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Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

The answer isn't ad blocking, the answer is paying directly and in full (so no need to subsidize cost with ads) for the service.

I cannot wrap my head around how generally intelligent people are completely blind to this. I guess 20 years of ad-block-is-the-norm has left people totally confused about internet monetization. I've never encoutered a problem that has such a clear answer, and that so many intelligent people get totally spun around the axle on.

We need to start paying for ad-free services. Wake up.

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> The answer isn't ad blocking, the answer is paying directly and in full

Netflix started showing ads on their lower tiers: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/126831

If you pay for Sky/Virgin/insert Cable provider in your country, you still get copious amounts of ads. If you pay to go to the cinema, you have to sit through 15 minutes of adverts before the film starts.

I'm buying off Amazon, they're showing sponsored products (so... ads).

EA were looking at putting ads into games that you bought back in 2024: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ea-are-thinking-about-inser...

Hell, I pay for public transport, they have adverts on.

A lot of people did pay for ad-free Netflix, only to wake up one day in the future to find that product ending, and a similarly priced tier that has ads in it.

Amazon Prime Video didn't have ads. Then one day it did.

Maybe you're right that _the masses_ need to start rejection ad-tiers, but so far we've seen that people will accept advertising to get more.

Facebook has made it very clear that they don't want you to do this: you can pay for ad-free (I believe it's because they're legally obliged to offer that as a result of some things they'be done and deals they've made), but the cost is easily 100 times what they can make directly on ads for me. The only conclusion can be that they place an immensely high indirect value on serving me ads.

Same with streaming services, ad-free services seem to be unusually higher priced than the ad-supported tiers. Netflix for example charges $10 for ad-free over the ad support tier ($18 vs. $8). I’ve seen estimates that ad revenue per subscriber is less than that, maybe $4-$8. And there’s a cost to that revenue as well, so their profit is even lower. Why go through all that trouble? Maybe the economics works out somehow, in that users willing to pay to get rid of ads are so price insensitive they may as well squeeze them for more money? Or the lower subscription cost opens up enough new subscribers to make it worthwhile to tolerate a much lower margin. I am very suspicious though and wonder if there is a more insidious or otherwise opaque motivation behind it. Is there some kind of ‘soft power’ benefit to being in the ad business?

They’re probably assuming that anyone who would pay for Facebook has a large disposable income, which means that they’re a juicy add target, and they are worth much more than the average Facebook user.

But we're talking about people who hate ads here. How juicy ad targets can we be when we get angry over them?

They charge around $15 per month IIRC. It's more like 3x revenue per user.

> We need to start paying for ad-free services. Wake up.

Where are all these ad-free services everyone keeps talking about? Social media companies don't even find it worth it to offer an ad-free plan last I checked...

If people demanded ad-free paid services with the same vigor that they evangelize ad-blocking, we would have it.

I don't really get why that's the responsibility of the consumer? Businesses offer shitty deal, consumer works around said deal... it's on the businesses to offer a better deal (a la Spotify vs limewire, or Netflix vs thepiratebay)

People don't work around the shitty deal, businesses work around the shitty consumers.

That's in large part why the Internet sucks, it's not made for people who ad-block.

YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music, Kagi etc etc

I would submit that maybe the first one qualifies as a social media network

My mistake, I thought the discussion was about online services in general.

Mastodon

That's somewhat apples and oranges. Mastodon-the-software is free-as-in-AGPL, but most instances are funded by donations. I don't know of very many instances that offer explicitly paid subscription (in order to keep their interests aligned with their customers)

so? donate

> We need to start paying for ad-free services. Wake up.

The services (FB etc.) don't want this model, and it's not like the users can force them to switch to a paid model.

Also, a large percentage of users don't care and believe that "free" is better.

> We need to start paying for ad-free services. Wake up.

You make it sound like there are no people that pay for ad-free services they find valuable. Or that there are no free ad-free services (ex: WhatsApp).

My feeling is that people know some "services" are not that "valuable" (ex: facebook, instagram, etc.), so they would not pay for them, but, like with drugs, they can't reduce their usage.

WhatsApp isn't free, you pay with your data. Facebook isn't running a charity.

I pay for some ad free services, but it’s infeasible across the entire internet and every possible link you might follow. Additionally, I fundamentally disagree with the concept of paying someone so that they don’t show me malicious ads. If they cannot or will not ensure the ads that they accept money to display are not malicious, I will not look at their ads.

This would create a two tiered social commons however. Someone like me, homeless and on disability, what could I afford? Where would my word be heard?

It could also create "free" platforms, funded by billionaires, to control the speech on the platform.

The answer is a communal, government owned social media platform, that mimics the rules of the town square. in the US, this includes the same 1st amendment rights. This would allow equal access to everyone's voice.

IMHO, social media should not exists at all. It is too huge and too fast for our tiny brains.

> Where would my word be heard?

You do realize that we are on a platform without ads where your word is heard, so it still is possible.

And before "social media" there were plenty of free forums (each with a certain main topic, but in which people were discussing occasionally more than that), so it was not that bad. And in fact that continues today (ex: this one), with more relevant discussions in my opinion than what I glimpse from my occasional social media incursions.

FYI, HN is a giant advertisement.

It's a place with bait for software engineers (lots of tech stories and discussion), and YC then gets lots of eyes on job postings for their companies. This is explicitly why it exists.

HN is not ad free, it is an ad.

What is your threshold of what you consider advertisement?

In the same way, speaking with a friend (or anybody) can be seen as "advertising your ideas".

For me, HN is more of an open discussion forum, where you can find lots of critical opinions on the topics, which for me makes it less "advertisement" than lot of other things.

Most people's words do not need to be heard.

We need to have an easy way to pay small amounts for a one-time service. A lot of websites offer content that you need only a couple of times in your life. It's worth paying for, but not worth all the hassle of setting up a normal payment.

This leaves ads as the only form of revenue and because ads don't care about the content, this creates a race to the bottom on generating slop.

The advertisers do care about the content. Ad based models ensure that content doesn't piss off advertisers. User payment models ensure that content doesn't piss off the user base, which does sound better, but audience capture can be every bit as bad.

But the truth is that people don't want that. We had that before and it lost in the open market to free but ad supported. There is a very small and vocal group of people (which is massively over represented on HN) that really hate the ad supported model, but the vast majority don't really care and prefer it to paying in cash.

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