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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine browsing the web without an adblocker. And if I get a nag screen for running an adblocker, 9/10 times I will either circumvent it or walk away from the site if not mission critical to read it.

I'm sorry to websites but from my perspective ads are a failed monetization approach. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something new. Charge me $0.001 for each page view but don't fucking show me ads.

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I'd argue that >50% of bytes on the web are malicious. We're past the point where it still makes sense to attempt to load the page and just block the bad parts. Ad blockers are bringing a knife to a gun fight.

I'd like to find a way to crowd source an unauthorized CDN for just the good parts. Maybe the ads need to be rendered once by a server somewhere so we can extract the content from the page, but after that we ought to be able to gossip content that's been pre-stripped of ads.

The web of trust that would be needed to make the gossiping safe can also help us figure out who to pay.

I wouldn't call it "malicious," but way more than 50% of what you download is stuff you don't want. For example, a random NY Times op-ed has 6730 characters of text, bur just the initial request is 454kb, so 98.5% of what you downloaded is overhead. Some of that is formatting markup, but probably 95% of it is junk. And that's just the initial request, which in turn pulls in the images, tracking scripts, and ads. In the end, probably 99% of what you downloaded to read those 6730 characters is stuff you didn't want.

"stuff you didn't want" would be accidentally recorded background noise, or code that makes the payload compatible with a device other than the one you're using.

This is data specifically crafted to get your computer to do something in addition to what you asked it to do, without your consent, and not in a way that benefits you

The word for data like that is "malware".

Indeed. Ads enable shitty products to exist, products people wouldn't pay for. That's why half the stuff on the Internet has ads -- it's complete and utter garbage nobody wants.

There are droves upon droves of high quality content online that you could pay for, but let's be real: You won't. Already demanding one thousand pages for just a dollar shows that free is the only option you'd consider.

This is a lazy take. I already pay for the WSJ, Bloomberg, 2 magazine subscriptions and probably 5+ streaming services (I've lost count).

I'm happy to pay for content that I know is high quality. But I'm not signing up for hit-or-miss content through a brittle subscribe-and-then-cancel-later-if-you-dont-like-it model when there's no real reason why pay-as-you-go doesn't exist

$0.001 is a placeholder for each page view. If you want to argue that's too cheap, that's a separate discussion, but saying I only want shit for free is inaccurate

Then I stand corrected. I assume that 0,001 was then just a figure like any.

What I want to see is a lot more high quality content behind subscriptions so that you know you'll likely find what you're looking for there.

Thanks. Problem is nobody is subscribing is a binary commitment for a relatively large sum that you need to make an active decision, so you may just not subscribe. If you charge people a small amount for the traffic they access, it could feel less onerous. I'm not in AdTech so I don't know how much revenue a website gets from their advertisers divided by the number of ad impressions, which I guess would be my starting point for how much to charge per view

Charge per view is simply not feasible with the way payment systems work today. Card processors charge at a minimum 25c per transaction, so you'd have to sell your views for 50c each at least. And all the hassle with signing up is still there.

I'm in marketing and in my experience online ads pay a misery to website creators, maybe except casinos and other unethical ads. If you produce online content you are much better off also selling whatever you produce, combining information with marketing. This suits well for many subjects, but not for all. Journalism cannot be combined with this for one.

That's why I'd like to see somebody making huge subscription bundles, where you'd get access to let's say hundreds or thousands of high quality websites within a specific or broad interest for a fair monthly fee. This money could then be distributed to content creators according to popularity of their content.

If creators started thinking rationally and put their own economic sustainability before their quest for fame, they would flock to these kind of subscription platforms. I honestly think it's the future of the internet. But people are stuck in the mindset of comparing prices of completely unrelated things, just because they access them with a computer. They think it's outrageous to pay $10 a month for access to a website when their internet subscription is $15 and Netflix is $15. But those are completely different things. It's like if I take the bus to town and go to the movies and then go to a store to buy something that costs $100. Would I be sensible to demand a smaller price because the bus was just $5 and the movie ticket was just $10?

> ads are a failed monetization approach

If it's worth paying for a giant un-targeted poster next to a highway, it's worth paying for embedded (i.e. unblockable, equivalent to other site content) ads based solely on website content, not viewer tracking.

It's just that most sites/ad vendors don't want to, and are trying to gaslight us into thinking surveillance advertising is the only option.

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