A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of ad blockers, but it certainly didn't help.
I don't think we should reward a business model which relies on the premise that humans like to watch ads. I never had someone tell me to drive slower because they wanted to take a closer look at a billboard. Never had I had to rewind a video because someone missed an ad. etc... etc...
Let's be honest. If someone told you to do any of the above things regularly and consistently, you would question their sanity.
But somehow it's normal for businesses to assume people like to watch ads and make it their primary income revenue. Well, sure, some companies succeeded using this model. But I don't see why this should result in me paying more attention to ads.
I don't hold the extremist position that all ads are bad or should be abolished. I have always tried to ignore ads. Adblockers automate what I normally do. And if your business model relies on me watching your ads, maybe you should reconsider your assumptions.
The only way to get rid of them is to deny them any attention at all. They are not entitled to it under any circumstances. Drive their return on investment as close to zero as possible.
So the amount you would have to pay to deliver the same revenues to creators as advertising does is not very much. Especially if we could cut out the middle man so that all of what you pay goes to the content creator.
That's the biggest problem we have right now. You have someone write a news article, a million people read it, it cost you maybe a thousand dollars to write (assuming it's well-researched and not garbage clickbait), so to recover your costs you need one tenth of one cent per user.
We need a payment system which makes transactions that small efficient. And it needs to be anonymous for the buyer, because the whole point is to get rid of the tracking, right?
Fix that and you can sustainably pay <$300 and not have to see any ads all year.
Hopefully Monero will achieve this one day.
Looks like Monero hasn't been pumping or dumping quite as much as other cryptocurrencies, maybe that means its creators actually care about making it useful as currency rather than as a medium for ~~scams~~ "investments"
I'd love an ad-free future, but something tells me that there'll always just be too much pressure to make more ads. Hell, Amazon is pumping $10,000,000 per episode into a TV show that's arguably just a big ad for Amazon (subscribe to our TV service to watch this show, buy some socks and video games while you're here)
There will always be pressure to advertise. No matter what product or service you have or how profitable it is, you can always make even more money by selling your user's attention. That's why we need technology that makes it impossible to advertise to us. A browser extension that deletes elements, a video filter that deletes brands, augmented reality glasses that deletes billboards.
Ads are still a net negative, but it's worth considering that requiring payment will price some people out, because the poor aren't usually subsidized with paid services.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUBpIWz6bPk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTcV-7Ubzpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYFyruOvAnM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVwvmozG6-A&list=PLjHdPL8MeP...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdCYe4FoMRA
I had plenty of friends that hated Football but would throw a party to watch the ads
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
– Banksy
Massive banners at the top, auto playing videos, throwing off the page layout etc are all terrible ad experiences that dominate.
We'd be here with or without as blockers. It would just be worse without.
If you don't click on ads, you don't bring any money so you night as well install an adblocker.
When your revenue source is ads, it becomes a conflicting content with your own content. You need people to stop paying attention to your content, lool at ads and deciding to leave your site for it. Ads network can also have an say on your content by controling your income source.
Paying a news website directly brings them independance and allows the site to focus on content, those 2 things are at the core of journalism.
If I were you, I would reconsider a subscription if you really liked the spiegel.
The idea that there would be no open content on the web without ads is ridiculuous. Most content on the web, like the comments in this discussion, is "user"-generated and the users generating it are typically not paid at all. While less visible in search engines, there are still many websites - personal or otherwise - that have no profit motive and are provided without any charge or ads. Its not uncommon for them to get posted here.
And even for content that you'd want to pay for, ads are a bad way to pay for it because the cost to you (or the average person) is much greater than what the content creator gets out of the deal. Meanwhile, the incentives for ad-supported content creators and users are not really aligned payment is based entirely on engagement rather than any judgement of what value the user gets out of the content. There is so much spam that provides no value to the web (e.g. because the content is literally copied from elsewhere) but still exists because some people may land on the page and end up viewing ads. So many user-hostile features designed to keep users spending as much time as possible on ad-laden website.
Now back to spiegel.de you say you frequented it a lot. Does that not mean that you got any value out of it that you are willing to pay for? If not, is not being able to use it anymore really such a problem?
Our lives are filled with so much which seeks to ensure we're constantly passively on autopilot, consistently following the path of least resistance. Putting a paywall in front of something forces you to really assess - "does this really offer me any value? Do I really want to be doing it?".
If it's not something you're willing to go through the motions to pay for, there's probably something more personally fulfilling you could be doing with your time.
The web is filled with so much rubbish that is "just good enough" to get users to sit through ads. I couldn't care less if all that ad-supported dreck goes under. In fact I'd welcome it.
On the other hand, while I'm extremely happy I don't have to watch random Google cr*p adverts before/during/after Youtube videos thanks to adblock, if the creator itself includes an advert in his/her video I usually watch it. That is acceptable to me, and more direct support than just unrelated ads.
But if websites insist on doing this under the illusion that they can monetize their userbase to the last penny, then it's only fair for its users not to allow it and force the website into being more explicit about the monetization - via a paywall.
> has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore
You could, but you're not willing to pay for it. Fair enough. But a significant number of their userbase is now telling them that they're not ready to pay using their personal info. That's good feedback that their users have provided using an adblocker.
It can be accomplished through higher taxes and a universal basic income.
Essentially: ensure that all people on earth have their basic needs met. A lot of people will produce incredible creative work, and it has been shown time and time again that government support of artists incubates incredible art.
I'm guessing we could actually keep people fed, but I'm wondering if we'd end up living in really crappy shacks without first world quality utilities
I dunno if I'd want a UBI utopia if it requires a 1700s-quality lifestyle
Would there be? There would certainly be some changes. Less desirable jobs would have to pay more. People would have more power to demand better working conditions. But the idea that the majority of beople would just be fine with "basic income" and then sit on their ass all day instead of trying to earn more to afford whatever shinies they want or just because there is something they enjoy doing. There are also a ton of bullshit jobs that really do not contribute anything - freeing up those people to do whatever they want might have a positive effect.
Eventually humanity will get to a point where automation can provide all of your needs as well as maintain that automation. On our way there, the hours worked per person should be going down.
(But I must mention, your Spiegel is not covered there atm)
I can assure you that there will never be a future where that happens. Even if everyone that uses a browser installed an adblocker right now and never removed it again, if every website was paywalled, they would have to choose between closing down or unpaywalling again. Because as you say, you, and everyone else isn't going to pay to use every individual website that they visit.
So just use an adblocker. Fuck the ad industry.