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They're fools to not make all their content free anyway. I'd only pay for a service I use a lot. How am I gonna develop the habit of using your page a lot if ev
by fifnir 7y ago
They're fools to not make all their content free anyway. I'd only pay for a service I use a lot. How am I gonna develop the habit of using your page a lot if every time I open an article of yours I'm blocked? I'll just go to another site, thank you very much.
- rtkwe 7y agoDo you use an ad blocker? They've gotta pay for content some how either a paywall or ads.
- jessaustin 7y agoAd blockers block ad networks. A fancy publisher like Economist doesn't have to use ad networks. They could sell online ads the way they sell print ads.
- rtkwe 7y agoThey can but it's not the way most places want to buy ads online anymore. There's a reason basically everyone moved to using ad networks.
- jessaustin 7y agoSo there are trade-offs involved? Different parties have different interests? Different publishers use different models? That sounds about right, and contradicts the false dichotomy offered above.
- rtkwe 7y agoThe dichotomy is the same people who complain a lot about paywalls on HN are also blocking all ads and JS. Paywalls are the offered alternative to ads already.
- jessaustin 6y agoYou'd like to change the subject, but you haven't. I run uBlock Origin to encourage publishers to run their own non-privacy-violating ads from their own domains, the way they did before the ubiquity of surveillance capitalists. Every time publishers have asked me why I use uBO, I've told them that. That they can't adjust to market conditions, is their own failure of imagination. This impasse won't last forever, anyway. Today's unimaginative publishers will eventually be replaced by new ones with new models we haven't even considered yet.
- fifnir 7y agoI think the guardian and wikipedia have a good working model
- rtkwe 7y agoI don't know much about The Guardian's financials but Wikipedia is only paying for hosting costs and some administrative staff which is easier than a newspaper where you've got to pay staff to write your content rather than having it written for free.
- fifnir 7y agoThe guardian has all their content free and aggressively asks you to subscribe. Maybe there's more to their finances that I don't know about but they seem to be doing well.