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Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

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Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#111

Post by dwild »

speg wrote: post #58
Touche wrote: post #54

This is sort of unfortunate news to me, as I take this as a sign that they won't do adblocking by default. I think this is a mistake; users want ads to be blocked. Especially on mobile, where it's more important from a perf perspective. Brave has ads blocked, Opera has ads blocked. If Firefox wants to follow the lead and be a privacy focused company like they say, then they need to block ads.

I may be in the minority, but I've never used an ad blocker. Content makers need to make a living and cutting off their ad revenue seems sleazy. That said, they may have gone too far with tracking and other excessive bloat that I might just start using one.

Same for me, if your website cause excessive bloat with their ads, then I'll just avoid it (unless that content is worth the excessive bloat, like Youtube ads).

As soon as I can pay for the content instead, I do it.

Ads is just another way to pay... if it's too bloated (thus too expensive) you just don't get it, or go find something less bloated (aka less expensive), that's it.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#112

Post by [deleted] »

CannisterFlux wrote: post #87
Touche wrote: post #54

This is sort of unfortunate news to me, as I take this as a sign that they won't do adblocking by default. I think this is a mistake; users want ads to be blocked. Especially on mobile, where it's more important from a perf perspective. Brave has ads blocked, Opera has ads blocked. If Firefox wants to follow the lead and be a privacy focused company like they say, then they need to block ads.

I use an ad-blocker on Firefox but I think if Firefox started blocking adverts by default it could find itself in a dangerous situation. A lot of sites would feel justified blocking Firefox in that case, which would do more damage to the already-shrinking user base. I know many sites have "turn off your ad-blocker" currently and I usually just leave at that point, but I could imagine a movement to more actively crush…

[deleted]

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#113

Post by err4nt »

heinrichhartman wrote: post #51

I welcome this effort! Enabling alternative revenue streams for web content will be critical to make the place less abusive. Unfortunately, the big successful players seem to make pretty good $$ by selling customer data, so they have little incentive to change this. Mozilla/Firefox is in a unique position to launch an effort like this, since it controls a decent browsing platform with a significant user base. I'll si…

Mozilla's userbase isn't really that significant, https://caniuse.com/usage-table

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#114

Post by nerdwaller »

Touche wrote: post #54

This is sort of unfortunate news to me, as I take this as a sign that they won't do adblocking by default. I think this is a mistake; users want ads to be blocked. Especially on mobile, where it's more important from a perf perspective. Brave has ads blocked, Opera has ads blocked. If Firefox wants to follow the lead and be a privacy focused company like they say, then they need to block ads.

This is just a data gathering link for Mozilla to validate some ideas for added revenue sources, they are also doing a VPN one.

Clicking the button brings you to a survey where they seem to indicate the intent is to be ad free:

> You clicked a button to possibly subscribe to Firefox Ad-Free Internet for $4.99

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#117

Post by mirimir »

SanchoPanda wrote: post #62
mirimir wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because their prices are ridiculously high. Sure, I want access to NY Times. But maybe I'll read 1-2 articles per day. Not the whole damn paper. Same for any other site.

Blendle has been offering this service for years, though I believe they recently are backing away from it. I used it for a while several years ago, but I found using small transactions frequently to be very uncomfortable (as in off-putting, not so much inconvenient).

I vaguely recall Blendle. And checking, they want ~€2 per article, which is way too much. Consider that a digital subscription to The NY Times costs $250-$500 per year.[0] That's 365 days, with numerous articles published per day. But for argument sake, divide by 5000. That's just $0.05-$0.10 per article.

0) https://dannysullivan.com/new-york-times-subscription-3480

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#118

Post by r3bl »

achingtooth wrote: post #108
achingtooth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a bunch of publishers that have a leftist bias. I wonder if they'll give The Daily Wire, TYT, The Daily Stormer, etc the same opportunity or if it'll just be neoliberal outlets.

[flagged]

Because your average HN reader understands that "unbiased journalism" is an oxymoron. Water is wet, and pointing that out brings absolutely nothing of value to the discussion.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#119

Post by kabwj »

cglace wrote: post #52
achingtooth wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a bunch of publishers that have a leftist bias. I wonder if they'll give The Daily Wire, TYT, The Daily Stormer, etc the same opportunity or if it'll just be neoliberal outlets.

Well, my guess is they aren’t going to support a website with whom 99.99% of their users probably find reprehensible.

If you’re implying 99.99% of users of Firefox are leftists, you’ll have to prove it.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#120

Post by Tomte »

dwild wrote: post #105
smt88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Other excessive bloat" often includes malware. Less seriously, it also includes autoplay video and scams. If ads were safe (i.e. text-only, no JavaScript, no video) and the publishers actually vetted the products, I wouldn't block them. I don't care that a physical NYT has ads. It's the algorithmic sale and distribution of ads that broke the model.

> often includes malware. Can you define often? It seems quite rare actually for a malware to be distributed online without user intervention, with the recent Firefox 0-day being one of theses cases and only touched a small proportion of people. The web is quite secure already and sure ads network is a good vector but so is Hacker News, Reddit and Facebook, which nobody cares about (have you ever not clicked on a lin…

When you visit a serious web site, like t-online.de or spiegel.de, with an up-to-date iPad and you're getting popups with porn or gambling offers that cannot be closed (they can, but reopen instantly), when you cannot use the back button anymore, and the only way to regain control of your browser is to either reboot the iPad (that's what many normal people do) or you force-close Safari... then you've caught malware from a big ad network that t-online.de or spiegel.de use.

Happened regularly about a year or two ago, certainly more often than every month, haven't seen it since, though.

> have you ever not clicked on a link on any of theses platforms and looked at the URL first?

That's not what happens.

> I seriously hate that argument of security, it's just wrong.

Maybe you should contemplate the possibility that you're wrong.

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