At some point, you have to admit that you just want the content for free.
The problem is that they're ads.
> At some point, you have to admit that you just want the content for free.
I understand it's a bit of an ethical conundrum. Quality content and/or service requires compensation. At the same time, advertisement is a form of harassment and intellectual terrorism and they make content undemocratic by nature. Altering your own software in order to see NO ads of any kind under any circumstances is perfectly justifiable.
With that said, I don't buy the myth of the struggling internet entrepreneur being unable to make ends meet because of the selfish adblock users. I think that's as ridiculous a notion as the idea that Napster could kill independent musicians. Fact of the matter is that ads are a form of revenue and there are healthy alternatives out there.
For instance, instead of giving away an infinitesimal fraction of our mental health to every single internet business, we can instead enter a social contract in which everything is free, and consumers are expected to pay into the channels and services that they like best. This is, for instance, how many Podcasts and non-advertiser-friendly Youtube channels work.
In the early days of the internet, there was no expectation to be paid for creating content - people simply created it out of their own goodwill or because it's their passion.
If I set up a personal website, I expect that to be a sunk cost; people pay for my content with their attention. Obviously, attention doesn't put food on the table, but it's saddening to see the contrast between what the Internet could be, and what it is currently.
> "healthy alternatives out there"
That's the real myth. You either pay for content up front (by going to work, getting paid in cash, and using that cash) or you see some ads (which convert your attention to payments in real-time on demand for exactly what you're consuming). For billions of people, ads are faster, easier, more passive and more fair.
Donations are not a scalable business. Podcasts are in an advertiser boom and are making record amounts of money from ads so I'm not sure why you used that example. Very few (if any) channels of size are completely user-supported.
None of the podcasts I listen to contain any kind of advertisement of any kind. This is not difficult to explain; prudent businesses typically do not stray very far outside the Overton window. This form of media exists - flourishes - because of listener patronage.
> Donations are not a scalable business.
True, but it's a viable business model. If you want something that scales as high as your entrepreneurial ambitions, consider that 100 million people pay Spotify in order to not have to listen to ads.
Spotify has made a profit a total of 2 quarters out of 10 years, and that's an example of direct payment as I described, which nobody has a problem with. Donations as you're talking about are completely different. There is no free and pay what you want with spotify.
The fact of the matter is that I have control over what my browser renders. If you provide it for free "with ads" then I am going to access it for free without ads; you are putting it out there free of charge and hoping to get kickbacks. If you escalate the ad-blocker arms race, I am going to lose interest in whatever crap you are peddling. You do not automatically enter a mutual agreement with me upon publishing it and you will not succeed in guilt tripping me into watching vapid and manipulative corporate material.
If you want any of my money, use one of the crowdfunding platforms out there, or sell it upfront.
But sure, some will have this position and it's relatively minor across the population, but you're starting to see more things behind subscriptions and paywalls as a result.
I don't see which part of this thread implies that I'm only against online ads.
> Call it what you want, but you know and understand the implicit agreement is ads in exchange for content.
You don't seem to get it. There are no terms other than what's on the table, which is to say the content and the ads, and both are optional. We are not legally or ethically bound by any "implicit agreement".
> but you're starting to see more things behind subscriptions and paywalls as a result.
Subscriptions and paywalls are markedly better than advertisements, for the consumer at least.
Except the ones that don't or can't pay for it. People want more options for access, not less. The extremist position is saying all advertising is bad while ignoring the economic impact and the fact that almost all businesses grow because of it.
More than that, random subdomains are used to subvert adblockers.
To me, it seems that the discussion is about third-party ads which are masquerading as first-party content. It's not about first-party ads or whether the content should be free, but about third-party advertisers pretending to be first-party.
The data relationship changes with first-party serving because it's now isolated to that site.
Except that when you decide to point to someone else's domain via a DNS CNAME on your own domain, you open the door to cookies, referrer information, and more being leaked to the third party.
Whether it's intentional or not, I think it's a bad thing to do.
Oh, and opens the door for malicious cross-domain scripting if the CDN you're CNAME'ing gets compromised.
I don't think it's the same.
At least with HTTPS (or even the use of VPNs, DNS over HTTPS, and the upcoming/proposed encrypted SNI), the ISPs won't have any metadata except the IP headers, which I think is a good rebalancing.
There's no requirement for the CMS to be hosted by a third party. Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, etc. are all popular self-hosted solutions.
The CDN typically does not have all the information, either: a CDN's job is (often, but not always) to deliver media assets (images, videos, audio), large files (e.g. ISOs, executables), or to deliver things like fonts or javascript libraries. These things are (again, often, but not always) supplied from a different domain.
My browser, for example, doesn't send referer headers when dealing with these sites, and it definitely doesn't send any cookies which aren't set for the CDN's domain explicitly. Different amounts of information leak when you CNAME to a CDN on your own domain, or you load third party advertising scripts in a page.
To me, at least, there's a difference between a third party (such as a CDN or ISP) knowing what domain I was on, versus third-party advertising scripts getting their hands on my detailed browser information by (ab)using JavaScript APIs and extensive fingerprinting.
> There's a difference between a service provider and data ownership.
Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand this point. For example, under the GDPR where I live, I have rights to data which I produced, regardless of the service provider or the domain it's delivered on.
The real issue is whether your data is more protected, and with first-party serving (and all the other anti-tracking restrictions), it's isolated to each domain instead of the cross-site tracking we had before. It's basically a user-to-site connection only now, regardless of the backend tech they use.
Any serious privacy change would require regulation as you noted, GDPR and CCPA in the US will provide the real protections soon enough.
The issue is data and privacy, and first-party means it's a much more direct relationship with the site you're on.