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> In fact, our reluctance to pay for any type of content has led to the state we are in today

Then how come, every time I pay for content, that content still has ads? The paywalled newspaper sites I frequent do this. Or, notice how they do this in every movie theater in America now -- you can't sit there in peace before a movie. Instead, before the trailers start, you're subjected to a barrage of loud ads.

Even on the March Madness app -- I've logged in with my Comcast credentials, they are going to show me the regular TV ads, and yet they make me miss live game action to show me ads specific to the app! And they do this every time you leave the app and come back.

Every place that an ad can be placed, it will eventually be placed, in every medium and whether a consumer paid for that content or not. Throwing ads in our face is so widely abused that I'm completely unsurprised that adblockers are mainstream and still growing. Our web browser is one of the few places we still have control.

Thankfully, progress is not purely monotonic towards ads. In the old days, you either watched TV shows on air with commercials (except on HBO) or... waited for the entire season to come out on DVD or something. Or pirated them, once that became technically feasible. Now, Netflix, iTunes, and friends will sell you most shows ad-free, and this has become my only method of watching TV since it is such a better experience.

Even on the Internet, remember the good old days of popup ads and blinking banner ads (that you couldn't easily scroll out of view)? I don't know what sites everyone else visits, but I don't use an ad blocker simply because most of the sites I visit either have no ads (like this one) or have few and unobtrusive enough ads that I can easily ignore them. (I don't care about tracking.) A notable exception is YouTube, where the obnoxious video ads caused me to start ad blocking recently.

Oh, and... while there are plenty of ads out there plaguing mobile devices, most good apps (at least on iOS) either don't have them or have an in-app purchase to disable them. Compare that to the websites the apps replace, and you can see a significant improvement.

> Thankfully, progress is not purely monotonic towards ads

You bring up good points, but thinking about this particular line more, I wonder if it really is heading that way.

Anywhere you find exclusivity for content provides the opportunity to put in an ad. You can be as customer-hostile as you like and get away with it because there's nowhere else to go. I put up with the March Madness app because I have no alternative -- I must watch that content there.

So if we're headed towards many players of exclusive content, why wouldn't a Netflix or HBO pull the same cash grab once their subscriber growth goes flat? Hey, I probably would if I was in charge over there.

Another example just from today: I saw an ad before an Amazon Instant video. Granted, it was for an Amazon product, but Amazon built an ad system of some sort to deliver it. Curious they made that.

>So if we're headed towards many players of exclusive content, why wouldn't a Netflix or HBO pull the same cash grab once their subscriber growth goes flat? Hey, I probably would if I was in charge over there.

If they do I am done watching. I don't think I am alone in this (I don't watch broadcast TV or youtube on my phone for the same reason).

Also their content isn't as exclusive as they like to think: you can get it on pirate sites.

The newspaper used to cost $1 (each! every day!) and it was full of ads. Probably about as much percentage of area as a typical news site today.

There must be a balance between "no payment" and "no ads" - the optimum profit doesn't necessarily happen at one of the extremes. Do you think you'd choose a higher priced subscription if it offered no ads?

well, newsprint ads have the benefit of curation so that they are not overly sexualized or from scam artists, and they don't attempt to track and collate you. They also have the benefit of being bought by local services in your town, if it's a local paper. So advertisements actually serve a useful function there.

That said, if my local paper started producing the swill I encounter merely seconds after turning off adblock, I would consider the "no bullshit" version as well!

Maybe? Probably? I would surely consider it.

It's a combination of "the ads subsidize the production of the content somewhat i.e. you aren't paying the full price" and "everyone is desensitized to ads now anyway so we might at well show them in every place we can possibly get away with it".

FWIW I think it's mostly the latter (e: was thinking specifically of cinema when I wrote this - nl is right it depends on the medium).

It's actually mostly the former. Not sure about movie theatres but for example printed newspaper costs are usually not even covered by the price of the newspaper. The ads is where the money is.

His point is valid. If you rely on something that causes people harm that must be factored in when they seek to minimize their risk.

I don't use ad blockers because I generally support your position. I do block flash because it is so annoying and especially noisy ads and downloading video I didn't ask for on my limited bandwidth.

It seems to me it isn't 100% either way. There is an issue of being a free-riding meanie when you block ads those providing content rely on for income. There is also an issue of sites being overly obnoxious in their serving of ads. The users right to control their computer makes sense.

The risk of privacy violations and serving malware are real and impact the ability to claim blocking ads is fair.

Those that believe in blocking ads mainly don't believe it is ok for some ISP or others to replace website ads with their own ads. This is normally based on the idea they don't have the right to change web content clients request and this argument largely relies on the same idea those that say ad blockers are wrong rely on. It is true there is space between these arguments to slip in the claim that while others don't have the right to eliminate the web content and replace it with their own the end user does. This is a reasonable argument, but it is not, IMO, without a reasonable counter-argument (that those providing the web content are doing so with the ads as part of their offer).

I don't think ad blockers are immoral or unethical but I do think they are not 100% pure either. They are a reasonable thing to resort to given an understanding of the whole situation. But they do, it seems to me, take away an earned benefit from those providing content.

> I didn't ask for on my limited bandwidth.

Your browser asked for it though. Maybe fix you browser so it isn't doing things you don't like?

Of course with HTTP/2, websites will be able to send you stuff that even your browser didn't ask for.

Isn't fixing his browser exactly what curiouscats is doing by blocking flash?

I for one did, and its called Noscript. And waddayouknow, it blocks ads (as a side "benefit")...

HTTP/2 makes provision for the rejection of pushed resources.

>In fact, our reluctance to pay for any type of content has led to the state we are in today.

One way I'm trying to overcome that is to actually pay for content. I've started in a small way by supporting people who producing the content I care about at Patreon.

+1 to you and I agree this is a nice step - though it doesn't work at scale, nor is it 100% appropriate for the ideals of the web. If you think about the web as the penultimate democracy for content, where content of the highest quality is available to even the poorest person, then saying "pay for this or you'll remain ignorant" is just not fair.

Example: I would be more ok if Coursera/Udacity and the like went with an ad-based model rather than a pay-per-view model. Why? Because the people it's meant to help - the individual who can't afford to take out massive loans to pay for school or the kid from the bad side of town - can't really benefit if it costs 100's or 1000's of $$ to study, say, computer science or the like.

Retort: But there are a number of other free resources! See link here or here! Retort back: Those aren't the highest quality, and usually those are free because: a) they're supported by ad spend b) they're supported by VC funding and will eventually move behind a paywall of some sort eventually.

Where do you earn "1000s of $$" per visitor? Are you serious?

Part of why ads are so irritating is that they shove tons of attention seekers on every page just to earn a tenth of a cent.

I think they were referring to taking a course at a university.

That's not without cost, though. It could mean that poor become so inundated with ads that they waste their already limited budget on frivolous bullshit and junk food, and have to take out more payday loans to pay the water bill this month.

Your point has been made several times on this topic but can someone cite some study about how poor people are more "susceptible" to the ill effects of advertising and how everything that is being advertised is obviously "bullshit"?

If anything, advertising is what allows poor people to have the same access to content/information without having to pay real wages in return for access.

What types of online ads that you see do you consider bullshit?

It's not that they are necessarily more susceptible, it's that they would be exposed to more of it, under this model.

How do the advertisers benefit from showing ads to people who can't afford their products anyway?

Patreon's model desperately needs a "one-shot" mode.

Ideally there'd be two types: the one-off, and the time-limited subscription. Not only would this provide a bit more data to the content-creators, but for me the consumer it would play better with my budgeting. Having to remember I have N subscriptions going on at any time is far more tiring then knowing I have X disposable income and want to apportion it out, or that I've committed to a maximum of subscription period of X before I'll decide to renew it.

IMO, a lot of content creators had already been providing one-shot opportunities by selling merchandise. The problem for me is that I frequently don't care for merch, so Patreon basically filled a niche for me: creators I was happy to give money to without actually asking for any more.

It really discomforts me that a lot of creators seem to feel obligated to provide a higher level of service for patrons.

>It's the sites that you use that have chosen to include the code snippets needed to display ads or track you (not withstanding those terrible ad injector add-ons).

Facebook tracks me and builds a shadow profile whether I use their shitty site or not.

>In fact, our reluctance to pay for any type of content has led to the state we are in today.

And yet if I pay for something, it invariably still shoves ads at me. Paying TV subscribers have to watch commercials. If I pay a subscription to the Economist I still see ads in print and online.

>Paywalls largely don't work for many types of content

Content isn't worth as much these days.

>When you block an ad, the network doesn't pay the site. Simple as that.

And that's why I love ad blockers. I don't want anyone to get money for forcing me to watch ads I don't want.

In most cases, a website will not get paid unless the visitor actually clicks on the ad (or carries out the action that the ad points to). In those cases, using Adblock and simply ignoring the ads would produce the same amount of revenue for the site: zero.

The problem here is that the trade-off is not "I tell you a story and you see this ad in return". The real trade-off is "I tell you a story and you have to allow these other shady companies to track you and run their code on your computer". Ads demand too much in terms of attention, performance, privacy and security.

So find a better business model. If it's not paywalls, and it's not ads, figure it out.

If you want to smarm about a better business model, I invite you to find it yourself. It's much easier to perform that smarm than find one, but I guess if you have to rationalize free ridership it's a good line. And it means you don't have to come to grips with the idea that it's a social problem instead of a free-market-hallowed-be-thy-name problem; it does mean you can mostly wave away that the money needs to come from somewhere and every scalable option involves advertising that free-riders block, native advertising that compromises the integrity of the work (if it's applicable at all), or requiring payment that readers won't pony up for. (Yes, really, every option, you're welcome to bookmark this post and cheetodust about it if one ever comes to fruition but I am comfortable betting my side of the line.)

Fixing the country, though, is ssssocialism, and we can't have that. Instead people who entertain us should beg for scraps, I suppose. That's sustainable.

I claim that part of it at least is a technical problem.

No, really. Compare user payment habits on desktops/websites versus mobile devices. Sure, there are the issues that users have become attuned to $1 apps, that many are incredibly reluctant to pony up even that, etc. etc. But at least some users pay $1, because it only requires a few taps and the purchase is associated with their existing $devicevendor account; good luck getting that to happen on the web, where not everyone has PayPal (to which the most common alternative is pulling out a physical wallet and filling in a long list of text boxes) and you need to make your own account system.

What would the web be like if micropayments had actually become a thing?

I suppose it depends when those micropayments had become a thing. I don't think, for example, that the various "pay a sliver of money when you hit a page" services out there have any chance, nor would they have had a chance five years ago. Content on the internet is Free, and when it's not Free, it's time to get boiling and resentful.

Ten years ago, fifteen? Maybe. At this point I feel like the entitlement of free ridership has won pretty hard.

> In fact, our reluctance to pay for any type of content has led to the state we are in today.

People's reluctance to pay and their aversion to advertising is, I think, understandable and reasonable.

It is just a quirk of the time period that we find ourselves in that there is any "moral" dilemma attached to this situation.

The reason people perceive it as a moral situation is because we've established a society in which one must extract money out of others in order to survive.

Our welfare system is not yet currently capable of providing people with the basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, clean water, healthcare, education, and equal access to opportunities.

If it were, you would find that the cost of content really would approach $0. If, for example, artists did not have to worry about any of the previously mentioned necessities (if it was just given to them), then most of them would probably be perfectly happy to continue to produce content for free and without advertising.

I know, as a software developer and entrepreneur, that I personally would be happy to not charge anything for any software that I create (or charge very little), if these basics were taken care of.

As more people continue to lose their jobs to robots and automation, we will (if we can avoid destroying ourselves), move in that direction.

> Our welfare system is not yet currently capable of providing people with the basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, clean water, healthcare, education, and equal access to opportunities.

Even if the welfare system was capable of giving these, people would want more. We can examine this by looking current people model. Their desire to earn more is not decreasing when they reach the minimum or optimum level of necessities.

I think the problem is life standards that emphasized to us by ads. The goal will be always higher than our necessities. Because, this is the only way to keep alive current economic system, balance of production and consumption.

So, I don't believe giving more to people solves anything. But I do believe, people's desire should be left to themselves by standing a position against all ads or things serve to this purpose.

> I think the problem is life standards that emphasized to us by ads.

Heh, if that's true, that's another reason for folks to use adblockers. ;)

> So, I don't believe giving more to people solves anything.

When it comes to solving problems, the evidence is rather strong. Giving people more food, shelter, medicine, health care, education (even plain old money), results in striking benefits to individuals and communities.

This should not be surprising, but if you need studies, there are plenty:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/studies

I am trying to say, while you are giving people what they need, also you are(or others) saying that to people what they have is not enough and they need more to survive.

But of course people would motivated more if they didn't have to think about their necessities.

I dread the day where the only content available is what artists can produce independently. Movies like Interstellar, or the TV show Lost, are by their nature very expensive, and it would be a great loss if this type of content could no longer recoup its expenses. I hope there's a place in the future for both indie work and expensive "blockbuster" content.

> I hope there's a place in the future for both indie work and expensive "blockbuster" content.

Certainly. You'll note that as individual expenses go down, group expenses should go down as well since employers will no longer have to cover their employees cost of living. Prices of everything will continue to plummet (as they have been). If anything, they should be able to do more on the same budget.

EDIT: You might think "Well who's paying for all those basics? Surely that will imply higher taxes."

Compare the cost of a 1GHz CPU today to the cost 10 years ago. The price went down and yet taxes did not play a significant role in that. The basics could be covered by taxes, but they need not be. The price of basics goes down over time naturally as technology advances and builds off of the knowledge and efficiencies of the technology before it. Taxes can be used to accelerate this process, but they are not necessary for it to happen in the first place. Free, clean drinking water was not even a thing a few centuries ago. Now it is everywhere in first world countries. The same should happen with other necessities.

Gets me thinking about Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Where people are banding together to maintain Walt Disney World in a post scarcity society.

I'd be interested to know what the Internet is like for folks in countries like Sweden where welfare systems are far more capable.

For example, do Swedish websites also rely heavily on advertising? How does the economy of Swedish content (in Swedish markets) compare to American content in America?

BTW: I should be clear that I am not advocating any particular type of welfare system. It does not even have to be government managed. The important thing is that a system exist to free people's minds from the mundane details of basic survival.

The profit motive exists just as much in Sweden as in the US. Welfare acts as a safety net for individuals, not companies.

As such, a welfare system may allow capitalism to function better. Because it makes it easier for disgruntled employees to start a competing company, or reduce the worry about companies shutting down (though you may get a chain reaction depending on its size etc).