161–170 of 315 posts
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We're talking about extremely low marginal cost. More like a free glass of water or free use of the restroom than a free pair of jeans.
Marginal cost? free glass of water? No. Writing articles cost time and money. They are not free.
Lots of people here trying to infer motives. Why not just believe what he says? He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy controversy. He's hacker enough to want to muck about with how to make a blocker, but it's not his joy. Basically, he's what many of us aspire to be.
I applaud the move on his part, but should have had some forethought before releasing it. He has skin in the game: profited from Instapaper (essentially an ad-stripper), sells ads on his blog and produces a podcast that profits from ad sales. His advertising may be more acceptable in terms of aesthetics and privacy, but it is an acknowledgement, nonetheless, that advertising is the best possible monetization model an…
He expected to make a tiny ad-blocker nobody cared about, and then keep tinkering with it. Instead, he captured the majority of the market—at which point he realized that his ad-blocker is not nearly "nice" enough (in the ABP "whitelist sites that display non-intrusive ads" sense of nice) to make sense as the one the majority of iOS users use, and he has no idea how to do the work required to get it there (I.e. build…
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If HTTP was a contract whereby you agreed to look at everything that was sent over then your analogy would make sense. But HTTP is a protocol, not a legally binding contract. So no.
No, that is a cop out and a rationalization for why you feel you're entitled to stuff for free.
I think there's a huge difference between what's legal and moral. I think ad blocking is quite legal, and morally questionable.
If the publishers want to get together and define a new protocol where acceptance of the terms of the TOS is included in the standard and then convince everyone to switch to it, they're free to do that. I suspect that they won't have any luck, but there's nothing stopping them.
Again, I say this as a person who does not use ad blocking software.
I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. Am I the only one thinks that the user's experience should be more important than everything else? Annoying advertisements are, in practice, the result of people failing to be creative in monetization. Ars Technica, for instance, has done a great job of integrating ads in…
I get greeted by a salvo of dozens of third part trackers from the likes of Doubleclick & co.
Ars Technica operates as maliciously as any other publisher. There's no "careful consideration here", just blatant disrespect for the privacy of their public.
Here is the whole thing about ad supported sites: We are worth a lot less than you think, and also overall an individuals monthly worth in advertisements is also small. https://air.mozilla.org/subscribe2web/ Turns out, we're worth about $6.20/mo in advertising. Lets just round this up to $10/month to not have ads but still support sites we visit. If content providers aren't working on an alternative like the above, I…
>I'm not against funding people, I'm against funding ad agencies and their tracking and their other maladies. Such as trojaned ad networks, silly amounts of javascript and data, etc.... This is an extremely simplistic view of the world. You can go on thinking that you're really only sticking it to coca-cola or walmart, but the truth of the matter is that 50% of digital ads (At least on facebook) are SMBs. They're sta…
It's the ad networks that cookie and track. It's the ad networks that load the website with horribly slow loading external JS. It's the ad networks that want to track, profile and retarget us to death. It's the ad networks that use any means possible to get that view. From animations and modals to popunders, sound and other trickery. It's the bottom feeding ad networks that accidentally end up pushing malware out. Repeatedly.
Most web sites are loading so many external scripts, ads and trackers that the experience is simply broken. Without ad, social and script blocking the web has become unusably slow.
Meanwhile, I and many others would be glad to see ads from the little guy - without all the cruft and pollution, if I could do so safe from all the above.
That little guy just wants an advert to get her new business going. The ad network sold them all the other crap.
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Doesn't do anything for sites not considered "publishers." Popular "tools," such as calculators, forms, etc. will not have these Facebook-type options.
I over simplified the Verge story. They said that everybody that currently depends on web ad revenue would either move to Facebook and/or a native app running iAds. Either way, it's a pretty pessimistic view of the future of the web.
I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. Am I the only one thinks that the user's experience should be more important than everything else? Annoying advertisements are, in practice, the result of people failing to be creative in monetization. Ars Technica, for instance, has done a great job of integrating ads in…
I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. You could just stop visiting the site that offends you. That would be the actual principled way to treat this - the content is not worth the price of admission. Instead, ad blockers let you take the content and sidestep the price of admission. I absolutely agree that medi…
Seriously. Take my money. But you don't get to show me ads. And I'm not going to bow out of visiting those sites; that would almost cut me off from the internet entirely.
I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. Am I the only one thinks that the user's experience should be more important than everything else? Annoying advertisements are, in practice, the result of people failing to be creative in monetization. Ars Technica, for instance, has done a great job of integrating ads in…
Your example about Ars Technica is perfect. They do it great and in a very tasteful way. I applaud them. The issue lies in that all the people who do it bad, The Verge, etc ruin it for Ars Technica. Why? Because the ads on The Verge are so atrocious they install adblockers. Now these adblockers are all in whitelist mode from the start. Nobody cares to turn it into blacklist mode and require users to manually enable i…
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Are you fucking kidding me? You're going to casually call him corrupt and a liar because you're too small-minded to believe he can have a change of heart?
Of course!! Our Lord and Savior Marco wouldn't do such a thing, How dare he be skeptic of His intentions and motives? Blessed His name Marco