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Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

> But many of the providers of "content" know they have little to provide, so they drag it out in video form, saving the actual information for the last 10% of the video (if ever!)

0:00 - 00:10 Useless video animation

00:10-2:00 "Hey guys welcome to my channel. Make sure to like and subscribe and let me know how I'm doing in the comments. Also make sure to check out [sponsor] and use coupon code [code] for 10% off"

2:00-5:00 Useless personal story about why creator is making the video

5:00-10:00 Useless history of the subject matter

10:00-11:00 The actual useful content

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There was always a lot of high quality content on the web, created and shared not with the intent of making money. This still exists but is crowded out by people incentivized to make content to monetize it ie the old publishing model.

This now makes up the bulk of 'content' and is heavily monetized and driven by monetization where the 'content creators' have a more intimate relationship with advertisers and platforms to essentially sell out their audience ie back to the old media model of 'influencers'.

The content is also derivative and repetitive but easier to access and consume. Thanks to the monetization the presentation and production values are higher. There is definitely some decent content produced by this model but it becomes harder and harder to find.

There is a certain desperation to capitalism that infects everything. Sell, sell, sell, make money, forget everything else unless it affects your ability to make money, and it becomes the primary driver.

> There is a certain desperation to capitalism that infects everything

I just quoted you on twitter as I think that expresses very well how I feel. Underlying capitalism is the thought that if you fail you'll starve.

But (and bringing this back to the original topic) the businesses behind the web have gone even further. It's not sufficient to make money, you must make ALL the money you can ALL of the time. This leads to the behaviour as discussed in the article - no regard for how you are treating your customers/fellow human beings, just get rich, and by winning you justify your shitty actions. This is probably nothing new, robber barons have been around for a long time, but it now seems to be standard practice for all businesses, especially web-based ones who don't directly deal with people.

This is what the bulk of Meditations on Moloch[0] is about - under competitive pressure, if you can forgo a value in order to get ahead, you outcompete those not willing to do so. Iterate over it, and you can see how competition gradually throws all values under the bus, until all that remains is the money-making core.

(I like to sometimes phrase it as "the market optimizes for creating the most useless thing that you can still trick people into buying".)

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

meditations on moloch seems to include several false premises. eg, in the fish farming scenario, it neglects the obvious: libertarian pacts are created to recognize property rights, which would yield a libertarian response to defectors - they're stealing productive capacity of the lake, ergo they're initiating a conflict.

Property rights themselves are a coordination problem - i.e. why should one respect the property rights of others when it benefits one to ignore them?

In real world, we solve this the usual way - by having a government enforce them.

I often feel this way about podcasts. Many great podcasts have a 0:30 intro, 1:30 of ads then 08:00 of random babble before getting into 5:00 of the meat of the podcast. The most recent one I can think of is 99% Invisible, though they're not even close to the only ones that do it.

There are podcasts like that, but I admit I am strange because all my favourite podcasts are multiple hours long, getting really deep into the content. Jocos podcasts, which doesn't really have ads other than for his own products, fx are often more than 3 hours, Dan Carlins Hardcore History is typically that long per episode, but often they are also part of a series, like his 5 episodes on the first world war (probably about 20 hours).

This. Exactly this. I don't get why anyone would listen to a podcast with ads and/or bad information density.

I mean, the whole point (and value) of podcasts is to remove the private radio station crap, not to replicate it.

BTW, the German podcast scene is a quite positive example of the directions podcasts can go.

Do you mean podcasts in German or by Germans? If the latter, any good suggestions?

Omega Tau - a Science and Engineering Podcast is fantastic:

http://omegataupodcast.net/

Long episodes, such as 2 hours interviewing a physicist at ITER are really well done.

And of course: (all German language)

- CRE Technik, Kultur, Gesellschaft https://cre.fm/

- Deutschlandfunk Nova - Eine Stunde History https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/eine-stunde-history

- Methodisch Inkorrekt http://minkorrekt.de/

- Raumzeit https://raumzeit-podcast.de/

- Logbuch Netzpolitik https://logbuch-netzpolitik.de/ (prefer the episodes where they have guests)

To be fair, a lot of podcasts have ads, but ads aren't what I'm objecting to. The modern web doesn't suck because of ads. It sucks because of the technologies around ensuring you look at the ads, around sharing your behaviors as you look at the ads, etc.

Any podcast player I can imagine anyone would ever use has a convenient way to skip ads, and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast. My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode. It downloads a file and plays that file for me.

Who really cares that much about ads that don't track you or destroy your experience?

> and the neither the presence of the ads themselves nor my decision to skip them degrades the experience of listening to the podcast

I beg to differ.

I see the ability to skip ads immediately, at any time, as a fundamental user right (and websites that try to deny this right should be prosecute by consumer protection). In other words, this is not the distinction between good versus bad quality. It is the distinction between merely acceptable versus totally inacceptable.

With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience.

I cannot agree with this sentiment. You're basically demanding that these creators work for you, for free.

If you choose to skip the ads, then how should the creators be compensated for the content that you consumed?

"With regard to quality, it is a huge jump upwards if a podcast has no ads at all, nowhere, not even hidden or implicit. It is a really noticeable difference if the whole audio simply doesn't care about pleasing any stakeholder besides its audience."

You know what else is a huge jump in quality? Actually being able to continue to do the show.

Either talk about something you care about a lot and do it for the love, or remember you're competing against students doing this for the fun or as an exercise.

Nobody is entitled to a business model. If ads don't work for your users, find one that does (I hear people have some success with Patronite these days, for example). If there is none, then maybe it isn't good to try to make a business out of it in the first place.

There's way too much "content" these days anyway, and the worst of it is the one that is done to make money (as opposed to labour of love, or having external funding independent of content's performance - like patronage, being considered a "marketing expense", etc.).

> I hear people have some success with Patronite these days

Moreover, direct donations [1] are working quite well, at least for the popular podcasts. (But then, only the very popular podcasts make a fortune anyway.)

Here in Germany, SEPA standing orders are quite popular for fans to support their favourites.

Also, buying stuff and sending that to the Podcasters is quite popular for some formats (either specialized stuff like high-quality chocolate from people working in that business, or just buying random stuff from a podcaster's Amazon wishlist.)

[1] Well, legally this is still plain income rather than donations, so you still have to pay taxes. Unless, of course, that income is very small and/or you create a non-profit organization around your podcast.

You're saying this like you're entitled to the content, though. You're not. And quite frankly, I find taking the content without supporting the creator to be much, much worse than you consider ads to be.

> My podcast player doesn't demand I look at Forbes' "thought of the day" or disable my fast-forward button in order to play. It doesn't connect to 280 random third-party tracking domains as I listen to an episode.

Yet.

There's an easy-to-imagine scenario where advertisers bribe podcast playing software creators to embed these "features" for a cut of the money.

but main question is how to monetize this content ... it seems patreon is the only option?

What are some podcasts from Germany (in German or English) that you would recommend?

This is why I stopped listening to back to work. There were useful tidbits, but I didn’t want to wade through an hour of random drivel to get to it.

If you're on iOS you should try my Podcast client, SkipCast. http://skipcast.net/ The marquee feature and indeed, the app's name, is for this exact reason. Large buttons make skipping much faster and accurate that other players, letting you get to the content you want faster. It's also got Skip Silence to eliminate extended moments of dead-air.

Podcasts are following the same pattern as other media. I think it's a vicious cycle. The medium starts out with a few ads, at a higher price. Once the novelty wears off and people are used to seeing these ads, they can't fetch as much money. So the publishers start shoving more and more in, driving up the ad saturation and driving down the value (and income) from each ad.

I've been listening to podcasts since about 2010, and in that time I've witnessed podcasts that used to be ad-free jump on the Blue Apron / Stamps.com / Dollar Shave Club bandwagon. First they started with a little sponsored ad at the end of the show. Then one at the beginning. Then one commercial break. Then multiple commercial breaks. It's the same downward spiral that television went through and it's absolutely painful to watch it happen and be powerless to do anything. Maybe I should have done a better job of supporting those podcasts; I did donate to many of them. But I envision a time in the future where I'll no longer be able to feel good about listening.

You forgot the trailer asking you to subscribe, with some clickable areas, and optional "bonus content at the end" :)

Makes it harder to estimate where the information in the video is.

> 0:00 - 00:10 Useless video animation

I'm happy when it's only useless. It's often useless and loud.

That's because it's an unconditioned stimulus (classical conditioning theory). If you repeatedly watch their videos, and like them, you'll start to associate their intro animation with the content you like, and you'll like the intro animation. Later, you'll even come up with post-rationalizations for why it's not quite so loud or useless.

Unless of course you're so turned off by the intro that you bail out before giving their content a chance.

The TED intro (standard series) bmakes me gag now Ten seconds.

Mind, mobile YT doesn't have keyboard sip, but mpsyt does.

Trick: Skip straight to halfway. If the meat is being covered, roll back, else forward.

Binary search works well.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-wadsworth-constant

You also forgot the slow unboxing if it's a product review. I mean I guess some people like that, but for me, it's just another point in favor of text.

The whole "unboxing" hype, as if that were a thing. "Now let's enjoy getting this [thing] out of its packaging!" -- as if that were an essential part of the enjoyment of [thing]. It's just a prerequisite to the actual use and enjoyment of [thing], because packaging is a prerequisite of transport, storage and sales.

Who the heck came up with the silly idea that this is an event in itself? And above all, why did anyone -- or, worse, seemingly everyone -- fall for it?!?

Stop the darn lunacy now.

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