Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Experience Web Today (2021)

how-i-experience-web-today.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–137 of 137 posts

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#131

Post by hatsuseno »

smittywerben wrote: post #112
andai wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ran into this gem today: https://files.catbox.moe/bvrd6u.jpg > Google (www.google.com) is a pure search engine — no weather, no news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distractions, no portal litter. > Nothing but a fast-loading search site. Reward them with a visit.

LOL, I didn't know they ran newspaper ads for Google. I love old images of the Google search engine. When I was a kid, I taught other kids how to use the "cache" button next to links. Then Google buried the cache button three clicks under before completely removing it, and Googlers said, "Well, nobody was using it." MBA's doing user-driven development, "As a user (child), I don't know what a cache is." and the legal…

That's not an ad, that was a highlighted blurb in a tech magazine from way back when.

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#133

Post by seec »

bbor wrote: post #102
CM30 wrote: post #34

Sadly the reality for 99% of blogs and news sites nowadays. Makes me wonder whether this is part of the reason why social media sites, YouTube, etc have taken over as a source of information for many people now. Those sites are nightmarish in their own right, but they seem to be less heavy on the annoyances than the average news site now.

I think we should take the time to recognize that this isn't bad design, it's a badly regulated market. This is exactly what antitrust exists for: to prevent a small number of firms dominating a market with thin margins, leading to a few decent experiences (namely Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok) and crushing economics for the rest. What can you do as a publisher of web content other than compete wit…

All of that is because the internet and more specifically the browser was made/evolved in a naive/idealist non-commercial mindset. It was for university research work at first, where paying for the content was not a question because it was already paid for by others.

Then the companies who took over browser development didn't care about having a monetization/identification part to it because they didn't have content to monetize and didn't need to have their users pay for it either.

Then Google took over with their naive optimism around values of freedom and just went with ads as a "solution" to finance their whole operation in order to keep the ideal of free (ideals are always dangerous).

Now we are in a terrible situation where there is still no integrated (micro)payment nor identity system into the web browser and thus we have a seriously fucked up dichotomy: either you have content with gazillions of ads that are "free" or you have content that is only accessible with a monthly subscription, generally priced higher than what good press used to cost (which makes no sense).

This is really a problem because if you can't access everything "a la carte" web browsing is a bit pointless, being barely better than accessing media at the library or your local press stand (in fact when you count DRM issues and lack of lasting physical product, you could argue that its worse).

In my opinion the whole point of the web is that not all content is uniformly valuable in the same way to everyone. And you can't ask someone with varying interests and varying time for said interest to pay for multiple subscription to multiple sources. And this is exactly why everything resort to ads: you can't have that many people pay subscriptions because it doesn't bring enough value to them but you also can't sell per unit because it's way too complicated/annoying for the customer to do; so, you use ads.

That being said, we should make some regulations around ad use because it's pretty obvious that some of the tech giants would not exist as they are if people really had to pay for their products. Ad use in those platforms is a pretty clear attempt at avoiding competition, you don't have to compete much if you are "free" after all (Google speciality).

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#135

Post by botanical76 »

darajava wrote: post #127
botanical76 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option is Vivaldi, I swapped from Brave some months ago and I've been quite happy with its ad-blocking. Plus it's tons more functional IMO.

I’ll give it a go if I ever get sick of Brave. What makes it more functional? I love how polished and robust Chromium-based browsers are.

Mainly, I found Brave's settings page to feel very janky. Vivaldi's settings are much more polished and feature rich by comparison. It also has vertical tab support which I now use everywhere, and the E2EE synced sessions is something I use on a daily basis.

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#136

Post by vegadw »

hosh wrote: post #15
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?

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-…

There's this "legend" that, I assume, has some truth to it, that only about 1% of Reddit users post, and only about 10% comment. The other 90% lurk.

On the internet as a whole, I do mostly lurk, but I have my own website where I try to post meaningful, useful content. To me, that's enough to have paid my dues. If you never, ever post anything. Yeah, paying is fair, but so long as you contribute back, you've paid, IMHO.

This gets tricky only because the web isn't small anymore. Youtube, for hosting, should probably get a cut, yeah. But the majority? no. The ability to monetize something someone else made and wants to distribute for free? Also no. They, IMHO, abused their way to near monopoly on video distribution, so they shouldn't have that right.

Similarly, I won't pay for content when I'm creating my own and distributing it for free (Actually, to some cost to me) and without ads.

Saying "Well, then only consume other's free content" is a fair rebuttal, but there's a larger social/societal problem that incentives making paid content or using platforms like YouTube which will monetize content made by anyone even if the creator never sees a Penny: The dominance of those platforms has stifled innovation to the point of depriving them of a real choice. (Again, opinion. Don't sue me Google By using adblock, I'm willfully, intentionally hurting that perverse incentive system.

It's a similar vibe to the idea that piracy may be moral, if it disenticives overbearing DRM. I pay for things when the DRM is non-existant or non-invasive. I've chosen not to when it is. I've let companines know on their forums before that I'd love to buy their product, if only they didn't use iLok, or Denuvo, etc. I usually don't pirate though, I just find an alternative, even if I think they have the better product and would otherwise be willing to pay.

Re: How I Experience Web Today (2021)

#137

Post by bryanrasmussen »

vegadw wrote: post #136
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-…

There's this "legend" that, I assume, has some truth to it, that only about 1% of Reddit users post, and only about 10% comment. The other 90% lurk. On the internet as a whole, I do mostly lurk, but I have my own website where I try to post meaningful, useful content. To me, that's enough to have paid my dues. If you never, ever post anything. Yeah, paying is fair, but so long as you contribute back, you've paid, IMH…

>Yeah, paying is fair, but so long as you contribute back, you've paid, IMHO.

I actually agree with this viewpoint, it makes me think of Peter Serafinowicz's why I steal movies article https://gizmodo.com/why-i-steal-movies-even-ones-im-in-55394...

however - I'm not sure if Serafinowicz would think that some guy on the internet writing articles is actually contributing back in the same way he might feel if you were distributing your own short comedic videos.

You may be contributing in a distribution channel, but are you contributing in a media?

The same goes for authors etc. They may think other authors should get a free pass on buying their books, because they're contributing, but not think that someone writing fan fiction on the web should get a pass.

The same with musicians, I'm sure you get the point. An artist in some field might think you are contributing if you are producing work in their field and should be given a pass on paying (I certainly would) but posting some meaningful to you on the web might not pass the bar of what they consider a contribution.

Post reply on HN