[HN Gopher] The Whole Web Pays for Google and Facebook to Be Free
___________________________________________________________________
The Whole Web Pays for Google and Facebook to Be Free
Author : chewz
Score : 217 points
Date : 2021-03-03 08:17 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| docdeek wrote:
| > The same applies to Twitter and Substack, where signing up to
| just four writers' output at $5 a month each is already more than
| the cost of a $17 New York Times subscription, which gives you a
| greater breadth of coverage.
|
| Imagine I really like hamburgers. I might choose to $5 each week
| on a burger and be happy with the quality of a burger made by
| people who only make burgers.
|
| The alternative is spending $4 a week so I could access a buffet
| with lower quality burgers (after all, it's not their speciality)
| but also hot dogs, sandwiches, poke bowls and sushi.
|
| Trying to convince me that the buffet is a better deal just
| because I have access to a wider range of foods when all I really
| want is a burger is not a winning argument for me.
| dgudkov wrote:
| Substack bundling is inevitable as subscription-based blogging
| matures. It's just a matter of time until we start seeing
| offers "Subscribe to top authors A, B, and C, for only $X/mo".
| rchaud wrote:
| Medium.com all over again.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| You can't survive on a burger a week and you will eat other
| food too between your $5 burgers. So maybe it's worth spending
| the $4 / week covering "most of the other food" you gotta eat
| anyway.
| docdeek wrote:
| It's not an exact analogy, that's for sure.
|
| Maybe I could save it by asking where am I likely to get a
| better quality burger: the place that charges me $5 a week
| just for burgers, or the one that charges me only $4 a week
| AND I get a whole lot of other stuff I don't like but could
| still consume
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Depends on the size of the burger I guess :D
| HPsquared wrote:
| Paying for news has become something of a "luxury" product.
|
| In these conditions, quality and satisfaction of a niche is
| more important than quantity (though quantity has a quality
| of its own)
| dotancohen wrote:
| It always has been.
|
| Source: I'm over the hill. now get off my lawn.
| jrumbut wrote:
| And, to strain the metaphor further, most of the $5 burger
| makers are just repackaging the $4 burgers since the $4
| burger makers are the ones who gather the ingredients.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's questionable whether a lot of substack writers give you
| more quality access than the entire newsroom at the NYT, WSJ,
| or similar newspapers, where a lot of substack writers still
| contribute.
|
| I think the high fees on substack, like on patreon have another
| reason. It creates a weird parasocial relationship between the
| creator and the reader that gives the reader the feeling that
| they have contributed to a cause, or has some personal
| relationship with the author they support, and so on.
|
| In that way it seems to me more similar to twitch streamers who
| often extract huge sums of money from their donors, when
| objectively the viewer gets more content out of a 10$ streaming
| subscription.
| vergessenmir wrote:
| It is also questionable whether the newsroom @ NYT, WSJ give
| much quality to begin with.
|
| That being said, there is value depending on what topics
| you're interested in. The value of NYT for me is the Arts &
| culture section. But I'd happily pay for Matt Stoller's
| content,Taibbi, Siskin or Gwern if he had one.
|
| There is risk that's been highlighted of creating bubbles but
| seeing how news media has reinvented itself over the last
| decade, I can't see how that can be avoided, except this
| bubble is self-curated and more specific, which one can argue
| is better.
|
| [Edit: clarification on last line]
| exolymph wrote:
| Gwern has a Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/gwern
|
| And a Substack for his newsletter:
| https://gwern.substack.com/ (AFAIK this is free though)
| ebiester wrote:
| They get _different_ content.
|
| Nowhere on that streaming content is someone explaining the
| intricacies of speedrunning The Legend Of Zelda (as a simple
| example.) It turns out there may only be a couple thousand
| people in the world really that interested in that content,
| and only a few hundred willing to pay for it. The economy of
| scale thee changes the calculus of how much you are willing
| to pay.
| gota wrote:
| Good example.
|
| > t turns out there may only be a couple thousand people in
| the world really that interested in that content,
|
| As evidenced by the success of SummoningSalt's youtube
| channel
| moron4hire wrote:
| One of the big things that strikes me about these journalists
| who leave their papers or start a side gig on Substack is the
| marked decrease in the quality of their writing. The role of
| the copy-editor is extremely important.
| ameister14 wrote:
| Which is why it's so frustrating that the NYT laid off most
| of theirs.
| rchaud wrote:
| They're also managing the business side of things directly,
| which can be very time consuming when you're getting
| started.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > It creates a weird parasocial relationship between the
| creator and the reader
|
| This is honestly a troubling trend in my opinion. These
| parasocial relationship are sort of emergent based on these
| new creator->fan direct channels that are popping up.
|
| I'm concerned that now these platforms are going to lean into
| this even more, encouraging this sort of thing instead of it
| just happening organically.
|
| These relationships are really not healthy for people. Not
| for the creator (even though they profit from it) and
| absolutely not for the fans who are likely missing out on
| forming real relationships with real people in favor of this
| parasocial thing that will ultimately not be fulfilling (and
| expensive) for them.
| rchaud wrote:
| I wouldn't worry too much about it. A mailing list is
| usually a means to an end. Most people writing on Substack
| are also writing a book manuscript behind the scenes,
| because that's a reliable way to monetize one's following.
|
| It's a different type of relationship if you're a
| 'personality' on Twitch or IG, and your audiovisual
| presence is what gets people to follow you. Books don't
| monetize nearly as well, and a lot of the people in this
| area don't really have anything to write about. So they
| pitch what they can: energy drinks, mattresses, Audible
| subscriptions.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| It also depends on the subject. For instance, there's an ex
| journalist in my country pulling in EUR20K/month on Patreon
| by making videos on corruption in the country. It resonates
| well with the audience which doesn't seem to be able to get
| similar content from the newspapers/TV channels. There are
| some random writings on Substack,but there are also those
| that aren't covered much in more popular media, which leaves
| a gap and some writers are happy to fill it.
| gregshap wrote:
| I would pay more for a subset of the current NYT. The website
| is full of imo prominently displayed clickbait that I
| consider negative value.
|
| I'm a previous subscriber of NYT and Bloomberg online. I've
| kept my WSJ subscription partly because its easier to consume
| only the useful content.
|
| I also subscribe to a couple of email lists where the author
| absolutely provides value in their niche over and above the
| larger newsrooms. They are usually great complements to each
| other and it tells you something that the journalists are
| also reading the newsletters.
| tekdude wrote:
| > _The website is full of imo prominently displayed
| clickbait that I consider negative value._
|
| When checking the New York Times, I prefer to look at the
| "Today's Paper" list of headlines, it's much easier to
| parse and less clickbaity:
| https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper
|
| Same for the Washington Post:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper/updates/
| daveguy wrote:
| I feel the same way. I stopped my NYT subscription because
| of "native ads"... Aka, paid advertising content posing as
| a news story by the outlet. I will not support deceitful ad
| placement. Subscriptions or ads. Pick one. No native ads.
| yerwhat01010 wrote:
| > Back in 2006, the New York Times charged readers an average
| of $534 for a subscription, while it brought in a further
| $1,064 per subscriber from ads.
|
| Wait, what? Is this the yearly figure? A subscription to the
| NYT cost >$500/year? Who the hell pays that much for a
| newspaper?
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Yes, those are yearly figures for an all-in subscription (no
| paywalls on their site, daily paper, weekend edition, access
| to all apps). And they are in range of what you'd expect. I
| just checked the current subscription price for the NYT.
| Where I live, it would set me back EUR 715 yearly. I compared
| that to one of the big newspapers in my country, a similar
| all-in would cost me EUR 480 (that's USD 580) yearly.
|
| You'd think that's expensive, until you start to dig into the
| economics of running a modern newspaper. The operational side
| is massive and complex. There's the newsfloor (NYT employed
| 1.300 staff writers in 2016), digital infrastructure to
| maintain and evolve and logistics for actually printing and
| distributing of paper, and so on and so on.
| s_dev wrote:
| I pay EUR2 a week for a digital NYT subscription.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > A subscription to the NYT cost >$500/year? Who the hell
| pays that much for a newspaper?
|
| Eh? That's less than $1.50 a day?
|
| That's how much it used to cost to get it delivered to your
| door daily.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Printing Paper and transporting it every day to you is
| costly. And back then, content was generally more expensive,
| because there was no elaborated online-crowd who delivered
| you half of your content for free. Today you have wikipedia,
| reddit, google, twitter, e-mail and many more which allow you
| to research many stuff from home. Back in the days you were
| forced to go around physically, talk to people face to face,
| visit libraries, maintain your own library. That was far more
| expensive than what you can do today.
|
| At the same time, because of the high quality free knowledge
| we have today, you can externalize knowledge and let people
| research it themself if they wanne know, and get away with
| lower quality of writing, meaning you can do it faster and
| need less people to pay. Meaning you can offer a lower price,
| because it's neccessary to compete in a world of massivly
| free information.
| m463 wrote:
| > Printing Paper and transporting it every day to you is
| costly.
|
| The whole "technology tree" for newspapers like the New
| York Times was actually really fascinating. Paper and Ink
| by the trainload and delivery trucks making their way
| across the nation in the wee hours of the night.
|
| do papers even have print editions anymore?
| fakedang wrote:
| Uh, yes? NYT, LA Times, WSJ are examples of some that
| have running print editions. Even more common in the old
| world.
| [deleted]
| kmlx wrote:
| I pay PS33 per month for the digital version of the Financial
| Times: https://www.ft.com/products
|
| If you're into that niche, it's great value for money. But
| even with those prices, FT still runs ads on their pages.
|
| Unfortunately in today's world, where people get their news
| "for free" from fb.com or twitter.com or news.google.com, it
| seems like a huge price to pay.
| strangeattractr wrote:
| FT is a great newspaper.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| But it's a daily Newspaper, that's a bit less than 1.50$ per
| day for a lot of written paper. (Some online magazines charge
| that per article...) I would go for that if I just read daily
| news from one source. Instead I have a varying number of
| subscriptions, nowadays mostly digital.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| It used to be that print newspaper subscriptions were quite
| expensive. Now that news is so heavily devalued subscriptions
| are a lot cheaper but even in the early 2000s a premium daily
| newspaper subscription could easily be $50 a month.
| batiudrami wrote:
| $1.50 a day? It's about what you'd spend on a physical
| newspaper.
| ling3 wrote:
| The problem with buying the NYT subscription is that you still
| get the ads. If not overtly, then they are still buried in the
| content in some sponsored form or another, because this is a
| large part of how the newspaper makes money. And the newspaper
| has other agendas too - political, commercial, etc. The
| Substack model, on the other hand (at least so far) lets you
| cut out most of the crap - the signal to noise ratio is just so
| much higher.
| fakedang wrote:
| And yet Substack was featured on HN top for running ads in
| their email newsletters....
| rchaud wrote:
| Newspapers have some level of editorial oversight, governance
| and fact-checking. Substack writers don't offer any of that.
| I understand that that's part of the appeal, but I wouldn't
| go as far as to say that Substack writers don't have their
| own agenda or biases.
| bollorior wrote:
| Like the music industry a decade or so ago, the news industry
| is now in a position where, rather than try and compete, they
| are going to blame their customers and their competitors for
| their own failings, and try and secure a special status whereby
| they get paid in perpetuity for doing nothing because of their
| supposed great importance to society.
| karatinversion wrote:
| This varies a lot - legacy media, sure. But the New York
| Times is doing extremely well!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The simple fix is easy: FB and Google should be _strongly_
| encouraged to offer paid versions of their services that are ad
| free and tracking free.
| TheEzEzz wrote:
| I've been thinking about this. There's two reasons people don't
| want to pay for free things: one, obviously, because they don't
| want to spend money; but, two, because there's friction
| associated with signing up to pay. If we made a law that said
| services like Google have to charge at least $0.01 to use, then
| we'd force providers and consumers to overcome the second
| hurdle without much cost, and make it easier for the first
| hurdle to be overcome over time.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| To add, it is hard for companies to resist double dipping.
| Why have one revenue stream when you can have two? So you do
| sign up and you come to find out you were still being
| tracked, you still have ads, etc. You are paying and you are
| the product. And since services on the internet are currently
| very centralized, the few big players have little incentive
| to offer a true paid service without worrying that anyone
| else can break into the game and really disrupt their market
| share.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| How do they not track you if when they must verify that you
| paid?
| fwn wrote:
| They argue that the centralization of advertising forces almost
| all companies to offer paid services and that those services lead
| to the overall online experience being more expensive.
|
| They conclude that "we should recognize the trade we've made from
| ad-subsidized media to ad-subsidized search and social
| networking", which I guess is a well-intended statement but
| somewhat obvious, right?
|
| Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they
| gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising.
|
| Their last sentence
|
| > Perhaps now we can forge a better understanding of the value of
| content. It costs money to produce, so it should also cost money
| to consume.
|
| I think is important, but maybe not for their reasons. Current
| paid services are sometimes very overpriced, which is partly
| caused by the lack of easy and scalable micro-transactions and a
| missing understanding of what a specific service might be worth.
| On the other hand there are some great services that get
| underused because users don't think the up-front cost are
| justified.
|
| The turn to subscriptions that we see in random tiny auxiliary
| applications is a great example of that. The developers of a
| small CBT-App I used for a bit thought they were worth 8 euro a
| month. They tried it a few months and then gave up, largely
| because they apparently failed to find a shared understanding of
| their value with their users.
| yoz-y wrote:
| > Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they
| gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising.
|
| It is also filled with comments gist of which is "paywalled,
| didn't read".
|
| I think both models have their strengths and ultimately are not
| meant for the same audiences. Which is also why mixing the two
| in the same product is tricky.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Paying a subscription for a single article is not worth it,
| and that's purely on monetary cost and not even accounting
| for the time it takes to fill the subscription form and then
| to cancel (and some newspapers make it extremely difficult to
| cancel).
|
| If there was a universal system where people could pay ~1$ in
| one click without having to fill in a form or provide any
| personal data (to reduce the risk of spam), I'm sure most
| people would happily pay.
|
| On the other hand, for a single product that you use
| significantly (like a social network) it makes sense to pay a
| subscription as opposed to having your time, attention and
| privacy compromised by ads.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| There is no safe way to do microtransactions without also
| forking over some kind of personal data. How do you prevent
| identity theft in that world? I would go as far as to say
| the current Ads model is more private that a subscription
| or microtransaction based world.
|
| Cheap. Private. Low-friction. Pick two.
| bollorior wrote:
| There isn't a technical limitation here. If in 2001 you
| had said that web content would be paid for by multiple
| auctions for advertising space between data brokers who
| know innumerable different facts about the reader, such
| as their recent browsing history, purchases, demographic
| info, _happening in real-time while the page loads_ , it
| would have seemed technically unfeasible. $100 billion in
| annual revenue makes lots of things possible.
| input_sh wrote:
| Sure there is: https://coil.com/ https://flattr.com/
|
| Pay one subscription, visit sites. If those sites have a
| specific meta tag, add-on detects it, providing you with
| access to paywalled articles. The longer the site keeps
| my attention, the more of my subscription they get. They
| don't have to know a single thing about me other than
| "I'm using this service and I have a running
| subscription". Service aggregates those micropayments
| from their subscribers within a time frame and avoids
| transferring small transactions and fees associated to
| the website.
| pedro2 wrote:
| Also Brave Browser.
|
| Yes, Brave has a mixed model for funding. If you don't
| opt in into Brave Rewards, you can still fund sites using
| your own money.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'm saying that a neutral third-party could be used to
| broker the payments and keep the details for auditing
| purposes.
|
| I don't mind _someone_ having my details, I just don 't
| want that someone to be a party incentivized to spam me.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Sorry, but how is that any different than the role Google
| and Facebook play today? You're just proposing handing
| _even more_ personal data over to what will become the
| next generation of big tech monopolies.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Compared to Google & Facebook, the neutral third party's
| business model would be to process payments as opposed to
| advertising, thus they won't have any incentives to
| collect/misuse personal data beyond what's necessary to
| provide the service.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I don't agree. Payment data are just as easily sold off
| as you seem to think advertisement data is. The
| incentives are the same, except one is pseudo-anonymous
| and the other is directly linked to your bank account.
| maple3142 wrote:
| Although I agree a simple system to make it easier to pay
| small amount of money would help, I think $1 is not
| everyone would accept easily. Maybe regional pricing is
| necessary.
| bollorior wrote:
| I mean, you've just outlined the way that newspapers'
| business model is delusional and broken. Lots of people are
| prepared to pay them for something they make, but they have
| decided that they're only prepared to accept money in a
| specific way and on specific terms. In fact, most paywalls
| assume that that specific news outlet is the most important
| one in your life. None of them are prepared to offer you a
| plan based on the more realistic scenario that you
| occasionally want to read something of theirs of particular
| interest, but don't want their take on every story, nor their
| particular curation of what to read on a given day.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Great point. If there were a service I could subscribe to
| that would give revenue to content producers in a common
| network based on page views I'd be interested. I like to be
| able to follow links in news feeds to read particular
| articles but since they may be in dozens of different
| publications there is no way I'm going to subscribe to just
| any one of them.
|
| edit: maybe this is what Apple News is? I can read lots of
| articles but have to go in through that portal, I can't
| click links on Reddit. Sometimes I do go into Apple News
| and find the same article but that is time consuming and
| inconvenient and often it isn't there.
| input_sh wrote:
| I'm happy to pay for subscriptions on sites I know bring
| value to me over time.
|
| I'd never want to start/stop a subscription for a single
| article I randomly come across, and I have never stumbled
| upon a link that allows me to pay a buck or two to access
| this specific article I clicked on without starting a long
| term commitment with a site I've never heard of before.
| bsder wrote:
| > It is also filled with comments gist of which is
| "paywalled, didn't read".
|
| I object mostly due to "free for me(FAANGS) but not for thee.
|
| Said article is available to the Googlebot or to Facebook but
| not normal mortals.
|
| If you want to be behind a wall, fine, be behind the wall--
| that _is_ your prerogative. But the problem is that these
| articles clutter up my search results and I _can 't remove
| them_.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they
| gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising.
|
| In my experience, quite a few people say such things elsewhere
| as well, but if you actually give them the opportunity to do so
| (even if it's not "a lot", but actually a pretty small fee),
| such offers tend to perform badly, even among the people who
| initially requested such a tier, unless ads are very, very
| intrusive (Youtube of late might be such a case) or it's
| bundled with other, actually useful functionality, more content
| etc., or rolled out as an increase of existing pricing instead
| of a separate offer people have to actively pick (risky in
| itself).
|
| People in general appear to be much more price-conscious when
| it comes to such things than they themselves seem to realize.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > In my experience, quite a few people say such things
| elsewhere as well, but if you actually give them the
| opportunity to do so (even if it's not "a lot", but actually
| a pretty small fee), such offers tend to perform badly, even
| among the people who initially requested such a tier,
|
| I used Blende and was ready to spend quite a bit more on it,
| but they changed their rules and also had do little relevant
| content that at some point I gave up.
|
| Recently found out one of the linux magazines sell digital
| articles as well as full digital so I will be probably be
| spending some money there, both for usefulness, entertainment
| (yep) and to support a good cause.
| orange_tee wrote:
| It's probably psychology. For example, myself quite frugal, I
| would probably not pay explicitly to remove ads. But if you
| raised my internet subscription by $1.50/month, with the same
| intent, I wouldn't bat an eyelid.
|
| It's all about putting the price in context.
| ghaff wrote:
| I also just don't want the mental overhead of deciding
| which of my 20 subscriptions I'm getting value from. Yes, I
| used to have that to some degree with magazine
| subscriptions. But most Internet subscriptions actually
| tend to be pricier for less content--probably in part
| because so few people pay you need to charge those who will
| a fair bit to make it work.
|
| I also observe that I do get some free newsletters and my
| usual pattern is I read them regularly for a bit and then
| they go into being read less and less frequently. (Which
| was admittedly often my pattern with magazines as well.)
| nindalf wrote:
| Yeah, I'm that guy. I would prefer not to see ads and claim
| that I would pay for the privilege. Ads on YouTube didn't
| used to bother me but as they ramped up the number of ads on
| each video I couldn't take it anymore ... until I saw the
| price of the Youtube Premium subscription. I balked at paying
| so much for the "minor inconvenience" of seeing 5 ads with
| each video. I figured I'd just watch less video instead.
|
| Side note, Youtube Premium includes music that I wouldn't
| have used, so maybe the cost of the service makes sense for
| people who use that.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye there is a huge prize difference between what Youtube
| gets for you nominally watching the adds and what you have
| to pay to not get any adds.
| eek04_ wrote:
| Using public numbers (references below):
|
| The average YouTube user (>18yo) spends 41 minutes per
| day on YouTube. Let's guess that an average view duration
| is 10 minutes (~80% of an average video of 11.7 minutes).
| That gives us 4 video views per day.
|
| The average per view is $0.18, so $0.72 per day. Multiply
| by 30 to get a month, and you end up with $21.60.
|
| YouTube Premium is $11.99/month. So yes, there's a huge
| prize difference - the advertising revenue would be ~$10
| more than the YouTube Premium price.
|
| https://blog.hootsuite.com/youtube-stats-marketers/
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1026923/youtube-
| video-ca...
|
| https://influencermarketinghub.com/how-much-do-youtubers-
| mak...
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think that might be way off. Most adds are skipped. And
| 18/1000 is 1.8 cents not 18 cents.
|
| "On Average the YouTube channel can receive $18 per 1,000
| ad views. This equates to $3 - $5 per 1000 video views."
|
| I.e. 0.3 to 0.5 cent per video of which Google pockets
| 68%:32% which gives about 0.2 cent per video for Google
| per video view.
|
| The first stats site says about 9 views per visit and
| day, so 9 videos a day is about 1.8 cent, times 30 days
| is 54 cents.
|
| A year would be 6.5USD for the average user - about half
| a month of Premium.
| Theodores wrote:
| The income YouTubers get from the paying customers is
| nothing. A rounding error. I don't have a link for that.
| eek04_ wrote:
| Yes. As I've said elsewhere - very few people want to pay
| their way out of ads - in this case, buy YouTube Premium.
|
| Newest public data I can find says there are 20 million
| YouTube Premium subscribers. There's 2 billion monthly
| actives on YouTube - ie, 99% are not YouTube Premium
| subscribers.
|
| https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/youtube-
| tops-20-millio...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/
| jeremyjh wrote:
| uBlock Origin extension (and I'm sure others) in chrome
| blocks all youtube ads. I am always dismayed when I see ads
| in the YT mobile app, which I don't use often because I
| haven't seen them on desktop in years.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I guess mobile is where most people use Youtube (by a
| very, very generous margin, too); for me, it's on an
| Apple TV, which also can't run adblockers. On mobile,
| even with DNS-based blocking, I wasn't able to block
| Youtube ads in the iOS app.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Ah, thats a bummer. I'd thought about trying out Pi-hole
| to block ads on our mobile devices and smart TV.
| drcoopster wrote:
| I'm a long-time Google Music subscriber (at the original
| $8/mo price point) and had no idea that it even came with
| YouTube Premium until I realized I hadn't seen any YouTube
| ads in years.
| aahortwwy wrote:
| > It costs money to produce, so it should also cost money to
| consume.
|
| An awfully strange perspective from a business-oriented news
| organization.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > Hacker News threads are filled with users arguing that they
| gladly pay a lot just to avoid advertising.
|
| True, and I _did_ before. I had a subscription to Ars Technica
| and a few other sites like Tweakers in the Netherlands (a big
| local tech site).
|
| But, what I found lately was that these tech platforms were
| alienating me. They're trying to reach a wider audience and as
| such are delivering much less of interest to me. Much less
| 'deep dives' than before and more 'phoned in' articles and
| press release copy/pastes. And in the case of Tweakers are
| _still_ delivering trackers like Google Analytics and Scorecard
| Research even to paid subscribers. Both sites also changing
| their design to be more visual and thus reducing content on the
| screen, which forces even more scrolling to see everything.
|
| So I actually dropped my subscriptions. I still have the lowest
| tier with Tweakers but they're dropping that soon so I won't
| renew. I still adblock anyway because I don't want to be
| tracked (and yes I know it's not fully effective).
|
| It just feels like every site wants to grow too big and widen
| their audience. They're no longer happy with being a small
| niche outfit, which waters down their value to me.
|
| I notice this especially because of Hacker News. Because it's
| still a niche site. Every day I find a few 'pearls' here that I
| don't see anywhere else. Whereas the other sites are forcing me
| to dredge through crap I'm not interested in with less and less
| interesting pieces in between.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Incidentally I started paying $5/ month each to two
| micropayment platforms. The first Coil[1] uses Interledger
| micropayments protocol, which is cool because it is easy to
| both monetise your content, and is decentralized in terms of
| payment providers and receivers. I get payed into an uphold
| wallet, in Fiat currency. It pays out based on time on page
| mostly and has Imgur, Newgrounds and Twitch using it, and lots
| of blogs. Downside is for mobile where you can't run browser
| plugins you have to use their custom FF fork browser Puma.
|
| The second one Scroll[2] is a centralised one. That has bigger
| names attached and removes ads from things like The Atlantic
| and Bloomberg. It shows you a breakdown of where your monthly
| fee is split.
|
| I love not receiving ads, and I hope that this tech pans out,
| but I am only doing it as an experiment so far. Personally I
| would prefer Coil and its underlying protocol to succeed. But
| it is highly possible these all fail. At least I am avoiding
| ads, while still funding content. It shows promise.
|
| - [1] https://coil.com/
|
| - [2] https://scroll.com/
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| I've written more about it here:
| https://sammorrowdrums.com/going-ad-free-with-micropayments
| rozim wrote:
| Seems like Craigslist should be added to the list, as they hurt
| the classified ads business.
| htk wrote:
| Misleading title and argumentation. False Cause fallacy being
| used to attribute paywalls to Google and Facebook.
| h0nd wrote:
| >News organizations, for example, didn't charge readers, in the
| misguided hope that more eyeballs on their stories would bring in
| more revenue from the banner ads they displayed.
|
| Which part of this is misguided? That is exactly how it works.
| The more ads they can show, the more they are paid.
| bollorior wrote:
| Newspapers made a huge strategic error in how they approached
| advertising, which ultimately resulted in much of their value
| being essentially given away to Google.
|
| It used to be the case that much of (for example) the New York
| Times' advertising value came not just from the number of
| eyeballs, but from the specific nature of those eyeballs. Being
| able to target a specific category of people who read the NYT
| (they can afford the paper, they are likely to live in New
| York, they know long words, they have a specific worldview,
| etc) is incredibly valuable to advertisers. Market segmentation
| by publication is very powerful - even knowing that a viewer
| doesn't have much money, or hates buying things, or is cynical
| about advertising is more valuable than not knowing anything.
| It's the reason that so many niche magazines exist. Advertising
| to someone who cares about a very specific hobby is worth a
| lot. It's also the reason that most printed publications aren't
| free. Many could be if you take a simplistic view of the
| economics. However they would dilute their audience to the
| point where it would become less valuable to advertisers. Vogue
| advertises to people who want to look at fashion photos enough
| to pay $9 or whatever to do so.
|
| With the internet, two things changed. Firstly the fact that
| anyone in the world could read a given article for free, meant
| that the average eyeball on a NYT article was much less 'NYT-
| reader-ish' than an eyeball on a printed page of the paper.
| Secondly, tracking and analytics meant that there was much more
| valuable and monetizable information about that reader than the
| fact that they are a NYT reader. Information like all the other
| things they have looked at, what they've recently bought, what
| apps they have installed, the content of their emails. Only the
| big tech companies and data brokers have this info. The data
| that the NYT has on you is trivial in comparison.
|
| It didn't have to be this way. Newspapers could have ringfenced
| their own data and sold ads in a way which kept them in
| control. As a side effect it would have been better for their
| readers' privacy. They failed to understand their own business
| as well as Google did.
|
| Now consumers are being blamed for this, for 'making the wrong
| choices'. I resent this for several reasons. Firstly it is an
| argument which denies the nature of reality. It is analogous
| with telling people they shouldn't shop at Wal-Mart, because
| local businesses will close. The solution is to change the
| rules to optimize for the things that we care about. Not to
| rely on the unlikely event that lots of people with limited
| resources will all make altruistic decisions to protect the
| nebulous thing that you care about. Secondly these newspapers
| set themselves up as society's only defenders of liberty and
| truth against the forces of darkness. In fact, a lot of them
| are full of propaganda, gossip and clickbait. Some of the $5
| newsletters are in a class above almost everything in these
| newspapers. The people writing them are (typically) experts on
| one topic, they love that topic passionately, they have no
| particular axe to grind and they have much incentives to make
| something high quality.
| h0nd wrote:
| Thank you for your very well observed and written reply.
| nerdponx wrote:
| _The solution is to change the rules to optimize for the
| things that we care about._
|
| I totally agree with everything you've said here, but I
| always get stuck on this part. What rules should we even
| change, and how should we change them?
| bollorior wrote:
| I don't know - the problem with complaints like 'Wal-mart
| are destroying small, local businesses' is that although
| many people agree that Wal-mart is bad, often no one is
| sure exactly what is bad about Wal-mart.
|
| Employee conditions, monopolistic practices to squeeze
| suppliers and city layouts and zoning are all already
| regulated in principle. But what if it's something much
| more nebulous? Attempts to intervene for 'atmosphere',
| 'niceness', 'tradition' and so on seem doomed to be either
| useless or lead to unintended consequences.
|
| But just trying to understand and be honest about what it
| is we want can be a huge step forward!
| h0nd wrote:
| Interestingly, I was on the verge of addressing this one
| specific sentence too. Especially, in the light of what
| was/is happening in Australia.
|
| Generally, I prefer to act for the things we care about
| than changing the rules to optimize for... However, this is
| a huge topic in itself that can not be dealt within a few
| sentences.
| drdec wrote:
| I believe the author is saying that the misguided part was the
| idea that they would get more revenue from banner ads than they
| would through subscriptions.
| h0nd wrote:
| Well, that is a different statement than what he is saying.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| No, not all my "media" was subsidized by ads before the internet.
| The author also fails to support the title, other than to weakly
| imply that somehow excluding ads on Netlifx has something to do
| with increased ad revenue on Facebook.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Sports was the first think that came to mind when reading the
| article. True, previously TV based ads where worth more, and
| could help pay for licensing right, but those licensing fees as
| also balloned and consumers have to pay more directly.
|
| Sports is one area of media that will truly be disrupted as
| we're already pushing the limit of what people will pay and
| advertising is no longer able to pay the difference.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Especially ufc, I thought the only reason ppv could be so
| expensive was because people were having parties to cover it.
| I can't believe so many people paid so much during the
| pandemic.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| When there's nothing else to do, I can see people who are
| bored and lonely increasingly likely to spend money on
| something that they used to enjoy pre-pandemic in order to
| try and gain some enjoyment in an otherwise pretty
| depressing situation.
| anon98356 wrote:
| I think you have your cause and effect the wrong way around
| there. The argument put forward is that Netflix is forced to
| use a subscription model because Facebook and Google have
| almost complete control of the advertising market.
|
| In the specific case of Netlfix this probably isn't true as
| their business model is an online version of a business that
| already charged a subscription (cable TV).
|
| However in businesses that traditionally relied on advertising
| e.g. the New York Times as mentioned in the article, the
| transition to the internet is leading to more upfront charging
| i.e. Paywalls because they aren't getting the ad revenue
| required to offer their services for free.
|
| My personal take from the article isn't that all content use to
| be supported by ads (although I would suggest that a lot more
| of it was than most people realise). The issue is that the near
| duopoly Facebook and Google have on web advertising, mean those
| producing the content can no longer rely on advertising to fund
| themselves.
|
| As a result we are seeing more and more paywalls being put up
| to fund these businesses. The potential end result of this is
| that finding content will continue to be free and probably even
| get easier. Finding content you can consume for free however,
| is likely to get a lot tougher.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Netflix's business is an online version of their old
| business, which was a mail-in version of Blockbuster.
|
| No ads were involved in take-home videos, that I recall,
| other than late attempts at unskippable promos by the studios
| who released the movies themselves (that was after I gave up
| renting videos).
|
| I don't see any causal relationship at all.
| fakedang wrote:
| Just a question, what's stopping NYT from using their own
| native ad experience embedded into their web page instead of
| relying on Google and Facebook? It's not like building an
| onsite tracking ad is secret stuff, is it? Rather, if ads are
| going to be better than those on Google and Facebook, they
| could charge a premium simply for eyeballs right?
| mattl wrote:
| Other than PBS/BBC, what other media isn't subsidized by ads?
| villasv wrote:
| I understand the bickering between media and social networks.
| Aggregators have disrupted the standard media business and a
| clash was inevitable.
|
| Including Substack in the fight, on the other hand, is pathetic.
| One would expect journalists to support each other and Substack
| is a tool _tailored for them_.
| u678u wrote:
| I like the idea of substack, but realistically the most popular
| journalists will be the ones with the biggest stunts and
| clickbait. I just want a plain newspaper that does a lot of
| good reporting without getting too political, seems too much to
| ask these days.
| snicksnak wrote:
| Most of the corporate press hate substack and think it's
| beneath them, I saw it being labeled as "onlyfans for
| journalists". That's coming mostly from mediocre journalists
| who envy substack writers with a huge profile and try to
| demonize them. But it also comes from institutions, like the
| UCLA information studies professor who tried to vilify substack
| writes. Matt Taibbi wrote a response worth reading
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-substack
| dgudkov wrote:
| Google and Facebook have attributes of "virtual" governments.
| Similarly to an IRL government, they provide to citizens
| identity, protection of assets, and policing. From that
| perspective, their ad-based monetization is indirect taxation.
| wwww4all wrote:
| Basically, the legacy establishment media is complaining about
| the new establishment social media.
|
| Same thing as the the obsolete horse and buggy industry
| complaining about the automobiles taking up all the street space
| and causing traffic.
|
| The establishment media got big, fat and lazy with their monopoly
| and selling limited ad space.
|
| When the ads space became infinite in the web, they didn't
| innovate and pivot to web technologies.
|
| Google and Facebook innovated web technologies and leveraged
| their tools to filter and target valuable audience attention
| space.
|
| The establishment media is obsolete and no amount of complaining
| is going to change the dynamic of the web. All they can do is
| talk about their high school glory days of scoring 5 touchdowns
| in high school championship game.
| collaborative wrote:
| What I truly miss is a competitor for both Google and Facebook.
| McDonald's has Burger King. Who do we go to when Google and
| Facebook overcharge us for advertising? The problem here is lack
| of competition
|
| Online advertising is by itself a great thing. In the past, only
| the likes of Unilever could afford to run ads on TV and
| Newspaper. That was because in order to convert they needed not
| just ads and an online presence. They literally needed to be on
| the shelves of every major shop so that the customer could
| complete their advertising journey
|
| I can see a competitor to Google materializing in the coming
| years due to Google's increasing difficulty to track user
| behavior. But I'm not so sure about Facebook. The only hope there
| is that platforms (Apple, Google and browsers) eventually force
| FB to become a paid service by completely disabling its tracking
| scripts.. which is unlikely
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| as a browser, duckduckgo works a lot better for me then google.
| try it. you may still need google occasionally for specific
| searches and to cross reference search results, but i find it
| highly satisfactory. Remember, DDG is American-based and even
| I, a UK resident can use it well.
| xdrosenheim wrote:
| Unless you count that one time I accidentally searched for
| weather details on my watch, I have use Google search ONCE
| this year. DDG is absolutely fine right now. And again,
| unless you count my Android Auto (Google Maps) searches, I
| have use Google search maybe 20 times since August 2020.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > What I truly miss is a competitor for both Google and
| Facebook. McDonald's has Burger King. Who do we go to when
| Google and Facebook overcharge us for advertising? The problem
| here is lack of competition
|
| You do realize that Facebook and Google are separate companies
| that compete with each other, same as McDonald's and Burger
| King?
|
| They need more competition, that's for sure. But they do
| compete with each other, same as McDonald's and Burger King.
| fakedang wrote:
| They compete in the same market (digital ads) but provide
| different utilities for the consumer, hence aren't
| competitors when it comes to user attention. Google provides
| a search engine, GSuite stack and other free products,
| YouTube, etc. Facebook provides a social network and networks
| to connect with their families. There isn't a meaningful
| competitor for either in either space. And most companies
| simply retain two marketing budgets - one for Facebook and
| one for Google.
| xtracto wrote:
| Exactly, it's like with the Cable providers "competition".
| They theoretically "compete" because they sell the same,
| but in reality, geographical availability is set in a way
| that they are focused on servicing different demographies
| dotancohen wrote:
| > What I truly miss is a competitor for both Google and >
| Facebook. McDonald's has Burger King. Who do we go to >
| when Google and Facebook overcharge us for advertising? >
| The problem here is lack of competition
|
| Forget advertising. I was recently passed up for employment
| because I don't use Whatsapp.
|
| And no, I do not consent to Whatsapp's terms of service even if
| I could carry a second burner phone.
| ysopex wrote:
| Can you provide more details on this? I decline to use a
| number of apps supported by Facebook and Google but have yet
| to have anyone refuse to hire me because of that.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > only the likes of Unilever could afford to run ads on TV and
| Newspaper
|
| Yes, but there were plenty of other advertising opportunities
| for smaller businesses. Local papers. Specialist magazines.
| Local radio.
| Lazare wrote:
| There's a fair bit to agree with here, but...
|
| First, one of the arguments being made here is that previous ad
| revenue subsidised content, but now it subsidises social media,
| so content must cover its costs directly.
|
| One of the implications of that is that in the "old" system you
| might get a bundle of content, some of which you liked and some
| of which you didn't, but the whole thing was subsidised so you
| didn't mind this, because you weren't _really_ paying for the
| bits you didn 't like or didn't consume. And now in the "new"
| system you have to pay full freight, so you're reluctant to pay
| for things you don't even want.
|
| In short, it's about people saying "I don't want to pay for an
| entire cable package (or NYT subscription), I'd rather pay for
| the exact content I want because it's cheaper overall, even if
| it's more expensive per item".
|
| But the example given is this:
|
| > Yes, you get better, more convenient and largely ad-free
| viewing -- but there's a good chance you're paying more for it.
| The same applies to Twitter and Substack, where signing up to
| just four writers' output at $5 a month each is already more than
| the cost of a $17 New York Times subscription, which gives you a
| greater breadth of coverage.
|
| And that sounds like something quite different. If people are
| paying $20/month in Substack subscriptions instead of $17/month
| for a NYT subscription, they're not doing it to _save money_ ,
| but because they think they can get better content that way.
|
| In fact, at the moment I _am_ spending $20 /month across Substack
| and Patreon for writing I care about, while the NYT is running a
| promotion for an online subscription for $3/month for the first
| year, then $8/month thereafter, but I'm happy with the value I'm
| getting from Substack, and I wouldn't dream of paying for the
| NYT, because in my view it's not even worth $3/month.
|
| This isn't a money story, this is a quality story. And I don't
| think it has much to do with ad revenue either.
|
| Second:
|
| > Perhaps now we can forge a better understanding of the value of
| content. It costs money to produce, so it should also cost money
| to consume.
|
| Again, I'm paying $20/month or so to Substack (mostly) and
| Patreon, so clearly I agree that paying money for content is (at
| least sometimes) a good idea. However, I think this is just a
| ridiculous, meaningless platitude.
|
| Education and health care cost money to product; in most
| countries at least some of both are provider at no direct cost to
| consumers. Scarce natural resources (or broadcast spectrum) costs
| little or nothing to produce, but should certainly cost money to
| consume. And just because it cost you money to produce doesn't
| mean anyone will (or should) choose to pay money to consume it.
|
| I once came close to subscribing to Bloomberg, but eventually
| decided against it, partly because it's _pricy_ ($35 /month!),
| but also in large part because so much of their content is just
| so poorly written and poorly researched. (Matt Levine is, always,
| excellent, but he's very much the exception. And, of course, his
| content is available for free, outside the Bloomberg paywall.)
| rchaud wrote:
| Businessweek used to be incredibly cheap, I remember having a
| web+ print subscription back in 2014 and paid very little. I'm
| legitimately shocked to see how much it costs now.
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