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How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

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Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#101

Post by mattmaroon »

jacquesm wrote: post #26
mattmaroon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1 per week doesn't seem like a lot when phrased that way. But when you think about all of the sites your adblocker blocks ads from on a daily basis, if it'd add up a lot of they all charged $1. I'd be ok with not consuming a good bit of content and paying for the small few I like, but I'm not sure that's sustainable. It'll be interesting to watch. Micropayments, however, will never work. The main problem is that the…

Micropayments would allow me to pay $1 for those articles viewed, or maybe even $5. The difference is that this would not require me to do anything else besides viewing the page, just like on the old prestel networks. But there the 'central authority' was the phone company and the whole tracking saga means that if you want to hit a large enough fraction of the ad blocker users that you'll have to take that scenario i…

I'm not saying it wouldn't benefit anyone. Just that the friction of paying for anything at all, assuming a reasonable level of security, is such that if I'm willing to pay $.01 I'm probably willing to pay $1. If I'm willing to pay $1 I'm more than 20% likely to be willing to pay $5. So the optimal pricing strategy would never be a micropayment.

This is why there's nothing funded by micropayments. (Unless you count free-to-play gaming where, for some reason, people refer to a $14 average purchase as a micropayment.)

If it were possible to lower the friction while maintaining security, that presumably would already be the case, as there is a HUGE financial incentive on the part of sellers.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#102

Post by cyphar »

DannyBee wrote: post #93
rosser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people with morals Nice. You might take a moment to consider that some of us who block ads are more concerned about the morality (read: more or less utter lack thereof) of the a̶d̶v̶e̶r̶t̶i̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ trackers than we are the revenue some arbitrary site may or may not lose from missing our impressions before you start casting stones wildly about like that. I'd probably be very willing to consider whitelisting sites who…

So, clearly, you instead just directly pay the authors/etc when you can, right? Or does that all conveniently fall by the wayside in your crusade?

> So, clearly, you instead just directly pay the authors/etc when you can, right?

Yes, if the content is good enough to warrant paying for a subscription.

> Or does that all conveniently fall by the wayside in your crusade?

Nope, and there's no reason to muddy the waters with terms like crusade.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#103

Post by viraptor »

Animats wrote: post #63
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micropayments would allow me to pay $1 for those articles viewed, or maybe even $5. The difference is that this would not require me to do anything else besides viewing the page, just like on the old prestel networks. But there the 'central authority' was the phone company and the whole tracking saga means that if you want to hit a large enough fraction of the ad blocker users that you'll have to take that scenario i…

All the enthusiasm for micropayments is from people who want to collect micropayments. There is little or no consumer demand for the ability to pay them.

You'd think so... I signed up for flattr (https://flattr.com/) with some credit shortly after they launched. Over half a year, I found one website (https://lightspark.github.io/) I went to which wanted to receive my money (and they did). Everybody else served ads (which I blocked).

Hell, putting a bitcoin address on my blog gave me actual couple of cents. :)

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#104

Post by Eridrus »

Lazare wrote: post #21
runako wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired kind of agrees: if you subscribe to the print edition (~12/yr IIRC), you get access to the digital editions too. The $1/week is a ridiculous grab from people who are unaware that there is a cheaper option available.

Yep: https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe/wired/ Something squirrelly in the pricing tiers.

Those are probably subsidised by ad revenue.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#106

Post by ChuckMcM »

Interesting, what I would like though is "$1 a week on the weeks you read wired" so lets say I start with a $52 budget, read some stories this week, my balance drops by $1, if I read nothing for a month, nothing happens, then I go back and read some stories it goes down $1 for that week. The when it gets below $10 it sends me an email suggesting I top up, and if it gets below $5 then every time I read a story it reminds me I only have 'n' weeks left.

THAT is a system I would sign up for in a heart beat.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#107

Post by _greim_ »

fencepost wrote: post #65

I'm generally not inclined to fully whitelist anyplace because even if everything it loads today is safe, who's to say what's going to be loaded after the site gets hacked. That said, I tried to go through and do some allowing of requests and scripts for places I recognized, including whitelisting the site in Ghostery to keep it from interfering. After adding 19 separate exceptions in uMatrix for both whole domains a…

> who's to say what's going to be loaded after the site gets hacked

Never mind even getting hacked. Ad providers routinely violate the trust of content providers by activating audio, throwing up full screen overlays and who knows what else. I'm not an expert but I'm given to understand that it's hard for content providers to quality control these sort of ads. The whole delivery system is gamed to a ridiculous degree.

Re: How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking

#109

Post by orionblastar »

wnevets wrote: post #10

how is adblock detection different from other forms of client side DRM? At the end of the day you have to trust the client

Adblock detection is like client side DRM it copy protects the article from being viewed unless you disable your ad blocker and see ads and get tracked.

There are scripts that foil ad block detection as well. So some people are fighting back.

It reminds me of file sharing sites like bittorrent sites that people use to get DRM free versions of products at risk of having their IP scanned by DMCA bots sending them a C&D letter.

It comes down to when you buy something you don't own it you only buy the right to use it. Now you only have the right to read articles if you get exposed to ads and tracking. If you block ads they can take away your right to read an article.

It is all about rights and how corporations control what you get access to.

Facebook, Google, and others use ads and tracking as well to earn money. Their sites are free at the cost of your privacy rights.

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