I started to notice that more sites are turning into paywalls, and I don’t like that and would prefer ads over subscriptions.
I am curious, what does the general community think about that?
Neither. Give me an easy option to donate. Even better, make it possible to donate based on how many times I visit the website, then give me an overview at the end of the month and let me split my budget.
Ads. I’ve been online since the age of Gopher. I’ve gone through every kind of ad or a pop-up you can throw at me. Even though I use an adblock, even without it I can subconsciously filter out ads so well that they won’t bother me.
Hard agree. Ads, what ads? Those are just swaths of color in my peripheral vision. I watch old-timey television too, and those ads are my free time to do whatever else, like pee or get snacks.
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The question is a bit loaded, since “prefer ads” means you see the content, whereas “prefer paywalls” means you don’t.
A fairer framing would have been: “how do you prefer to pay for content?”
Because, contrary to many opinions here, there is a price to pay when you watch an ad. At the very least, you’re paying with your sanity. And very possibly you’re paying with your wallet too, later, when you buy some product or service you don’t really need. If ads didn’t work, there wouldn’t be so many of them.
Next, in a world where content is funded by advertising, the people who control our tech have an infernal incentive to spy on us - so we all end up paying with our privacy.
Advertising is the lifeblood of consumer capitalism. It’s what powers the pseudo-needs and pseudo-desires and status competition that drives all that material throughput of JUNK that is killing our planet. That price tag is gonna be pretty hefty.
Advertising is sheer poison. But paywalls are not the enemy. It is not immoral to pay for things that have value.
Banners! I was fine with banners, you can look at them or not if you want, you can click them or not… guess they weren’t profitable anymore.
Companies didn’t vet them, and outside to other as companies. Turns out they didn’t do any due diligence, and let viruses leak through. That’s when people really started blocking them.
Paywalls, but the content has to be absolutely stellar for me to consider paying for an account.
False dichotomy, I’d rather see other funding models like Patreon/Kickstarter. Paying gets you early access/bonus stuff/whatever, and you don’t need intrusive technologies like ads/paywalls.
Yeah, I want to pay you directly. I, admittedly, pirate things. When those things are good, I make an effort to go send money to the creator directly. Sometimes it’s hard, especially with things like books. I don’t want to buy it on Amazon. And unless someone is self-published, they’re getting peanuts. I’d much rather Venmo an author money direct. When Radiohead released In Rainbows way back when and put it out for “pay what you want,” I gave them five bucks I think.
I understand it can’t always be like that, and that the people between a content creator and me do serve some purpose.
You may want to clarify, as patreon and kickstarter are often used as paywalls. Do you mean people can donate to a cause, and everyone gets the benefits?
The latter, but I also don’t really mind paywalls in the form of “get early access” like SMBC comics or “get exclusive special content” like a lot of bands do.
You can just straight paywall with those too, but you don’t have too. A band I like crowdfunded a music video and you can watch it free on youtube, but if you didn’t crowdfund it you missed out on perks that go all the way up to being in the music video
This is a complex and nuanced question that is not as black and white as the binary choices you give. Both paywalls and ads, as they are implemented currently, suck and erode away at the usefulness of the Internet.
Paywalls
They typically tease content in the hopes people will be interested enough to pay for the content and other content. Sounds good on the surface, because the people putting in the effort to write articles should be paid. The problem is, the quality of journalism has also eroded to the point where it’s not worth paying for as much as it used to be. Excessive SEO has poisoned search results in such a way that paywalls content crowds out other valid search results. Throw in the fact that there is a possible future where articles may be written by AI, and it’s especially not worth it.
Ads
Ads are intrusive, they can contain malware/viruses, may be inappropriate for an audience (e.g., porn or violence related ads shown to kids). I’ve even had ads redirect the webpage to another website. Using fingerprinting to target “relevant” ads is a privacy nightmare, intrusive, and still is mostly irrelevant to the user. Those cookie pops are annoying as fuck — my guess is it’s malicious compliance with the EU — even when using a site that is based in the US that targets only US citizens. Certain browsers are blurring the lines between useful browser functionality and increasing ad revenue.
Either way you look at it, these companies are eroding public trust in search of the almighty “engagement” dollar. And then they’re all shocked pikachu when people find ways to circumvent paying for content. So they double down on making things as difficult as possible for the end user, which makes the user double down on hating these companies and their malicious practices.
Ads and paywalls can work, but everybody (from publishers/content creators to advertisers and ad networks) need to sit down fix the glaring problems:
- No PII or fingerprinting in any analytics
- Search engines need to either remove paywalls content from results, or flag the result as paywalled and allow users to filter them out
- Journalists need to step up their game and stop writing garbage nobody wants to read
- Ad networks need to be more hands on with making sure ads are appropriate and not malicious in any way
- STOP CROWDING OUT YOUR CONTENT WITH ADS!
I’m sure we all could come up with more solutions. But we all know that all parties involved won’t do a damned thing to make things better for us.
And yet no matter how bad it gets, it still somehow is profitable. So pirating material doesn’t seem to be an effective means of protest because it seems there are enough people out there willing to pay for all of this garbage.
Ads over pay wall BUT with the option to pay to remove ads for a reasonable price. Then I have a way of supporting the content of I enjoy it enough
I keep telling people but if they keep using ad blockers, then they can expect less content to be available for free. Yet they all want to act like they’re not responsible for this trend even though they are.
they can expect less content to be available for free
Less corporate content. But if big business wants to fuck right off the internet forever, it’s okay by me.
I keep telling advertisers but if they continue using intrusive ads that send information to Facebook or appear after content has loaded forcing us to misclick, then they can expect more people to use ad blockers. Yet they all want to act like they’re not responsible for this trend even though they are.
It’s not that simple, unfortunately. Even if you were concerned about the impact of using an adblocker, the ads are not like billboards, merely visual distractions, but rather ads now include invasive tracking and surveillance, and other malicious code that can freeze or make a website unusable. Ads often create an accessibility nightmare for some users. They also tend to use up data, making the internet less accessible to those in third world countries where internet access is slow and large data are a bigger problem.
There have been some half-hearted attempts to create standards for advertisements, but the reality is that greed has always undermined attempts for the private sector to self-regulate on this issue, so short of some kind of legislative action to curb these problems, you are going to get people trying to protect themselves with adblockers.
Make your content good enough and be a good enough person so that people are willing to give you money voluntarily or for token rewards. Let those with the means subsidize those without.
Occasionally you see something and the comments are full of “let me throw money at you”. Maybe at least partially try that as a goal rather than searching for infinite growth at the expense of anyone who isn’t an executive.
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Funny that changing your UA to like Googlebot means you can see the content since website owners want search indexing
I wound not mind ads if they met the following conditions (in no particular order).
- Actually vet them, no scams and viruses.
- minimal obstruction to what I’m there for. A bilboard on the side of the highway is fine, but when they put in the road, there’s a problem.
- Mix it up. YouTube playing the same ad 500 times in a row is obnoxious.
- No yelling/loud shit. Play your ad, don’t blow out my speakers.
- If on a silent website, video ads must be auto muted.
- if I’m on data or a metered network, don’t auto play ads and keep the total data usage to a minimum.
- Medical and health ads aren’t allowed. You can have PSAs about conditions and that there are treatment options, but it should your doctor researching and recommending specific medicine not a patient going in with some ad.
Add political ads to the last one too.
99% of the time it’s either an outright lie or stretched exaggeration of the truth. No one is getting any correct information from a political ad except either side’s specific spin on it and it causes a lot of average people to incorrectly believe they are informed on who and what they are voting on that they don’t need to do more due diligence before heading to the polls.
Also favors rich politicians and more well funded campaigns over less well off politicians and less well funded organizations and causes.
thank goodness most browsers disable autoplay with sound now
Globally disabling autoplay in my browser brought me so much sanity. It’s worth the small fraction of sites that behave badly because of it
I prefer ads, as I can block them.
No.
You…realize good journalism costs money, right?
You realize that if newspapers offered a federated service (pay once, you get them all), they’d make money hand over fist?
But noooo…each newspaper wants you to pay.
I’d pay upwards of $20 a month if that guaranteed me access to the major newspapers (NYT, WaPo, LA Times, etc.) and my local one with one subscription.
I do this with Apple News. Not sure if anything like it exists, but what worries me is Apple cut their News development staff recently which makes me think people (at least Apple users) don’t value journalism enough to support it.
Apple is worth THREE AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS!!!
Say that again. Three and a half trillion dollars.
They have cash-on-hand reserves of in excess of $60bn. They could give every single employee $200,000 and still have half of it in the bank.
Tim Cook is a relative pauper in the CEO game, with a net worth upwards of two billion. He could personally pay a team of a three thousand reporters with full benefits and remain a billionaire.
It’s not people refusing to pay for journalism, it’s robber barons refusing to pay journalists.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea but it’s interesting how similar that is to cable TV.
Of course, cable TV was largely ad-free at first then you ended up paying for it and getting ads.
Your local library might give you free digital access to most (or all) of those, if you haven’t checked.
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Yeah, “good journalism” is definitely what you’re paying for with ads or paywalls.
To be clear, I support journalists - and they deserve to get paid for their efforts.
But (a) OP didn’t specifically mention news sites, and (b) the revenue from websites via ads or paywalls is going directly into the coffers of the ultra-wealthy. Find me a news outlet that successfully implemented a paywall and then started paying their journalists and reporters vastly more money.
You won’t, because they don’t.
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To both obviously.
A more genuine response would be “Ads, so I can use an adblocker on them.”
Fuck advertisers. FUUUUUUUUUUUCK paywals.
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You know that people aren’t forced to interact with websites right? Like if I don’t have a choice about if your website is going to show me ads, then I DON’T HAVE A CHOICE to view your website. Those ones that block the entire page until you whitelist them? I just close them and move on with my life. Nobodys product is so important that I will interrupt my day to view their advertising for it. And no website has such a reputation that I am willing to pay them or whitelist them for advertising BEFORE VIEWING THE FUCKING CONTENT.
I agree I close them if I see that, but just so you know a combo of bypass paywalls clean, and ublock origin (go into settings and enable all cookie notices, social widgets, and annoyances) will bypass 95% of those without you even knowing
If that fails go to web.archive.org and paste the URL, that works most of the time. There’s a web extension called “web archives” that makes this easy if you’re ok with other extensions
Why? Prove to me that your binary is true.
If someone sets up a website, and uses ads to fund it, 99% of the time their goal is profit.
How they profit is their issue, not mine.
Many websites exist without ads, hosted by people who simply want to have a website.
As for paywalls, again, people are creating a profit-generating barrier for something. Again, that’s their concern, not mine. Generally when I hit a paywall I just close the tab. I’m not the sucker they’re looking for.
If I’m really curious, I may run the URL through archive.is
Alright as far as your argument goes. But what about content that has value for society? I’m talking, of course, among other things, about serious journalism. Do only “suckers” pay for that, too?
So you think people should just work around the clock making content and not get anything for it? I keep seeing this view and it sounds so naive, you can’t expect donations to keep you afloat. Even hosting the website and domain names cost money.
I wouldn’t mind paying for quality content, but usually you end up paying for crap and seeing ads too. So now the corporate media is double dipping right out of your wallet. Journalism is dead and we’re probably never getting it back.
Okay, so you never go back to ye olde shitty website because they are absolute scum. Now you keep getting to pay the quality content for making the stuff you enjoy without even touching your wallet.
People always have.
How many people get paid to go to ham radio clubs, to write up plans for model airplanes, or to share telescope mirror polishing techniques? How many people try to profit off of community seed/plant exchanges?
The only difference is that people are now looking for venues to generate profit by producing content, rather than producing content for its own sake. The concept of “every sharing of information must be financially profitable” is a sickness - a festering disease.
Domain names cost about $50/year. Self-hosting can be done for free with most ISPs; and if you’re getting enough traffic that you need to pay for hosting, it starts pretty cheaply.
Profit is destroying community at every turn. Resist the relentless lust to make an extra buck, and ENGAGE with people.
Wanting to stay alive is not a “relentless lust to make an extra buck”. You’re portraying people wanting to earn money as villains trying to abuse you. Putting ads in a website where someone puts so much effort to create is NOT evil. Youtubers without sponsorships for example simply wouldn’t exist, because nobody would put in dozens of hours of work a week if it wasn’t lucrative.
The concept of “every sharing of information must be financially profitable” is a sickness - a festering disease.
I would argue the concept of expecting everyone else’s hard work to be free is selfish. I’m not talking about major publications that have millions of dollars, I’m talking about small websites where the creator needs it to succeed or else it shuts down a year later.
How many people get paid to go to ham radio clubs, to write up plans for model airplanes, or to share telescope mirror polishing techniques? How many people try to profit off of community seed/plant exchanges?
What you’re describing is a hobby that people with free time and extra money do. This isn’t what 99.9% of content creators work on or have the capability of doing.
The thing is if I see an article that’s blocked by a paywall, I can simply go to another site that has the exact same story for free.
maybe for-profit news organizations should get another business model. My computer is a temple and merchants can get out.
My computer is a temple and merchants can get out.
Gotta steal this one and start using it.
Should be donations. Fuck the corporate internet.
How much money do you donate to your ad-free lemmy instance? Or the rest of the free services you’re using?
For the vast majority of people, that number is $0.
I donate free labor by administrating it.
No, you really really really don’t.
I’m old enough to have been online when commercial content was illegal, and I’ve watched as aggressive commerce has crept into every single corner of the internet.
You don’t need to have ads to support a website, you need ads to profit from a website. The idea that everything - information, news, community, society - not only CAN be monetized but MUST be monetized is relatively new, destructive, and anti-human.
The mere idea that you have to choose between two ways of throwing money at billionaires is a symptom of the terminal stages of capitalism. We’re going to have a rough 50 years or so, but this has to end.
