I prefer each website be in control over their own monetization model and not dictated by the whims of a browser vendor without their consent.
There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.
I'm extremely satisfied that ad blocking is spreading ever more rapidly simply because I think that's the most direct way to get out of this current model of profit that leads to so many awful things. The fundamental problem is that with ad based model your customer is no longer the person actually consuming your material, but the advertiser. That, in turn, introduces 'sponsored' content, ads misleadingly ran as actual content, bias in views presented, external censorship of content to remain in the spirit of the advertiser, extensive tracking and data mining of users, and all these other lovely things. Good riddance.
What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads.
> the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is.
Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads? The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon, consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source.
And I want to be compensated for writing HN comments. Alas, just because I want to be compensated for something, doesn't mean I will be. Content producers feeling entitled to compensation for their free and public content are kind of forgetting the content consumers have agency too.
> and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads.
Just because it works, doesn't mean it's not wrong. Just because it worked for now, doesn't mean it'll keep on working. Nobody is entitled to their business model working forever, or at all.
> Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads?
Yes. They have the content, and want to exchange it for money. It's literally their job to figure out how to do this.
> The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon
Good. As it should be.
> consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source.
Again, not my responsibility. Especially given that the social contract of the Web is, by design, that if your server responds with 200 OK + data, I get to render that data however I like.
They have a right to ask for compensation, and a right to require it. They have no right to be compensated, if they choose to give away the content for free. That would be saying they have a right to force people to be generous.
Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free. The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking. Browsers are user agents, and what you send in response to a HTTP request is mine to render how I like. Publishers have a proper, correct way to ensure compensation on the Web - it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content. But they prefer ads, because it's easier. It's easier to bleed people out of their sanity (and privacy) than to ask for money. It's easier not having to write quality content that would be worth paying for. But that's a choice publishers make.
This is the most important point: nobody is entitled to their business model working. If ads aren't working for you, change your business model.
Your attestation usage of "manipulative" is attempting to manipulate in itself. Like I said everyone is technically free to do what they want, but it doesn't change the fact that starving content producers of micro ad revenue goes against their wishes which in most cases deprives them of their sole revenue source.
> The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking.
No the web is not a social contract, it's a combination of technologies. The social contract exists between Content Producers and Consumers and the Web is the platform to enable delivery of that content. The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served. A "blocker" by definition blocks supporting resources that producers wanted their content served with - which in most cases is their primary revenue source for producing that content.
> it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content.
Great, then use it when that option is available, as a benefit you wont see ads and producers get compensated.
But I hope you're not naive enough to think that a paywall works for all content and all audiences? It's great when it does, content producers get a reliable and predictable source of revenue but there's a reason why ad-supported free content is used, it's not because it's easier, it's because it's viable.
Content creators have been acting like assholes and now they're seeing the consequences.
Crying crocodile tears of unfairness won't change that, it's just wasting people's time. If those content creators can't get people to pay for their content, it means their content is worthless.
Choice of revenue source is, well, a choice. It's not like we're talking about some poor third-world kids, for whom the only choice is between starvation and building ad-powered content farms. It's all just people who asked themselves, "how can I make me some money?", and out of countless of possible business models, chose this particular one, which is giving stuff away for free, attaching a malicious secondary payload to it, and hoping that this secondary payload will generate some money.
> No the web is not a social contract, it's a combination of technologies.
It's that combination of technologies that create this contract. Those technologies create a particular platform, with particular set of rules. It provides ways of giving things away, as well as asking for compensation. It provides ways of saying "strings attached". Unfortunately, many people choose to use the "give things away, no strings attached" path and then, after giving a thing away, demand to be paid. And it's even fine, as long as they realize many people will just brush their latter demand away, as it's silly and improper.
> The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served.
Oh, no no no. Not the last part. Why on Earth I, as a consumer, would agree to a producer dictating how I consume the content after I get it? I have the right to consume it the way I want, and the Web tech stack is built around preserving this right. The producer's right is to structure the content for particular consumption. A paywall, or showing ads before content, or dumping it all in a PDF, is a way of doing that. The consumer's right is to destructure what they get and consume it the way they like.
(As an analogy - if a restaurant wants me to not eat tomatoes, it's free to offers only meals without them. But it would be ridiculous for them to serve me tomatoes and then have a waiter hovering over me, ensuring I don't eat them. Or a waiter dictating I have to eat all of the things on my plate, and in a particular sequence.)
> Great, then use it when that option is available, as a benefit you wont see ads and producers get compensated.
Offer it to me, and I shall use it if I want your content badly enough, or not use it and go elsewhere. That's fair.
> I hope you're not naive enough to think that a paywall works for all content and all audiences?
I'm not. Fortunately, there are alternatives, including donations/patronage, or writing your content off as marketing expense for something else (e.g. articles published for free in hope you'll buy the author's book on the same topic, or just publishing in order to gather trust and goodwill).
(EDIT: and also, there's the elephant in the room - a lot of content can exists solely because of ads. Or, in other words, it couldn't be monetized in any other way. Why? Because it's crap. If that content dies off completely, I say good riddance.)
> there's a reason why ad-supported free content is used, it's not because it's easier, it's because it's viable
It's viable for now (and becoming less so, hence all the whining about ad-blockers). But so is polluting rivers when you're running a factory. Just because something is viable, doesn't mean it's good.
I agree with your statements above. Just pointing out that revenue is not the automatic goal of every human endeavor.
The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served.
I certainly agree with you that content producers should have a mechanism for the possibility of revenue, but this is a two way street. Advertising networks have worked for some things , but are becoming more and more invasive, and hence more and more problematic. If enough people reject the model, content producers need to be either looking for a new model or looking for ways to improve this one. This stuff isn't rocket science.
Not at all. Most of the industry moved away from CPC a while ago due to how dodgy it skews data. Most clicks end up being bots on shady websites Vs actual people. Viewabilty is what the good agencies are advertising against now; with the hope that you'll navigate to the advertiser's site down the line.
The ad-blocker won't load the ad at all for two reasons. 1) Performance. Less to load (and process, and render, etc) means faster load times, less bandwidth consumption, lower CPU usage (think about all those extra scripts), etc. 2) Privacy. If your computer contacts the ad network at all, then it could track you.
Because the blocker fundamentally can't load the ad or contact the respective network while also doing its job, triggering a payment would seem to be more or less impossible.
(I know that stealing from white man is bad, third worlder in a far away land is not bad but I'm too autistic for the hypocrisy our society lives by)
Some minds are just completely warped.
Most don't offer that choice.
> There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.
I think I missed that right in our constitution--you must respect other's wishes to impose ads on the content that is otherwise freely accessible on the internet. A “right” is hardly the right word—“social courtesy” may be better.
So I block all ads and all trackers.
I keep one browser in vanilla condition in case I run into a government site that won't work with the blockers.
And that's great if a large volume of your visitors are using Brave, but that's certainly not the case for us. Granted, this is anecdata, but I suspect that it holds true for many other sites.
(On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name: I've known plenty of people who are brave, whether it's because of things they've done, or because of terrible suffering they've endured, but I'm afraid I see nothing about that web browser to justify the name.)
I wouldn't blame you.
In any case, this is more of an ethical preference than a serious statement about the viability about Brave's specific monetization model... any product that gives the consumer more choice without entirely depriving people of revenue is welcome to me.