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The Bullshit Web

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Re: The Bullshit Web

#541

Post by ChuckMcM »

jiveturkey wrote: post #537
ChuckMcM wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this rant, you should go the next step: All you need to 'fix' this is a fast loading news website that gets enough paid subscribers to earn enough margin from subscriptions that you can pay for a news staff, an office, and various overheads. That is a longish way of saying that 99.9% of the overhead in any modern web site can be traced almost entirely to the mechanisms by which that web site is attempting to e…

data cow. thank you

Your welcome, but it is oil89's invention of 10 months ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15350778 I just love it though.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#542

Post by blub »

monadgonad wrote: post #530
blub wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporal literally said that the internet is the "commons" and your counter is that companies and protocols aren't the commons. You're just being purposefully obtuse, this is not hard to understand, assuming ones paycheck doesn't depend on not understanding it.

There’s no need to be so rude. I’m not being obtuse; I understand their point, I just disagree with it. The internet itself is not degraded by some major news sites being slow. Their misuse of their part of the internet doesn’t affect it overall, thus it is not tragedy of the commons. Most of the websites I use on a day to day basis (GitHub, Stack Exchange, HN, most smaller blogs that I find through HN, etc.) do not…

The internet as experienced by the average human is a poorer experience because of the advertising and spyware/tracking.

This is almost universally true, even if small areas have been fenced off. The fact that you can limit your use of the internet to HN and a few other sites is in fact a luxury.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#543

Post by blub »

bena wrote: post #525
blub wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporal literally said that the internet is the "commons" and your counter is that companies and protocols aren't the commons. You're just being purposefully obtuse, this is not hard to understand, assuming ones paycheck doesn't depend on not understanding it.

I think his point is that the protocols are the internet. I mean, the "internet" is just the word we give to the interconnected network of computers spanning the globe. It doesn't exist as a thing per se, but as an idea. The internet can never be slow. Your connection to a certain site can be slow. Whether that site is a particular web page or the internet service provider's router that provides you with access to th…

In this case the internet is the sum of the online services people interact with.

Most websites are using advertising and spyware-like tracking, to the point that it can be said that interacting with the internet will be a poor experience without an ad blocker. There will always be the odd oasis website, but the internet has been completely swallowed by spyvertising.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#545

Post by russdpale »

ben509 wrote: post #533
russdpale wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if your content sucks. If you need all that bullshit to stay profitable then perhaps the business isn't really needed at all. "but that is the industry competition for you, everyone does it." To that, all I can say is perhaps some regulation is required to level the playing field.

You don't want regulation to level the field, you want to set up a barrier to entry for smaller players. And I've thought of this many times, regarding all the terrible news outlets out there. But you'd have to gut 1A to do it, and it would instantly be used for evil. Nope, just hell no.

I mean regulations in terms of specifically protecting ourselves with a digital bill of rights. No one gets to use telematics, no one gets to track users, etc.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#546

Post by ChuckMcM »

birksherty wrote: post #536
ChuckMcM wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this rant, you should go the next step: All you need to 'fix' this is a fast loading news website that gets enough paid subscribers to earn enough margin from subscriptions that you can pay for a news staff, an office, and various overheads. That is a longish way of saying that 99.9% of the overhead in any modern web site can be traced almost entirely to the mechanisms by which that web site is attempting to e…

They don't need paid subscribers. Physical papers and tv have been supported by ads without tracking for decades. Companies pay for space or time. Internet allowed advertisers to track so now we have this BS. They had many years to fix this. But tracking is the business of many companies like google and facebook. Now lot of people uses ad blocker and it's increasing.

The price an advertiser pays to be a full page ad in the NYTimes and printed with the paper is on the order of $150,000, the price an advertiser pays to obscure your entire screen with an ad is as little as $1.00.

What you're missing is that advertising rates for television and print are several decimal orders higher than the rates for internet advertising. Why that is is more complicated than you might guess, but the economics of "printing" a newspaper by sending you the text is a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than running a printing press. Between those two realities a lot of news web sites are being crushed.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#547

Post by smolder »

SilasX wrote: post #508
themacguffinman wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's very surprising. Advertisers won't let publishers serve ads directly because that requires trust in publishers to not misrepresent stats like impressions and real views. I don't know how you'd solve that trust problem when publishers are actually incentivized to cheat advertisers.

Couldn’t they eg have some trusted proxy server that routes some requests to the real-content NYTimes server and some to the ad server?

That sounds like a viable solution to the trust issue. They don't need to respond to the requests, just see copies they can be sure are real requests.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#548

Post by krapp »

ryanianian wrote: post #488
krapp wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Simply rendering text isn't a business-model anymore unfortunately, and publishers are doing everything they can to actually make their content profitable. If they can't come with a business model that works on the web then they're welcome to leave the web and go back to the printing press. The web wasn't made to provide a stable platform for monetizing content, they have literally every other media paradigm ever cr…

You're also welcome to leave the site and not return. You're not entitled to their content on whatever terms you decide are fair or not.

> You're not entitled to their content on whatever terms you decide are fair or not.

Yes I am. I'm entitled to whatever content their server returns in response to my user-agent's request, and I'm entitled to filter and alter that content in any way I choose, including not running javascript and blocking advertising.

If they want to put content behind a paywall, fine - good luck getting anyone to consider their content worth paying for, though. Otherwise, it's fair game. That's the way the web works, and that's the way it's always worked.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#549

Post by ubernostrum »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #394
ubernostrum wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of the public transit systems I use on a regular basis sell me monthly unlimited-use passes.

That’s nothing more than marketing. Do you ride more because it’s unlimited? When you get to your stop for your office or dinner or whatever, do you go back home and then back again before getting off? Do you go all the way to the end of the line to minimize your cost per mile, then walk back to your actual destination? Of course not, you use it as efficiently as possible to do the thing you used public transit to ac…

Of course not, you use it as efficiently as possible to do the thing you used public transit to actually _get to_.

The comment I replied to claimed transit systems don't sell unlimited-ride passes. I was pointing out that some of them do. What you're arguing is they wouldn't have the capacity to handle it if every person bought such a pass and immediately ceased all activities other than riding transit 24/7, which may well be true, but is also a non sequitur.

Though since you ask, it would be a bit difficult for me to "maximize" use of my Caltrain pass in the way you're suggesting, since going "all the way to the end of the line to minimize your cost per mile, then walk back to your actual destination" is not realistic -- the line is ~80 miles long.

Re: The Bullshit Web

#550

Post by smadge »

bena wrote: post #522
smadge wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your choice of journalism as an example is unsettling. If the New York Times goes out of business, there is no guarantee that another news publisher will break the same stories. Some things will just not be investigated anymore and some important stories will just not be told.

But doesn't that hold true regardless? The presence of the New York Times means there are certain stories not being investigated or told. And we aren't even fully aware. We have no idea if those stories would be of more worth to us or not.

Can you elaborate more? I was working with the model that more investigative journalism is better, but you seem to be suggesting that the presence of some news outlets inhibits others.
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