7 ms·

What a magical world you live in where everything is free and no one needs to be paid for their work. Ads have been abused by companies over the years but whit

by theg2 11y ago

What a magical world you live in where everything is free and no one needs to be paid for their work. Ads have been abused by companies over the years but whitelisting sites that whose content and services you value and don't abuse you with those ads are the only reason they can afford to exist. Edit: I get it, you don't want ads. People have abused them over the years and that's bad. My only point is that whitelisting (or donating/subscribing to where possible) the sites you value keeps those sites running. It's nice that some sites don't need financial support to pay for reporters, editors, producers, and photographers but that's not the case for many sites that do great journalism.

Touche 11y ago
Bytes are distributed over the public internet. He/she has a right to ignore the bytes he/she doesn't care about.
anc84 11y ago
The good old "there can not be free-of-cost content unless money is involved" fallacy. I am a member of many communities whose hosting costs are paid by the communities, the administrative tasks are shared by members of the communities, I "consume" many sites which only exist because their authors want to express themselves, I use sites that exist because people feel the need to share their knowledge and collections of bytes. They all exist without a single ad. They exist because someone wants them to exist. This comment was written and shared for free on the web without restrictions because I felt the urge to write it.
- theg2 11y ago
  Not all news and content creation can be done as a side job or hobby. The people who do journalism, create content, or support that goal of quality journalism need to make a living somehow.
  - anc84 11y ago
    Absolutely. And I wholeheartedly think that enough people support high quality journalism. See the 1 million online subscribers to the NY Times. The majority of online journalism seems to be regurgitated news agency reports and stuff that no one needs (or can get free from communities elsewhere). lots of forums, blogs and aggregators perfected clickbait and cat picture distributions a decade ago.
    - wutbrodo 11y ago
      You picked a particularly terrible example, since the Times hasn't stopped struggling since introducing an online subscription, and most depressingly, is starting to experiment with the same clickbait bullshit that Buzzfeed popularized (things like increasingly questionably labeled "sponsored stories").
  - Touche 11y ago
    It's entirely plausible that those things are not profitable enterprises any more. A user doesn't have to surrender his/her privacy to prop up a dying industry. It's possible that journalism becomes supported by patronage the way art once was.
- manigandham 11y ago
  How is this a fallacy? It seems like you just cherry picked a few small sites and claim that if they can do it, everyone can. Sure hosting costs are ridiculous cheap and now anyone can publish for next to nothing. But do you get all your content from your friends posts on Facebook? There's a reason why real original and valuable content requires dedicated staff to do it and that does cost money. You don't look at movies and think "well that could just be done for free if they really cared about it" so why attribute that to good content that just happens to be in another medium?
  - anc84 11y ago
    I buy physical good newspapers and magazines with cash. They don't track me, they can't DRM paper, I prefer that.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      Your first comment was how content can/should be free but now you're saying you paid cash for newspapers - how is that related? The whole point is content does cost money, regardless of medium. Just because it's an article online doesn't mean it's free. If you prefer a certain type of medium that's fine, but that doesn't mean other types aren't valid or hold value.
coldpie 11y ago
I host a half-dozen websites out of my own pocket with no ads. I pay for an Ars Technica subscription and don't view ads. Hacker News doesn't have ads, yet here we are. Wikipedia doesn't have ads. I guess the world we live in is pretty magical!
- theg2 11y ago
  Those are all subscription or donation (wikipedia) based examples. A lot of sites could never survive on those models or obtain the resources to manage them. I'm all for blocking sites that abuse their users.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    > Those are all subscription or donation (wikipedia) based examples. That was precisely my point: there are other viable models than ad-supported. > A lot of sites could never survive on those models or obtain the resources to manage them. Tough shit.
    - manigandham 11y ago
      > Tough shit. Not really, it might hurt in the short term but it only gets worse for users to have paywalled/closed access, which will actually lead to more ads and tracking.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    They all abuse their users in one way or another. Tracking me across the web? How about no? What about distraction? Is time free now? And that's before we get into the malware vector problems. The few tenths of a penny you got for me seeing your ad is much less than my hourly rate for cleaning up a network infected with the latest 0day du jour. Is your (the collective your) company going to compensate me when one of your ads destroys my machine? No? Then I'm forced to conclude that you want the benefit with none of the responsibility. The blockers stay on. *ed I realize this comment sounds mighty dickish but I'm quite tired of advertising apologists demanding that I sacrifice my privacy, security, and time to access their all-important text. I decide if and how my computer renders a given piece of markup - if your business can't survive that, welp, not my problem. Fix your broken business model.
davidgerard 11y ago
about: Newsroom developer Ads from newspapers are one of the biggest vectors for malwared ads, because they have so many viewers. You're a very efficacious channel for the malicious. Because newspapers have proven incompetent at not endangering their readers. If you have an exciting new method of not malwaring your readers, that hasn't occurred to every newspaper that's malwared their readers so far, we'd love to see it in action! Until then, you really can't expect readers to just assume your competence in the face of overwhelming evidence. Possibly you need to explore business models that don't risk malwaring your readers.
- theg2 11y ago
  I worked for public media, the only ads we have are VERY basic PNGs served by DoubleClick or house membership ads for donations. Newsroom != newspaper and your assumption of how all news sites operate based on a few examples is incorrect.

by theg2 11y ago

Touche 11y ago

Bytes are distributed over the public internet. He/she has a right to ignore the bytes he/she doesn't care about.

anc84 11y ago

The good old "there can not be free-of-cost content unless money is involved" fallacy. I am a member of many communities whose hosting costs are paid by the communities, the administrative tasks are shared by members of the communities, I "consume" many sites which only exist because their authors want to express themselves, I use sites that exist because people feel the need to share their knowledge and collections of bytes. They all exist without a single ad. They exist because someone wants them to exist. This comment was written and shared for free on the web without restrictions because I felt the urge to write it.

theg2 11y ago
Not all news and content creation can be done as a side job or hobby. The people who do journalism, create content, or support that goal of quality journalism need to make a living somehow.
- anc84 11y ago
  Absolutely. And I wholeheartedly think that enough people support high quality journalism. See the 1 million online subscribers to the NY Times. The majority of online journalism seems to be regurgitated news agency reports and stuff that no one needs (or can get free from communities elsewhere). lots of forums, blogs and aggregators perfected clickbait and cat picture distributions a decade ago.
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    You picked a particularly terrible example, since the Times hasn't stopped struggling since introducing an online subscription, and most depressingly, is starting to experiment with the same clickbait bullshit that Buzzfeed popularized (things like increasingly questionably labeled "sponsored stories").
- Touche 11y ago
  It's entirely plausible that those things are not profitable enterprises any more. A user doesn't have to surrender his/her privacy to prop up a dying industry. It's possible that journalism becomes supported by patronage the way art once was.
manigandham 11y ago
How is this a fallacy? It seems like you just cherry picked a few small sites and claim that if they can do it, everyone can. Sure hosting costs are ridiculous cheap and now anyone can publish for next to nothing. But do you get all your content from your friends posts on Facebook? There's a reason why real original and valuable content requires dedicated staff to do it and that does cost money. You don't look at movies and think "well that could just be done for free if they really cared about it" so why attribute that to good content that just happens to be in another medium?
- anc84 11y ago
  I buy physical good newspapers and magazines with cash. They don't track me, they can't DRM paper, I prefer that.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    Your first comment was how content can/should be free but now you're saying you paid cash for newspapers - how is that related? The whole point is content does cost money, regardless of medium. Just because it's an article online doesn't mean it's free. If you prefer a certain type of medium that's fine, but that doesn't mean other types aren't valid or hold value.

coldpie 11y ago

I host a half-dozen websites out of my own pocket with no ads. I pay for an Ars Technica subscription and don't view ads. Hacker News doesn't have ads, yet here we are. Wikipedia doesn't have ads. I guess the world we live in is pretty magical!

theg2 11y ago
Those are all subscription or donation (wikipedia) based examples. A lot of sites could never survive on those models or obtain the resources to manage them. I'm all for blocking sites that abuse their users.
- coldpie 11y ago
  > Those are all subscription or donation (wikipedia) based examples. That was precisely my point: there are other viable models than ad-supported. > A lot of sites could never survive on those models or obtain the resources to manage them. Tough shit.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    > Tough shit. Not really, it might hurt in the short term but it only gets worse for users to have paywalled/closed access, which will actually lead to more ads and tracking.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  They all abuse their users in one way or another. Tracking me across the web? How about no? What about distraction? Is time free now? And that's before we get into the malware vector problems. The few tenths of a penny you got for me seeing your ad is much less than my hourly rate for cleaning up a network infected with the latest 0day du jour. Is your (the collective your) company going to compensate me when one of your ads destroys my machine? No? Then I'm forced to conclude that you want the benefit with none of the responsibility. The blockers stay on. *ed I realize this comment sounds mighty dickish but I'm quite tired of advertising apologists demanding that I sacrifice my privacy, security, and time to access their all-important text. I decide if and how my computer renders a given piece of markup - if your business can't survive that, welp, not my problem. Fix your broken business model.

davidgerard 11y ago

about: Newsroom developer Ads from newspapers are one of the biggest vectors for malwared ads, because they have so many viewers. You're a very efficacious channel for the malicious. Because newspapers have proven incompetent at not endangering their readers. If you have an exciting new method of not malwaring your readers, that hasn't occurred to every newspaper that's malwared their readers so far, we'd love to see it in action! Until then, you really can't expect readers to just assume your competence in the face of overwhelming evidence. Possibly you need to explore business models that don't risk malwaring your readers.

theg2 11y ago
I worked for public media, the only ads we have are VERY basic PNGs served by DoubleClick or house membership ads for donations. Newsroom != newspaper and your assumption of how all news sites operate based on a few examples is incorrect.