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How I Experience Web Today (2021)

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Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#71

Post by masswerk »

tmtvl wrote: post #59
masswerk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what are my ideas? - static banners (non blinking, no transitions, esp. no vertical transitions that are designed to force you to lose focus – I've come for the content, not the ads) - no tracking that exceeds maybe, if you have seen the campaign already. Preferably hosted by the website (who is responsible?). - also, no targeting. Ads once were supposed to be consumer information. Public information is meant to…

> ads should be more expensive for the advertising party. Sorry, my reading comprehension is failing me. If Bob pays Google to put an ad on Alice's website, is Bob the advertising party? Because if so, that would disadvantage small companies and harm the market by making it harder for newcomers to be competitive. If in our hypothetical situation Google is the advertising party that's good and well, though I don't kno…

It's about the price of placing an advertisement. Ads becoming that cheap has eradicated significant portions of the Web, which is now flocking to the few big content platforms. I'd call this an anticompetitive development. Ad networks, like Google, are setting these prices. And they have turned the tables: you can't negotiate the worth of the service, as you the product is the ad tag, not the content, it's embedded in.

(Also, we – as a society – don't entertain second thoughts on housing prices or general cost of living, while this is a common and basic need. Why is this different? Is there a privilege? Also, who's interest is this about, the content creators, including news sites, or advertisers, who rely on this kind of contextual content provided by the creators? Quite obviously, the current arrangement isn't working out for creators, and news, including active journalism and research, are in a steep decline, after having peaked in revenue around 2008.)

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#72

Post by neilv »

staplers wrote: post #57
judah wrote: post #48

This is great. I see: - Cookie acceptance overlay - Email prompt when switching away from tab - Push notification custom UI prompt - Push notification browser prompt - Subscribe to our newsletter prompt - Ad blocker detected modal - Please subscribe overlay - Continue reading overlay - Ratings prompt - Floating feedback button - "How can I help you?" chat popup - Email prompt when scrolling - Create an account footer…

Could we do something similar but for top level DOM? It's called "reader mode" on most browsers.

Unfortunately, Firefox Reader Mode bypasses your uBlock Origin, so you get violated by trackers.

IIRC, this `about:config` setting is how I disable Firefox Reader Mode: `reader.parse-on-load.enabled` = false

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#73

Post by throwaway833884 »

anyfoo wrote: post #10

What I always don't understand is: So you don't want to pay for online content, but you also want to use an ad blocker. In summary, you don't want the author or creator to get paid? Personally, I hate ads, so I pay. I have digital subscriptions to the newspapers I read. I have YouTube Premium (because I spend an ungodly amount of time on that site). But for people who want to do neither... what's your idea?

The thing here is that many of us aren’t interested in paid content, but we keep getting shuttled to paid content due to googles goggles. There is so much free content on the web but we don’t get directed there because we are stuck in an advertising loop. Google intentionally directs us to a site with “paid content writers” to propagate their ruin the internet with advertising scheme, thereby “ruining the internet.”

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#75

Post by masswerk »

gffrd wrote: post #56
masswerk wrote: post #36

Fun effect: When finally confronted with the page-leave dialog, I automatically went for the non-default, grey option button – and was kind of surprised that this wasn't the option I wanted. I've a minor criticism: The "No thanks" button should really be "Remind me later" and possibly greyed out, since any negative wording is allegedly bad UX and users must be protected from any blunt denials in any options. "Maybe l…

> "Maybe later" is also acceptable and even empowering You've got a fulfilling career in product management ahead of you!

Hire me! Unfortunately (or is fortunate?), I'm rather bad at real-life cynicism. So, no results guaranteed… ;-)

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#77

Post by lelandbatey »

anyfoo wrote: post #10

What I always don't understand is: So you don't want to pay for online content, but you also want to use an ad blocker. In summary, you don't want the author or creator to get paid? Personally, I hate ads, so I pay. I have digital subscriptions to the newspapers I read. I have YouTube Premium (because I spend an ungodly amount of time on that site). But for people who want to do neither... what's your idea?

Your business model is not my responsibility; you're giving away content for free by your own choice. It's cool that you've found "one cool hack" to earn some money while giving away your content for free, but the people who accept your free content do not owe you the author anything. The author is free to require upfront payment for access, and the audience is free to pay or leave. But the audience of free content doesn't owe you the author anything, as the author has no contract relationship with the audience. When we visit a blog post we do not sign some contract and never have (some sites have tried to move the goalposts with banners like "by clicking this link you owe us your souls and thus your eyeballs" but that's pretty transparently hogwash).

Saying "you want to use an adblocker, thus you're just a thief!" can validly be escalated with the exact same logic by saying "why don't you click on every ad you see, that's the only way the benevolent authors get paid you know, if you're not doing that then you're just a thief!" It's all nonsense fundamentally because the audience consuming your content for free doesn't owe the author anything (as much as authors in this scenario will wish otherwise).

To be clear, making content explicitly for-pay I think is amazing and is the clear future. As ads race to be as annoying as possible, users are going to run out of patience and seek alternative sources of information/entertainment, and some number of users will opt for sources that require payment. That's GREAT for the industry as it means users stop expecting everything for free and become selective with their dollar, allowing niche content much more money. This is happening with many small-time independent video publishing platforms (Dropout.tv, Nebula, Floatplane, CorridorDigital, countless creators on Patreon, independent movies published via VHX.tv, etc) to fantastic effect.

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#78

Post by FridgeSeal »

cle wrote: post #4

It's even worse than that, first Google will bug you to use Chrome, then bug you to login, then after your search the browser will pop up "Google would like to use your current location". And then the first half-page of results are ads. And half of the actual results are AI slop and a helpful AI summary of the slop. And that's before you even get to the page.

Don’t forget finally landing on the page and having the focus immediately stolen by some “LOG IN WITH GOOGLE” pop up that you didn’t ask for, and don’t want.

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#79

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

anyfoo wrote: post #43
hosh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a whole lot more to this than just whether content creators or publishes should get paid, and whether there should be ad blockers (and whether they get paid). There are people who have been fed up by this because they remembered how the web was like in the late 90s, before social media pushes became the dominant experience. People have formulated ideas around the Small Web ( https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-…

I get that, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people whose job content is, and who may have had the same job in the 90s, e.g. newspaper journalists. So I'm asking those who don't want to pay for a subscription, but want to use an ad blocker: How does it work? As said, I opted for paying the creator directly, because I hate the ad ecosystem. Seems like a lot of people want to do neither, but still expe…

I choose to do both.

uBlock Origin everywhere. Steven Black host list on everything that can use /etc/hosts. Subscriptions to the things I value (but not to all the things I read).

I run an open source project called Ardour. One of our mottos is "It doesn't matter if everybody pays, it only matters than enough people pay". I wish more people could make some effort try to follow this idea in some way.

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#80

Post by awinter-py »

masswerk wrote: post #36

Fun effect: When finally confronted with the page-leave dialog, I automatically went for the non-default, grey option button – and was kind of surprised that this wasn't the option I wanted. I've a minor criticism: The "No thanks" button should really be "Remind me later" and possibly greyed out, since any negative wording is allegedly bad UX and users must be protected from any blunt denials in any options. "Maybe l…

page leave dialog was chef's kiss
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