The End of the Ad-Supported Web • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#51

Post by pdimitar » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #41

trothamel wrote: post #12

Before the rise of ubiquitous ads, the web was publisher-pays. If you wanted a blog, you would pay a host a few bucks a month to host it. I wonder if that's the model that the web will move back to. There's the argument to be made that the advertising model supports 'independent' news and social media, but it sure doesn't look that way - we'd move from partisan media supported through ads to partisan media supported…

Some micropayment / street-performer-payment solution will emerge if ads are gone. It may take a few years, likely not have anything to do with cryptocurrency (though it may). There are quite a few people already supporting themselves through patreon; people are willing to pay if the donation is reasonable, and friction low enough. In many ways iTunes/Netflix/prime beat “free” pirated content - but only once friction…

Good analysis and I agree.

In my country everybody was tooting that the creative industry is gonna die due to piracy (torrents). Yet once the subscription services became very easy to pay for, affordable and with high quality, people almost completely forgot about movie torrents.

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#52

Post by tinus_hn » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #15

Re the reference to Vectuary. Here's the decision:[1] They sell an add-on for apps which snoops on the user's location and sends it to them for advertising purposes. The French data privacy regulator said that required Vecturary to get explicit user consent. But Vectuary has no customer interaction of their own. They claimed to rely on some chain of consent from some other party, but couldn't prove they actually had…

Great, so as long as my browser is not logged into Google or Facebook, I get no tracking and no ads?

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#53

Post by kodablah » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #46

kodablah wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance, I didn't read the ruling or look into it deeply. Why would the tool, used by other apps, require consent itself? Why not punish the apps using the tool without the required user consent? So if I have a tool that helps with analytics, I can't sell in Europe? Because I can't prove that my customers used it properly? I wonder where the line is. My helper Android library that obtains an IP? What dete…

> I wonder where the line is. My helper Android library that obtains an IP? GDPR only applies to parties who store and process user data. If your library doesn't talk to your own servers when embedded in someone else's app, you've got nothing to worry about.

My library processes it. Or does it have to both store and process? So my SaaS analytics service that only stores and gives it back out unprocessed is ok? It's less about specific hypotheticals and more about the general ambiguity around the risks.

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#54

Post by lkrubner » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #50

lkrubner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Who do you think should sponsor the creation of arts and the publication of news? " The government is the obvious choice. The USA already has the National Endowment for the Arts, which is a good start but it needs vastly more money. The important thing is that the NEA has none of the corrupting biases that afflict companies such as Google and Facebook. Most Western countries have some equivalent for the NEA.

You don't see any conflict of interest with the government being a main sponsor of publication of news?

Do you see any conflict of interest between the government appointing judges who will then, at some point during their career, probably hear civil lawsuits against the government? The independence of the judiciary developed throughout the 1500s and 1600s and then finally, in Britain, was consolidated into a formal principle with the Act Of Settlement of 1706. And since that time, the principle of independent appointees of the government carrying out government functions is an idea that has spread to other areas of government. We can certainly put in place guarantees of an independent NEA.

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#55

Post by Viliam1234 » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

yayana wrote: post #31

orev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the reason you feel the need to immediately block ads is because of how they have been abused and pushed to further and further absurdity over the years.

I don't know that is true, I spend more than half my time on resources similar to (sometimes even from) the pre-commercial Internet. The existence of the Ad driven Internet is disruptive even if it were pretty benign simply because it has money and it wants all the engagement.

> it wants all the engagement

This. From my user perspective, a good website is one that gives me the information that I need, when I need it, in minimum necessary time. From ad-driven websites's perspective, a good user is one that visits the website as often as possible, and stays as long as possible; also provides all kinds of personal data (in ideal case, also on other people).

Problem is, even if I turn off the ads, I cannot turn off the design decisions that were influenced by the ads. Such as, pages trying to make you click on more pages, long descriptions where a short one would do, multiple articles containing essentially the same information, articles with partial information (which don't get updated, because a new article gets written instead), etc.

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#56

Post by julien » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 2:21 AM UTC

keithnz wrote: post #32

The irony of the articles website asking to turn off adblocker :) I'm not sure what a non ad supported web would look like. I'm fairly sure my local newspapers would collapse. They are drastically shrinking already. Seems hard to make a buck in journalism these days. we also hate "paywalls", we expect everything available for free and, the more tech savvy, are more than happy to block the ads with adblockers. While I…

>The irony of the articles website asking to turn off adblocker :)

Lol, this is a picture from the message that NYTimes shows when you have an ad-blocker!

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#57

Post by pcr0 » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

product50 wrote: post #39

No ad supported web means a paid web. I am not sure if that is what the users want either. I have seen even in HN where people post alternate links of a site blocked by paywall to let users access the content for free. And this paid channel means every content site (such as Medium, NYT, WSJ, WaPo etc.) will have to institute their own paid mechanism which will cost users a lot of money. Pick your pill - you can't hav…

I think paying to opt-out of ads and tracking is a reasonable solution.

There will always be people who can't afford or don't want to pay for content.

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#58

Post by votepaunchy » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #54

mythrwy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see any conflict of interest with the government being a main sponsor of publication of news?

Do you see any conflict of interest between the government appointing judges who will then, at some point during their career, probably hear civil lawsuits against the government? The independence of the judiciary developed throughout the 1500s and 1600s and then finally, in Britain, was consolidated into a formal principle with the Act Of Settlement of 1706. And since that time, the principle of independent appointe…

Have you considered that an independent judiciary has been aided by an independent media? Who will watch the watchers and all.

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#59

Post by hliyan » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 3:30 AM UTC

An unorthodox chain of thought:

1. In order to end the stronghold of advertising on the web, we need to first address advertising in the wider world

2. Advertising (amongst other things such as lobbying, flouting rules, pollution, anti-competitive practices) is driven by companies' almost desperate need for "growth"

3. Growth is driven by investor pressure

4. Investors are driven by need for ROI

5. The need for ROI is driven by inflation and its erosive effects on saved wealth

6. Inflation is driven by government spending via printing money

Therefore, we should reduce inflation?

Re: The End of the Ad-Supported Web

#60

Post by justapassenger » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 5:08 AM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #59

An unorthodox chain of thought: 1. In order to end the stronghold of advertising on the web, we need to first address advertising in the wider world 2. Advertising (amongst other things such as lobbying, flouting rules, pollution, anti-competitive practices) is driven by companies' almost desperate need for "growth" 3. Growth is driven by investor pressure 4. Investors are driven by need for ROI 5. The need for ROI i…

Growth is driven by people wanting to survive, for which they need to accumulate more wealth. Maybe you already have enough wealth to support yourself for the rest of your life but most of the people in the world don’t.