Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#61

Post by normloman » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:05 PM UTC

skylan_q wrote: post #50

easytiger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only is this why online advertising is ultimately doomed, but it's why we hugely and desperately and badly need to find another way of paying for content. Another viable option is letting a lot of the content die. I'm sure we can all live without knowing that one neat trick that you won't believe. In your proposal: > ... constant challenge for any creative type is making a living. Well perhaps if that's the cas…

... constant challenge for any creative type is making a living. Well perhaps if that's the case what you do is not valuable to anyone. People have trouble coming to terms with the fact that they don't necessarily deserve to earn a living because they're doing something they like. It's like people are incapable of growing up anymore.

That's not completely true. While it's true that some artists just feel entitled to a paycheck, there are other reasons to support paying for content. After all, good music (or good anything) takes a lifetime of practice to make. You have less time to perfect your craft if you're working a full time job doing something else. If some artists are allowed to make a living off their work, or even half a living off their work, the quality of the art improves. So not everyone needs to "grow up." Some have a valid concern.

That said, artists never made much of a living, even before the Internet.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#62

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:06 PM UTC

It has been way for a while, but it has gotten worse.

I used to check out Yahoo Finance once a day because it used to have real financial news but now if you look at the front page template about 60% of it is allocated to the same scam ads that run over and over and less than 40% to real content.

Needless to say I don't use Yahoo Finance regularly anymore.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#63

Post by normloman » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #57

jerf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon is saving the world, not AdBlock. It's still early but I expect in 10 years that "trying to make money via ads" is going to see "very 2010s", due to the lack of words for "something done from the late 1990s to the late 2010s". It just doesn't work. It almost works. It is so painfully close to working that we can taste it, which is why it has hung around so long. But eventually, advertising corrupts all souls.…

Isn't Patreon just charity? I don't think that's a sustainable way to pay for content.

Not sustainable? Tell that to PBS!

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#64

Post by john_b » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #38

dredmorbius wrote: post #18

99% of online advertisers give the rest a bad name. Not only is this why online advertising is ultimately doomed, but it's why we hugely and desperately and badly need to find another way of paying for content. The alternatives for the moment are gratis, patronage, "native advertising", and subscriptions. Few of these strike me as ultimately scalable. I've been a fan of Phil Hunt, of Pirate Party UK, and his broadban…

> Not only is this why online advertising is ultimately doomed, but it's why we hugely and desperately and badly need to find another way of paying for content. Another viable option is letting a lot of the content die. I'm sure we can all live without knowing that one neat trick that you won't believe. In your proposal: > ... constant challenge for any creative type is making a living. Well perhaps if that's the cas…

> "valuable"

Your post only uses that word in its economic sense. Thus statements like this:

> "Over time economic cycles destroy things that were once valuable."

Are tautologies, not arguments. The set of things which people find valuable (in the subjective sense of the word, not the economic one) and the set of things which people will pay for are not equal. A great many important works of art were once produced under a patronage system, in which only one person found the artist's work "valuable".

The reason patronage as a system is no longer as prevalent as it once was is because it was once a status symbol, whereas now it is just seen as some sort of hipster endorsement of some niche thing. The ability to offer patronage to an artist was once a display of great wealth and personal connections; now it means you have an internet connection and a few spare bucks. Maybe it can still work, but the social significance of the system has changed.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#65

Post by Fuxy » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:08 PM UTC

blueskin_ wrote: post #56

dredmorbius wrote: post #18

99% of online advertisers give the rest a bad name. Not only is this why online advertising is ultimately doomed, but it's why we hugely and desperately and badly need to find another way of paying for content. The alternatives for the moment are gratis, patronage, "native advertising", and subscriptions. Few of these strike me as ultimately scalable. I've been a fan of Phil Hunt, of Pirate Party UK, and his broadban…

>Pirate Party UK >broadband tax proposal The Pirate Party is supposed to be pro-internet. This is just a perfect example of how shambolic and badly-organised the UK Pirate Party is, and the reason their membership has been dropping since launch. They are basically a joke party in the UK, where in other countries they have emerged as a significant political force with influence above its size.

With such a proposal I'm not surprised how ca a party of technically skilled people and intelligent people ever come up with such a dumb idea.

There are plenty of obscure artists that were able to monetize their work to a certain degree.

Now are they making millions? No. They do make a small chunk of change though.

With the internet and access to so many good songs the value of a song has decreased and the entertainment industry and artists need to accept that.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#66

Post by Touche » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

normloman wrote: post #63

Touche wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Patreon just charity? I don't think that's a sustainable way to pay for content.

Not sustainable? Tell that to PBS!

Sustainable is the wrong word. Is it scalable? Meaning can a large number of creators live off of this model?

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#67

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #42

thaumaturgy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tell our customers that ad blockers are their first line of defense against malware on the web, and it's true. Web ads have been bad for years and continue to get worse, and content providers aren't doing enough yet to police the advertising on their site. Did you happen to see the recent link about the AdSense redirects? e.g. http://blog.sucuri.net/2015/01/adsense-abused-with-malvertis...

If your customers have machines that can be hijacked by drive-by malware, then blocking ads is not going to help them much in the long run.

Pretty much everyone has machines that can be hijacked by drive-by malware - there have been cases where 0-day exploits have been used for such attacks through targeted ads on reputable websites.

Following other best practices doesn't help you to protect against that, but preventing third parties from injecting arbitrary content on the [reputable/largescale/https] websites you're viewing does close one attack channel. One out of many, but a valuable one.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#68

Post by hellbanTHIS » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:12 PM UTC

Seems like branding is the way to go on the internet, rather than throwing crap in peoples faces.

Example: Yahoo News, brought to you ad free by Nationwide Insurance

Then people think "I like Yahoo News, I like Nationwide Insurance" instead of "I hate that scummy ad, I hate Yahoo News".

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#69

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #18

99% of online advertisers give the rest a bad name. Not only is this why online advertising is ultimately doomed, but it's why we hugely and desperately and badly need to find another way of paying for content. The alternatives for the moment are gratis, patronage, "native advertising", and subscriptions. Few of these strike me as ultimately scalable. I've been a fan of Phil Hunt, of Pirate Party UK, and his broadban…

I think it is more fair to say that a small percentage of online advertisers fill up a lot of inventory with junk that hurt the large percentage of advertisers that run relevant ads.

For most X, you can say that showing ads for X from people who really want to sell it to you makes life better than worse.

The least common denominator behind all these scams is: (i) recurring billing, and (ii) high margin product. An early form of it was the "free ringtone" scam which would hit your phone bill for $10 a month. Today it tends to be nutritional supplements. If you can send somebody an $80 a month bottle of pills that you can get made in China for $5, the net present value of a customer is enough that you can pay Yahoo, affiliate advertisers and others involved enough to keep the thing going.

There is a group of a few hundred people that could be described uncharitably as a "criminal ring" that are behind this stuff. Seriously, they hang out on IRC.

In the world of multilevel marketing the most interesting development is "Ambit Energy" which gets over the problem that it is hard to get people to buy a $80 a month supplement -- everybody needs electricity. However, electricity is a low margin business and Ambit offers very little benefit to consumers other than getting your friends and family members who are Ambit to shut up.

In the world of "normal" businesses where you are dealing with people who know more about their product or business than they do about the rapidly changing world of online advertising. (I read technical documentation like some people read thrillers, but reading the jargon around AdTech makes my head spin.) Also they don't have 80% margins. People like that often find it hard to make a profit with online advertising so the scammers take their place.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#70

Post by brokentone » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 3:21 PM UTC

I've worked primarily on the publisher side and observed such advertisements, but where to point the finger can be really difficult. There are so many affected parties here.

Should Yahoo be held at fault by the consumer? What does that even mean, a boycott? Does Yahoo have a direct relationship with these scammers, or how many connections away are they? Is this a network or programatic placement? Do discovery magazine and CNN go after this company for trademark issues? Does this former homeless man go after them for endorsement issues? Does it even have a US point of presence at all?