[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.