Inadmissible assumptions underlying Internet policy | Hacker News Reader

Inadmissible assumptions underlying Internet policy

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48 pointscstross24 comments

If you create a website that users pay for and it becomes popular, somebody will come along and create an Ad funded version and take some or all of your users (assuming everything else is equal).

I have no problem with this whatsoever. I have no problem with advertising. What I do have a problem with is advertisers tracking people across websites, and that all of the major browser vendors are happy to facilitate/encourage this.

If all of the major browser vendors just tied third party cookies to the domain of the top level origin, this sort of cross site tracking would be blocked, with the bare minimum of damage. It wouldn't kill advertising, it would just stop advertisers compiling data that they didn't ask permission for.

There are of course lots of other tricks to track users even if they turn off third party cookies altogether. But lets at least try to get the low hanging fruit first, please.

EDIT: It would probably help if the major browser vendors didn't make large sums of money from this sort of advertising. Talk about a conflict of interest. It would be better for everyone if the evolution of the web wasn't so heavily guided by advertisers.

What I do have a problem with is advertisers tracking people across websites, and that all of the major browser vendors are happy to facilitate/encourage this.

I think everyone has a problem with this to a degree. I'm ok with Google giving me personal search results and Facebook recommending me products based on recent wall posts. What I'm not ok with is my Fiancé searching for wedding ideas one night on her laptop at home, and the next day having all the website ads being shown to me from a particular ad network on my iPhone being wedding related while connected to my home WiFi. This really happened to me 2 weeks ago.

I expect a certain amount of privacy, for both her and myself. Nothing needs to be written in law that says that I cannot be tracked, but there should be a moral code on what kinds of ads are displayed and where they will be displayed. If advertiser networks can't develop a system that isn't invasive then they need to go away, via adblock or otherwise.

Targeted advertising done well can be helpful, and I realize the only thing making these connections is a computer program some where. Yet, while I don't mind reminders that a movie I might like is out, there is something innately creepy about being tracked like that.

PS: Progress is being made on the creepy front. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...

To add to your point, the problem with cross-website tracking is that it breaks the mental model that people have about these web services.

For instance, one would expect for Google to know everything you searched for. I don't think that anybody is naive enough to not realize it, even non-technical users. So if you're searching for something and you don't want Google to find out about it, then the simplest thing you can do is to NOT search on Google.

And the problem with cross-website tracking is that this model breaks. Now Google / Facebook know what websites you visit, even if you were careful about not searching on Google, or not sharing/following links on Facebook.

It's pretty scary actually.

    The idea that "most people only want to consume" is
    profoundly offensive and serves the interests of abusive 
    "producers" who tend towards rent-seeking (see the MPAA    
    for a worked example—most notably in how they run the   
    film classification system in the USA),

It does not matter if it is offensive, so I will just have to ask the question:

Is it true?

It is absolutely true that the majority only wants to consume. I think the author is taking offense at a stronger assumption, which is "Only an elite few want to produce" the number of people which want to produce is much higher than the number of people that have historically been given a wide audience for their productions.

I take issue with:

b) Funding content via ad sales holds our public arts hostage to a boom/bust bubble economy. Furthermore, there is an incentive for web publishers to prioritize paid ads over editorial content, and to censor editorial content that threatens advertizing revenue

First, while public arts sounds good, it means entertainment. In a bust, you're likely to wind down your entertainment expenses, in a boom you wind them up. Restaurants are not ad-funded, but still very sensible to the business cycle.

Second, whether ads or not, editors have an incentive to do whatever nets them the most money. For movie producers, it's make a movie that the most people will want to go and see. For authors, it's writing a book that people will want to read.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be a euphemistic endorsement of TV Licensing-style financing. However, that runs contrary to point d) Nobody can be trusted.

I agree.

Other commenters take issue with c), that the majority are consumers. If the art we consume is to be excellent, it will be _rare_. Not just from the supply and demand curve, but with the internet's ease of distribution comes a global "bazaar" of artistic creations that pushes up the threshold of excellence.

Artists then face an essentially limitless supply of "good enough" competitors, even though only a small percentage of internet users are actually content producers. (The rest of us, in my opinion, are those "consumers.")

Advertising works when scarcity does not - Advertising can be shown for all the mediocre works that aren't going to make much money any other way.

For the truly great stuff (AAA Games, Hit music, Movies, and so on) the price of admission will generate a lot of revenue. But for the mediocre stuff, the business model has to adjust.

Personally, I think the real challenge lies in the "below mediocre" art. The market mostly ignores things like flash games, small bands, fanfiction, etc. To me there's a missed opportunity to cultivate the "startup artists" as a sort of Y Combinator.

Footnote: after some naval-gazing, I have to conclude that all of these assumptions are based to some extent on the axiomatic belief that market-based approaches are the best way of managing a cultural communications medium.

Would you mind explaining what the alternative is? (that is, what non-market-based approach to web publishing is better than the status quo?)

As a little-l libertarian, I'd accept that there's a bit of market failure here as the friction of making payments has exceeded the relative ease of "just slap some ads on it". However I suspect this problem is fixing itself over time. Ad inventory is only going to increase, which drops what you can change on average, which is slowly but surely going to take "just slap ads on it" out of the reach of more and more people, and alternate payment methods, while not quite as easy as just shouting "Micropayments!" and walking away with a smug expression, are in fact developing. Kickstarter is one example, and other models like that will develop and return the concept of "patronage" to the field of culture by mixing in a heavy dose of "crowdsourcing". And once we're comfortable with that, who knows what else we might come up with?

And hey, maybe somebody will figure out that whole micropayment thing too. But at least now there are increasingly concrete demonstrations that they were never the only solution, which is fortunate since they don't seem to work.

I'm actually more optimistic now that we can escape from ads as the only choice than I've ever been before. I'm hoping that this is the last year or two that cstross could make this post and have it still seem a reasonable concern.

I don't know, it seems like it is going the other way. At least for the buyer, internet ads have become more expensive over time. I imagine mobile ads will become more expensive as well.

There's the Wikipedia non-profit model, for one. Probably can't create all kinds of content, but it has created some of the highest-quality online content.

Why do you think that a non-profit model is outside of the market? People donate money to sustain something they get utility from, and all of the donations are freely given. It would only be outside a "market model" if Wikipedia were funded solely by the government. As it were, it is a free enterprise with a goal other than profit.

Charities and non-profit foundations can hardly be considered outside of the market model. Wikipedia is, in fact, an anecdote you'd point to if your goal was to debate that market forces result in collective good.

That's true. I suppose more specifically Wikipedia is an example of web content being produced without a profit motive on the part of the producing entity, but not wholly outside a market model.

How that relates to market models producing collective good depends on which one you subscribe to. Many proponents (dating back to Adam Smith) argue that it's the profit motive in particular that makes the market model produce good outcomes. There's also a lot of skepticism of even voluntary collective production in much of the libertarian literature; e.g. the Israeli kibbutzim or the 19th-century "utopian socialist" communes aren't viewed favorably. Wikipedia has a sort of voluntary-collectivism feeling to it as well, from that perspective, though it's more limited in that you don't have to actually move to Wikipedia and live there; you can just contribute some content now and then.

Is it helpful to make a distinction between managing and funding? I am unconvinced that most people hold that "advertising is socially neutral or good" but rather are left with the question "how else will it be paid for?" I deliberately phrase the question passively - it is easier to ignore the downsides of advertising compared to asking "How will I fund what I value?"

I hesitate to bring up the BBC licence fee because it is still a very consumptive model but as an expat Brit in the USA I often wish I could still pay it for the privilege of accessing the BBC content.

I have to disagree there - there are other approaches to market-based funding of the creation of cultural communications that are not advertising based. For a very successful current example, see Kickstarter.

Advertising has less friction than any other possible solution (so far). That simple fact overrides all other concerns because it means stuff gets paid for where otherwise it wouldn't. Any other solution that creates more friction will fail.

There are costs to advertising, but most are hidden. They will start showing on the long run, IMHO. There will be a lot of friction.

Like what?

True enough, but that may end if we get an actual working payment system or if the "price" of free becomes too high.

It's a bit immature to link to a dystopian fiction as a citation to show that "everyone" can be evil

I'm sorry, was there a point? All I see is a series of assertions. (Most of which agree with my ill-considered prejudices, but....)

This is only true for certain segments of the internet.

Internet gaming, for instance, has successfully leveraged a subscription based model, as do some specialist interest sites.

Personally, I suspect that the main reason that the first Internet mega-corps have been ad based, is just because that is the easiest industry to implement on what most people are still regarding as merely another media channel.

However, I strongly doubt that it is even close to being the most profitable thing you could do with a global computer network.

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