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Two ways in which issues who have adblock are better than bots.
Users will promote organically, which can win more credence than even a higher listing in SERPs. Depends if your wiki is part of building a community.
Because while your argument sounds nice, if you break out the numbers, it becomes largely meaningless. In fact you find that the average internet user, especially in the tech/gaming space, usually contributes nothing, while watching/loading no ads and self congratulates themselves for doing so while encouraging others to do the same.
I expect the difference is that the scrapers are the most likely to regurgitate the content one way or the other.
Are you denying creators revenue by not reading reading/observing every ad that comes your way and making purchases based on them? Maybe you should read/comment on HN less and focus on consuming more ads instead?
What at an incredibly stupid thing to say.
Like if a video game is too expensive for your liking, you simply don't buy it. Going and pirating it is not a valid response. You get the game and creator gets nothing. You can just stick to playing honestly free games, there are plenty out there.
This idea that digital data is worthless is stupid child logic born from when kids ruled the internet. Obviously it has value, as evidence by the very top level post I responded to.
(Also, as an aside, it's only heavy ad-block/privacy tool users who get malware and scam ads, because they have no profile and only bottom feeders bid on their views. Regular users get Tide and Chevy ads.)
First of all, I can and will visit any website I want, and I will use an ad blocker while doing so. Second - how do you know what ads and privacy invasion a website might have before you visit it? Makes no sense.
> Like if a video game is too expensive for your liking, you simply don't buy it. Going and pirating it is not a valid response
In either case the creator gets zero $. It could be argued that pirating might actually benefit the creator more - since it would increase overall usage/adoption/prevalence of the product/game. So your argument is kinda backwards.
> This idea that digital data is worthless is stupid child logic born from when kids ruled the internet.
You keep mentioning 'kids' and 'teenagers' across your comments seemingly as a way to imply that you have some kind of greybeard wisdom and special knowledge. You don't and your arguments don't make sense - your own realization of that is probably what triggers you to call everyone who disagrees with your kids and teenagers LMAO.
And for the record - intellectual property is a made up scam, the only purpose of which is to stifle competition.
And so can LLMs, so I don't see why anyone should be upset about "stealing content"
>In either case the creator gets zero $. It could be argued that pirating might actually benefit the creator more - since it would increase overall usage/adoption/prevalence of the product/game. So your argument is kinda backwards.
So how do you decide (I'm asking you), who are the suckers who pay, and who are the ones that get it free? I say child a lot because it's really only kids who cannot see how a system like that plays out.
Just a heads up, with donation systems, typically ~1% of people convert to a donation.
In many cases running something like an online game requires server s/infra , and also requires an active subscription - not something you can generally get around.
Why would they pay for server infra or pay the devs? They should just be free to pay what they want or pay nothing at all. Not sure what the problem is.
Let me know if you need me to break it down for you further.
Advertisers only care about attention, if you don't impose editorial standards they'll contaminate your entire site.
So thank you, but you are one of about 14 people on the internet who actually use a whitelist.
Ublock origin et al can’t block those so there’s your solution. Don’t lazily monetize your content.
This is a much bigger issue than just podcasts. It's every form of binary encoded data.
Ad-block users didn't mine Pokémon Central for content, then remove them from search listings. Changing the specific criticism made to the generic "denying creators revenue" is a distortion, because they screwed over all people who wanted visitors, not just the people who wanted visitors to milk them for cash.
If I made a forum about trains because I wanted people to come to the forum to talk about trains, Google milked the forum for all of the accumulated information about trains, then made it impossible to attract new users to talk about trains.
You just have to not use third party integrations that run untrusted code on your visitors computers.
People really hate it when you hold up a mirror to illustrate a problem. They tend to reflexively punch the mirror
So they can get content without compensating for it.
I've been on this train since the beginning. I was there when ad-block-plus read the writing on the wall 15 years ago and decided to make a truce with advertisers. It was clearly unsustainable for 50% of web users to be effectively parasites, so maybe we can negotiate on acceptable ad practices. But to the users, a truce with advertisers!?!? Ublock Origin was born days later.
Also - negotiating 'a truce with advertisers'? What does that even mean? Granting the ads industry even more power and control over the internet?
Can you come up with an idea that isn't a dystopian hellhole on its face?
Are you confused or being sarcastic?
I'll admit the system is one step larger than a typical transaction, which could be hard to understand for some, but the views -> ads -> dollars pipeline is the still straightforward to understand. Maybe not. I don't know when things get too complicated here.
These aren’t simply commercials running like OTA tv in the days of old. They are basically fracking our data and then selling it to other people without any oversight or ability to stop it. You are basically under assault from the moment you walk through the metaphorical door. Why does a host need my device info, my demographics, every app I’m on, my router info, all this incredibly personal and granular data just so I can watch a damn video? They just start probing and sucking up every bit of information they can get their hands on and they put a lot of effort into making sure I don’t know it’s happening or where it’s going. I will never forget the first time I fired up little snitch mini on my Mac years ago and watched all those little lines light up like the Fourth of July.
They are the parasites when you get down to it. If the transaction was clearer and we had the ability to get out of it ultimately I think people would be a lot more willing to deal with ads. But again, it’s not simply ads. This is sophisticated network data mining and reselling that vastly outstrips the value we are getting out of visiting a friggin news site or whatever, and it happens basically every single time you travel to a URL. It’s absolutely relentless, and it certainly doesn’t benefit creators 99.99% of the time.
TL;DR: framing this as people simply not wanting to watch ads is not fair at all.
The system would topple rapidly if people went back to paying directly.
But there is a huge caveat. The ad internet created a classless egalitarian internet where everyone can pay with attention, rather than money. Almost everyone has equal attention, not everyone has equal money. This is taken for granted, but it's very real.
A payment based internet, devoid of ads and tracking, would be back to the rich people having all the coolest services.
But nowhere in any scenario is "free riders counting on suckers to cover their costs".
Also a lot of people are very happy creating things without consistent/“making a living” (or any!) compensation, but they are often exploited by large corporations that want a free ride - or worse, use them as a building block and then find ways to wall them out as they take advantage of people who would otherwise use their tool. See: the FOSS community. Where would we be without VLC?
An example I always use is the Indie rock boom in Canada in the 2000’s, which bled into the US in a very concrete way . A lot of that was actually possible because of the Canadian government funding the arts.
Or do you think users actually think 'i don't want this creator to be compensated so I'll use an ad blocker'?
Let me know which part is so confusing/complicated for you.
No, I don't. From a business perspective its all the same revenue line item. However it does determine who I am working for.
>Or do you think users actually think 'i don't want this creator to be compensated so I'll use an ad blocker'?
I don't think they are thinking at all, besides "Wow this is cool I can bypass ads!". But I can tell you, from the creator side, it's a massive problem. 30-40% of your customers have this idea that your time has no value (and ~99% if you go the donation route, 90-95% if you paywall)
Also keep in mind, any creator can give away their work for free, but they don't. I don't think it's controversial at all to say that's intentional.
Creators don't get compensation when LLMs scrape.
It's totally, and completely, unambiguous. The internet just has collective brain damage from the grassroots morals of it being formed 30 years ago by teenagers. How surprising that a bunch of kids decided that the way to save the internet was to make it better for themselves, and worse for the people who make the internet the thing they love.
Some of us have grown up now, and realize the correct answer to save the internet was to not engage with ad supported content period.
Adblocking is basic security now. I am not compromising on it. I say this as a “content creator”
Content creation comes in many forms. You can also promote things in your copy. People do it all the time. Adblockers aren’t going to somehow remove your words. People disclose their sponsorships at the top/bottom of their written content all the time and frequently use affiliate links.
The point that continues to be missed is that instead of taking downvotes as validation that people simply failed to comprehend the argument you're making (they didn't), you should take them as a check to reevaluate whether your conclusion is as unambiguous as you believe.
There is no way to reconcile an internet where the suckers who cannot figure out ad-block carry the overhead costs for those who do. It costs money to create the content you consume, it costs money to serve the content you consume. The internet is not some magical exemption from standard financial practice going back millennia. The cost is your burden, take it or leave it. But don't take it then do mental gymnastics about why it's not actually something you value while walking away with free, shifting the cost onto the next guy.
I'll leave a variant of your argument here for you to mull over, and consider whether the bathroom-breaker here is just as morally bankrupt as the online ad-blocker:
> There is no way to reconcile [over the air TV] where the suckers who cannot figure out [how to leave the room during ad breaks] carry the overhead costs for those who do. It costs money to create the content you consume, it costs money to serve the content you consume. [Broadcast television] is not some magical exemption from standard financial practice going back millennia. The cost is your burden, take it or leave it. But don't take it then do mental gymnastics about why it's not actually something you value while walking away with free,