Apple vs Google vs Facebook and the slow death of the web

Ever since iOS became ascendant I've been scared of a future like this - where the bulk of internet use is funneled through a small number of gatekeepers, doing an end run around the leveling power of the web. It's hard to put into words, but it's the fear that the "internet as we know it" - chaotic and untamed, or more importantly unruled - will evolve into something akin to TV before cable: more interactive, but still essentially a content delivery system for four or five corporations. That is, a thing that our grandkids will be free to consume, but not to create or improve.

It's funny - if a TV network had ever tried to sell people TVs that only played that network's shows it would have flopped, but iOS has proven that the principle can work if the experience is good enough, or the alternatives poor enough. I suppose it's all inevitable, and maybe some think what I'm worried about is already here, but I sure hope not.

Highly ironic that Gruber is complaining about blocking its website ads on the grounds that they're not annoying like other websites. Same with plenty of other Apple bloggers.

Guess what: adblocking because some ads are obtrusive is like killing a fly with a cannon. Or more like killing a fly with a nuclear bomb. No adblocker maker is going to start whitelisting every single non-obstrusive ad network. They're going to block most of them. Most users will not make the effort of whitelisting their favorite websites either, they'll just see some adblocking app on the Top list in the App Store, download it and forget about it.

Bigger websites will get smarter about ads. Probably more "sponsored" stories and similar things that you can't block. Smaller websites are going to have a harder time tho. All because some people can't understand that if you don't like obtrusive ads the best thing to do is to stop visiting sites with obtrusive ads.

I am actually with Apple on this one, and really think Apple is doing the right thing. No, we have started on wrong footing about content should be free* thanks to Napsterization of web, we discriminate digital goods and physical goods. Now, with ads, we get junk websites or good content websites turn into junk as soon as monetization starts. We have to some how find a way to make people pay for the content they consume, advertising can stay for those who can tolerate and those of us, who cannot - I am tired of Car Ads on my kids youtube channel, I will pay.

The web will be OK, the real hell is the media like The Verge, serving mega-pages with marginal content and click-baity.. ratty tatty articles.

My take on what the Verge is saying:

Web sites that rely on advertising will die or move to Facebook and native apps.

What percentage of Hacker News links rely on advertising? 90%?

While the article makes interesting points, I feel that it is only relevant to big media and expensive content.

The other side of the web is small businesses and individuals making money with their own web sites for customer support, maintaining a consulting business (I have used my web site for 20 years for this purpose), selling their products, sharing their creative works, etc. I would argue that this side of the web is huge and is still ripe for Google style revenue generaton.

I don't underestimate the effect of mobile app use though, and I don't like raising the bar for individuals and small businesses having to spend money to create apps. This is a shame since the web is better in my opinion. When I do engage in productivity killing activities like Twitter and Facebook, I use the web versions of the sites on my phone. I do this partly to support the web as a universal platform and partly because I resent the access permissions so many apps require on my devices.

I'm torn on whether this will make things worse or better. I can see sites starting to adopt in-content ads more aggressively, which will be more difficult to block. Like the sponsored links at the bottom of news articles. I find those much more annoying than a simple banner ad that's in the sidebar.

The author's take on ad blockers is quite alarmist. There are plenty of obvious solutions and counter-arguments:

* Is it fair that you collect and sell data on your users without telling them exactly what that data is? Do you think they'd continue patronizing your site if they knew up front?

* Create a mobile app for your content and enforce its usage

* Bring ads on premise. Back in the 90s we all hosted and sold our own ads.

* Pivot. The world only needs so many BuzzFeeds.

People are talking about this as if there are two options here: ads pay for the internet or the internet drops behind paywalls.

There's another option: we go back to using non-monetized or minimally-monetized services. Frankly, those are better. I don't care about giant media websites aimed at providing oversimplified, sanitized content for the lowest common denominator of people. I don't care about social media or snappy web interfaces that put a layer of varnish on crap. I care about quality information, and people who are knowledgeable and care about a topic will share information on that topic even if they don't make much money for it. People running blogs or small informational services will still do that. Services like PBS/NPR will still be funded by government and donations. Bloggers who are knowledgeable enough will still be able to sell books. Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. can all go bankrupt and I don't care. Sites can go back to being straight unstyled HTML with no CSS and I'm fine with that. Web 2.0 is completely worthless to me. Ads AND paywalls can go to hell.

Sheldon Brown's website is still the best resource about bikes on the internet. The worst degradation it has experienced is the apologies for politically incorrect content that its current maintainer has added due to pressure from people on social media.

"you wouldn't steal a car..."

what a difference in tone and attitude the tech media has for the movie/tv studios (snickers and shrugs of indifference) and for themselves (plaintive appeals to the reader's benevolence) when they both have issues with making money on their content.

Web seems to be doing OK. If a few of the sort of websites that rely on ads go out of business, it may even get better.

The article is wrong. The author thinks this is about a war between the big 3. It's not. There's no insidious plot to pull the rug out from under google. Apple isn't trying to push their ad platform. Ads right now are just a shitty user experience. You can try to construct whatever narrative you want, but the simplest explanation fits; ads are shit, mobile browsing is shit because of it.

Just block iOS for everything, Apple didn't see that one coming.

"TAKING MONEY AND ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE WEB MEANS THAT WEB INNOVATION WILL SLOW TO A CRAWL"

This is the sort of messaging I would expect from a journalist who has a stake in the online-advertisement game. Does anyone really buy this argument?

I enjoy this Apple-Google death spiral as a spectator, and I hope it will drive more websites to subscription-based, freemium models, instead of playing friends with global spy regimes that incentive advertisement platforms to extract every detail of your internet browsing in order to "serve you better ads", aka, develop behavior profiles of consumers in order to find the "terrorist", and definitely not aggregating the behaviors of individuals in order to create a huge information disparity that becomes a vector of population control. Yes, that poorly placed Google AdSense blurb is trying to take over the world.

Advertisements suck, and they're only getting worse, and more subversive, and the intent of the platform creators is only becoming further aligned with these spy regimes.

So walled gardens and "owning" the users are all fine and dandy until they suffocate you.

No one challenged apple either legally or technologically and everyone tried to emulate them. Enjoy your brave new world.