> The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free.
I've never had free internet... which ISP do you use?
> It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of data and volume to win over quality and user experience.
The whole point of advertising is to trick people into buying shit they don't need.
> As much as I don't care for the ABP approach, it's something that can be used to actually make progress and that's what this is, progress.
This is a step backwards, not progress.
> It's finally some outside pressure on the industry to change from the segment of the advertising mechanism that matters most - the people themselves.
Bullshit. This is a way of lifting the pressure on the industry, and this initiative is mostly supported by players in the industry. Not the people.
DISCLOSURE: I WORK AT GOOGLE ON NOTHING AD RELATED BUT IT CERTAINLY PAYS MY SALARY.
>> The fact is that advertising pays for much of the internet content you consume for free.
> I've never had free internet... which ISP do you use?
How many payments from Comcast to New York Times happen per year? Hint, the number rhymes with buck mall.
>> It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of data and volume to win over quality and user experience.
> The whole point of advertising is to trick people into buying shit they don't need.
Or, it's to inform you about the stuff that's out there. It's all perspective. "Trick"? What phone do you own? I guarantee you heard about it through some form of advertisement. And before you say that it's only because you read a review about it - I 1000% guarantee you saw an ad somewhere that primed you to even read the article.
>> As much as I don't care for the ABP approach, it's something that can be used to actually make progress and that's what this is, progress.
> This is a step backwards, not progress.
Why?
>> It's finally some outside pressure on the industry to change from the segment of the advertising mechanism that matters most - the people themselves.
> Bullshit. This is a way of lifting the pressure on the industry, and this initiative is mostly supported by players in the industry. Not the people.
There's no one on the other side right now - ABP is at least bringing the people to the table.
If you don't like it, then turn on and pay for Google Contributor (see earlier disclosure about my employer) and then no ads AND the site you visits actually get paid.
ISP are providing access/transit, not content. Just because you have a car doesn't mean you can go to any store and carry out merchandise for free.
Advertising, and the greater marketing concept, is not that simple. It's about connecting customers looking for wants and needs with the companies that offer them. There is a certain amount of work in creating that desire (hence the wants and not just needs) but it's ultimately still the consumers choice.
Care to explain how this is backwards progress and lifts pressure on the industry? ABP is a company and extension that only makes it harder for the existing ad networks to continue.
If you want to go that route, then none of the advertising companies, or companies that make money from advertising are providing the content either. There are several steps before the content comes from some person's mind to your computer, the ISP is one of those steps.
> Care to explain how this is backwards progress and lifts pressure on the industry?
You want me to explain how an initiative to not block a subset of ads alleviates the pressure from blocking all ads?
Seems pretty trivial to me.
> This is a company and extension that only makes it harder for the existing ad networks to continue.
Nope. They did make it harder before, when they weren't taking money from advertising companies to not hide ads, and weren't launching initiatives such as the topic of this thread.
Those companies are contracted and put in place by the content producers and owners to monetize their content, in exchange for giving it to you for free. Some content producers dont do this and charge you directly instead.
There will not be an internet without ads. So that is not a logical or reasonable goal.
The very vast majority are fine with advertising but the current situation is out of hand - so yes, working on standards that everyone agrees on and moves forward with will create progress.
Just because it's done this way at the time, it doesn't mean it's right.
To be fair, the monetization of "free" content should be done different way: utility payment model is the way to go. YouTube Red got it right, they just haven't pushed it all the way - eliminate ALL ads. Apple Music and Spotify got it right too.
As a customer, I have fixed amount of hours to spent in a day to consume content, so content providers have to compete for this time to get compensated. If you pay flat fee at ISP level, then it can distributed to content owners minus platform service fee. This way you don't stuff people with gazillions of non-relevant ads and there's natural flow to get higher quality content to attract customers to your site.
Right for who though? The important thing is to have choice as a consumer, both ads and paid or ideally a spectrum between both extremes.
Advertising is the most egalitarian method because everyone regardless of money can access the same things. This is an important issue in a world full of great wealth and power disparity.
Also what you're asking for is basically a cable bundle for the internet. It's in the works by a few companies, we'll see if it goes anywhere.
First of all it's not like cable bundle - you pay flat fee to access EVERYTHING like utility (probably % of your ISP bill). Call it content tax, if you will (BBC in UK is funded this way). Internet is NOT free anyway. Then whatever you paid goes to authors in a share proportional to content value consumed (I don't want to go into weeds on how to evaluate fair price for the content, but it's possible).
It is right for content consumer: no annoying ads, no interruptions, no more punishment for using "free" content by being blasted with non-relevant junk.
It is right for the content creator: you rewarded for high quality content, not for ads shows (natural flow of interests) -> no need to beg visitors to disable adblockers (this is what some youtubers do). BTW, IMHO, this is also a very good and organic way to "embrace" piracy - just redirect torrents income share to copyright holders - nobody will ever fight torrents after that point.
Ad companies is unnecessary middle-man in this relationship. And this middle-man will be eventually eliminated for good. I understand that you represent one, but there's still market for ad companies in other areas - where ads are relevant to context (like when I'm searching to get a new car or fix my fridge). Ads should help users, not annoy them.
I don't agree that this is a step backwards, but I certainly do agree that this is not a step forward.
Progress will be defined by decreasing the amount of obnoxious advertising, until we see that there is no progress and this is all talk.
I do enjoy that both sides are trying to improve the situation, but I still feel like the ad industry has yet to acknowledge that they are the root cause of the problem.
We almost need an advertising "intervention"... If the creation and rapid adoption of adblocking software isn't the embodiment of that though, I don't know what is.
> Progress will be defined by decreasing the amount of obnoxious advertising
That's exactly the point. Advertising is necessary, but showing that we all agree to a better implementation of it will let us move forward rather than making things worse.
The people in the industry know the reason, but again it's about incentives and lack of oversight. Far easier to just look the other way and make a few dollars than try to go against the grain.
This may be true for locks and cryptography but a message board is not really a 'security system' nor does it fail completely and catastrophically if someone manages to figure out the details of the ranking algorithm or spam countermeasures.
I can't really think of any good forms of 'security through obscurity'. Is the elimination of buffer overflow vulns and sql injections a form of obscurity? Is SSL a form of obscurity?
SSL is based on obscure prime numbers. Another example is user passwords (obscure text). Sessions and API tokens, too. Credit card numbers, garage door openers, and SIM cards all rely on hidden information. Even door locks are a physical form of hidden keys.
But you're right, there are some forms of security that don't require obscurity. For voting systems though, I would categorize them as "cat and mouse" systems, which unfortunately fall into the obscurity category.
> There's no way around the need for moderator intervention on a site like HN—the clue is in the word 'moderator' itself: left to its own devices the system runs to extremes and it needs a negative feedback loop to dampen it.
Then maybe the system needs to be changed?
> None of this is new information, btw. I've posted about it plenty over the years and am always happy to answer questions.
Is there anything in particular that should make us trust the information you provide? You could be lying for all we know.
> What do you do with a conscript who never wanted to be there and possibly fundamentally isn't suited to military life anyway gives up? Threaten them with legal action?
In some countries, you will get punished - get assigned bathroom cleaning for a week, get assigned lots of manual labor, or your whole squad gets punished which means they will have reason to 'motivate' you themselves. You can also go to military jail and get dishonorable discharged.
Basically, there is the carrot motivation method, and then there is the stick method.
It's one of the big differences between the lisp and ml types of functional languages I would say. Other than the parentheses that is of course :)
I've never been comfortable doing big projects - multiple files, more than a few hundred lines of code - in a dynamically typed language. It's the same reason were seeing the big uptake of typescript. Statically typed languages give us so many superpowers when we need to do refactoring or any changes at all to an existing codebase. Just changing a function name in a dynamically typed language can be hell. Rearranging the parameter order is even worse, cause you have such trouble finding all of the function uses and where you need to update. With statically typed languages you get editor support for simple stuff like this and it becomes automatic and a push of a button almost.
That is patently ridiculous. The vast majority of firms that you give your dollars too have direct competitors. They may not prefer to have competitors, but neither do you when applying for jobs or bidding on a house, that is pretty basic human nature.
I've never had free internet... which ISP do you use?
> It's because of perverse incentives and a lack of regulation in the entire industry that force bad formats, fraudsters, malware, and the pursuit of data and volume to win over quality and user experience.
The whole point of advertising is to trick people into buying shit they don't need.
> As much as I don't care for the ABP approach, it's something that can be used to actually make progress and that's what this is, progress.
This is a step backwards, not progress.
> It's finally some outside pressure on the industry to change from the segment of the advertising mechanism that matters most - the people themselves.
Bullshit. This is a way of lifting the pressure on the industry, and this initiative is mostly supported by players in the industry. Not the people.