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Comment by shanecleveland | Hacker News Reader

I don't mind most advertising. As with magazines and newspapers, I mostly ignore them, until I am interested in something. It was amazing how much more I was inclined to look at ads in the newspaper while we were building a house (a lot of stuff to buy!). Ad-blockers are silly. To demand the web to be free and then block the one avenue for revenue available is completely contradictory. Content is not free! Can they be better optimized? Of course. Let the users and search engines flesh out the good from the bad.

What I really hate are site pop-ups that suddenly interrupt reading and play hide and seek with the "close" option. That's the last way to get my feedback or make me a subscriber. but it must work!

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> Content is not free!

Then charge me. I didn't agree to watch ads, and have no obligation to do so.

I'm actually under the impression that sites that make readers pay will eventually implement advertising in addition to subscription fees. Even great magazines do this and it makes sense because the people who are willing to pay for a subscription are exactly the people who are the best to advertise to.

I read somewhere[1] that magazine publishers are aware of this -- that people who will pay anything at all are much better than those who read free magazines -- and try to straddle the difference by charging something while also having a zillion opportunities to get a highly discounted subscription. This is why you see all those offers (in addition to planning to jack it up later).

[1] Pretty sure it was Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week

>To demand the web to be free and then block the one avenue for revenue available is completely contradictory

Sponsored posts, subscription models, premium services/special access, shops/merchandise, donations/flair. Saying advertisement is the "one avenue" is lying through clenched teeth.

The issue is that few people value journalism (and not surprisingly given the falling levels of journalism found everywhere nowadays). If I get a report on a war breaking out on Egypt does it matter if I read it in the New York Times or see it trending on Twitter? Not really. Most people are more than happy enough to share news for free and I can likely hear it from a family member or friend. To most people, it doesn't really matter who they end up hearing it from.

The only reason they turn to popular news sources is because they are in-their-face and they know they exist. I might have trouble finding a random Russian blog about the Ukraine conflict written in English. But CNN's coverage of the conflicts will do and is easily accessible. Does it matter to me which source I use? Not particularly if the information is more or less the same.

> * Saying advertisement is the "one avenue" is lying through clenched teeth.*

You are ignoring the import of the very line you quoted: to demand the web to be free. While there are exceptions, in general people do not like to pay for web content, which includes subscription models, premium services/special access, and donations/flair. Sponsored posts are advertisements.

> If I get a report on war breaking out in Egypt does it matter if I read it in the New York Times or see it trending on Twitter?

If it is trending on Twitter, to read the report you must click a link which goes to a web site that needs to pay its writers.

> Most people are more than happy enough to share news for free

From a source that needs to pay its writers.

> and I can likely hear it from a family member or friend.

Who heard about it from a source that needs to pay its writers, right?

> But CNN's coverage of the conflicts will do and is easily accessible.

CNN is, well, a source that needs to pay its writers. And they do so through advertising. Because we demand the web to be free.

Sponsored posts are a form of advertisements - but not easily blocked by ad blockers. I keep the two separate in my mental compartment and take issue with one (indiscriminate, mass advertising) and the other (usually discriminate, relevant, on-topic and paid-for advertising).

>If it is trending on Twitter, to read the report you must click a link which goes to a web site that needs to pay its writers.

This doesn't even deserve a response for how blatantly wrong this statement is, but I'll humor you.

I can guarantee that during any major event I can find 1,000's of tweets covering the topic in extraordinary detail (ie: photos and videos taken by the people involved) without ever having to go to a news article and without any of those tweets mentioning an article. Hell, most news nowadays is centered entirely around finding these type of tweets and writing an article about the information in these tweets.

Browse tags related to Ferguson for all of 10 seconds to see how wrong you are.

>From a source that needs to pay its writers. && >Who heard about it from a source that needs to pay its writers, right?

My mom told me there was a fire by my house a few weeks back. The source was she saw smoke in the hills in my general direction and used a bit of guessing as to the location of the fire, which was indeed a few blocks from my residence. No writers had to be paid for my mother to take this news and relay it to me. It was entirely free! Once-upon-a-time this was how almost all news was relayed! Who'd have thought this methodology still works and is still reliable thousands of years later!

>CNN is, well, a source that needs to pay its writers. And they do so through advertising. Because we demand the web to be free.

But nothing is stopping me from finding another news source (ie: the hypothetical Russian blogger I mentioned) and following whatever they say instead of CNN, other than I don't already know they exist. Which with crowd-sourced news (more or less what Twitter is) is amazingly easy to find. If I cared enough about the Ukraine conflict I can find 20+ sources that I could cross-compare and get an accurate idea of what is occurring without a single writer needing to be paid. Just people wanting to be heard.

Believe it or not - but news is not something that needs to be paid for. The only reason that news pays is that there are people who want to share a story, people willing to listen, and advertisements that can be shoe-horned inbetween broadcasting segments. "The news" often gets its "sources" from unpaid people willing to share their story. They are a middle-man who can be cut out of the deal.

Journalism is a form of news that is supposed to be "curated" to give an unbiased, full perspective of an issue and allow the reader to come to their own conclusions. I treat it as an art-form to tell a story in a captive and informative way. It's a dying art form.

I don't apologize for my tone because your response came off as extremely narrow-visioned with an extremely annoying and self-affirming (but wrong) argument of "the source came from writers, didn't it!"

I have a blog where I write about topics important to me because I want people to be aware of them. I am a news source, I don't expect (or need) to get paid for my time spent writing on the issues. I'm not the only person like this, there are thousands of people like me. Thousands? I meant millions.

Well, you don't need to apologize for your tone, certainly. I didn't mean to be extremely annoying, but I stand by the assertion that the source of written material comes from writers. You think the "middlemen" of reporters can be cut of the deal, and sure, they can, if everyone is not only willing to do the same job that reporters do but can manage to be reasonably good at it. At risk of being extremely annoying yet again, I think you are vastly underestimating the amount of work involved.

I've tried to make it very clear I have a high level of respect for proper journalism and even see that form of covering a subject as a form of art. That's some pretty high praise. The problem about paying for journalism is not many people see it as a form of art.

But that's just the issue with paying for journalism, I went off on a secondary topic about paying for news (more general).

My argument was that Fox News and most other mainstream media covering mostly trivialities and unimportant things could be replaced entirely by following trending topics on Twitter and one would miss nothing that actually matters. Any major events would be covered by the general public.

> Ad-blockers are silly

No, ad-blockers are necessary because ads (as they exist right now) are security risks that negatively impact performance and the the user experience of the site.

I'm more than happy to disable my ad-blocker on sites that I trust and appreciate, but they are only a tiny fraction of the sites I visit. Either wise up and provide a sane and trustworthy user experience, or wither as your revenue vanishes.

Meanwhile, sites like reddit do sane, minimal advertising and have never turned a profit even with 170 million monthly uniques.

Then advertisement isn't the best monetization strategy for Reddit. "Abuse your users or go bankrupt" is a false dichotomy.

Presumably, for advertising to work, your ad has to stand out. If every ad tries to stand out more and more compared to other ads, the result is more and more invasive ads. I'm not an expert on the matter, but it seems to me like the free-stuff-sponsored-by-advertising model isn't very sustainable. On the other hand, I do like free stuff as much as everyone else.

Of course it's sustainable. It's sustainable forever until there is some other option. TV and news paper and magazines never found an alternative. If someone can think of one, they'll get very wealthy I'm sure.

Right. Or sustainable until a new way of serving up content is found. Print couldn't adapt to online. Will there be an alternative to online as we know it now?

TV found several better models. PBS asks the public directly to give them money, and they allow corporations to buy sponsorships which don't interrupt the content. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. have subscribers who pay directly for the privilege of watching their shows. Netflix delivers ad-free content to your home either via postal mail or network for a fee. There are plenty of other models available to try out.

In many cases PBS does interrupt their content to solicit donations – but you do get a coffee mug and tote bag. Is it better, as you suggest? Maybe. An alternative, certainly. Don't see many others doing it.

Akin to a "Donate" button on a website. How well does that work for most?

I've never seen them interrupt a show in progress. I've seen them do pledge drives where they preempt a show, but I haven't ever had something I was watching on PBS be interrupted, personally. Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe they do it differently in the places I've lived?

Well, in Germany, for example, no one pays for Pay-TV – Sky has less than a few thousand users.

But what people are willing to pay for is additional value for programs they already know – 60€ a year to get HD instead of SD quality is worth it for many.

(Also, we have the largest tax-financed TV industry worldwide, even larger than the BBC with over 120 channels, but it’s worth it)

I like free stuff, too. I am unlikely to ever subscribe to a traditional newspaper or news site, and I used to be a journalist. But this is why I don't mind advertising. Content has value, there are costs - however minimal on the web - to serve that content. All else being equal, I will certainly be more loyal to sites that find the least obtrusive way to do so.

My local newspaper has an atrocious website with terrible load times, obtrusive ads and confusing navigation. But it is the only game in town.

The point of using an adblocker is that in many cases it's really hard to ignore an online ad, seeing as there's often a noticeable performance hit (in terms of both computing and connectivity) and seeing as how such ads are in a downward spiral as they aggressively try to outdo one another.

On that note, AdBlock Plus gets a lot of heat for having an "acceptable ads" list, and I never understood why. I don't mind advertising, either, so long as it doesn't degrade my user experience, and that's what ABP has been shooting for.

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