“Your frustration is the product” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#151

Post by frmersdog » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

piperswe wrote: post #98

andai wrote: post #89

Does anyone know a form of internet advertising that isn't complete cancer? On the one end we've got Google Ads, which spies on your users everywhere they go. (I think most ad networks are in the same category, unfortunately.) On the other end, you've got "someone emailed me to negotiate a sponsorship / affiliate thing and I added the banner/link manually, with no tracking code." I only really see those two options.…

Project Wonderful took the best of both (automated auction for ads, but there's only one ad active at any given moment for any given ad slot so no targeting) but apparently it wasn't able to keep making enough money to stay around

IIUC this is how ads on 4chan work. I learned this during my brief foray into targeted merchandising (https://www.temporary-url.com/9CBFE). Everyone on a given board at a given time was seeing the same ads.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#152

Post by davidfischer » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #89

Does anyone know a form of internet advertising that isn't complete cancer? On the one end we've got Google Ads, which spies on your users everywhere they go. (I think most ad networks are in the same category, unfortunately.) On the other end, you've got "someone emailed me to negotiate a sponsorship / affiliate thing and I added the banner/link manually, with no tracking code." I only really see those two options.…

I built EthicalAds (https://www.ethicalads.io/) for exactly this reason.

No tracking. No cookies. No behavioral targeting (targeting based on stuff you've previously done). Every website where our ads appear AND every advertiser is hand approved. No JS from advertisers: just a plain JPG/PNG and text.

We're small but on track to pay out $500k to publishers this year.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#153

Post by IAmBroom » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

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.

My local alternative paper has always been free.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#154

Post by pinkmuffinere » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #77

I used to work at a startup that was trying to replace ads as the funding source for news (we failed, obviously) but the crazy thing we discovered is that the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so complet…

This is fascinating! Can you share more stories?

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#155

Post by falcoteu89 » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:42 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#156

Post by donohoe » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

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…

Fixed the URL for Nautilus. Updates will roll in over the next 24 hours as tests happen and it averages out.

Its on my roadmap to auto-update the URL over time to avoid this very thing!

Thx to those who pointed it out.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#157

Post by martinsb » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

I really wish that browsers natively supported some sort of "402 Payment Required" HTTP status code (or any other well-known specified indicator) that users could pay with micropayments, so that they wouldn't have to drown us in this ad garbage. I would gladly pay small but justified sum for an article without setting up payment method on each site and be able to return to it. I would be glad even to donate some amount of money to some authority that'd pay for viewership of those less fortunate and not being able to afford reading quality news.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#158

Post by robinhood » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

This is why I have NextDNS installed at the router level. No need for Adblocking extensions if we can't even make the requests to those ad servers.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#159

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#160

Post by egypturnash » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

> As Bose notes, “A lot of websites actively interfere the reader from accessing them by pestering them with their ‘apps’ these days. I don’t know where this fascination with getting everyone to download your app comes from.” It comes from people who literally do not understand, and do not enjoy, the web, but yet find themselves running large websites.

I would presume that this fascination with pushing viewers to the app is because they make better money off of you reading stuff in the app.