We hate shitty content creators (like Buzzfeed) who replicate content from other sources or even worse disguise ads with content (i.e. native advertising) . We also hate paying for the whole site just to read a couple of articles every now and then. How about a pay-by-article model with widespread adoption from the industry? I'd gladly go for it.
Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that.
> We hate shitty content creators (like Buzzfeed) who replicate content from other sources or even worse disguise ads with content (i.e. native advertising)
So why on earth are you going to those sites?
> We also hate paying for the whole site just to read a couple of articles every now and then. How about a pay-by-article model with widespread adoption from the industry?
I'm not. But 95% of web sites out there are replicating content one way or the other.
That's literally what this is.
No it's not. That's a different model and I have no objections against it. This is a model where Google decides to give money to sites, and that is any site that's running AdSense not just the ones with original content. My argument is about why some of us like to use ad blocking mechanisms.
No, it's the model where Google is giving money to the sites you visit, in proportion to the level you visit them. Since you claim not to visit the sites that are "shitty content creators", you're not going to be supporting them in any way. So what exactly is your real objection?
Contributor might not be the answer. But if nothing else, this is a great "put your money where your mouth is" experiment. Suddenly all the talk from adblock users about how they'd just love to micropay for content directly has been replaced with all manner of excuses.
My real objection is profiling. I've mentioned it in a half dozen comments in this thread. Why is it so hard to understand? And why on earth are you so aggressive?
And by the way, we're paying for content. It's called books, magazines, newspapers, kindle shorts, you name it. Half of the original content out there comes from established news agencies, and most of them don't even run AdSense.
And please, spare me with this false dilemma, we're either bombarded with ads or the web will cease to exist. I've been hearing that for more than a decade. Advertising evolves. Even if 80% of users adopted ad blocking technologies advertising would find a venue to reach users. It's doing that for decades.
In the messages in this subthread (the ones that are direct ancestors of my message) you mentioned more often how much you hate Buzzfeed-style sites than how much you hate tracking. You used having to pay for Buzzfeed as your main (only?) argument against Contributor. Maybe it's not your intended objection, but it is the one you were making.
If tracking is the actual hill to die on, I don't know how we'd possibly get to your stated optimal outcome of per-article micropayments. That is something that'll by necessity make it easier for you to be tracked. There will have to be a central micropayment platform (or a few ones), since the threshold for maintaining per-site wallets is going to be too high for users. You will also need to have a single persistent profile on that central site, rather than ephemeral profiles that can be wiped away just by clearing cookies or by browsing from an incognito window. You can't even block the HTTP requests that are passing your information about the article load to the central server, since that's exactly the request that's facilitating the micropayment you want to make.
So I don't know if it's a very consistent position.
(I did not make any claims about the web ceasing to exist, nor about the necessity of advertising. No idea why you're assigning those views to me.)
> it's the model where Google is giving money to the sites you visit, in proportion to the level you visit them
Is it, though? Perhaps a closer inspection of the payment model is in order. I found this:
> You’ll pay the market price for each ad space that shows a thank you message or pixel pattern. This price can vary a lot. The exact price is determined at the time of the Google ad auction.
Essentially, you are bidding against a website's advertisers and paying the going rate for that ad slot. Not all content is equally valuable to advertisers. Consider the high cost for cancer targeted advertising compared to targeting an audience for, say, some form of generic cola beverage. The page with the cancer advertisement will receive a higher portion of your Contribute budget than the page with the cola advertisement (if it's replaced at all.. Google may decide they get more money with the cancer-related ad than with your Contribute bid).
So, it doesn't seem to distribute your money in proportion to your level of visits. If you visit a single site more frequently than others, then sure, that site may get a larger number of bites at your budget, but if the value of that space is very low then the total sum you provide to this content creator could be less than what you give to the owner of the click-bait link you followed once and forgot about.
Well, I'm just one person, but: I pay for my email on Fastmail, I buy all the games (largely indie) I play through HumbleBundles or Steam, I donate to streamers on Twitch, I buy print copies & merch direct from comic artists I found online, and I buy music from bandcamp. I'm planning on supporting a number of artists on Patreon as well. I go meet those creators at cons and form a personal connection. Those are the content creators I want to keep alive.
I run an adblocker and I do put my money where my mouth is.
If there was any news or essay site that put out consistently high-quality content, I'd pay for that too. But as it is I'm happy for mass media and sites with vacuous pseudo-intellectual articles like Quartz, Medium and Nautilus to die out.
There are literally thousands of ways to trick users to visit a site, from clickbaiting to rickrolling. Suddenly these methods pay out some real money.
What do you think the possible consequences of this are? Will that be a net positive or a net negative for content quality on the web?
Bingo. Most people don't even realize they are being tracked via ads. And if they did, they wouldn't care. Look at how many know about the NSA yet don't really care, and ad tracking is small potatoes compared to that.
Sure dude, I didn't proclaim my self public speaker of the HN community. It's just a way of saying. Jesus, some people in here are ready to dig up the hatchet first chance they get. Chill man, love and peace.
I mean, I think I'm pretty chill? I didn't mean to offend you if that's what happened, I was just pointing out that the distinction may be important in the context of this conversation.
If someone is proposing a solution for or discussing a problem that affects the entire Internet, it's important to realize that there are several parties who think differently, and in fact only a very small minority feel the same way you or me or the majority of HN does about things.
Well imho the context of this conversation and probably of every other conversation in HN is between technology savvy people. I think this is pretty clear, or isn’t? We talk about ourselves, not about the average user, unless otherwise stated. So in this context, with “we” I speak for those of us who understand the risks of profiling and for that reason choose to block ads.
I'm not proposing a solution, hell I wouldn't even consider that I know better than Google what should be done. I'm just stating a problem. Profiling is annoying. And as a user I don't think it works that well. When I visit a site for science fiction I'd prefer watching relative ads, not an ad about a pair of shoes I searched a week ago.
We certainly are a minority but an influencing one.
Tracking is weird. One hand it's gross and I don't like it. I think because who knows who is looking at what you're looking at. On the other hand, as a consumer I actually find the ads more valuable, and I sometimes buy items advertised to me. And as a content creator, they generate much more revenue.
I think there's a line that's often crossed. If there's no (or light) personalization, the ad shown will be relevant to the content it's next to, and maybe not relevant to me. If there's too much personalization, the ad shown will be relevant to me (or my browsing history), but not really relevant to the content it's next to. I would be less creeped out by personalization if the ads fit on the page; so when I view a news article about the Pope's visit, probably don't show me retargeting ads for a service provider whose API docs I was looking at yesterday; but if it's a technology site, then go ahead. Also take a lesson from Target; just because you can figure out I'm pregnant, don't make it obvious you know, put some deliberately mistargeted things in there too, so it looks more random.
Google ads used to be valuable because they were based on the content of the site you were currently watching. Doubleclick (later bought by Google) and others already did the tracking thing and didn't get mileage out of it. Retargeting (i.e. following you around with ads for something that you may buy with a more than 3% chance because you actually searched for it) is the opposite of that, purely tracking-based and mostly annoying.
> Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that.
As a nerdy guy, I'd much rather see video game ads than tampon ads. I get the ideological argument against targeted advertising, but the practical arguments for it are pretty compelling, too.
You don't need to be tracked for this to happen though. If ad networks placed video game-related ads on video game-related websites and tampon-related ads on tampon-related websites, then users of both sites would get ad content relevant to their interests.
Consider contexts like news websites, though, with broadly-applicable audiences. Specialty or niche sites do just fine with site-derived advertising targets. Other things do much less well.
There's also the fact that targeted ads result in better CPMs for publishers (since they'll result in better returns-per-view for advertisers), which means that they don't have to deploy as many of them to meet revenue expectations.
But I'd go a step further than "BuzzFeed". Any of the "[something] via [somesite]" web sites are in the offending category. They literally make money from the content of others by (sometimes) rewording the original title and giving it a slightly more clickbait title so that their 'via' "articles" look more inviting. Often, this is a chain of evil. I do not want to support that chain, even if it is just for the one visit. I would like to support the original writer, but none of the reworders. Now, the sad part is, there is only a very small list of real content creators.
Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that.