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Comment by ceol | Hacker News Reader

From their FAQ on the subject:

>Starting with Adblock Plus 2.0 you can allow some of the advertising that is considered not annoying. By doing this you support websites that rely on advertising but choose to do it in a non-intrusive way. And you give these websites an advantage over their competition which encourages other websites to use non-intrusive advertising as well. In the long term the web will become a better place for everybody, not only Adblock Plus users. Without this feature we run the danger that increasing Adblock Plus usage will make small websites unsustainable.

Part of me is extremely disappointed ABP made this change, but part of me knows there's got to be some compromise between absolutely no ads and annoying, intrusive ads. Not every website can offer a pay service. I'm happy they're making this change with small website owners in mind, and I'm also happy they're allowing users to turn off all ads by going in to settings.

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Why does there have to be a compromise? Please don't take this as some sort of flame bait. Instead it is a serious question about why some advertising must exist and be tolerated.

Why does there have to be a compromise?

Running a website costs money. Some people also want to make profit, but that's beside the point. Micropayment solutions at present are sadly lacking - especially for international audiences. Don't forget also that you and I are a technical audience; I know at first my mother thought that websites got a split of her ISP bill when she viewed their pages. So advertising bridges a lot of these gaps.

Instead it is a serious question about why some advertising must exist and be tolerated.

I don't believe anyone is saying that you must tolerate advertising :-)

So ... why not integrate a micropayment solution into the adblocker extensions. Bootstrapping problem solved!

I don't believe advertising itself is necessarily evil, and it provides an easy way for website owners to fund operations. You're provided a service for no monetary cost but, in return, you must requite some of your focus to an advertisement. This seems fair to me.

There is no answer to why advertising must exist aside from it being the best answer we have to a growing problem of who's going to pay for the Web. I'd rather have a few ads than fork out money on a package-basis a la cable channels.

I very much doubt that this is the best answer. We are using a model that pre-dates the Internet to cover the expenses of site content. Given how unpopular it is for the readers of print publications and viewers of television, it seems a mistake to consider something so obtrusive the best available solution. While I don't as yet have a better solution, the fact that no real research into alternatives has been done makes me believe that there has to be a better available model.

Nearly every website would happily have a pay wall if advertising didn't exist.

If the majority of people with internet access preferred to pay directly for every website they use, advertising wouldn't exist. But they don't, so it does.

I think many people would be happy to pay if the payment method was easier and less intrusive. If there was a method for sending a few cents for a pageview without a credit card or permanent account, I would use it , constantly. Such a payment method does not presently exist, paying for stuff is hard and there are fees and fixed costs severely limit making it easier.

> If there was a method for sending a few cents for a pageview without a credit card or permanent account, I would use it

What about https://flattr.com/ ? It seems to be exactly, what you're looking for but haven't really taken off.

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