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“Your frustration is the product”

daringfireball.net

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Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#111

Post by dfxm12 »

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…

we lost the original vibe of the Internet.

The signal (fan sites) to noise (sites focusing on revenue) ratio is way off today. The issues are that ad revenue generating sites are too plentiful, in some cases they are generated by code and they are more highly placed in search engine results. SEO and procedurally created content is where we lost the way (I think the lure of getting rich as a social media influencer or streamer further moved us away).

I was looking for discussion around a brand new album last night (not King Crimson related...), like from an internet forum, reddit, even a review, but the first few pages of search results were all storefronts selling/streaming it, PR (not even reviews) or AI generated pages about the artist. The stuff I was looking for existed, but I only found it after adding "reddit" to the search terms. I was hoping to find a new forum similar to this one focused on that kind of music. Reddit is not ad free, but at least it has a raison d'etre beyond advertising...

So, it's harder to find fan sites, and I'm sure fan site maintainers are less motivated to keep up for this reason (a more popular site is probably more fun to maintain). At least compare this to FOSS projects. I think findability is easier for those, and the popular ones are reasonably well maintained.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#112

Post by compiler-guy »

naravara wrote: post #82
HexPhantom wrote: post #58

At some point, either subscriptions have to carry more of the load or the web experience just keeps degrading

Or someone can invent an ad supported business model that isn’t abusive. A lot of print magazines, like Vogue or even Field & Stream, are like 60% or more full page ads. But if you’re reading something like New Bride magazine you’re probably actively shopping for wedding dresses and flowers and such, so the advertising ideally works as part of what makes the magazine valuable for the reader and the advertiser. The re…

He also has no shareholders except himself. So the only person he has to please is himself, and if he is wrong, the only person who suffers is himself (and, I suppose, his family).

This very direct, very personal connection to the web business doesn't exist in most other sites.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#113

Post by compiler-guy »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #62

> No print publication on the planet does this. Because you have to pay for the print version. They have plenty of ads, too, but they're not the sole revenue stream.

The amount you pay for the print version just barely covers physical print and physical distribution costs--and that's if the publication is lucky.

The vast majority of revenue comes from ads. They are just placed and handled in less obnoxious ways.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#115

Post by marssaxman »

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.

That's how the internet worked back when we were all excited about it. Giving things away for free is easy on the web; irritating people badly enough that you can squeeze money out of them is what takes effort.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#116

Post by dfxm12 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #56
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…

So exactly when was this? Even Geocities was full of punch the monkey ads and the web was inundated with X10 pop under ads. Right before the web became a thing, Usenet was starting to become inundated with spam

There are distinctions to be made between rotating/static display ads, spam and everything (i.e., user surveillance) that encompasses digital advertising today. Personally, ads don't bother me. Spam is annoying in terms of UX. But really, user surveillance is what we need to worry about in terms of UX, our privacy, security, etc.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#117

Post by butlike »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #91

Just a crazy idea, but could it be that they don't dogfood their own stuff? I have Ublock Origin Lite on by default (RIP full Ublock Origin) and a lot of sites look clean . I'm often not even aware that if I send a link to an article via Whatsapp or whatever, it may reflect badly on me that I send such an ad-overloaded mess to them. I just don't know the mess is there except sometimes by accident. I watched someone g…

To be fair, I don't think the porn sites have ever had egregious UX/UI. It's mostly Sourceforge and image hosters from the early 00's that have my votes as the worst offenders.

To be fair to your point though, the pirate sports streams are AWFUL in terms of link landmines.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#118

Post by genthree »

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…

I used to deliberately not block ads on sites that worked directly with advertisers and didn't use big spying malware- and scam-filled ad networks, and only served (more or less) static, non-animated and non-pop-up ads. I also didn't block the early "see? We're doing not-evil advertising!" well-marked text-only Google ads (remember those?)

None of those are really a thing any more, but if those were the only kinds of ads around, I might not bother with an ad blocker at all.

Except Google ads or anything else from a big multi-site ad network. That's all spying crap, I'm never going back to allowing those through, no matter how unobtrusive.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#119

Post by burgreblast »

I'm afraid he has it actually inverted. What if the "sanctity of the prose" is just a old gloss, and the Taboola / Outbrain ads are the reality that don't hide the org's true character?

The printed version does _look_ better, but can org that serves Taboola ever be taken seriously anymore? Sanctity is miles away from "6 simple steps to $1 Million" ads. We can be sad in general about their passing. But let's not think it's isolated to issue surrounding online/ads. WaPo isn't the same either.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#120

Post by genthree »

VorpalWay wrote: post #46
georgeecollins wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The closest thing I can see to direct monetization of HN is that YC uses it as a captive advertising platform.

They don't serve 3rd party ads, but they use it as a job board (with closed comments on those posts, LOL) for their companies, and to announce product launches and such. All that stuff gets boosted, nobody's organically up-voting a comments-disabled job post from some mediocre startup.

[EDIT] The less-direct part, yes, is stuff like brand awareness and community goodwill.

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