumer, and companies are profiting off that and don't want to lose all the people who are paying $10 for only $4 monthly utility. My coworker hates the subscription era and pines for the days of buying a CD-ROM with software lol

Right. I've been a subscriber to Adobe's Creative Cloud for almost 10 years now - which means I've paid them upwards of $6,000 by now - even though I only use 3 programs (Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator) and even then I only really use base-level functionality that's been present in those titles long before they became subscription-only: if it weren't for (normal and understandable) platform-obsolescence (high-DPI su…

Have you tried Scribus, Krita, Inkscape, say. Is familiarity worth the cost?

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#92

Post by byteware »

littlefish444 wrote: post #47
fastest963 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a space that my company operates in and we will hopefully provide this service in the future. First, publishers want more than what consumers are willing to pay per article, the credit card companies charge too much (even with special micro pricing we've negotiated) and no one has a market big enough to reasonably get $xx per month into a wallet from a massive audience. Google had tried something similar with…

Hmm interesting. But it seems like one industry that has gotten this down is p*rnography? OnlyFans seems to be an enormous processor of micro-transactions for marginal content. Maybe people are just more willing to open wallets for that type of content? It's interesting to see that even press "rebels" like Substack use a subscription model. You could argue this benefits writers with steady streams of incomes, and tha…

tangent: do we have to censor words here as well? i thought it was for youtube and tiktok recommendation systems (unalive is particularly funny imo)

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#93

Post by Moldoteck »

fastest963 wrote: post #42
alex_young wrote: post #21

Ad free internet costs ~$40 one time fee. Raspberry Pi + pihole dns.

Genuinely curious what you do when a site asks you to turn off your adblocker? PiHole doesn't have an option to whitelist an individual site like an extension does. Do you just leave the site or do you temporarily turn off PiHole?

Different options. Turn off pihole for that site. Or using something like archive.is or wayback machine. Sometimes just blocking the banner with ublock works too. Other times there are link previews like telegram quick view

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#94

Post by andirk »

The repeating issue in these comments: very small fiat transactions are difficult.

Crypto solves this. The barrier to entry is cumbersome because of KYC, but after that the whole ecosystem is ready to go.

People talking 25 cents for an article. The ad revenue from viewing a single page with a few well sold ad impressions at $40 CPM is like 4 cents, and more often more like < 1 cent. I keep hoping to see Basic Attention token BAT get traction for exactly these microtransaction use cases.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#95

Post by Nursie »

andirk wrote: post #94

The repeating issue in these comments: very small fiat transactions are difficult. Crypto solves this. The barrier to entry is cumbersome because of KYC, but after that the whole ecosystem is ready to go. People talking 25 cents for an article. The ad revenue from viewing a single page with a few well sold ad impressions at $40 CPM is like 4 cents, and more often more like < 1 cent. I keep hoping to see Basic Attenti…

“Crypto solves this”

Does it? Transaction times and transaction fees on some of the more well-known cryptocurrencies would seem to exclude them entirely.

There’s no particular reason that it has to be a decentralised cryptocurrency that operates in the manner required - preloading a few bucks here and there, which are transferred between accounts in small amounts.

As with many things that “crypto” solves, it is neither necessary nor sufficient. Some cryptocurrencies could form part of a solution. It’s not clear they bring any specific advantages to the table though.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#96

Post by andirk »

saghm wrote: post #75
marcus_holmes wrote: post #48

Doesn't this end up spiralling, though? As we've seen with Netflix, nothing stops the service from adding ads to a subscription feed. Sooner or later the pressure to grow revenues is going to force Meta to do ads on their subscription accounts (especially since they can charge a premium on those ads). Then they introduce "premium" subscription accounts with no ads, then those get ads, then there's the "excelsior" sub…

Recently I've noticed that the Uber app (which I grudgingly use instead of Lyft due to a decline in drivers over the years in various areas near where I've lived to the point where it wasn't a viable option most of the time) will show me adds when I open it to check the ETA during a ride. This is something where I'm not paying a subscription but literally paying for the ride itself, because I obviously don't check th…

Things that are super time sensitive should never have distractions present. The Uber app trying to get me to buy cold upside down delivery food while I'm trying to get a ride is a terrible UX. Another example is Waze, the once most amazing map app ever made until bought by Google, has Jack n the Box ads (ok yeah I'm eating jack n the box right now, who cares!) overlaying my fkking map while I'm driving.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#97

Post by Hamuko »

andirk wrote: post #94

The repeating issue in these comments: very small fiat transactions are difficult. Crypto solves this. The barrier to entry is cumbersome because of KYC, but after that the whole ecosystem is ready to go. People talking 25 cents for an article. The ad revenue from viewing a single page with a few well sold ad impressions at $40 CPM is like 4 cents, and more often more like < 1 cent. I keep hoping to see Basic Attenti…

Every time I've paid with crypto, the fees I've paid to Coinbase and the network have been massive.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#98

Post by DevX101 »

saghm wrote: post #75
marcus_holmes wrote: post #48

Doesn't this end up spiralling, though? As we've seen with Netflix, nothing stops the service from adding ads to a subscription feed. Sooner or later the pressure to grow revenues is going to force Meta to do ads on their subscription accounts (especially since they can charge a premium on those ads). Then they introduce "premium" subscription accounts with no ads, then those get ads, then there's the "excelsior" sub…

Recently I've noticed that the Uber app (which I grudgingly use instead of Lyft due to a decline in drivers over the years in various areas near where I've lived to the point where it wasn't a viable option most of the time) will show me adds when I open it to check the ETA during a ride. This is something where I'm not paying a subscription but literally paying for the ride itself, because I obviously don't check th…

Lyft started doing the same thing. It's slightly annoying.

Jet Blue is also showing mandatory ads on the video display in front of you. They last for around 5 minutes and you cannot turn off the display while these ads are showing. This is highly annoying.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#99

Post by orbital-decay »

andirk wrote: post #94

The repeating issue in these comments: very small fiat transactions are difficult. Crypto solves this. The barrier to entry is cumbersome because of KYC, but after that the whole ecosystem is ready to go. People talking 25 cents for an article. The ad revenue from viewing a single page with a few well sold ad impressions at $40 CPM is like 4 cents, and more often more like < 1 cent. I keep hoping to see Basic Attenti…

The last time anyone seriously considered crypto as money was 2016. Even Steam started accepting Bitcoin. You can see how it went for them [1]. Fraud, volatility, transation delays and fees were unacceptable. And that was the time before the total KYC pressure.

While some of these issues might have been solved (kind of), there's no way anyone touches crypto for end-user microtransactions with a 10-foot pole today.

[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/50-of-transactions-were-fraudulent-w...

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#100

Post by brutal_chaos_ »

Welcome to a niche of the web, which is a niche of the Internet, of which wants all of your money pls. Oh? The fight (ad-free or ad-ridden) alone makes more money, because, "ad money or subscription money pls", which in turn equals more clicks for them.

You can argue, "yeah, but what about ublock origin (or another ad blocker)?" To you, they'd (speculatively) say, "ye are few, why bother."

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