261–270 of 334 posts
Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…
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They're allowed to change the offering. They're not allowed to offer you one thing, but supply another. YouTube is currently testing their legal waters. They currently offer an "ad free" experience with the subscription of Premium. Despite this, they still serve: * In-feed ads. These include ads for content prominence (preferential placement for creators), articles with link-out, ads for Google products and services…
> Once the Digital Markets Act comes into effect in the EU in a couple of months I'll be installing alternative frontends for YouTube which include SponsorBlock. this is weird. are we sure this is a thing in the EU? because the idea of having some sort of regulation forcing a private company to have their product offered by some other party raises so many issues. it's not like youtube is some sort of public good, it'…
If they go too far and Google leaves the EU market, I suspect nobody will be all that sad, goodbye giant competition, a boon for the local service providers.
I think what you are misunderstanding is: countries will sometimes be protectionist toward their own companies, but they don’t actually care if foreign companies have a viable business model, especially for non-critical things like YouTube. Asking the EU to care whether or not YouTube has a viable business model is not really reasonable.
I treasure my attention and so I've spent some time to opt out of ads. 5 years ago I couldn't tell what DNS was, now I've got an OPNsense router at home running ZenArmor/Unbound and I can can link to it from my phone over wireguard. Using ublock I've made a point to prune the pages I visit, so classes like "header" "breadcrumbs" "recommended" "sponsor" &c. are hidden. I self-host my media collection so I avoid spotif…
There is a small cottage industry of privacy focused products that do some section of the heavy lifting (adguard comes to mind, and there is a paid DNS service that essentially does what pihole does with easier configuration as well) but no "one stop shop" as of yet, and I think in part its because - the market isn't conditioned to want these services - awareness of their benefits aren't obvious - Its still within th…
I do think though that people can understand the benefits of adblocking. For example the digital video recorders that cut ads out of broadcasts, that was/is a successful product. And my friends complain about the ads - it is just that the blockers are not at a level where they can use them.
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As a non paying ublock origin user, I don't see any ads. The ad-free internet has already been here for a long time if you are willing to spend 10 minutes install ublock origin. Paying is actually worse, because it shows the fact that you have some amount of disposable income and are willing to pay for things, which greatly increases the value of advertising to you specifically.
I have never really used an ad blocker for any kind of time. I've tried on multiple occasions but then just range uninstall it whenever some random site breaks because of it and I don't realise it's because of it. Last time it was some online shop... Regardless of the morality / philosophical questions, the modern web feels to janky and unstable for me to trust the house of cards staying standing if you throw some Ad…
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But is this not a fundamental problem if you expect everything to be available for free? For journalism, this has become an existential threat as web-users generate nowhere near as much revenue than selling printed paper.
Hard to say, nobody has managed to replicate the old IRL newspaper business model. You used to be able to get a subscription, or just buy a single paper from a store or a box. The latter is much more convenient, but the former was the only one implemented for the web. For example, I don’t care to have a subscription to the economist, so I didn’t read this article. If I could pay like $1 for it, I probably would. But…
Another way to monetize is to make it interactive and bring back comments. Allow a well-regulated peanut gallery for each article, but have it actively moderated, require people to use their real names, and set a high bar for what comments are even allowed. Have journalists actively engage with them. A comment will only be published if it adds value. Then encourage people to have spirited discussion about each article. And guess what, actively commenting will cost you admission.
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There is always piracy as ground truth and I'm content with it.
How do you pirate a social media product though?
You can’t “pirate” Social Media’s original intended functionality, social interactions, because the content isn’t really the point. The connections are.
*I mean, if we have to misuse the term, which is actually about threatening to kill/killing people and robbing their boats, to mean unauthorized copying
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For some values of ad-free. Direct ads from the site you are viewing, yea adblock is great. Aren't you feeling thirsty and want the cool crisp refreshing taste of an ice cold coca cola right now? In content ads, and user posts as ads are far more difficult to deal with, but at least they don't track you.
I'm actually OK with "product placement" ads as long as they don't interrupt the content. It IS annoying when a YouTube creator interrupts the content to say "And now an ad for a VPN which has NOTHING to do with what you are watching or care about..." but I've seen some YouTube creators actually integrate the product being sponsored into their content in a way that makes sense and serves both purposes. For example, I…
Ah! Wayne's World...way (way) ahead of its time.
This is nothing new but the article hits hard. I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is after my attention but a good chunk of the economy seems to depend on it. There has to be a better future than this?
You are, with or without ads. The web is a struggle for attention. No website can survive that doesn't addict you to check it again and again.
What is that supposed to mean? There are plenty of websites that are not out to earn any money. It doesn't take anything for them to "survive".
The problem with ad-free content is that rich people do not just want just "no adds". They do not want to be tracked, in order not to be stalked and harrassed by companies(or individuals like gold diggers or sellers or bankers). And they are rich so companies want to track them. This is the reason you could not trust Google or Meta with ad-free stuff. They are already private intelligence(spying) agencies that alread…
Sadly this is nearly impossible for digital products or services, at least those worth paying for.
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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.
oh, tell it to the tram schedule app, popular in Poland. You pay subscription or you watch unskipable ads. Very cool when you have 3 minutes before your trap. And I am pretty sure just initializing the ads engine takes a half of a second or so. Ah, I guess UX is dead in 2023
Booking one ticket involves solving 2 captchas. They even tried to involve advertising into these captchas. You had to type out some specific detail from the ad to get past it.