We're all complaining and blaming the big corporations for the pitiful state the internet got to be now but seems we are all contributing our little to bring it even lower. Because corporations pay, I know, but we are the ones pulling the trigger.
But that's not the case. Products cost money, and we've established a pattern of free to play to freemium for much of the most popular services. This could change, but it would take the major players to flip the script, and they've invested so much into ad systems that they'd be hard pressed to abandon it.
> it kept fluctuating colors from heavy green to purple
"We put green and purple in great barrel [...]. We reach in, we take." [1]
"Rules change... caught up in committee." [2]
Trust thing: the site is likely to still spy on you even if you're a paid subscriber. Even if they drop ads they'll send your data to google or some other analytics provider, at the least. They'll "accidentaly reset" your email preferences. Plus other shenanigans *.
Infrequency thing: I won't subscribe to $SOME_SITE just because it's linked on HN a couple times per year.
* friend of mine said he's tempted to subscribe to the economist online. I pointed out that they need to call or talk to a rep over live chat to cancel. Friend stopped mentioning subscribing to the economist.
That said, yeah-no one can reasonably afford the constant “I just want to read this one linked article twice a year on your local community news” turning into “subscribe for $120 a year after $1 for your first month”, and we really need some middle ground.
Unfortunately, people have an aversion-a hard aversion-to anything that’s not “zero” or “fixed”. I discovered it with Kagi, for example-despite whatever number of searches you find yourself actually running, having only “x per month” means you have to think about it, until you’re just like “pay the unlimited price and put the cost of thinking about it on them”.
Maybe with news the best way would be some kind of micro transaction, but all attempts so far have failed…
It's hard. I wouldn't pay a subscription to a micro transaction middle man, for example. Unless it would work like a music service, i.e. have everything available for one price, and not like a video service with their islands and attempts to differentiate.
But if they had everything, you'd end up with a gatekeeper that decides who can make money and who can't, and that ends up as censorship. If such a service ever comes up, i want to be able to pay for any site with it, including porn, right wing propaganda and left wing propaganda if i so choose. And that ain't going to happen.
Now suppose there would be competing services where you could pay 5 cents for an article read, and they'd bill you when you reach $10 or something for the transaction fees to make sense. That's okay, you pay per read, you can have accounts with several middle men because you pay per use.
But what do you pay for? One read? What if something comes up and you can't finish? Will you be able to save it for later reading or will that cost extra?
Perpetual access? With per-article access control that's going to be a major database after a while. Hard problem technically.
And I've only begun to think about it...
Google was playing around with ad-replacement purchases, but they never made a version that does the same thing as youtube: pay X and all the google ads go away.
this is the comment I replied to. Apparently the old internet was fine, so what kind of "competition" are you looking for? Youtube gives you easy access to content you would have to spend hours trying to locate on "old" internet.
If you do not like their content, simply stop using their site. But it is immoral to pretend like it is OK to abuse their site, and deliberately hide their adviertisments that keep their site alive
Ads might be fine, a pinch of annoyance.
And yes I pay for my content thank you.
What hard work? Most of the time it's "content" written by minimum (African) wage "copywriters"*. We are drowned into a deluge of shit, so excuse us when we don't trust anyone.
Also, I believe you have no idea what the "cookie law" is about.
* soon to be replaced with "content" that is LLM generated.
Personally, I run malware blockers by default, so I don't know which sites are trying to send it to me to avoid visiting them. I couldn't tell you whether e.g. the github link in OP has ads. I see some stuff gets blocked, so I guess maybe? I figured they monetize through upselling their enterprise offerings, but I guess it is Microsoft and their OS has ads built in these days, so wouldn't surprise me.
"I don't mind driving the speed limit"
"BUT ARE YOU ALSO OKAY WITH MURDER???"
How can you justify it being okay to send drive-by adware and spyware with a requested web page, but you believe it's not okay to use computation as a form of payment without consent?
Personally, I've only ever worked for companies that make money by having our customers pay us for the product or service that I work on, so I've never had to worry about that conflict of interest.
...and FWIW the use of ad-blockers is indeed recommended by the German "Federal Office for Security in Information Technology":
https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbr...
[1] Unless companies are taking out loans for their ad budget hoping to get that money and then some back through additional sales.
It's funny how scarce the "I'd be willing to pay for good content, but alas, there is no option" claim has become since websites have started widely implemented paid ad-free accounts or outright paywalls
I've never seen someone angry that a supermarket won't give them a newspaper for free, but when it's online this is apparently a valid complaint
I also pay for online news, AND STILL GET ADS, so fuck that I block them. It's still the case today that most of the time you do not have an option to pay to get rid of ads, and often when you do it's some ludicrous amount like $10 a month for some blog you might read three times a year.
Part of being able to pay for content is to come up with a fair price for it.
edit: and I hope you're not implying that all people who don't want ads should buy an iphone just to use an app tied to it? Again, there needs to be fair alternatives to ads.
I'm not trying to imply anything, I just personally use two ad free map services that you seemed unaware of.
I assume kagi is based on open-street maps, I use kagi but not their maps as I have better alternatives. I really hope Kagi continues to succeed because its a model I believe in, but outside of basic search I suspect they have a ways to go.
To bring it towards alignment with the status-quo, every fruit-vendor would be a facet of a few massive guildhalls, with spyglasses trained down from the parapets, informants circulating in the crowd, a parchment file on everyone, etc.
Businesses are always changing and there are no guarantees. Some money hungry bozo might become CEO of your favorite product and enshittify it. That's just reality, and it doesn't mean that paying for things is futile. Best to avoid having too many eggs in one basket and paying for things that you can't actually own.
Recently, the investment platform M1 Finance decided to begin charging users with less than $10,000 in holdings $3 per month to use their service while giving everyone access to features that used to be only available in the premium plan. This has all been announced in advance, so it's not as if anyone should have been surprised about this.
Many users, virtually all of whom have a total of holdings below the $10k threshold, flipped their shit and have claimed they are leaving the platform. Ironically, many of them are suggesting alternatives that cost more than $3 a month, and I'd wager a guess that a lot of these people are spending way more than that buying coffees every day. No one has to like having to pay for something that used to be free to them, but one really has to question their life if paying $3 for something that used to cost more than that per trade and require a lump sum up front is something to throw a fit over. If you have just shy of $10k in investments, you're not gonna retire, and $3 a month is the least of your worries.
In my opinion, M1 is doing the right thing by saying goodbye to these users. They are the types who won't value your product, maintain chronically low balances, and will tie up your customer support with spurious complaints and misunderstandings. I predict they will be rewarded for keeping around customers whom are willing to pay.
Hopefully, more online platforms figure this out and decide to do the same thing. I call BS on those claiming "no one will pay for that." If your business is only viable on attention, which is what the ad economy is based on, then its existence is in a precarious position, and perhaps your product isn't worth much to anyone except the ad networks. On the other hand, there are things that people are willing to pay for, or would pay for if given a premium experience. I've gone from watching stuff for free on YouTube to buying books and audiobooks because they provide far more value to me these days than the chum that is social media "content." I pay individual creators I appreciate on Patreon, etc. I have a Kagi subscription because I find it to be more aligned with my wants and needs than free search engines. I've gone back to buying individual songs and even buying CDs since they not only disappear from platforms but now there are artists that change their own songs retroactively. I pay my investment platform because it has better automation than competing free (or so-called free) competitors.
Everything being free online is a meme, and hopefully it starts to die the more that the spehre of free things eats itself with spam and user-hostile behavior. They will always exist for those who have barely any money or those who don't value the conveniences bestowed upon them, but they can't be the only viable options anymore. Paying for things is a good thing.