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“Your frustration is the product”

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Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#41

Post by mattw2121 »

AlienRobot wrote: post #33
red_admiral wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For "lyric sites" read "ad sites that use lyrics to attract an audience". That's where we are today.

People want lyrics. They don't want to pay for them, but they want someone to make the lyrics available for them, for free, on the Internet, forever. And they feel they are entitled to this without ads for some reason. That's where we are today.

Somewhere along the way, we lost the original vibe of the Internet. There was a time when it was fundamentally a community. People hosted things for the sheer joy of doing it and for the satisfaction of contributing.

If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.

I would actually flip your statement around. Today, many people feel entitled to be paid for sharing things on the Internet. In that sense, they are the newcomers. The original ethos was about sharing information simply because it mattered to someone else, and a few of us still believe that value has not gone away.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#42

Post by georgeecollins »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #36

Reminds me of "Website obesity crisis" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpl0QVCr6U - https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm Some say that you should not use ad blocker, because that kills ad revenue, but I did not forced anybody to rely with their lives on ad revenue. Many of things were 'free' because we were all just using ad blocks, and then it all became commodified, simplified, so simpletons without a…

It kills programmatic advertising, not sponsorships or subscriptions. I always subscribe to the four or five sites I use most and use a blocker. If HN had a subscription tier I would pay it to support them.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#43

Post by lotsofpulp »

mattw2121 wrote: post #41
AlienRobot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want lyrics. They don't want to pay for them, but they want someone to make the lyrics available for them, for free, on the Internet, forever. And they feel they are entitled to this without ads for some reason. That's where we are today.

Somewhere along the way, we lost the original vibe of the Internet. There was a time when it was fundamentally a community. People hosted things for the sheer joy of doing it and for the satisfaction of contributing. If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did…

> If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.

Anyone can still do this today (I don’t know the legalities of publishing copyrighted lyrics though). Of course, the proportion of people who wanted to do that was much higher in previous decades.

But we also spend much more time and bandwidth today than decades ago, so maybe it just wasn’t feasible to expect that much quality content from volunteers to keep flowing.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#44

Post by mikestew »

pembrook wrote: post #5

> The print editions of the very same publications — The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker — don’t do anything like this. Yes because they don't give the print editions away for free. You go to these sites as a free user, you get exactly what you paid for. The only reason you're confronted with articles from these legacy publications in the first place is because they…

You go to these sites as a free user, you get exactly what you paid for.

Yeah? How about when I go to the site as a paid subscriber and get the exact same experience? Did the number or obnoxiousness of ads go down when I gave NYT money? Nope.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#45

Post by GraemeMeyer »

donohoe wrote: post #3

Here is the most frustrating part: Publishers could create efficient fast-loading web pages if they prioritized it (and a rare few do) but its just not a priority for most even though its in their best interest. You can have ads loading on a web page, even with header bidders, if you structure it correctly. In fact you can implement an ad solution that allows for fast loading pages and better optimize your ad revenue…

Wow, it’s really interesting to see the sudden unchanged nautil.us made around the 4th of March!

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#46

Post by VorpalWay »

georgeecollins wrote: post #42
renegat0x0 wrote: post #36

Reminds me of "Website obesity crisis" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYpl0QVCr6U - https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm Some say that you should not use ad blocker, because that kills ad revenue, but I did not forced anybody to rely with their lives on ad revenue. Many of things were 'free' because we were all just using ad blocks, and then it all became commodified, simplified, so simpletons without a…

It kills programmatic advertising, not sponsorships or subscriptions. I always subscribe to the four or five sites I use most and use a blocker. If HN had a subscription tier I would pay it to support them.

HN doesn't need your money, it is run by YCombinator, a venture capital firm. As far as I can determine HN is a way to raise brand awareness for them. Sure, there are probably some people passionate about the concept at the company, but it wouldn't stick around if it they didn't also determine that it has more value to them than the operating costs of the site.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#47

Post by patates »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #43
mattw2121 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere along the way, we lost the original vibe of the Internet. There was a time when it was fundamentally a community. People hosted things for the sheer joy of doing it and for the satisfaction of contributing. If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did…

> If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point. Anyone can still do this today (I don’t know the legalities of publishing copyrighted lyrics though). Of course, the proportion of people who…

But in search results, you only find the sites that game the system to maximize their profits, while millions of other well-meaning sites get little to no traffic, and eventually people lose interest in maintaining an online presence. They move toward big silos like Instagram, platforms that just use their content to attract more ads.

Ads do break the internet, or let's say, fundamentally change the model of how it works to the detriment of most people

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#48

Post by wmeredith »

red_admiral wrote: post #30
rcarr wrote: post #8

> The reader is not respected enough by the software. The reader is not respected by the software because the reader themselves does not respect the software or the article. If the reader paid for a subscription to the website they would get an ad-free version. Don't pay and then this is what you get. The money has to come from somewhere. The issue is that a large portion of the population seems to think that if a pr…

> We used to pay for things - including the news. Have newspapers or magazines ever been financially sustainable on sale revenue alone? They've always carried ads, and I suspect that's always been a bigger income stream than the cost of buying the paper itself.

> Have newspapers or magazines ever been financially sustainable on sale revenue alone?

Most certainly not. The hollowing out of classifies by Craigslist in 2000s is what killed most local newspapers.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#49

Post by jasode »

mattw2121 wrote: post #41
AlienRobot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want lyrics. They don't want to pay for them, but they want someone to make the lyrics available for them, for free, on the Internet, forever. And they feel they are entitled to this without ads for some reason. That's where we are today.

Somewhere along the way, we lost the original vibe of the Internet. There was a time when it was fundamentally a community. People hosted things for the sheer joy of doing it and for the satisfaction of contributing. If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did…

>If I loved King Crimson, I might create a site expressing that love and also host lyrics to their songs. Not to generate ad revenue. Not with any expectation of being reimbursed for hosting costs. I did it because it was fun and because sharing knowledge felt like the point.

Unfortunately, music lyrics are protected by copyrights so your site of King Crimson lyrics would not be authorized unless you paid for a license. The music publisher may not expend the effort to have a lawyer send you a "Cease & Desist" letter to make you take it down because your personal website is small fish but they wouldn't ignore a popular website that tried to show all lyrics for free with no ads.

The legitimate ongoing licensing costs from Gracenote/Lyricfind for their catalogs of millions of song lyrics will cost significantly more than the hosting bill. The cost is beyond the resources of typical hobbyists who like to share information for free.

EDIT: I have no idea what the downvotes are about. If you think my information about lyrics licensing is incorrect, explain why. Several decades ago, volunteers were sharing guitar tabs for free on the internet and that also got shut down by the music publishers because of copyright violations. Previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24598821

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#50

Post by StableAlkyne »

AlienRobot wrote: post #33
red_admiral wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For "lyric sites" read "ad sites that use lyrics to attract an audience". That's where we are today.

People want lyrics. They don't want to pay for them, but they want someone to make the lyrics available for them, for free, on the Internet, forever. And they feel they are entitled to this without ads for some reason. That's where we are today.

> And they feel they are entitled to this without ads for some reason

And others feel they are entitled to passive income by hastily throwing together IP they did not create and do not own, apparently.

Everything has to be a side hustle and everyone has to take their cut as a middleman these days.

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