10 ms·

How will ad-supported sites function without ads? Government subsidies?

by baeaz 4y ago

Moissanite 4y ago
Hopefully they will just go away; much easier to understand the value proposition of some content if the owner has had to put an actual price tag on it. Yes, people will end up consuming less media - but given how precipitously the quality of news and news-like publishing has dropped, I'd be glad to have fewer, better sources of "journalism".
- baeaz 4y ago
  If you don't like them then don't visit them or visit them with an ad blocker on. Don't deprive users from the content and don't deprive staff from their jobs.
  - Dah00n 4y ago
    This is just like the "I have nothing to hide so I don't mind tracking" argument.
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      No. It's really not. It's "I would gladly give person A the thing I have X for the thing they'll give me Y but you won't let me because you don't want to do that". It's more like the minimum wage argument or something like that but you don't really need an analogy.
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    Not that simple. Even for paid media (Netflix, for example) advertising is starting to creep back in, because consumers have no way to resist it. Companies which don't gather ad money and just rely on actual value-transfer transactions get outcompeted. Advertising itself is only mildly offensive; if done with taste it can be no problem at all, but too many companies seemingly don't know when to stop - the line from Ready Player One about monetizing 70% of a person's field of view sounds exactly like what Meta and Google would do if they could get away with it. I want legislation on this topic to create breathing space for real businesses which make things of value.
- fomine3 4y ago
  You're talking as a richer person.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Advertisers aren’t charities though, their objective is to show ads to people who have the means to buy stuff - poor people seeing their ads (and having their content subsidised) isn’t something they want and they’d be more than happy to stop it should there become a reliable way of tracking and detecting poor people.
ls15 4y ago
They can close if it is too expensive to run.

How will ad-supported sites function without ads? Government subsidies?

by baeaz 4y ago

How will ad-supported sites function without ads? Government subsidies?

Hopefully they will just go away; much easier to understand the value proposition of some content if the owner has had to put an actual price tag on it. Yes, people will end up consuming less media - but given how precipitously the quality of news and news-like publishing has dropped, I'd be glad to have fewer, better sources of "journalism".

baeaz 4y ago
If you don't like them then don't visit them or visit them with an ad blocker on. Don't deprive users from the content and don't deprive staff from their jobs.
- Dah00n 4y ago
  This is just like the "I have nothing to hide so I don't mind tracking" argument.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    No. It's really not. It's "I would gladly give person A the thing I have X for the thing they'll give me Y but you won't let me because you don't want to do that". It's more like the minimum wage argument or something like that but you don't really need an analogy.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  Not that simple. Even for paid media (Netflix, for example) advertising is starting to creep back in, because consumers have no way to resist it. Companies which don't gather ad money and just rely on actual value-transfer transactions get outcompeted. Advertising itself is only mildly offensive; if done with taste it can be no problem at all, but too many companies seemingly don't know when to stop - the line from Ready Player One about monetizing 70% of a person's field of view sounds exactly like what Meta and Google would do if they could get away with it. I want legislation on this topic to create breathing space for real businesses which make things of value.
fomine3 4y ago
You're talking as a richer person.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Advertisers aren’t charities though, their objective is to show ads to people who have the means to buy stuff - poor people seeing their ads (and having their content subsidised) isn’t something they want and they’d be more than happy to stop it should there become a reliable way of tracking and detecting poor people.

ls15 4y ago

They can close if it is too expensive to run.