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Comment by jhall1468 | Hacker News Reader

> Most content is worthless.

What nonsense. Most content's worth is variable depending on who is consuming it. The issue with ad-blockers is that it isn't killing worthless content. It's killing content that survives between the insane traffic of Facebook and the complete lack of traffic in personal blogs that 12 people visit.

> The purpose can easily be filled by some alternate, free material.

Yes, because the quality of content supported by ads and the quality of content done by some ad-free blog in someone's free time is always equal.

> When the content can be easily leveraged to some profitable goal, people are usually more than willing to pay for it.

You mean like instructional YouTube videos, free web-based resources for learning new things (programming, languages, etc). Oh wait, all of that is ad-supported.

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> It's killing content that survives between the insane traffic of Facebook and the complete lack of traffic in personal blogs that 12 people visit.

What does that tell you about the value of that content that people are not even willing to be exposed to an ad in order to consume it? This is the proper application of "the customer is always right". When the customer doesn't want what you're selling, it's not the customer's fault. It's the vendor's fault for failing to meet the market demands in a suitable way.

> Yes, because the quality of content supported by ads and the quality of content done by some ad-free blog in someone's free time is always equal.

No, it's not. Sometimes the unbiased opinion of someone who doesn't have to please advertisers results in a much higher quality product.

> You mean like instructional YouTube videos, free web-based resources for learning new things (programming, languages, etc). Oh wait, all of that is ad-supported.

Do most FOSS doc pages have ads on them? Not that I've seen. O'Reilly and other publishers have no trouble charging money for well-written technical documentation. People are clearly willing to pay for that. Rosetta Stone charges quite a bit for language instruction.

> When the customer doesn't want what you're selling, it's not the customer's fault.

They do want it, but for free. And while they still consume it, for free, they hide behind some non-sense about tracking or privacy, even though if those two issues were resolved they would block it any way because it's not convenient to white list a site. Duckduckgo is perfect evidence of that.

> No, it's not. Sometimes the unbiased opinion of someone who doesn't have to please advertisers results in a much higher quality product.

And much of the time it isn't.

> They do want it, but for free.

Yes, this is relatively common. People will take something for free that they aren't willing to pay for. Other things they'll pay one amount for, but not a larger amount. Everybody decides for him or herself how much something is worth to them. If the majority of people decide that value is "nothing, not even looking at an ad", then that's what the value of that thing is. That's how markets work.

This is a load of BS. The reality is most people install a blocker and never think twice. Your implication that people make a value decision for every website they visit is laughable, and more importantly, exactly the opposite of what most people do.

> most people install a blocker

This is exactly the point. People have to actively seek out and find an ad blocker. They experience the Internet with ads, then decide that it is not worth it. It doesn't just happen. So what is your argument? That people are idiots and cannot correctly assess how valuable something is to them?

Personally, I've whitelisted sites that are known to have useful and unobtrusive ads. I've also supported other sites and apps that I like directly, by giving money, buying a paid version, or buying branded merchandise. There are options other than ads.

I think it's quite possible to detect when someone is using an ad blocker. If publishers really think it's a problem, they can easily disable the site for anyone with an active ad blocker. So why don't they do it? I've seen a few sites take this approach. I happily left and never went back. Like I said before, there's no real reason I need to read one particular article rather than another one in any given moment. If I need the information for something specific, I'll pay for it.

> If publishers really think it's a problem, they can easily disable the site for anyone with an active ad blocker.

Anti-ad blocker blocker's are a thing. UBlock and Adblock both include them. At the end of the day all it takes is regex.

You take another breath every few seconds but you don't do it consciously. Not everything you do is a conscious decision you actively make in the forefront of your mind.

Your comments lead me to believe you have skin in the game because you seem determined to not acknowledge that the value of something is what your customers will pay for it. If they aren't willing to pay for it then it has no value in the market, regardless of the value you've assigned to it.

> Your comments lead me to believe you have skin in the game because you seem determined to not acknowledge that the value of something is what your customers will pay for it.

None what-so-ever, other than having several websites I enjoy that use ads for revenue generation. My current work is in Business SAAS.

> If they aren't willing to pay for it then it has no value in the market, regardless of the value you've assigned to it.

You don't understand markets. If a minority of users aren't willing to "pay" for it, that doesn't make it without value. By your logic, movies are pirated by a minority and thus, they have no value. With movies it matters less because they've compensated for it by charging people that actually pay more and more.

I use an adblocker, but only with a blacklist. So far only one site has made it on that blacklist. A certain financial blog that is just too obnoxious to read without. The whitelisting approach suggests that 'the first one is always free' for the consumer but I agree with you that the average user has no feeling for the economics underlying the websites they visit and the content they consume. Adblockers run with a whole lot of blocking by default. That gives them the most market value (remember, there is a market for adblocking).

People suggest that they would happily pay a 1st world sum of money but do they think about what that price tag looks like for people with less money to spend? My 'eyeballs' might be worth more than most, or not, to the ad networks. I'm happily trying to subsidize this whole web thing.

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