[WarmWash]

It's never been a problem with people ad-blocking for the last 20 years, why is it suddenly a problem now?

We've been celebrating denying creators revenue for decades...

Maybe this is just the internet hypocricy of "When I do it, it's good, when they do it, it's bad".

[omnimus]

Total sleight of hand.

Ad blocking has always been a problem for creators but it's aimed at big corps - non-creators. The creators asked people to support them other ways or turn off the blocking. And it's not like the little independent creators wanted this version of commercialized internet in the first place.

The ai marketing teams are spinning everything they can but no AI companies are the conscript, the vultures. No question about it.

[WarmWash]

The conversion from viewer to donator is around 1%. This is true from wikipedia, to twitch, to podcasts.

The number of people who will not ever load your ads is around 30%.

I can tell you that creators talk about this a lot in private, but will not publicly because the internet has a mass delusion on how creation and compensation works. It's like trying to convince christians that jesus obviously didn't come back from the dead days later, depsite there being no logical system available that would explain it.

If we were to try and map out a functional internet where everyone wins, users and creators, there is no example where ad blocking is anything other net harmful. You either get volunteer net where 0.01% share hobby posts on their own dime for the other 99.9% or you get IRC where 99% of the population doesn't really benefit (ala 1993).

[20k]

The problem is that the ad vendors couldn't keep it in their pants. The ads you're talking about are a common vector for delivering malware onto people's PCs, and absolutely destroy the usability of sites. Between tracking cookies, popups, full screen banners, autoplaying video, flashing ads, and their unbelievably high weight in bandwidth - the internet is fairly unusable if you don't block any ads

Bear in mind that many basic privacy features destroy ads by breaking tracking and fingerprinting. Its impossible to get a browser in that doesn't filter out behaviours that have been used to deliver ads

Creatives can and have adapted their strategies away from what is a very specific form of ads: the disruptive full screen ads, or banner ads. That's only one form of advertising that everyone utterly detests. Sponsored content is much more popular with the end users, and much more effective as well because its way less disruptive. Some people hate that, but overall the tradeoff is significantly better

We shouldn't confuse a single type of widely blocked advert with all advertising being blocked. Banner ads have very poor efficacy at delivering sales anyway

[WarmWash]

>The problem is that the ad vendors couldn't keep it in their pants.

You might not know, many people don't, that ad vendors came to the table little over a decade ago to make a truce with Ad Block Plus. ABP and advendors both saw that an "ad supported internet" was unsupported with no ads. So ABP was looking to set terms for what would be deemed as acceptable ads. Creators/service providers get incentive, users get manageable ads.

It didn't matter though because users rioted and uBlock (then uBlock Origin) became king. No compromises there. I mean, what fucking idiot would take some ads when they could take no ads, right?

Even less known is that Google trailed a program where you could pay them directly and they would remove ads from your browsing. This program was about as popular as shit on stick, because again, what fucking idiot would pay for no ads when they simply block all ads for free, right?

There have also been attempts like Brave, where crypto could be used as a micropayment in lieu of ads. But that has also gone nowhere, even if it does have a few snags around centralization.

What I have never seen though, and have zero examples of, is internet users trying to reconcile the situation. It's just a relentless entitlement to free everything, with a small fraction sometimes subscribing, and an even smaller fraction sometimes donating. The users are unquestionably the biggest assholes in this situation. They won't even acknowledge they have a problem.

[20k]

>You might not know, many people don't, that ad vendors came to the table little over a decade ago to make a truce with Ad Block Plus. ABP and advendors both saw that an "ad supported internet" was unsupported with no ads. So ABP was looking to set terms for what would be deemed as acceptable ads. Creators/service providers get incentive, users get manageable ads.

I'm very aware of this, most ad vendors did not come to a truce with ad-block plus. ABP tried to position itself as the gatekeeper of what ads users were allowed to use (a hugely financially beneficial position for them), and immediately ended up letting through a bunch of terrible ads

It was a nice idea, but it was never going to work. There was simply too much money for the advertisers to make to allow abp to be the gatekeeper of ad content

The nature of ads has gotten significantly more invasive over time, and blocking ads today is a mandatory part of security. Ad companies *do not* have a god given right to track you, or infect your PC with malware

Users rioted because ABP did a terrible job at managing the situation

>What I have never seen though, and have zero examples of, is internet users trying to reconcile the situation. It's just a relentless entitlement to free everything, with a small fraction sometimes subscribing, and an even smaller fraction sometimes donating. The users are unquestionably the biggest assholes in this situation. They won't even acknowledge they have a problem.

As I mentioned in the comment you replied to, there are lots of alternative forms of advertising that users have not revolted against to anywhere near the same degree, eg sponsored content segments in youtube videos

[omnimus]

So what's your point? AI is justified because users use ad blockers?

The whole situation including the ad system of the internet is made by the same corporations. All of it. They didn't even want paywalled content on the internet because this way they don't have to tell people how much stuff costs and how much it makes. Facebook famously makes so much money on it's users that at some point they were considering paying them.

There shouldn't be any mercy with the mega companies. On the other hand every single person that's being taken advantage now (like anybody whos ever posted anything) should be defended because copyright has failed them.

[u_fucking_dork]

People usually point at the scale when this discussion comes up, in my experience. These companies are doing something at a huge scale spending tons of money to do it so the potential harm is greater.

People can easily justify their own piracy because it’s small scale. Even when they organize, create a whole software and tooling ecosystem around pirating media to stick into jellyfin or plex. AI still did it bigger and worse and is bad, what I’m doing is not so bad because I wasn’t going to buy the movie anyway, etc.

[52-6F-62]

Don't forget that the money being spent to do said scraping has, in great sums, come from subsidies paid by taxes from public coffers.

[WarmWash]

On the whole, about 35% of internet users are ad-blocking. In the tech space it's upwards of 70%.

It's in no way, shape, or form "small scale", and has fundamentally changed the the very nature of the internet for the worse (opinions/views of ad blocking people don't matter).

[onedognight]

Choosing not to look at something is not denying anyone anything.

[WarmWash]

Choosing not to look at an ad, and blocking it are different things. One is totally ok, the other incurs a monetary loss on the creator. Those services aren't free to run, and the content doesn't take zero time to create. It also incentivizes creating content focused on those who cannot figure out ad blocking.

[vharuck]

I use ad blockers on my personal computer and phone to avoid tracking. My work computer doesn't have a blocker, but I only visit "professional" sites and major blog aggregators on it, so those ads aren't egregious. Ad blockers wouldn't have become a thing of it weren't for ads causing terrible layout, poor performance, and annoying interruptions when playing sound. Not every website does it, but the ones that do have poisoned the well.

[zetanor]

I am in favor of severely limiting both copyright and advertising, but for the benefit of everyone, not just for the benefit of a few "AI" companies.

[omnimus]

And you will not get it. As the AI pump money into lawyers and politicians - they will be the ones profiting from copyright. Total regulatory capture as US AI companies make it illegal to train AI on their output.

[WarmWash]

The answer is to simply pay for stuff.

There is no viable model where "have stuff but not pay for it" works out.

[theamk]

Remember early internet? The time when it actually cost non-trivial amount of money to post stuff on the web, and there was no expectation that webpage authors would get any money back?

This worked pretty well. Websites were hobby - one might spend their money buying comic books, and someone else might spend the money making and hosting their website.

[theamk]

There is more to life than money.

Many of the websites I read do not collect any appreciable amount of money from ads, or have no ads at all (one example: news.ycombinator.com :) ). They want a recognition, or to share the knowledge, or community, or they are building their brand... And AI is destroying this all - the first result of "zx80" is an AI overview with a link to wikipedia and some youtube videos. If person stops there , they will never get to computinghistory.org.uk link, and won't see any related information about the variants and models.

[WarmWash]

This website is an ad for Ycombinator. It's in no way, shape, or form a charity place for devs to hang out. It's a feeding ground to lure tech people into a mega VCs pastures.

When you click "news.ycombinator.com" you are clicking on the ad.

:)

[BoneShard]

If all ads were like that, I would't have an ad blocker.

[mixmastamyk]

Interesting. I suppose the main difference is that we’re ants compared to an 800 pound gorilla.