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“Your frustration is the product”

daringfireball.net

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Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#171

Post by alephnerd »

jodrellblank wrote: post #166
alephnerd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of internet users wouldn't have experienced that supposed world. The median age in the US in 39, which means at least half of all Americans would have been in elementary school or not around during that supposed era of the internet, and the mass adoption of the internet only really began in earnest in the early 2000s.

> " that supposed world ... that supposed era of the internet " "Supposed: Presumed to be true or real without conclusive evidence". You think there isn't conclusive evidence that the internet existed before 1995? o_O

As in "rose tinted glasses".

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#172

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"The web is the only medium the world has ever seen where its highest-profile decision makers are people who despise the medium and are trying to drive people away from it. 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."

It has nothing to do with "understand[ing] or enjoy[ing] the web". It comes from people at organisations running websites that know where the money is, probably because some cretinous nerds encouraged them. Generally, the amount of potential data collection, surveillance, ad serving and _money-making_ is greater with an "app" than with a website

"Ad blockers" are popular but "app blockers"^1 are not. The "smartphone" is a remotely-controlled "entire surveillance device" (recent HN title: "Your phone is an entire computer")

1. Application firewalls like Netguard. And even this does not solve the problem entirely because the design of the "entire computer" includes extensive surveillance capabilities

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#173

Post by tking8924 »

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.…

Even if the ethics on the advertiser's side could be solved, advertising as the core source of income for a business has it's own unenthical incentives imo. It ultimately boils down to more attention == more ads == more money. I'd argue we got an early preview of that effect when 24 hour news channels were coming into their own in the 90s and 00s, and the detrimental effect it had on the quality of programming and frankly truthfulness. The scale of the internet has only exacerbated those issues.

Unfortunately the industry is so large with so much money now that choosing a different business model is almost always leaving money on the table. And I don't have any ideas on how to fix that.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#177

Post by krunck »

martinsb wrote: post #157

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 amou…

This is doable today if there was a will. But the advertising/surveillance industry doesn't want it.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#178

Post by dmd »

> the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel.

I recently was in a 45 minutes Uber ride where the driver had the stereo set to the Sirius XM self-advertising channel - the one you get if you haven't subscribed. For 45 minutes, all he listened to was an ad for XM.

Most people just don't care.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#179

Post by righthand »

snowwrestler wrote: post #87
righthand wrote: post #2

This is a pretty inconsequential blog post where Gruber is just echoing another article. > “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 w…

> This is a pretty inconsequential blog post where Gruber is just echoing another article. He does this to amplify things, and look: it worked! The original post made the HN homepage a couple days ago, and now Gruber’s post about it has made the HN homepage again.

Amplified but redundant for HN crowd is my point. I’m not clueless as to why a person who blogs to maintain attention would amplify a topic. Your explanation was not needed.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#180

Post by righthand »

lapcat wrote: post #69
righthand wrote: post #2

This is a pretty inconsequential blog post where Gruber is just echoing another article. > “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 w…

> This is a pretty inconsequential blog post where Gruber is just echoing another article. It's a link blog.

okay. And?
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