So to quote GroundUp: "Obviously the behemoth in Mountain View won’t miss [us], but we take some pride in saying the feeling’s mutual."

My recommendation is to sell the space directly on BuySellAds. At $1.00 CPM it would fly off the shelves, but you can get much more than that with a little patience (and provided that your visitors have at least some kind of quality).

Another point to remember is that typically publishers only sell to Google AdSense their unsold (so-called "non-guaranteed") inventory. Typically you take this money because it's better than nothing, and because you couldn't sell this inventory yourself. Usually this non-guaranteed inventory has a lower value then the stuff you'd sell yourself.

There's a lot of reference-style material on news sites, and the CTRs on that are not bad. Just look at Wirecutter and its affiliate model.

That said, industry average for news display ads is about 0.05%... 1 click per 2,000 impressions. No bueno. Say 3m impression get 1.5k clicks, that's $0.33 CPC net or about $0.49 CPC gross.

Please help: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/64wwge/ads_mak...

It's pretty well known that techies don't click on ads, but they're only a smaller segment of the internet population.

Although I don't know how much I can blame this on connection problems on my end, it looks like it takes five seconds or so to type "Test Tester", when in my opinion it should take only one.

All you need to do is delete the frames where nothing changes in the input box and it'll be a big improvement.

(Obviously, this depends on your framerate. Suck it and see.)

Google is no cake-walk from the other end either. As someone who has paid them for ads, over 70% of the clicks are...shall we say?... low quality. Of course if you only run Google Analytics you may never realize this, but if you cross-check with something else you will.

The idea that google can better qualify leads based on search results has basically failed. Online advertising needs to be treated the same as the other media: just a method of branding.

I much prefer to pay-per-view rather than -per-click. At least I feel like I'm getting what I pay for.

I'm used to seeing mainstream newspaper websites with downright toxic commenting environments, so seeing "Dear Editor" followed by a thought-out response is very refreshing. Maybe they have a "better" readership/screening process/whatever, but I think this higher quality commenting behavior is in part due to how GroundUp has simply tweaked the wording of the comment box interface - by framing the comment with "Dear Editor".

"In contrast to comments, letters are only published if approved by our editors. Views expressed in letters are not necessarily endorsed by GroundUp, but they must meet our quality requirements. Letters are given more prominence than comments on the website. "

Then at some point Google gave me the option to opt out of various objectionable topics and soon Google ads got as bad as the others. Maybe Google bought the bad ad networks, or partnered with them or something.

Quite a bit of subtext is largely unexamined. AT&T and Verizon, two of the biggest advertisers, have pulled out from YouTube. AT&T is the biggest pay TV provider in the US now (DirecTV) and Verizon wishes you would watch Go90 so they could sell ads against it. Both of them benefit if ad spend goes elsewhere than YouTube.

I think the problem with ads on the internet is that it will always be a race to the bottom. Ads on TV and in newspapers/magazines have scarcities in play to somewhat help manage them. Ad space on the internet has never been scarce.

The ad companies (Google and Facebook especially) see themselves as somehow unbiased market platforms, and I think we are coming to point where the lack of scarcities leaves "neutral" platforms vulnerable to very cheap "attacks". I worry that ad platforms need to exert a lot more editorial control in the face of that and/or start building a lot more artificial scarcity into their platforms, and I don't think any of them are appropriately incentivized to do that.

I also worry that Google and Facebook's ad spaces are content spaces: search ads at the top of search results, and sponsored "posts" that have like/share/comment abilities. I think that also requires a custodianship and a moral obligation to editorially control those spaces that neither Google nor Facebook have thus far been inclined to take enough responsibility for. Facebook especially, when liked/shared ads graduate to "real" viral content, entirely blurring the lines between ads and content and giving direct power to cheap micro-targeting attacks without having some editorial immune system to help avoid the worst memetic viruses. (Facebook claims to want to do better, but their fiduciary responsibility incentivizes them not to treat ads as user hostile infection points.)

Me too, but not so much about the content ("ads is ads", I used to think), but about privacy and the relentless tracking that DoubleClick was doing. And oooh boy, did that omen ever come true.

Another thing was the moment when I realized the implications of having a giant Internet-wide ad-network implemented in the form of injected third-party javascript. I mean, at first it seemed real clever. This wasn't a big thing back then, just yet. Originally ads were just clickable image links with an affiliate code in the GET parameter and http-referer tracking (which already provides an advertiser way more info about their audience then a printed ad in a magazine would, so yes that is more than sufficient for advertisers who honestly want to advertise instead of spying on people).

It's a miracle that over the existence of AdSense, nobody ever managed to XSS the entire Internet. Even if that can be attributed to the AdSense team awareness of their unique position of responsibility and engineering quality control or something; We still dodged a bullet with that one, because it just so happens that it was the Google that came into control of the largest XSS vector in history. But having quality control and a culture of responsibility didn't cause becoming the largest and gaining control (it just means they got to keep it, because it hasn't gone horribly wrong--for which we are lucky). A while back I read a comment on HN arguing (though I'm not sure if they realized) that whether something is a "good product" depends more on how well it is marketed (and therefore finds its way to people that can use it) than it depends on the quality of the product. That's horrible, but like too many horrible things, also true in some sense. So it just so happened that the ad-network that was marketed best and became one of the largest and most successful, also happened to be one that was of sufficient quality to not break the Internet.

It's funny how you never see the sites that whine about adblockers offer to accept legal responsibility for their complicity in the potential theft and property destruction served from their site. When you take away the option to protect myself, you accept responsibility for attacks. After all, if it's morally/legally wrong to alter the presentation of the content they serve, then they also morally/legally responsible for incidents when they serve it improperly and cause losses/damages. Quite obviously it's not financially viable for them to pay for their negligence, and so it's also not financially viable for me to trust that a site won't host some sort of attack vector.

The pennies of advertising revenue earned from my modest browsing over the course of a year doesn't pay nearly enough to compensate for the time I lose through dealing with malicious ads. Unless online advertising cleans itself up, adblockers will be the best option. And sites that don't respect that aren't sites I'm interested in.

I thought they were, while still annoying, safe from serving such content. So much that if they detect your site has malware they prevent it from serving their ads https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1308246?hl=e...

As such I went along with allowing google ads since it seemed like a good middle ground between not wanting to have everything pay-walled off and still allowing sites to generate ad money

Yes.

http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/y...

The claim is that a YouTube ad was serving malware.

However, upon reading the article, it seems that:

1. Somebody purchased legitimate YouTube ad space. 2. They then redirected that traffic twice through two other legitimate ad networks. 3. They then broke into a Polish government website, and funnelled the traffic there, to serve up malware.

That certainly doesn't seem to be a case of Google/YouTube serving up malware - if anything, these attacks went to a lot of trouble to obscure from YouTube what they were doing, precisely so they wouldn't get shut-down (presumably by either YouTube, or the two other ad networks they were piggy-backing on).

You could argue, they should have caught them earlier - but isn't that a bit like blaming your email provider that you got a spam/malware email - when the actual party to blame is the person sending you aforesaid spam/malware?

All that backend obscurantism is completely irrelevant to the hapless viewer.

Or if somebody posts a bomb in your postbox - you'd say "US Postal Service is building and sending bombs"?

There's a fairly clear distinction there...

Yes. Very much so.

Look for "VLC download" for instance, the first ads should be adware sites that distribute a fake version of the software and they paid to get that top search position.

There is even a giant banner (looks like it's not paid for) that says "VLC" and has the VLC logo and links to Videolan.

Google removes ads that contain/link to malware/viruses as soon as they are made aware of them. What more do you want?

Not doing it in the first place, of course! Because this has happened with VLC (a fact you seem to ignore), maybe they fixed it by now, or maybe it's temporary, or maybe you're just not in the "stupid people that would fall for this" filter bubble, but for quite a while Google Ads have been responsible for serving malware and damaging people's computers.

Also just because they try and fix it after the fact for VLC, doesn't mean it's not still happening for all sorts of other software. Google's approach for curation of ads is just not suitable to be able to provide a platform this large in a responsible manner (and I doubt it can ever be, but that doesn't give them a free ticket to behave irresponsibly).

Maybe you've forgotten what this thread was about in the first place, but if their policy is "we will remove ads that contain/link to malware as soon as they are (made) aware of them", then:

1) it's still a perfectly smart choice to use an adblocker because you can still get malware from ads (in addition to many of the other reasons such as opting out of clickbait timewasters, whose "innocence" evaporates as soon as you consider their scale), and a particularly important and smart choice to install it on people's computers that would actually fall for such a fake download link, which is not the HN crowd.

2) as a publisher, I would DEFINITELY want a much tighter guarantee on not serving/linking malware than "we'll remove it when we see it" because now it's not just my safety on the line (or my father trying to download VLC cause I told him over the phone, etc) but my entire audience!

I know I am careful personally, what to click and install, but I honestly wonder how long I myself could keep a fresh Windows install malware-free without running an adblocker. Some of those things are nasty clever and misleading (not thinking about Google Ads in particular, here). Ever consider the amount of good those people are doing? The ones writing the adblockers and keeping the blocklists up-to-date? They are not even getting paid to do it. It gives me such a bitter taste, every time I see a website whining about my adblocker usage. If you care so much, why are you using a third party ad network. If hosting and linking and curating your own advertisements is too much to ask, well then so is me whitelisting your site, sheesh.

They are however replaced with new ones as soon as they are deleted. It is a constant war and the only salvation is adblockers.

I don't think most people would consider Google's purposeful display ads, which site owners choose to put there and customers expect to see, 'Malware.' I think Adware/Advertising Malware refers to software that shows unexpected ads, such as after you leave the site, or installing software on your computer that randomly shows ads.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=jOsFlLPg1KkC&pg=PA10

"Google Ads" is injected third-party code that literally does all of these things (and goes through quite some trouble to obfuscate it) (even if us techies are aware).

And they pay people to serve it to you.

I would like to consider my Android phone to be a "private computer system", yet Google has full access to it and they will disrupt its operations whenever I try to prevent them from either 1) gathering sensitive information or 2) displaying unwanted advertising.

But it came with Android when I bought it, yes? And I chose to agree to this agreement or something, right? Well first, we know by now that this "choice" is mostly illusion. I put Cyanogenmod on it to better protect myself, but the disruption persists and it merely exposes how aggressive the malware in fact is as soon as you put up any form of resistance. The mob can also be real nice people if you don't stand in their way. Also, if you buy a new laptop, the crapware it comes bundled with, is that malware? What if it would disrupt and limit the operation of this laptop if you decide not to use it (yes you must actually use it and thus provide them with sensitive private tracking data, not merely refrain from trying to uninstall it).

Of course I don't really consider my phone to be a "private computer system", not any more, but that is exactly the sad state of affairs. I can't consider it private because I am aware of the above and my lack of real choice in the matter. But this way you can argue that any computer system that malware has gained access to, is no longer private. But that is basically just giving up.

It's a very natural human instinct to legitimize something just because it's the largest, most successful player. There's an internal urge to want to side with the winner. But not all human urges are rational or even okay to give in to, without seriously considering the implications.

... they probably even tell it to themselves to better sleep at night.

It's right there in the definition, literally.

I don't qualify any of the info that trackers get about me as "sensitive".

Almost every senior citizen I've ever had clean up malware for got it from a malicious search ad. And the tech support scams they continue to list take advantage of tons of people as well.

I've pointed out before that Google happily lists phone numbers of tech support scams on search terms for Windows tech support, but doesn't show ads at all if you look for Chromebook support, pointing you straight to their official contact.

As a note, if anyone would like to see examples of this in action, I can go get screenshots and example links and everything, it just takes a little while to put together, as I would prefer to offer evidence of what I see "today" rather than any past examples I might have.

That's quite a serious accusation :). One that is not substantiated by the facts:

https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-a...

It's like somebody saying "Tesla cars suck - they explode". And Elon Musk comes out and says, "No they don't, here's the testing/validation we did". And you say "Oh but...but....you work for Tesla. It must be lies!"

If there's factual inaccuracies - of course, that's a different story. But you seem to be simply saying, "They must be lying, because that suits my narrative, so I'm not going to bother trying to refute it".

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/78-very-quickly-to-the-drill...

But malicious content (even on the SERP) is common enough that one of the most effective steps that you can do to protect senior citizens from malware is to install a good ad blocker. The ironic thing is that the search algorithm does a decent job of filtering out malicious sites from appearing on the first page, but that does no good if there is a malicious ad right above the filtered results.

Even if Google is removing "x million bad ads", they are merely replacing bad ads with other bad ads. Removing bad ads doesn't significantly impact their revenue. I'd argue that while Google is willing to make gestures like removing some ads, they are unwilling to do what's necessary to protect users: Stop serving ads entirely where malicious ads are particularly prevalent, and clearly highlight the difference between ads and search results.

EDIT: Here's some captures I did this morning of Google results on incognito: https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/nTZcQOHrTgnM-90dAfmut0AX_c...

1) Don't open the site to begin with.

2) Open the site and instantly get redirected.

Note how none of the options entails actually reading the content provided by the site.

So if there is no valid way to consume the content, you could ask why it is there in the first place.

yep. This is an effective way to get newspapers whining about ad blockers to shut up as well.

"But then what's the point", we both said in unison.

* Everything is worse for users (tracking and malware)

* Everything is worse for advertisers (ineffective ads)

* Everything is worse for publishers (pays way too little)

* But adtech gets paid well

Then you see all those shitty ads for:

- finding a russian bride

- getting rich through some millionaires secret

- anti-aging remedies

- adware

and you realize that the ad-model only benefits Google and the peddlers pushing the dodgy adverts. Everyone else is losing.

People keep saying that "journalism is dying", but this industry and its ad-model isn't very "old" in historical terms. For every Business Insider that dies, the world will carry on. For quality journalism (an oxymoron of sorts) and news that matters to people and their circumstances, I assume people will keep forking out money (like they do for The Economist).

If someone smarter than myself can elaborate, how is Googles business-model for ads on 3rd-party websites sustainable for the long-term?

Some percentage of users will use ad blockers, and businesses should account for that. If it is not sustainable, new business models will be invented. One thing I've been hoping for is inventing some form of advertising that was actually fun for the user -- fun enough that they would not want to block them.

Or invent a system by which 10% of the ad revenue gets cut out to the end user. That will incentivize people to unblock ads.

My eyeballs are not being loaned to you; my senses/attention is not for sale.

I'm perfectly fine with paywalls - that's the 'correct' approach as far as I'm concerned. You can decide to conceal the information you know; if it's valuable and nonexcludable (usually isn't), then hey, you have a sale. But if you don't, don't expect your deals with third parties to hold up on some promise you made to them about how I browse.

That right there is the problem, though. You are right that most information is "non excludable" (if that actually is a word).

But that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. That's an illusion, conceptually very much like clean water: almost free, but vital.

The stuff the wire services collect and sell (and that everybody republishes) does cost quite a lot to produce, and it's the backbone of the news ecosystem. It's subjective value is further diminished by its anodyne voice, making it difficult to picture the actual people reporting it.

Maybe the publishers do actually have a case for a new class of intellectual property protection. I'm horrified of the prospect, but within the current market dynamics, I don't see much of a future for quality journalism. Public opinion is critical of every and all publications, indiscriminately, and quick to use that as an argument for not subscribing. Wall Street may still pay for Bloomberg and the like, but Main Street doesn't see why. Maybe the NYT spent two or three million on some investigation. Once published, the information is delayed by little else than the time it takes the guy at BillingsMorningNews.com to switch a few sentences around.

With regards to ad blockers, you are right in that there is nothing in the law that should stop anyone from using them. But that's not really the argument. Nor is anybody disagreeing that ad tech needs drastic changes.

But fundamentally, the question is if blocking ads isn't hurting your own interests. Sure, there are many sources for the same information, usually. But the one you're reading probably has some small advantage, which is why you are using it. Once that publication folds, you have already lost something. And I'm not optimistic that the process will stop before it has drastic consequences on diversity and availability.

It also sometimes needs reminding that for an individual, news often seems like a guilty pleasure. But for a society, news is vital. Without it, you can't even keep up the appearances of democracy.

It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, obviously: blocking ads is vastly advantageous for the individual, just as fishing with the really big net is for the fisherman. But, thinking a bit broader, the question becomes: What's better – reading the news with annoying ads, or not reading the news?

The population pays for it by buying more or paying more of some products -- in a time and manner that provides evidence to networks, content vendors, and advertisers of business justification.

If we drill down further into the population, I think we'll find that some population of people either view or don't view ads, but don't adequately change their purchasing behavior in a time and manner so as to provide signal.

In other words, some people are takers, and some people are contributors. The people who are takers -- that is, whether or not they look at ads, click through, or whatever, they don't sufficiently change their their market behavior in a time and manner that provides evidence for business justification -- possibly detract from all mentioned parties because they diminish the business justification of the whole affair.

In tension against the takers, the people who are contributors are paying more than what they need to for the service because they're subsidizing "news" for other people.

Note that I don't really consider revenue in situations where eventually advertising clients figure out that they lack the business justification to pursue some advertising venue, such as intermediate marketing metrics that payout to businesses, but then the lack of justification for an advertising decision is later discovered. People who are marked by intermediate marketing metrics but don't go on to yada yada market behavior, are still "takers" in my view.

With that said, I think the money is there, people are already paying for news, but maybe the people who are paying should have more say than those who don't pay. Otherwise, it's the advertisers who have say, and the advertisers sponsor some pathological news outlets.

So in my view, people who argue for advertising are arguing that only advertisers can do the financing of the news world, and that contributors should continue to float takers.

It kind of seems like an arbitrage situation. But if I understand correctly, those are only good as long as they naturally "deflate" and sort restore balance back. Instead, there is some information-hiding going on that artificially props up this situation at cost for everyone but the third-party ad industry and middlemen. I think that situation is not very good.

I'm not even sure how to effect the latter without making the current fish bowl infinitly more invasive.

Even your choice of words is revelatory of a profoundly scewed perspective full of imaginary obligations. Of course those whose livelihood depends on a particular arrangement often seem to feel that the current state of affairs is necessary to the world at large as if the current good effects are both essential and couldn't be achieved any other way.

Actual news are, in essence, gossip. They destroy people's ability to think and reason.

News agencies are the worst. They define the agenda, what is important and what isn't. They pollute the "news ecosystem" right at the source.

Adblock is one way to fight back. Not the only way but a good way.

For this reason I only subscribe to weekly or even monthly newspapers. It means those journalists are not racing to be the first ones to relay any information completely raw. Instead they can take a bit of distance, take time to analyze the situation and think of its possible consequences.

I don't know what to do when I'm told that there's been a terrorist attack in a country thousands of kilometers from me. Then we get a stream of picture, and a death count updated every femtosecond. It's sad, sure, but then what? Learning about the causes and consequences of this attack and how they fit in the history and geopolitics of our societies, now that's a lot more interesting and maybe even actionable.

The problem is news agencies is the only way to get information. Spicer doesn't invite "regular dude Joe." We in an information desert.

Yes, news as we generally know it contains a lot of fluff, is almost certainly biased - whether politically or racially - and misleads through omission and incredible sources, we can go on. But, who will then do the reporting if these big news sources do not? Imagine a world without CNN or NYT or whatever. All of these sources are blamed by one political party or another to be biased and left/right/radical/whatever leaning. If we got rid of them and relied only on the smaller news entities and blogs and such, who will do the reporting on wars in Syria and Ukraine? Or who will report on whistle blowers and interview them? Why would someone of Edward Snowden's level of infamy be interviewed by a no-name news paper? Actually, on the topic of infamy, would it have even been possible for Edward Snowden to stay alive so far if general opinion was not so divided? If no one knew about him, what would save him? I would credit those same big news entities with spreading his story around and making him known. I believe that credible news sources are required for a healthy democracy, and that news organizations need to make money. Last thing we need is a government-run news entity (how can we trust one to keep us informed about grievances our governments may commit. Lets not kid ourselves and declare that the government is perfect or has the citizens' best interests at heart).

Let's also not kid ourselves about the notion of the current, big, established news organizations being independent of the same conflicting interests that ensare various parts of the federal government. No, the government doesn't control the media. Rather, big corporations and rich moguls control the government, AND the media, to the same ends.

False dichotomy.

Firstly, ads don't have to be annoying. Secondly, news doesn't have to be financed by ads.

There are lots of smaller and independent news sources that don't rely on ads for funding. The news organisation linked to in the article is a case in point. They make their money from donations. Another one is insurge intelligence (https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence) which uses crowdfunding.

Then there is also citizen media and blogs.

That data will soon enough be used to determine things like interest rates and hiring (already is in China).

I can deal with stupid ads and have done for decades reading print journalism. Unless they're animated, modal or otherwise unnaturally annoying.

Can you elaborate on that, or provide a source? I'm quite curious (and somewhat not surprised).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-surveilla...

No. They gambled that they could make money giving their content away for free with ads on it. They were never guaranteed an income that way, and to legislate one for them is a terrible way to proceed. We have a name for those people in Australia: rent-seekers.

The other half is, that the third-party ad networks themselves are in fact already feeding a tragedy-of-the-commons situation. Somewhere in the whole maelstrom of shitty clickbait websites funded by ads for other shitty clickbait websites. I read an article recently linked here about those weird vague thumbnail image clickbait links (the ones about celebrities, diets and skin diseases, mostly) that appear below low quality articles. They followed the links, and it just led to more and more of the same, but it did so while spiraling downward into a lowest common denominator like way, way lower than I'd have imagined.

There's some really out-of-control complex systems (in the systems theory sense of the word) in the guts of the advertising industry and they are already causing tragedy-of-the-commons situations way before, and regardless of, people using ad blockers.

Disabling the ad blocker is not going to help fix those (they'll just gobble up the extra profit). And even then, to (personally) answer your question, yes I think using ad blockers is a net benefit if it keeps those systems at least somewhat in check.

It's not like they have prosthetics for blocked ads and lost revenue.

That's the best for everyone involved.

Or you need to fund journalism with tax money, directly (NPR, PBS) or indirectly (BBC, ARD, ZDF, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper

Be it paper or as e-paper on your tablet.

But in either case, subscription costs are a lot more reasonable than subscribing to the website, and you get high quality content with only very few, handpicked, ads. Which also can't track you on paper or in the PDF

Journalism's oldest and most important role is to serve as a watchdog over government. When they start profiting from government, they'll be less likely to be critical of it.

Journalism should be supported by the free market. If people want it, they pay. If nobody wants to pay, then you either adapt or die. The really good media outlets are doing just fine (i.e. The Economist, NY Times,) those on the margins are at risk -- but that's their own fault.

State supported media has the potential to turn into Pravda (for the political party from whom they garner the most support, usually leftists,) and it generally does, albeit with much more subtlety.

Do you think the BBC is biased? ARD, ZDF? They are not.

Because they don't get paid by the government, but they have the right to collect their own taxes instead. That way they are independent, and still always funded.

How is this different than your "masters" being mega-corporations?

At least in a publicly funded organization there would be transparent checks and balances in place.

this is evidenced by Trump's foolish missile strike being so thoroughly adored in mainstream press.

Which means now we need to have some kind of legal, international safeguard to protect against content thieves, who copy paywalled content and publish it themselves. Everyone loses in that scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#International_copyri...

Whether this means that everyone loses ... I'm not directly disagreeing with that either (I don't like copyright/intellectual property rights in their current form at all), but let's get the facts straight first :)

It's the same situation with smartphone apps about now. Yes, it's an absolute mire of low quality, exploitative crap at the moment, but when developers try and avoid this by just charging full price (like Nintendo with Super Mario Run), they find their apps are significantly less popular/profitable than if they'd be 'freemium' all along and end up getting a virtual tongue lashing from audiences who expect 'mobile app' to equal 'free with ads/microtransactions'.

Unless everyone charges money for content (which is likely happening because of business reasons) or some service genuinely manage to repair the media's reputation enough people will pay for it and also offers a better, more usable product than everyone else, things aren't changing.

One way to get the charge-for-content back might be to demonstrate how much privacy people are losing and to make some noise about it.

Instead you want an immense pool of content generation for that 27c per day. Good journalism isn't cheap - that's why paper newspapers cost what they do and are full of adverts - but you want to pay rock-bottom prices to individual sources whilst still pretending that you're paying a 'reasonable amount'.

There are movies that cost hundreds of millions to make which make up just one more item in the Netflix catalogue, and Hollywood is far from hurting. It may cost enormous amounts to produce good news, but this is true of the business model I am pointing out as well.

Interesting, the ones who tried to charge seem to be dying.

Isn't Spotify and Netflix evidence that suggest otherwise. All the music on Spotify is available for free on the so called dodgy sites. Torrents and whatnot. Heck, you can even listen to it for free on FM radio! However, literally millions of people choose to pay for Spotify - because it's worth it.

The news is no different. If news content providers provide a useful service, millions of people WILL pay.

My analysis is that millions of people avoid paying because news content providers don't sell news, they sell people. They sell their readers as fodder to the ad men. When that business model changes, people will pay for news.

I have experience of this world, having worked with old-school book publishers and old-media print journalists. They are way too entrenched in their understanding of publishing/journalism to make the change. The closest I've seen anyone get to something that might work, and they're still a long, long way off, is the Guardian. At least they understand that a) they need to provide additional content, suited to the medium (e.g. quality infographics, interactive data, etc.) and b) online advertising is not enough, but current paywall implementations are a poor substitute.

Spotify is a great example to compare. If Spotify worked the same way as online news, you'd go to Spotify, browse through some skeuomorphic representation of a CD rack, get interrupted, find an album you like the look of, listen to the album with an obnoxious advert between each song, put it back in the rack, repeat. Is there a single newspaper that will allow me to even, for example, do something useful with their content by collecting it / tagging it / whatever for future reference? Will they let my contacts, or famous people, recommend content on a particular subject? Will they offer any kind of api for other publishers wishing to reference their material?

Then LinkedIn bought it and promptly ruined, then shuttered it. Still waiting for someone to release a new newsreader app with the same scrolling format. I would have absolutely paid to keep and improve that app.

I'm pretty sure that should cover their server bills.

This seems to be kind of just how technology industries work (at least right now): you don't have a broadly strong market for "social news feed", you have Facebook.

But sure, when you reduce distribution cost to zero, you remove a lot of local advantage. And this isn't new. Improvements in music distribution, starting with the wax cylinder, have been slowly killing the local market for musicians. Why wait until the evening go a few blocks and pay to hear a so-so local band when you can play an amazing one in your house right now?

I don't really disagree with you, my point was just that the fact that paywalls can work for an extremely small set of publishers does not resolve the tension in comments #1 and #2.

That fine-sounding in theory, but it seems to ignore the fact that your attention has been for sale for as long as billboards, or, heck, carnival barkers have been around.

It's great that we can use technology to un-render ads that have been delivered to us via the internet, so I fully support ad blockers, but let's not pretend that we have some innate, natural Right to never hear a sales-pitch.

You went there on your own free will and can leave when you want. No one is "forcing" anything on your screen.

(not saying I agree with this notion necessarily - just that your physical "property" analogy isn't very good).

That said, I do maintain that a site owner has the right to try to extract revenue from their enterprise and to a degree as visitors we have a right to not put up with overwhelming advertising. It's one of those things where we both have rights and we need to find an agreeable medium --not that everyone will agree but at least "the average person" will agree.

Maybe small enthusiast site will always be free and depend on the goodwill of the site maintainer (as in the "good old days" before ads) And maybe we'll have services which bundle premium content ala cable. And maybe there will be a micropayments aspect too. In the end, content does not come for free --someone or many people have to put work into bringing that content to light/publish.

People seem to think they exist in a vacuum. But now everyone is using ad blockers, and the dynamics have devolved to resemble the Greek tax system: "I'm not paying those taxes, they are too high" -> "We're not getting enough revenue, need to lower costs" -> "Why should I pay for the shitty service the government provides?" -> "We need to raise taxes, or close the schools" ->...

Stuff that would help:

– Publishers need to get their act together and offer netflix/spotify-style access

– Adtech needs a quality revolution

– Ad blockers need to evolve to do "smart blocking", where the tuple of (user/publisher/article/ad network/ad client/network condition) determines if an ad should be blocked, with a build-in mechanism to reward both quality content (by being more forgiving in the other dimensions) and quality ads (in terms of technology/security/interest to the user/intrusiveness)

– Users need to welcome such experiments with a modicum of goodwill and good faith, and a renewed willingness to differentiate. Right now, journalists cry themselves to sleep because even if you're just doing the crosswords at a French magazine, someone will try to stab you with your own pencil, yelling something about "Iraq" and "WMDs".

Sure, but it has needed one for circa 20 years. And quality has continuously declined over that time. To me, that indicates that generally the next increment of profit gain is not in making things slightly better, but slightly worse.

It seems like a classic tragedy of the commons to me. But good management of a commons requires people perceiving and acting on a common interest with a long-term focus. That's an attitude so far removed from what I see of the culture of advertising and adtech that I expect we'll need a major disaster to change that.

> Users need to welcome such experiments with a modicum of goodwill and good faith

That sounds like a reach to me. In a financial sense, and I think perhaps also in the casual sense, goodwill is what you get when you've spent a long time working hard to make sure your customers like you. For the whole of the consumer internet, advertisers and adtech have been pushing the line of what people will put up with. With the possible exception of search advertising, I think internet ads have earned enormous negative goodwill.

If publishers and advertisers want new experiments to be evaluated separate from the last 20 years of history, I think they're going to have either a) spend a long time undoing the damage, or b) find some way to declare brand bankruptcy for the whole notion of advertising.

And even if they try, I'm not sure how well it will work. The point of the sort of ads that publishers run is to distract you from what you're trying to read and manipulate you into buying whatever the advertiser wants you to buy, without regard to the actual utility or quality of the thing purchased. No matter how much you experiment, there will be a moral conflict at the root of advertising. New tech won't fix that.

Ads need to be curated by content providers.

microsoft tried that with bing rewards. i suspect it's not working well because i only heard of it in the context of botting it to get free money. the advertiser wants to spend as little money to gain as many sales, whereas the viewer (and blackhats) want to get as much money as possible. the two parties' objectives do not line up.

I was on that program, paying $10 a month. They refunded anything that was left over. IIRC think they habitually refunded $5+. They also showed stats, and IIRC the websites I frequented the most frequently (Ars Technica, multiple times a day), still received only pennies. That's how cheap ads are.

I started being a subscriber to some of those websites after.

Despite teasing a Contributor replacement "early 2017", nothing has been announced yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

And what I don't understand is when I decide I want to subscribe to a newspaper, it's hundreds of dollars a year. They take pennies to serve me spam and malware, but if I want to pay them, it's 1000x the price.

And don't get me started on how the Washington Post gives a $70 annual discount on a digital subscription if you agree to receive a print copy of the Sunday edition. It sounds incredibly stupid and backward until you remember, advertising.

"If you just ask for the fucking right price, people will pay and great original content can arise"

Currently, online journalism is anchored against the price of free. So if I want to sit down with my coffee and read an article from the New York Times, another from Washington Post, and a counter-point from the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, and follow that up with a long-form piece from the New Yorker, I can either pay $500/yr, or remember to right click each article and open in incognito mode.

They just haven't figured out yet that on the web no-one is ready to pay 15$ for access to a single news source given that no-one is able to actually read all available content produced in one day.

New potential news customers born in the 1990 are like bees that fly from sites to sites.

Loyals customers that relly on one newspaper and are paying high fee are elderly people and they will stop paying when they unfortunately dies.

It all about not getting the demographic of you potential customer base...

But, for the individual publisher, this would mean the end of their current subscriber base and 70%+ of revenue. I'm pretty sure the NYT has a spreadsheet somewhere, and currently it's still saying that they are likely to lose out in such a model.

If they get, say, 10% of my $30, that's $3 x 12 = $36, which is about 1/10 of their current price. Could they increase their subscriber base by an order of magnitude with such a model? I'd say it's possible, but it's just too big a risk right now. And the numbers may be less favourably for smaller outfits.

It's definitely coming back, though. Just not in quite the same form.

No, the problem is it didn't work with adblockers. I really want to pay for the content I read, I just am not willing to risk being outbid on the chance to view a page without spam by someone trying to deliver malware.

My current solution is to buy pre-paid visa cards to pay for online news subscriptions, which is a huge pain, but necessary after finding out that newspapers will continue to charge even expired or cancelled credit cards. Even after I explicitly cancelled a credit card to try to stop recurring billing, the credit card company will helpfully keep accepting those charges.

I'm desperately looking for a solution to support journalism that simply lets me pay to read articles for exactly what advertisers would pay to bombard me with crap.

Google Contributor was SO close to being a solution. All it had to do was work with ad blockers.

That's a big issue. Another is that I want sites without any ads to be able to get a share of the money too.

But it's also that the bidding model is a poor way to allocate the money. I don't want the word "insurance" to randomly trigger a $50 ad slot. It's okay if there's some influence from ad slot prices onto how the money gets allocated, but the main influence should be how much I use each site.

Using the normal bidding process was a clever shortcut to get Contributor working as a 20% project, with minimal manpower. Seriously, it was just two guys at first.

It's not currently just two guys. I'll let you read that how you will.

https://blendle.com/signup/kiosk

They also have a 9.99 per month subscription, where you get 20 articles daily (I think they are selected through a recommendation system + curation).

1. I haven't resorted to pre-paid Vias cards, but it's a good idea.

2. There has been so many times when I'm thinking about signing up for a website, or service, but the fear of them being "cute", like not charging the correct amount, recurrent billing, making it difficult to quit, and lousy security prevents me from giving money to anyone, except the current monopolies., and only for stuff I really need. As to really need--I don't need that much in all reality.

3. I get those Wall Street Journal offers for $1 for so many weeks. I don't care if it was .01 cents; I don't want to have another thing in the back of my mind to worry about.

It's not about the money, it's about Trust. If I feel this way about WSJ, how are the littler sites suspose to gain trust?

4. I don't have a solution as to how online companies can make money. I just know the minute you hire the MBA, or the "expert", and start underestimating your customers; you're screwed.

Every website should give the customer the option of an immediate purge of all credit card data on the servers, at the time of registration;

"We will sign you up today, charge you $10, and purge you from our database. We would not sell your information. We won't bother you ever again. You have my word--sincerely, the Founders."

You will need to re-register next month. Big deal? Most people will opt for the easy way(keep all info on the customer on the servers), but their will be people like me, that don't want you to have that information on file.

I was just about to sign up for Republic Wireless. It might me the cheapest cell phone service out there. Then I noticed their "new, and improved" billing. It's not new and improved, it's just more money per month. I didn't bite. One lost customer, at least for now.

It's about trust, at this point, for me. I don't think getting certain people to pay is an insurmountable problem, but work on trust, and make the content something they need to pay for? In my youth, I needed quality porn, and that was my last subscription. Pathetic, I know, but even then I made sure they didn't get cute with my Credit Card.

What will be the next website I really need? Yea, it's a problem, but trust should be taken for granted.

The most extreme can give you a unique card number with an expiry date of your choosing, whenever you need one. That does wonder against shady practices.

(You is to be read as Google, not you personally)

You didn't even give me a chance! I was actively looking and you denied me, I think because I was European and didn't want to lie or something.

And seriously: I only knew of it through HN. Was there ever any campaigns to inform about it? I can't remember seeing a single ad. Never heard about a single talkshow appearance from any of your bosses.

As it was, I was the only one of the dozens of other techs/devs I know who heard about it. Most were interested once I told them! There must have been zero advertising.

Not nearly enough ads were replaced by Contributor. Worse, it was the more innocuous ones that were replaced, while the most obnoxious blared on through.

On top of that, it showed me the absolutely paltry amount paid out to the sites running the ads.

So back came adblock, and Contributor mostly just helped on my mobile browsing. I bought Contributor to contribute to the sites, and some for Google, not majority Google, dribble for sites.

That was a serious problem, I agree, and not one we could do anything about at the time. The problem was, those more-obnoxious ads were mainly not served by Google in the first place.

(There may have been a period when Contributor only worked on a subset of Google's ad products, mostly for technical reasons.)

cough

rich people don't pay, poor people pay for them.

That's the base of the free internet model.

With the Tier1 ISP billing at 95th percentile, and ISP almost illimited subscription and the close to flat rate, the contribution of small internet users in volume is the biggest in proportion of revenues.

And with people like google not paying for their transit, it means someone has to pay. Who?

Every internet users.

Internet & phone are in all developed country a must have for administrative & job related tasks. In every country it is when you are poor a substantial cost, as well as computers.

For those who are growingly poor internet is expansive.

But for the happy few with latest generation computers internet is comparatively cheap.

Being rich is the art of making the poor pay for you.

It is not people don't want to pay, the poor cannot pay, and they are the biggest population.

Me I have an adblock not because I don't want advertisement, it is because my 2007 computers cannot load a modern web page under 15 seconds with ads enabled.

The modern economy is based on the redistribution of the money of the poorest to the richest achieve by (lack) of regulations where the strongest wins.

So, my point is there is no free champagne, someone has to pay, but I don't see why it should be the one not being able to buy a bier.

And call a cat a cat: commercial internet has not yet found a fair sustainable model.

Funny, F2P gaming is all about the opposite. The whales pay for everyone.

Something like lotteries being a tax on people who don't get math.

We of course botted immediately. I am shocked they went out of business.

All large websites switch to canvas rendering (like Netflix already does). This provides scrape, adblocker, content filter, ... protection.

And of course it makes the internet completely unusable by anyone either blind or ...

You might even create a startup that makes a javascript web browser, that allows all these companies to get consistent rendering across all web browsers, prevent ad blockers from working, while enabling them to use all their current infrastructure as-is. This would work better because it would still enable ad-network providers to send their javascript to the end-user, so they can keep doing their little custom checks to verify if they're being scammed or not.

Until there's a replacement model for that lack-of-trust, ad blocking will probably be easy regardless of display technique.

You should take a look at the sponsored lenses on Snapchat. Nowhere else on the internet are ads so engaging and enjoyable. This is also why I think Snapchat had a chance to really take on Facebook, until FB sucked up and started copying everything from Snapchat.

So when I see people claiming that adblockers are immoral, it always gives me a good chuckle. Is ripping the ads out of a magazine immoral too? Is the mute button on my remote a ethnical crime against poor hapless television companies?

Which reminds me, TV/cable/et al. related services already cost money, yet they still serve advertisements. Isn't this a form of double-dipping? Shouldn't they be paying (or giving a discount) to watch advertisements?

sheezus. didn't that take a shitload of time and effort? i can't believe how many ads magazines have. they're all over everything.

Not really, back when I received the paper copy of the Economist it took me about a minute after receiving it on a Saturday morning to flip through and rip-out the double-sided ad pages. Also gave me an idea of the main stories in the issue.

Put a 30cm ruler on the page near the binding, grab top, pull. Well worth it for making the magazine thinner, easier to fold into my back pocket, and more readable on the bus. Just turn the page and continue reading, no interruptions.

One time there I remove so many pages ( 20? a lot anyway ) that I actually spent money on postage and sent them back to the Editor with the suggestion that he spend his time reading them for me and provide a summary.

If you create great costs (like ripping 30 pages from a magazine) for a small gain is this a particularly well intended economic strategy?

Brendan Eich is trying to do exactly this with the Brave browser [0]. Although it is a ways away, he wants to cut out the adware middlemen and give users a portion of the revenue for ads which they view, perhaps with some sort of opt-in "watch this video and earn $x" model in which the video content is tailored to you through (local, private) browsing history analysis.

If you are interested, Software Engineering Daily recently did an interview with him about the topic:

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/03/31/webassembly-...

[0] https://www.brave.com

Unfortunately it seems they've taken an other route. If users try to actively disable ads, just hide the ads amongst the actual content of your website.

I will admit to have been tricked by that a couple of time already (that I know of, at least). You're on some kind of news website, you see a genuine looking link towards a potentially interesting article. You follow it, read a few paragraphs and then starts to notice that the tone appears completely off and way too enthusiastic about the device or service they're talking about.

Then you start looking around and you eventually find a small "sponsored content" disclaimer somewhere on the page. I've seen those types of ads on physical newspapers as well, mainly those given for free in the subway. Often the only thing that sets them apart from actual content is a think border around the page or something like that. That's super shady and a bit worrying honestly.

> If it is not sustainable, new business models will be invented.

If the ad blocking becomes so widespread that the ad-supported model becomes unsustainable, I think a lot of people will be unhappy with what happens next. There will be a lot more paywalls and a lot more native advertising, which will be fine for entrenched players but much harder for very small publishers to pull off.

The cool thing about AdWords was you could write a little blog and actually make a few dollars running ads on it just by adding a snippet of code. Maybe micropayments can take care of that some day?

...is that a competing business down the road from mine has decided to spend $20/click for my business name, so now I have to spend much more than that in order for customers who already want to make an appointment with me to be able to call my phone number consistently. Google are complete gangster at this point... "nice business you have there."

How is that not intentionally causing marketplace confusion?

Also, if you roll over and pay Google, you are damaging your ability to defend your own business name as a trademark. Trademarks are lost if you don't defend them. Talk to a real lawyer, ASAP.

We've considered seeking legal counsel. Part of the problem is that the two primary words of the business name are a generic service offered by this type of business (40 years ago SEO was not a big consideration). Also very few of our customers take the care to quote the two-word phrase, so their queries could plausibly be sent to the competitor which offers that service as well. This competitor has itself recently added the name of yet another lucrative related service to its name, presumably as an SEO measure.

That said, I'd be very eager to see any more advice you might have, or any links to resources you think might be helpful to us.

In that case, businesses exist that can help your business search for and monitor more defensible trademarks. If you are truly hurt by competitors buying AdWords, you really should thrust your hand into the fire and suffer the pain of rebranding now, because it's only going to get worse the longer you wait. Switching from "Snake Plumbing" to "Jessaustin Pipewranglers" would hurt temporarily as you trained your existing customer base to use the new name, but uncommon or newly coined words are so much more defensible.

Seriously, where's the Spotify of blogs?

It might be the best we can do, given that the price of information has plummeted, but I hope something better comes along.

Also, at the end of the day, I think a lot of people would prefer ads over paying for content directly. What percentage of Spotify users are on the free plan dispite it's disruptive ads?

Legally I have no idea. But ethically/morally, I'd argue you don't. By visiting the site, you're entering into an agreement to exchange your ad views for content and you're breaking that agreement.

Doesn't feel right to me.

No.

By replying to my browser, they're entering into an agreement to not waste my time, and give me lots of money. Oh, not that either? Hmm. Several sites detect that I'm using a malware blocker. I make no effort to obfuscate this. Some websites will ask me to turn it off, others will block me if I do not. That's fine - I've no obligation to them, they have no obligation to me. Neither of us entered into any kind of agreement.

Keep in mind - I'm even happy to unblock and click ads relevant to my interests and follow relevant affiliate links - to stuff I'm actually interested in. Webcomics in particular are my jam.

So I would likely not even bother with ad blockers if site owners were not routinely acting as a proxy for criminals in (attempting to) serve me malware, extortion-ware, pyramid schemes, and other scams - or peddling horrifically low quality untargeted advertizing that doesn't respect my time (think "same 30 second unskippable ad plays 5 times in a row" utter and other absolute garbage.)

> Legally I have no idea. But ethically/morally, I'd argue you don't

If you want to talk ethics and morals, just how ethical and moral is it to leave your computer open to joining a botnet - imposing so many externalities onto other parties not privy to your "agreement" in the form of DDoS attacks and proxying to obfuscate the origins of such criminals? I think these concerns far weightier than the ethical or moral concerns of depriving a website owner a few cents for selling my time, my attention, my browsing history, etc. (even if they've outsourced that messy work to an ad company who does so on their behalf.)

Their communications are probably encrypted and their ads are probably served on the same connection as everything else. Which means that either now or in the future you won't be able to modify your /etc/hosts to solve this problem either (assuming you have a rooted phone or tablet of course).

The only option you'll have will be to crack Facebook's client and modify its behavior, which will be copyright infringement.

So how long do you think it will take for either (1) everybody moving to native apps where ads can't be blocked or (2) courts starting to rule ad blocking in browsers as being copyright infringement. After all, isn't opening a website just like installing an app? I don't see a difference really.

Don't get me wrong, I now have ad-blockers installed everywhere I can.

But let's not kid ourselves, you didn't have an implicit right for that content to begin with, by blocking ads you won't reward the good actors (i.e. GroundUp, featured in this article) and the future isn't bright.

It wouldn't be. You have the right to do whatever you want with the bits on your computer, you just don't have the right to redistribute all of those bits.

Copyright is about distribution, not about modification (well, it is in part, such a modified work would be classed as a 'derived work' and that is why you can't redistribute it, just like you can't redistribute the original).

> courts starting to rule ad blocking in browsers as being copyright infringement.

That's utterly wrong. Copyright infringement is about distributing content, not about forced consumption of content that was freely given to you by the rights holders or their agents and associates (the ad networks).

And rights holders have plenty of options here:

  - sell ads directly rather than through networks
    (and serve them up from the same server)

  - charge for their content

  - deny you access if you use an adblocker

Of course you can't sell your soul in an EULA and there's always this gray area where users might not be held accountable for selling their souls with a single click on "I agree".

But you're saying that copyright law refers to distribution, but well, you can't have that binary distributed legally unless you agreed to that EULA. And if you haven't agreed to that EULA, then by using the app it's copyright infringement.

The other problem is that most users won't be able to crack their own binaries and distributing or even downloading cracked binaries from the Internet will be copyright infringement.

Even so, lets assume that an easy to use tutorial will be provided, such that somehow users aren't violating any laws. Well, this is why the industry is pushing for DRM, which ends up getting used not only for encrypting media, but also for protecting binaries. And in some parts of the world it is already illegal to crack DRM.

And if not, I see the industry winning this argument and pushing for legislation protecting them, because truthfully they can point to people that crack binaries in order to freeload and pirate stuff for free - even if such arguments will be morally and factually wrong, they'll win by those arguments with the right lobbying power being exerted. It has been happening for some time now.

> You have the right to do whatever you want with the bits on your computer

Sure, if you don't like how the Facebook app works, you can choose to not use it.

There's no way you can package this argument as to make it right.

> And if you haven't agreed to that EULA, then by using the app it's copyright infringement.

No, it really isn't.

Breach of the EULA does not automatically translate into breach of terms-of-use for the service and neither of those translate into copyright infringement.

They would have a case to terminate your right to use and maybe they'd sue you for damages if you cause any but copyright has nothing to do with it (in this case, there are edge cases where copyright might be invoked but this is not one of those).

> Sure, if you don't like how the Facebook app works, you can choose to not use it.

Yep.

> There's no way you can package this argument as to make it right.

Well, the company won't like it and may sue you but they will still have to convince a judge that you caused them damage. And suing a private individual for pennies in lost ad sales is just not going to happen.

I do judge publishers by the quality of ads they accept. You cannot advertise a borderline illegal MMF scam and be considered legit. So when I see such ads I assume the news is at best a twisting of the truth, at worst completely fake. Quality editors will take less revenue to ensure that their advertising is not a scam.

I mean, this GroundUp site decided to drop Google's ads in order to improve usability for users and because the gains aren't worth it.

But this change won't get noticed by users having ad-blockers installed.

And if they'll decide to push high-quality in-house ads in order to survive, all it takes is somebody submitting a new rule in uBlock's or AdBlock's repository and then that revenue will be lost, with no discrimination.

Again, because of the status quo I too have ad-blockers installed everywhere, phone included. But it's not a win-win situation and that bothers me.

Anybody is free to disable their blocker on any site. If you want a site to be funded by mean of ads and you are fine with the ads served to you, just disable your blocker on that site.

One of the many reasons I don't install every dick and jane's mobile app. In this context, I don't even have a Facebook account.

> Which means that either now or in the future you won't be able to modify your /etc/hosts to solve this problem either (assuming you have a rooted phone or tablet of course).

It's trivial to proxy your own HTTPS traffic even on unrooted phones for e.g. debugging or corporate MITM. Short of cert pinning - which is going to block some corporate users as well - it's not going to be a problem. Facebook would be able to detect I'm not consuming their ads, of course.

> So how long do you think it will take for either (1) everybody moving to native apps where ads can't be blocked

You'll want a working website if only for the search traffic. I also consume most of my content on desktops or laptops - native apps are barely a thing here (anymore.) Even for phones, Google has a powerful incentive not to let apps break the web (which would deprive Google of all that juicy search traffic) and are already penalizing e.g. "intrusive interstitals". And even for phones, I will go without sooner than I will go with people's terrible native apps.

> or (2) courts starting to rule ad blocking in browsers as being copyright infringement.

Has that stopped pirates? And reminding consumers that adtech can be regulated might not be the smartest move as well... that goes both ways after all.

It's also giving ad blockers powerful incentive to obfuscate their tracks. Right now, adtech has the option to detect and request you disable your ad blocker, or refuse to serve you content if you don't. They lose that option if ad blockers have to obfuscate their tracks as a matter of routine, just to continue operating.

> But let's not kid ourselves, you didn't have an implicit right for that content to begin with

Agreed.

> by blocking ads you won't reward the good actors (i.e. GroundUp, featured in this article) and the future isn't bright.

That doesn't follow. Several blockers have e.g. "acceptable ads" policies. Those that don't can still whitelist sites (either because they asked nicely, or because the website breaks without doing so), and you will likely not remain whitelisted unless you and your advertisers are good actors. If anything, ad blockers are about only rewarding good actors.

There's also native advertising, doing a bit for one's sponsors in a podcast or video stream, etc. which tends to be of infinitely better quality, impossible to embed malware into, actually vetted by the content producers, and which generally nobody bothers to even try blocking.

And for all GroundUp's good intentions, part of the reason they seem to be ditching google ads is because they were not being good actors by running said ads. Are you sure this is an example of a darkening future instead of a brightening one?

From the people, to the people! I don't even need movies and articles - well, I still keep a 1% interest in them, but that's all. I am sorry about them but they are so derivative and dishonest at times that I can't watch them any more.

How many times did you find more value in YC comments than the linked article?

C'mon, you know better. What agreement? If your answer contains the word "unspoken", I'll let you in on the real definition of that word in this context: "non-existent". I didn't sign anything, no notice was posted. The only agreement I have is that I ask for data, and should your server deem me worthy, it will send me some. That's what I signed up for low those many years ago. If you and advertisers would like to change the "agreement" after the fact, well, good luck with that upstream swim.

You don't like ads, I get it. You take without compensating because you want to. Don't just shrug and say, "no notice was posted." Own it. Say, "I felt like taking this so I took it."

That'd be perfectly fine. Many sites already do this - detect my adblocker in javascript and then deny me access to the content. This is also perfectly fine - I fully agree that circumventing this forcefully is immoral/unethical.

In essence - the seller (content provider) should have the option to not give me content if I have an ad-blocker. If this is possible, then I don't see anything immoral about me using an adblocker. Do you?

And in fact, it does seem to be possible - wired for example does this. And I certainly don't try to circumvent this.

Many sites manage to work around and still show me ads. I dearly wish there would be some way for me to indicate "I'd rather be denied access to the content than be shown ads." Unfortunately that doesn't technologically exist easily yet.

It's more like content-mills like adverts, so they give content for free, attach adverts and hope it sticks.

Don't just shrug and say "we have to do this". Own it. Say, "we sideloaded non-relevant content to you for profit through pipes you're paying for because we didn't want to bother building a different business model".

Did you ever get those "march of dimes" solicitations that include a dime? I know people who believe that there's an unspoken agreement of reciprocity - they sent you something of value (even though you did not ask for it) so you must give something back. But no such social contract, spoken or unspoken, exists.

Similarly, there is no such contract with respect to ads. Personally, I never watch TV live, even when the schedule is convenient, because I like to skip all the ads. Courts have held time shifting to be a right, so I can assure you I am in the right on this one, although there is zero practical difference between my fast-forward ad blocking (which is sometimes automated), and running uBlock Origin.

Adblockers didn't happen by magic, they are a reaction to advertising trampling all over the implicit social contract.

What exactly am I taking by not viewing ads? I view it the opposite, ads take away my attention and time and worst of all are generally using psychology to influence my behavior. If your site is using them to monetize, I'll be blunt, tough shit. I dislike the advertising model of shoveling malware javascript from dodgy ad companies and if blocking ads is the way to get that changed, so be it. Consider this societal protest over a business model I disagree with on its very premise. All the way back to Edward Bernays I think advertising has a rotten core by encouraging things like women to smoke, and passing off one of the most common elements off as some sort of rare thing amongst numerous other ethically questionable tactics.

But what theft has occurred when ads are blocked? What have I taken from the ad companies? From the publisher? What alternative has been given? If anything the only thing I have taken away is encouraging them to pursue better ways of monetization that doesn't treat my attention as some fungible thing for their own benefit. This company made $200 a month, donations alone could easily recoup that cost with 40 people doing $5 a month.

Also, if I go to a website and read content without viewing ads due to having an ad blocker. Well oops, but not like there is a giant banner over each hyperlink that says I can't click it without hurting someones feelings or bottom line. Block me if you want, but ironically you'd be cutting of your own nose to spite your face. I'm willing to pay for no ads, but no site is wanting to engage in what that truly means.

Point me to the ethical problem with ad blocking and maybe I'll buy your argument. But if your fundamental premise is that you need ads to publish, you're not going to convince me with $200/month arguments.

My computer is controlled by me, ads come through a programmable rendering engine, nobody owes ads the right to render unconditionally.

All that being said, the irony is I pay more out via patreon than I'm probably worth in ad revenue to all the websites I've ever visited. I do this because I hate the current model. I'm supporting the content producers that have realized this fact and are embracing it. What are you doing to change things for the better?

If running an ad blocker is stealing, then so is disabling JavaScript or using curl.