Let me rephrase that "So a not yet profitable site is going to spend 10% of a new form of marketing. Very not happy I'm not an investor in that company" :)
In theory, if they can get enough people to stop blocking reddit ads, it might actually increase ad revenues. I guess we'll see if that actually works.
IMHO, the type of person who installs adblock isn't the type of person you can sell things to easily. They're decidedly anti-mainstream, anti-corporate, probably not particularly rich, etc.
So it's not just a matter of convincing their userbase to stop blocking ads, you'd need to tell their current userbase to go away, and invite a better userbase to come and click on ads.
Reddit created this problem by fostering a culture of anti advertising early on.
Reddit should probably just become some non-profit foundation like wikipedia and show begging adverts.
> IMHO, the type of person who installs adblock isn't the type of person you can sell things to easily. They're decidedly anti-mainstream, anti-corporate, probably not particularly rich, etc.
[citation needed]
Could just be that the people installing AdBlock don't like being distracted by multitudes of flashing popover and automatically playing videos. I doubt it's anything to do with being anti-mainstream or anti-corporate.
They should focus their efforts on redditgifts (http://redditgifts.com/) and consider putting it on the main site instead of on a separate domain. Their users may not like to buy mainstream products but they definitely like to buy quirky, off-the-wall things as evidenced by `Shut Up And Take My Money`'s success with advertising on Reddit. They've already got the right idea with the marketplace model. They should (if they're not already) focus on trying to attract unique products through a program similar to Steam's Greenlight and stop focusing so much on advertising. Advertising and Redditors -- generally speaking -- are not a good match.
While you are responding to a poorly-defended stereotype/generalization, I actually think your anecdote is worse: the userbase of this website is, on the whole, going to be almost entirely "rich"; even if 99% of Adblock users are "poor", if you thereby polled Adblock users here you would not be able to discover this phenomenon due to the pre-selection.
By definition, not-for-profit companies don't make a profit. If your company's expenses are always as high as its revenues, then the company can survive forever. So I don't see what your point is.
At least in the US, non-profits may make a profit, it's just that they can't have owners who receive the profits (or managers/insiders who receive undue compensation). Any profits must remain within the organization and dedicated to its mission.
(Although "non-profit" is the common name, in this sense it's better to think of it as shorthand for "not for profit", meaning that achieving financial profits for its owners/insiders is not its legal purpose.)
Same in France, non-profits are allowed to make profit but you can’t plan it (you’re supposed to plan that you’ll spend as much money as you receive but it doesn’t always happen) and you can’t give it to your people. (source: I run a non-profit)
They might be onto something. I guess many users consider Reddit a trustworthy and ethical company.
Such a move only strengthens this image. This in turn makes their users very faithful (as long as they
manage to live up their image) If they manage to (directly or indirectly) sell a no-bullshit product/service that appeals to their users then they are going to be a very successful company.
(What's more, trust is a "resource" potential competitors can not easily imitate)
Sure, they haven't really found anything yet but building up trust will capitalize if the right product/service is found.
If there really exists is no such product then our whole society would have quite some serious flaws ...
You can see "gilded" comments in real time. Gilded is when one user gives a month of reddit gold to another user (it doesn't include people buying it for themselves).
They have a "gold goal" progress meter at the bottom of the homepage sidebar. I assume this is approximately "amount of gold purchases needed to keep us from losing money today" -- it's usually above 80%; yesterday it was 107%.
Obviously, if it were profitable then revenues would have to be substantial - above total operating costs. Any percentage of that would be a massive expenditure.
Whereas if it is not yet profitable, then revenue could be tiny - i.e. you might be 'vetoing' (with your comment) a $50 expenditure that serves to generate huge amounts of free advertising and goodwill for Reddit.
Frankly with this level of analysis, it would surprise me greatly to learn that you have any money remaining to invest.
Probably not ideal given it's financial situation, but the userbase may respond positively, and that could have a proportionate benefit that outweighs the negative.
I'm always suspicious of people proudly announcing that they're giving something to charity. We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of their money for the public good: taxes. As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good.
Why, then, is it laudable if an org decides to give to charity instead of paying taxes? This takes the decision of how to spend for the public good away from the public and instead the company decides. Is it because in practice we distrust the government and our decision-making procedures too much and we trust private companies more?
> We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of their money for the public good: taxes.
Yes, but without any personal discretion or choice. For example, I personally think a woman's access to birth control and abortion is an essential right, but because this is by no means a popular viewpoint, I donate directly to charities that support my views.
Taxes aren't a way to support specific, desirable public goals, they only maintain the status quo. If your view had merit, Bill Gates would try to pay taxes to encourage redesign of condoms to improve Third World family planning outcomes (one of Gates' current projects). But Gates knows this won't work -- as far as a vocal minority of American are concerned, family planning is the work of the devil.
> As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good.
You have a distorted idea of democracy. Democracy is not a centralized decision-making process in which various views are amalgamated into a single choice of action for all. Not to oversimplify, but democracy respects the rights of individuals and diverse groups to act in a way that doesn't interfere with any other group's similar rights. On this basis, private charity accurately represents democracy much better than centralized taxation does.
Ironically, it would have been more on the nose for you to briefly empathize with a different position on birth control for the sake of this argument.
There is a very small minority (even among Catholics) that believe that birth control is immoral, let alone that government should impose that moral view. Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select states or counties, for banning birth control.
So what's the issue? One of them is that there are cases before the Supreme Court, including one involving Hobby Lobby, regarding whether private businesses should be forced to pay for birth control (by means of tax penalties) over moral objections. The "vocal minority" in question is struggling to maintain their freedom of personal discretion in this respect.
In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.
> Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select states or counties, for banning birth control.
If you live in the U.S., you're out of touch with popular opinion. The majority are in favor of birth control, but there is certainly popular opposition to birth control.
> In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.
That's absurd and a troll. Obviously anyone who speaks in favor of free speech would have to receive the same reply from you, on the ground that free speech is by definition a tolerance for unpopular views.
To be clear, according to Gallup [1], over 85% of American Catholics have no issue with birth control. Not that this is solely a Catholic thing, but it's an illustrative example.
Even in the link you provided, there is nobody protesting legal birth control. They are protesting being forced to pay for other peoples' birth control. If birth control was an out-of-pocket expense, there would be no issue here.
I was simply trying to point out that the government is willing to put people out of business and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate free birth control.
You seem concerned that the government could trample over your conscience as well, and we should all be concerned about that, but it's ironic that you chose this particular issue as an example, considering current events.
> Even in the link you provided, there is nobody protesting legal birth control.
Transparently false -- the people in the story are protesting legal birth control.
> They are protesting being forced to pay for other peoples' birth control.
That's this week's explanation. These people are against birth control, and they con't care what form it takes.
> I was simply trying to point out that the government is willing to put people out of business and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate free birth control.
Yes, just the same way the government put people out of business and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate an end to slavery. You very clearly have no idea what you sound like.
> Is it because in practice we distrust the government and our decision-making procedures too much and we trust private companies more?
It's because it's much easier to stop visiting reddit than to move to another country.
Failure to pay taxes is punishable by prison time. Failure to support the local arboretum probably shouldn't be. If you really have a problem with where taxes are going (either moral or practical), you can't opt out unless you move.
With private giving, you can keep your freedom of conscience and have a democratic say (by voting with your feet and dollar) that is more granular. On a ballot you vote for the democrat or the republican. With charitable giving, you can vote for AIDS prevention, AIDS treatment, or research for an AIDS cure. Or all three. Or you can decide heart disease is a bigger problem and put your resources there.
I have a serious problem with this form of philanthropy, and in its mroe extreme form this libertarian desire to replace tax with voluntary donations to 'charity', and it is quite simple.
It basically implements a system of 'one dollar, one vote'. This gives more power to those with money than those without and therefore creates the perfect framework for sort of positive feedback which allows the rich to kep getting richer and the poor poorer.
As long as private profit, or more specifically private ownership of the means of production (that which allows some to get rich from others labour) then I have more faith in the state than private interests to determine the allocation of resources. This doesn't preclude a critique of the form or functioning of democracy within state, which I think is crucial.
> It basically implements a system of 'one dollar, one vote'.
...except for the fact that many organizations need labor donations more than they need monetary ones.
And if donating to an organization literally makes the doner wealthier, it's not really a charity, no matter what its tax-exempt status is.
And besides, it's been getting much worse for the poor recently despite ever-growing government expenditures in social welfare programs, especially if you factor in well-meaning market distortions like the nationalization of the student loan industry.
Taxes mostly go towards the welfare state. This is only an effective use of your money if you believe imaginary lines on a map make some people's quality of life more important than others.
"Disprovable" in the sense that's how it looks on paper, but like you may know the USA "Department of Health and Human Services" is extremely corrupted and most of it is wasted thanks to an overpriced health system. Many European countries suffer as well from corruption in this area but USA levels of corruption are still unmatched (http://epianalysis.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/usversuseurope/)
> supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good
Even if they were working (which they're clearly not), just because 51% of people want to fund wars for egotainment, the kiddie-porn collecting NSA, and the rest of the American Empire outreach program does not mean that it is just to require everyone do so.
(also: alright Reddit Incorporated, put your money where your mouth is and let Wikileaks be an option to vote for)
Philosophically, I disagree: taxes are for the public necessity, not the public good. Roadways, fire/police, civil governance = necessity.
Granted, there is a lot of grey area. But the phrase "public good" means different things to different people. For those grey areas, private donations have been important. (see Planned Parenthood, the NRA, etc.)
Right... that's not going to trick us into advertising on Reddit again, which is one of the biggest wastes of ad dollars out there. You couldn't sell Makeup to the /r/makeup forum. They just don't click on ads, let alone buy anything. We joked about how you're probably better off advertising on a gay porn blog. I actually tried it. And I got more sales than on Reddit. I've tried 3 separate times and all three were wastes, I've read articles about others trying and they found it to be a waste as well.
They're doing this to try to get their (often stereotyped as snarky and condescending) users to click on ads for the "good of the world". It won't matter because their audience's clicks don't convert into sales.
I sometimes browse the frontpage of reddit and I feel like the best way to advertise there is by making "real" submissions.
I've seen quite a lot of highly upvoted submissions like "look what my girlfriend got me!" linking to a picture of some "geeky" product. Maybe I'm a bit cynical but I can't help thinking 80% of them are just marketing in disguise.
Also, you don't even have to pay to submit those stories. I'm not sure how reddit could solve this problem.
You may not like ads but they heavily subsidize great content. In fact, the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300 (and that's if all their existing subscribers could even afford it).
Alexander Hamilton (newspaper owner, secretary of the treasury, founder of the Bank of New York) said:
"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."
The fact is people dramatically underestimate what it costs to produce high quality content and that as a rule you'd need to spend much more than you'd expect to have access to it.
Advertising has essentially made information free or cheap for the user for a long time. Just because you think ads are ugly and annoying doesn't change this fundamental reality.
Yes I totally got that when Newsweek published an article called "In defense of Goldman Sachs" came out the day after their 2009 bonuses were made public. Of course there was nothing in the world to defend GS (or Newsweek for the matter who got sold for 1 USD a couple of weeks later IIRC).
I killed my subscription the next day.
I guess if GS wasn't sponsoring, the article would never have appeared or made frontpage, but it did.
The current "advertising model" leaves most newspapers open to foreign interests which go against press freedom almost all the time. That's why WikiLeaks published more interesting content in 5 years and made more scoops than the entire western press in ~ 30 years or so.
In this new Digital Age, the Press needs to find a new model - which mind you, I don't have a clue what exactly should be, since advertisement is what GENERALLY makes the world go round - or face extinction.
"In this new Digital Age, the Press needs to find a new model"
It did. In this digital age, small time publishers and blogs can now have an audience thanks to advertisers. If they're popular and providing great content they will, at minimum, make enough to cover the cost of hosting. They have a potential viewership of 6 billion people. Without advertisers, this just wouldn't exist. The internet would be different at the fundamental level.
Most people severely underestimate what advertisers bring to the table in terms of enabling content producers.
That's nothing, that's like microwave heated food.
In Greece you can buy newspapers (paper or digital). You'll see ads from banks, drinks and state-owned organizations (Lottery games, etc.). So basically they are financed from the very same people they should be exposing, that's why in 40 years of bank-state back-channeling and corruption no one has ever been seriously exposed. Not to mention that freedom press in Greece 84th between Togo and Kosovo. Note that USA is 32 and UK is 29, not exactly freedom champions. It's not because they kill journalists, they fire them :-)
This fact is why newspapers are dead, and online content continues to blossom. In the information age, there's absolutely no excuse for the content they produce to cost $1500/year per subscription.
In fact, that's where we hit the real problem: the kind of content that is covered with advertisements is usually not very good content to begin with.
This is especially true of content aggregators and meta sites such as Reddit and to some extent, this website. The content isn't even theirs: they are simply hosting a discussion forum about the content. A new-agey one instead of the old BB sites, but it's nonetheless exactly the same.
What content providers should be learning is that people are willing to pay for good content. Quality absolutely matters. The 90s and 00s were all about quantity, but now we're up to the rafters with disposable content. Look at the shows with the best ratings today: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad. Exceptional content quality, heavily pirated because the content creators have failed to adapt to new media distribution. The fact that I can torrent GoT more easily than I can view it from HBO is tragic.
There absolutely is a reason why it's expensive. In fact, I could easily make a case that as a society we'd be better off if more money was invested in creating quality content.
Believe it or not, the subscription costs usually only cover the delivery and printing fees. Historically, subscription revenue has never been a real profit center because it's always been the best interest of a publication to build a larger circulation to increase ad rates.
Now, the internet has brought certain efficiencies to what it costs to distribute content. But it hasn't necessarily impacted what it costs to create quality content. With ad rates being lower online than they are in really any other medium, ad revenue isn't supporting the creation of quality content like it used to.
While Game of Thrones exists on a no commercial network, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and many more of your favorite cable television shows rely on both ad revenue and subscription revenue to exist. HBO has a cost north of $15 per month depending on your cable network, whereas AMC (which runs commercials) costs about 27 cents in your bundled cable package which is about 2% of the cost of HBO. That's a colossal difference and yes, advertisers, are subsidizing that dramatic cost differential.
I'm trying to learn more about this issue. Could you elaborate on the evidence for people willing to pay for good content? I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.
I also don't understand why Game of Thrones supports your argument. Of course the shows that are pirated the most will be the ones that are (1) popular and (2) expensive or hard to access. And of course if those shows were cheaper they'd be pirated less. But I don't see how that relates to the idea that people are willing to pay for good content. My roommates pirate GoT, but I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.
I have a Netflix connection and I am in Finland. 98% of the time, when I search for a movie/documentary/series on Netflix, it's unavailable for streaming (mostly because the content for Netflix Finland is far less than that for US). Then, I have to head over to PirateBay to get the stuff. It's the fastest way. I could order a DVD from Amazon UK or Germany, but then it would take at least a week.
As long as content producers and distributors fail to find a faster way to distribute their offerings, I think piracy will continue and grow.
Startup idea: A for pay private tracker with deals with the media industry.
You could track seeds, peers, etc, and pay the media companies a license per peer (whatever). Could probably get a good picture of piracy of each piece of content as well.
Oh man. I'd pay $20 an episode if they had readily available. Even $50 if it had subtitles. I hate waiting, even a hour to download and crossing my fingers the quality is good.
> I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.
You now know of me. I spend around $50/month downloading content from Amazon, be it music or tv. I would buy Game of Thrones as it came out if I could, but I can't.
Absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence. Especially if you've done no investigation.
>I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.
$5 might be a bit steep for some, $2-3 is just about perfect. But honestly I'd still pay $5 for content created at this level, if not just to encourage the people creating this quality of content to keep doing it.
Your skepticism is powered by your lack of knowledge and research. Do the work, then come back and comment.
Actually, this is an issue I'm trying to research and understand better which is why I asked you my questions. Sorry if I offended you.
One thing I did try to find before asking you was data on the size of the a la carte TV/movie market. Anecdotally I know no one who buys TV shows (probably because I'm poor and tech savvy), but I thought I might be able to find comprehensive data to change my beliefs. Unfortunately my Google Fu was not good enough to find anything. I thought you might have a source you could share with me.
(To be honest, I think your response was rude and I feel a little hurt. But it's ok.)
Edit: In hindsight, some of the fault was mine. Of course there are people willing to pay at every price (that is the idea behind a demand curve). I guess what I'm really getting at is what are the best estimates of the shape of the demand curve. Would HBO make more money if they made GoT more accessible/cheaper? Is there evidence that a $2-$3 price point would be better than $5 price point? What are the price elasticities of demand? I guess I kind of wrapped up those more subtle questions into the question of people being willing to pay for content.
Game of Thrones is available on both iTunes and Amazon Instant Video for $2.99 SD / $3.99 HD per episode. I'm not sure if that counts as "failing to adapt to new media distribution".
> the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300
The fact that this model works well on dead-tree newspapers, does not mean that it should be copied on the internet. We have tools to customize how sites are displayed, ads shouldn't be a sacred exception.
> You may not like ads but they heavily subsidize great content. In fact, the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300 (and that's if all their existing subscribers could even afford it).
???
You are off by a factor of 3, given that you're assuming no elasticity of demand.
In the last quarter, the New York Times obtained 46.8% of revenues from circulation, 47.8% from advertising, and 5.4% from other.
Once upon a time, newspapers had more advertising revenue. But today, they're already well on their way to a world of digital nickels, where they have to get their bulk of revenues from subscribers.
I seriously question the figures you've stated, but either way, it's not comparable to this situation.
Reddit doesn't create content. Reddit is a content aggregation service just like HN. You could probably make the argument that some subreddits generate content, which I would not disagree with, but Reddit doesn't pay for that content creation.
Also, plenty of blogs aren't ad supported, or aren't primarily ad supported. I can't remember the last time I visited a "popular" blog and they didn't have an ebook or some other form of merchandise for sale.
It seems to me that those that are most reliant on advertisements are those that house communities or just regurgitate content from other sources. If those sites all died tomorrow, I probably wouldn't care. (That includes HN and Reddit).
"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."
This doesn't make sense. My understanding is that newspapers weren't primarily ad-supported until the 1920s, when new technologies enabled nationwide economies of scale for both newspapers and ad buyers. Is this not correct?
Newspapers were largely ad driven since their "modern day" inception in the early 1700's.
I'm going to need to write a blog post about this since I'm seeing so much confusion about how we got where we are and why we've ended up with ad models we have. It may take me a month or two to get to, but I think this community would benefit greatly from it.
The thing is there are people who won't click on ads no matter what. So in case it is pay-per-click showing ads will accomplish nothing. In case of pay-per-view it is just a waste of you and advertisers money. Maybe they are ok with that, but I am not obliged to help.
I agree. I do not need my mind polluted with artificial wants for products I don't need. It's not my capitalist duty to watch ads. Website owners, if you're pissed off about me aggressively blocking ads, then make it easy for me to give you money. Don't try to subvert my adblock, because I'm just gonna go away. Don't lecture me about adblock without giving me an option to pay (DuckDuckGo, I'm still waiting on a response for that email on how to send you money instead of watching your ads).
I hope that if bitcoin (or any other crypto) takes off, then it really will be easy. Bitcoin works the way money on the internet should have always worked: easy, between individuals, nobody else's business but the people who are actually doing business. :-)
Do you have a citation for that? Is it true that if you make methods of payment accessible to anyone, including people who don't have credit cards, people would still prefer to sit through ads than to pay the lost revenue from that unwatched ad? If I could instantly whisk away a penny for each ad I don't watch or whatever, I imagine this might be more popular.
Look at the number of projects that ask for donations (that are actually useful) that get little to no money from its users. It's pretty well known that the majority of people will not donate if they don't need to (I've been a part of a few).
I'm fine with you using Adblock. I just don't want to hear complaining when companies go out of business and jobs are lost (which is happening right now due to this) or we end up with a few corporations supplying all of the content.
This does nothing but make it so small and independent websites can't make a living anymore and large corporations rule with content. It's the same with piracy. They can take the hit, the small companies can't.
All because you can't be bothered by seeing an advertisement .
> All because you can't be bothered by seeing an advertisement .
Let's step back a little and think of how me looking at advertisements is supposed to be fueling the economy.
When I look at ads, I'm supposed to be given an incentive to buy something. I look at an ad in order to create a need in me that didn't exist before I viewed that ad. By creating that need, I'm supposed to go out and buy something I didn't want in the first place. What I wanted in the first place was to view something on some website, not to go out and give someone else money.
So, let's cut the middleman advertiser. I don't want to be given artificial needs and give someone else money. I want to give the original person money.
To me it is kind of like waiters and tip being an expected part of their wage. Instead they should just have a real salary and a tip is something outside of the norm for exceptional service.
Just owning a website doesn't mean you are entitled to make ad revenue. If your website can't generate money in any other way then your business model should probably be changed. Make it easy to accept donations for exceptional quality for people who are willing to donate.
I'm not sure I understand your reasoning. Assuming they run a profitable business, telling them that they should change their business model because you don't like ads is like arguing that Nike should charge less because their shoes don't cost $90 to manufacture. You can argue until you are blue in the face about why something shouldn't be the way it is, but it won't change the fact that despite your pleas to the contrary (and perhaps intuition), that IS the way it is.
My reasoning is that people can easily disable ads and there is no way for them to stop people. To rely on something that is at the control of the end user is just going to be bad for their business in the long run.
Reddit is one of very few websites I unblock from Adblock because they aren't annoying, intrusive, obnoxious, or otherwise a pain in the ass. If you can do it out of the way, keep it classy, and not tag me like a wild animal to be tracked, Im fine.
It should be noted that Reddit also loses a large amount of money each year. Reddit has never not lost money.
Reddit is not an example of a successful ad solution because their ads are so out of the way and "classy" that they don't even bring in enough revenue to come close to covering their costs.
It still remains to be seen if reddit can ever build a sustainable business.
Do you contribute to those websites in other ways? Reddit now allows the purchase of Reddit Gold. OkCupid allows you to pay $5 to never see ads again. Wikipedia periodically asks for donations. I wonder if those options will proliferate in the future.
At the risk of getting off-topic... are you confident that your opinion isn't just justifying your own selfishness? (sincerely curious, not meaning to offend/attack)
I could imagine the same logic applying to someone who shoplifts, which is hopefully clearly wrong. E.g., "I prefer to support future-viable business models, and stores that allow shoplifting are not future-viable. I'm just trying to help the world reach a better equilibrium sooner by imposing extra costs on non-future-viable businesses."
What do you think is the main distinction between your position and the hypothetical shoplifter?
Avoiding the hyperbole and answering the heart of your question:
No, I honestly don't believe that centralized content silos are a good thing for anybody besides their owners who are hoping to become the new gatekeeper communications middlemen.
Your shoplifting analogy would only be appropriate I were saying that I run Adblock to make anti-Adblock technology stronger. The problem is not that centralized websites allow the possibility of "freeloaders", it's that in addition to being expensive, the centralization itself has harmful effects on expression, culture, and self-determination.
Just look at something like Youtube - you have content restrictions (no "porn", etc), internationalized lowest-common-denominator copyright restrictions, public pressure to hide majority-objectionable content from searches, length restrictions, extrajudicial takedowns from an algorithm rejecting a video with no legal judgment, an unchangeable UI, a UI that changes when you don't want it to, terrible search, nagging of asking for signups/G+ account linking/etc, no ability to easily download videos for later viewing or posterity's sake, limitations on video quality, and I'm sure a whole host of other features that I cannot even fathom because they're impossible to experiment with.
A market of many centralized providers will indeed correct some of these things with time, but there's always going to be details that competition will never fix, especially while battling the inherent non-linear network effects.
As another straightforward example, take something as benevolent [1] as Wikipedia. The main thing they need these massive donations for are because they distribute content by fulfilling every individual request, using a massive number of servers.
Imagine a different system instead using current technology - Wikipedia could instead publish a magnet link in DNS, which interested clients would periodically refresh and restart the torrent. If Wikipedia was not a popular site, their initial seed would be enough to handle the load of casually-interested people who retrieve what they want and close the torrent. But as they get popular, people incidentally contribute to helping them host by re-serving content.
Current torrent clients of course have limitations that would make this annoying and/or not scalable across sites. But this is merely a straightforward example meant to wet your whistle.
[1] Since their editing process is centralized as well, we can certainly question whether it's universally benevolent. But for this example, let's keep our focus on their publishing method - of course similar things can go on on the content-production side. There should really be no need for me to be submitting this comment only to news.ycombinator.com, supposedly agreeing to their terms, hoping they indefinitely rehost what I have to say, suffering the annoying dead-continuation bug on long posts, etc
The "centralized content silos" are side effects of the copyright system, which exists to ensure distribution of IP generation costs across the people who consume it.
Wikipedia doesn't care as much about this because most of the content is an aggregate of the Wikipedia community. Wikipedia's costs lay in distributing the information, not in generating content.
For most content companies that have IP generation costs, how do you propose that they distribute the costs?
Torrenting only solves the distribution cost problem.
The sheer majority of centralized services operate on content generated and submitted by users simply looking to express themselves and communicate with others, and do not reimburse them. I explicitly used Wikipedia because it's a very pointed result of specifically how much money is required solely due to terrible technology.
As for the funding of big budget films and the like, I'm not terribly worried. First, they have an awful lot of fat to trim, like all those lawyers and lobbyists they hire in an attempt to put the Internet genie back in the bottle, and that whole parallel management chain of Orwellian-named "producers".
But more importantly, we're already in a post-copyright world on that front. You accept that any information can be freely propagated, and that is just a new rule of the game, and you move on. You sell things like the experience of going to a movie theatre, concert venue, and physical merchandise. You explicitly appeal for fans to directly support you, and you take preorders instead of doing big-money gambles. Things about this model aren't ideal, but it's just how it is going to be.
While there is a large quantity of user-generated IP out there, it is not the majority of what is being torrented, nor do the content holders of user-generated content have any generation cost.
Also, the lobbying, legal fees, and other "fat" costs that you allude to are necessary for larger organizations to survive, less they become subject to rent-seeking by their competition, who do participate in the agency behavior. Even if Adobe were to never spend a dime on lawyers or lobbyists again, would they no longer have to pay software engineers too?
Again, for most content companies that have IP generation costs, how do you propose that they distribute the costs?
How does torrenting help solve the problem with the IP generation cost, considering you are claiming it's the future?
You're harping on a completely different subject from what I was talking about, and while I also have a strong opinion on it, you're attempting to muddle the two into one general ball of "ownership is the only option" without looking at the details of each one.
Alas, I directly answered your question in my last paragraph, by telling you how to figure out how to distribute exotic-bit-combination "generation costs":
> You accept that any information can be freely propagated, and that is just a new rule of the game, and you move on... Things about this model aren't ideal, but it's just how it is going to be.
In Adobe's case, they can strongarm prominent obviously-using businesses with some reduced notion of commercial copyright (as every software vendor has basically been doing for the past decade), set up support contracts that give access to prerelease features (currently works well for smaller, more expensive niches), or (as they're starting to do) further lock down their software by moving to a server-side model and buy time until a Free competitor gets good enough to overrule their inconvenience. If they were just starting off, asking for donations would also work, but clearly at this point they have way too much overhead for that.
Also note that if their product is deprecated by something else, then under the current regime it is considered appropriate that their costs are never recovered. Conversely, at some point their costs have been completely recovered yet they keep right on seeking rent.
For what it's worth, I've run adblock since before web ads even became prominent, and installing it is my first step on any web browser. So I've never believed in or consented to the idea that viewing ads is somehow an integral or reciprocal part of viewing a website. I was actually surprised when I eventually learned that banner ads had come to be seen as a respectable business model. To me, setting up a server and publishing content is borne out of some intrinsic motivation (publishing something interesting, expressing an opinion, informing about a business, personal hobby, etc), and those who systematically pollute the information environment in hopes of making money are the parasites of the system.
I agree. But it also takes people willing to put their money where their mouth is to do that.
The notion of "free" has spoiled a lot of folks online and made it a tough sell. I run a site that is entirely reader supported, but statistically it's very unlikely you'd just sign up and join, even though you believe ad revenue needs to die.
It's especially tough to do on sites built on user-generated content, because someone could just start a new one that's free and they'd lose their audience.
I hope we can make tipping website owners easier, for those of us adamant about adblocking. Using my credit card to give a small tip to every website I enjoy is uncomfortable. Sending money to anyone on the internet (no international region locking, no international laws) is what I really want to do with bitcoins.
We strongly considered doing this - especially since most of our writers are in foreign countries - but so far not a single writer has expressed interest and no one from the bitcoin community we reached out to showed much interest.
If you know anyone who would help kick this off/make it worth while, I would love to talk more.
I agree but Flattr does provide an interesting approach. With them you set aside a set amount per month you want to donate. Then when you tip a site it gets a proportion of that amount based on the number of tips you made in the month. This way you cap your total spend per month. You could do this manually of course. Maybe sites could start a system of including a bitcoin address in a file at a common location in the URL space.
Dogecoin is doing a good job positioning itself as the internet tipping currency, as far as I know there isn't a dead-simple way of doing it yet though.
> Ad revenue needs to die as a business model for websites.
What other business model do you prefer? Would you prefer that websites collect massive amounts of information about you, datamine it, and sell it to third parties? Or should reddit users have to pay a monthly fee to look at shitty maymays?
That's very shortsighted and sounds very elitist. Do you also steal from brick & mortars that don't have business models or store layouts that are agreeable to you?
Why not? The site owner is saying, "Here, I made this cool thing. You can use it in exchange for $THING." Do you think it's fair to use it and then refuse to give him $THING? How is that any better than your employer deciding not to pay you the agreed-upon wage for the work you do?
> The site owner is saying, "Here, I made this cool thing. You can use it in exchange for $THING."
Name one popular website that explicitly states you can browse their website ONLY if you look at ads.
The notion that your users will look at ads isn't an obligation; it's an expectation. In contrast, wages are a contractually-bound obligation. It's not morally wrong to refuse to live up to someone's expectations.
If you owned a website, would you refuse to serve anyone browsing with Lynx? They sure aren't going to be looking at any ads.
But it's kind of a dick move to take something from somebody knowing full well that they expect something in return and then deliberately refuse to reciprocate.
Sure, if you're using Lynx, you really don't have an option. That's fair enough. But in many other cases, it seems disrespectful to me to use somebody's site and tell them, "No, you can't have anything in return for giving me this even though you clearly wanted to." You have the option of doing your part, but you decline to do so. That isn't how I like to treat people I appreciate.
You're right, it is kind of dickish and it is inconsiderate on the user's part. I think we can agree on that. But I don't think it's fair to have such high expectations of your users. This is the internet, where everyone is an asshole and half the incoming traffic to your site will be wordpress logins. All we can do is hope the user is nice and will click on an ad.
Your web server is simply providing data (a bunch of HTML) to anyone who sends an HTTP request for your web page. That's all your server is doing.
It's not telling the client (the browser) "here's a bunch of HTML, but you can only use it if you show ads". There is no contract or agreement to display ads, implied or otherwise.
In the end, all you can do is simply ask the user to display ads. If you want to enforce that the user views ads, the web probably isn't the right medium for your product.
> Your web server is simply providing data (a bunch of HTML) to anyone who sends an HTTP request for your web page. That's all your server is doing.
Exactly, and that costs money. Electricity costs money, servers cost money, webdev costs money. That data that is being sent to you wasn't magically discovered and offered up for free.
Exactly, and that costs money. Electricity costs money, servers cost money, webdev costs money. That data that is being sent to you wasn't magically discovered and offered up for free.
I dunno, jrock.us is free. I subsidize those costs for the readers.
As soon as your point of view requires me to understand an abstract imaginary analogy-based framework, agree with you about the framework's inherent legitimacy, and submit to your interpretation of my obligations under that framework, you've long since lost my attention.
It's like let's play pretend, or story time, and you're telling the story. I stop thinking about the rules as soon as I leave the card table.
Can you explain this? Does it give you satisfaction to sit through unobtrusive ads, and you put up with it because you feel like you're helping the website, or do you sit through ads hoping you'll be peddled something you actually wanted to buy but didn't know until you watched that ad?
I run an office design website that shows new office design projects and discusses office design trends.
Though some readers probably wish there was no advertising, most of our readers want to know what products exist because they are office designers. I try to treat it like a magazine where the ads look nice and generally unobtrusive.
I'm obviously biased because I make my living on advertising.
I somehow assumed that advertisers know that ads are annoying but they want to do it anyway because this is how they make money. Assuming that they don't know what a pain the whole concept is is somehow scarry.
Really? If I buy a car magazine I buy it for the content not for the ads. I assume that there is at least some useful information in the articles and if I want to buy a car, I also go rather for the content in the articles (tests, introductions of new cars with pros and cons) then for the ads which are all pro, hyping and probably also misleading.
Ads are useful to my readers because they don't have unlimited time to research 10,000 types of side chairs for use in their office projects. If they see a chair they like in an ad, they'll meet with a furniture dealer to check it out, and then maybe use it in a future project.
How is that bad?
Many people like advertisements though - just pick up a September issue of Vogue and you'll see over 500 pages of a 900 page magazine filled with ads. And people go out of their way to buy it because they love the ads.
But isn't it you job to have those pictures as part of your content? It's not like the ads have these 10000 types also. They also have only a few. Sometimes an ad even takes 2 pages for one item because they payed more. In the worst case the ad is misleading telling you: "this is the best chair for your because it has XY" and even if you don't belive it in the first place (which is self-evident already. You just don't belive what they tell you because everyone has the same claim of truth. Think about it: we got used to it!) but at the point where you make a decision, maybe far in the future, some subconcious connections that have been manipulated by the ad make you chose the product. This is actually what advertisers aim for. I see it as ethicaly wrong and I'm really sad that you can't see my point of difference between content and avertisment.
@vogue: My girfriend reads those magazines also. But she is always annoyed of the ads and the ad manipulated content. Some of these have at least ads you can take out and throw away, which she does also. She does not read the magazines because of the ads but because of the name of the magazine as well as the content (which is why she stoped reading the german Cosmopolitan for excample. The content became the ad in a way it became unreadable for her).
I've never ever heard somebody say: I buy/watch this product because I like the ads. I really doubt there is a relevant ammount of people who do this...
I don't know in which country you live but the trailers are only a minimal part of the pre-movie show. Most of it is again ads. Ads I don't enjoy at all. Nobody in the cinema does. Thats why people are still talking and not paying attention to what is on screen.
I don't even enjoy the trailers anymore because I've seen them all already on the Internet. I don't need them. Thats why I do something I can't do with a newspaper for example: I come into the room 30minutes later. When the actual product I've payed for is being aired.
This is a luxus I don't have with newspapers, on my company computer surfing the Internet, on the street,... My brain is being attacked by those unwanted information that has been tailored to hook onto certain mechanics within my unconscious mind I can't control. It manipulates me in a way I can't do anything about it.
And it is even worse: they also lie to me. I would never rely on this information because I know there is another player on the same market claiming the same things for their product. Why should I believe them? How should a lie be useful to me? I just can't see it.
I also don't recall a single situation where an ad showed me a new product I've never heard of and was interested in. I just can't. Maybe I'm to informed but I doubt it. I asked my girlfriend. She's not even close to that nerdy as I am. She also never did that. You think that might be an coincidence?
What was your last product you did not hear about before and bought after seeing an ad?
> What was your last product you did not hear about before and bought after seeing an ad?
Probably buy something each week that I saw previously advertised somewhere.
The last thing was probably some pig electric fencing that was advertised in a pig magazine last week.
You're an outlier. Perhaps you're just so determined to be against advertising you can't see the value in it.
Without advertising, how would we know what products exist?
So now it is me just because you seem to be a indifferent consumer with to much money?
I don't know anybody behaving like you described so I can't be an outlier. At least not where I live.
Too bad you decided against continuing the discussion based on the reasons I presented but I guess this is what keeps the show running. Good luck with that.
You can still be an outlier in terms of the population as a whole. With all due respect, perhaps you're in a bubble.
Do you watch American Idol? Do you read celebrity gossip magazines? Do you play bingo or the lottery? Do you watch Fox news? Do you buy a newspaper? Do you click on ads?
Millions and millions of people do all of the above - they are not outliers.
On your previous point "How should a lie be useful to me? I just can't see it.", we have this problem all the time outside of advertising with general information. Look at the average news story on Reddit. It's probably biased, probably a half truth, probably out of context, probably only half the facts of the story. Everything is biased and needs careful inspection before you can take it at face value.
However, there are obvious ways to do this. For example, I "trust" Lego. That means if they advertise a new awesome Batman Lego Arkham Asylum set, I'll know it's going to be quality, and awesome, and I'll buy it. If however it's some new unheard of company, I'd probably want to go examine it in a toy shop before I buy it.
I'm not trying to convince you that advertising is useful, I don't think you'll change your mind. But hopefully you'll see that you're not in a majority, and the majority think advertising is useful.
@millions of people:
I guess it is somehow connected to your example of you buying something advertised every week.
As I said above: my gf reads gossip magazines or consumes crap information and even advertisement but it still doesn't mean that she consumes stuff every week just because she has seen it in some ad.
I see that in the US stuff is different and you are a lot of people that have been educated to consume for generations and it may stack up every day but that may be part of the problem don't you think? There must be a reason why you need that many credit cards...
@reddit:I have the CHOICE to believe the single one news source posted on reddit. Or I go to different ones and try to get a better picture. I may even completely ignore the news post or the whole subreddit.
I may even go to a completely different source altogether if I am really interested in a certain information and never ever see reddit.
I can not avoid advertisement.
@LEGO: Like with politics, your LEGO example shows that you are not the target group of LEGOs advertisement. You are like the voter whos parents and grandparents voted for the same party. You are completely irrelevant. It's clear that you'll buy. You are being really only informed on what to buy and when. You are the optimal client that just need to be fed. In this way, advertisement is really useful for you because you have to consume or you'll feel "hungry".
(Funny that you chose LEGO here because LEGO is a monopolist in his niche. How about Coca Cola and Pepsi?)
But as I said, this is not what ads aim for. They aim for new customers. People who did not buy the product yet. They need to be moved to buy your product and avoid the other one.
This is done particularly through methods that are unethical as I have shown above. They have nothing to do with quality of product or any other of those highly advertised properties that an optimal version of the object in question should have. It's more a stacking up of versions of those properties or even inventing completely new properties (product x makes you more sexy to gender y for example) leading to whole millions worth marketing strategies throughout every kind of media. If they work out, people will happily carry around the product and even display the logo creating even more advertisement. All this has nothing to do with the quality of the product. It may be a good one but it doesn't have to for the marketing to work.
Which leads us back to my initial post describing the whole advertisement industry as unethical up to annoying. And only because you or "people" got used to it, won't make it better. And if somebody who produces this illusion does not know what he really does, it becomes scary.
Ads definitely aim for upselling existing customers.
in the case of coke, they want to sell you coke more often, and when you start becoming health conscious, they want you to consider vitamin water. if you have seen their expensive super bowl or Christmas commercials, they don't focus on the product, its features, or it filling your needs. coke sells its image to validate the refreshing feeling you know.
There are ads that do this. Car commercials mostly. Especially those who don't have any message at all, showing just the product in some surreal environment for example.
But you can't really say that the superbowl commercial was something to support excising customers. I'm sure it scared away a hell lot of customers who were used to the product as far as they can remember. They didn't have to do that. They could have gone for funny or sexy. Everybody likes funny or sexy. This was a attention hammer. Liberals praise CC for being brave. How many switched over because of it? I mean, we are talking about the most expensively aired commercial in US (world?) TV. You don't really believe Coca Cola would invest that much money on that spot only (or mainly) to aim for existing customers (by even scaring a part of them away)?
I have seen all superbowl commercials. I can't remember one that would aim only for existing customers like the ones I've described above.
I also said above that the product or it's quality lost relevance already. Which makes the whole concept of advertising even worse (I said this because the topic was usability of advertisement). Vitamin water, even if it comes from the same company is a different product. You can drink Coca Cola once a week even if you are health conscious just to "reward" yourself but drink the rest of the week a product made by a different company because the whole health-claim of that company seems more true to you. Thats why Coca Cola fights a new fight for NEW customers with a new product.
Sure Coke sells an image. Or better: they jump on an image that is in at the moment. Cokes image isn't the same today as it was 10 years ago. You don't do that if you aim for existing customers because they started buying the product when the image was different. The new image is mainly for new people. If you do this but your competitor don't, you of course keep existing customers but you also gain new customers from your competitors that did not jump on the bandwagon.
Coca Cola did a risky thing here hoping they get more new customers then they lose by the message.
It's more that I might want something. Say if I was at a video game site, an ad for the new Zelda would be welcome. As long as it didn't get in the way.
Also, I kind of wish more sites took the mindset of http://dodiy.org/ but thats kind of a pipe dream.
Lets not forget quiet. There is almost nothing worse in web surfing than hitting a website only to be ambushed by sounds. Forbid you click and link and then hit back, only to hear it yet again.
google, facebook, yahoo and pretty much 99% of the sites who serve more than a 1M pageviews. People who talk like the "grandfather" have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. It seems like a good idea in their head, but that's only because they see it only through their eyes and they have 0 experience in the publishing business.
Not trying to be elitest. I just don't visit reddit. If I did and enjoyed the experience I'd pay for some service such as Reddit gold. Which mind you was my first visit to Reddit to learn what it was.
That's very cool. Allowing the users to have meaningful input will really set them apart. I don't do reddit much, but this is very noble and generous of them!
Yeah, unless the users choose charities that alienate other users. Is your pageview going the planned parenthood or the NRA? Berkshire Hathaway discontinued their shareholder directed charity because some (vocal) people disapproved of the choices: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/jul0303.pdf
Anyway I wish them the best but I hope they know what they're getting into.
They do seem to be thinking about exactly the sorts of problems you are talking about. Not quite clear in the techcrunch blurb, but more explicitly stated in the actual reddit blog post:
I hadn't thought of that before. If charities like Planned Parenthood (apropos the Berkshire Hathaway situation) or the WinShape Foundation (remember the Chick-fil-A incident?) are on the table, there could be controversy.
This is cool, I wonder why they are using part of the ad rev though. Advertisers want to advertise no matter what, like it's _basically_ just a formula for $ <-> traffic. But I'll bet users would be more pumped to buy each other reddit gold if part of that purchase went to charity.
If I want to buy someone Reddit Gold, I can easily spend an extra $2 or whatever I want on donating to cause du jour. Having that bundled into Reddit Gold is useless and actually counter-productive, because if Reddit donates to a cause I disagree with I now actually don't WANT to buy Reddit Gold.
its a good idea, making users supportive of advertising by giving some of it to charity. Now people with adblockers might more inclined to add reddit to whitelist.
Does anyone else feel like this is extremely suspicious (classic misdirection) given the negativity surrounding the moderation of Snowden's latest leak?
Are you serious? Of course it isn't. Not everything is a conspiracy theory, you know. That was to to do with the moderators of /r/news and nothing to do with Reddit itself.
I'm willing to believe both sides of the coin now. Traditionally, I'm not a tin foil hat kinda guy.
I proposed a question that I thought was worth discussing considering the leaked presentation which highlights the psychological theater orchestrated by our government on a regular basis. Admittedly, I'm not nose-deep in all of the Snowden/Reddit drama either.
1. The moderation is very recent news, and something like this isn't banged out in 24 hours. Likely this has been in the works for a while, before news broke of the Snowden moderation.
2. The mods on subreddits like r/news are different people from the admins of Reddit. Obvious bias within the subreddits, but I have little reason to believe that it's a site-wide conspiracy from the admins rather than controversial decision making from subreddit mods.
Not sure if you're joking (I can be tone deaf with text comments), but that's never going to happen. Reddit specifically stated they're only going to open suggestions for 501(c)(3) organizations. Besides, even if they didn't, it'd be hard getting money from an American company into the hands of someone actively being pursued by the American government.
Can someone possibly fill me in on what the latest leak is and why Reddit (Conde Nast) would be involved? The latest leak I've found is the webcam spying that GCHQ has been doing.
Edit: Looks like possibly this story related to the r/news subreddit and not necessarily reddit in general? [1]
Not at all. Further, Reddit forms hiveminds with strongly idiosyncratic opinions that squeeze out other valid views, and it's likely one of these which is going to determine the direction of donations.
I mean advertisement made by people disguised as some kind of post.
It's a risky business though because if they get caught they get masses of anti-advertisement. Though one would say that best advertisement is anti-advertisement.
I've never understood advertising on Reddit. It's basically a very anti-advertising community, who will very likely be hostile to your product/service.
XX (or is it Dos Equis) and Oldspice would beg to differ, and they didn't even advertise there. I've found reddit to be rather accepting of advertising as long as it is done transparently. IAMAs by celebrities every time they star in a new movie aren't treated with hostility - just put the fact that you're in a new film in the submission text.
There have been many HN posts and comments about successful paid ads in specialized communities.
That seems to vary between subreddits. I've encountered a few quite successful ads (with comments from regular visitors to the sub further supporting the product!). /r/sysadmin comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
Well, there you go. When you know the audience, just adjust your advertising to fit. Not that hard. Not every product should be advertised on reddit tho.
This move is so people on Reddit stop using ad blockers, which is clearly effecting their bottom line.
I don't think it will work, since Reddit already uses non-intrusive ads and the majority of people block ads on principal alone.
Users don't want ads (because it's somehow intruding on your space), nobody would be willing to pay for the site, and Reddit gold was seen as class warfare (haves and have nots).
Anything that even seems like Reddit wants to bring in money is shunned immediately by the user base.
Like most anti-capitalist Utopian groups, it's doomed.
Can we infer from this that using ad-block is a form of low intensity class war? I (as an ad-block user) like this idea.
I think that its perhaps a bit of a stretch to call reddit an 'anti-capitalist' group, but for sure the capitalists are failing to find a way to extract profit from it, and this itself really interesting
Like other 'social media' (in the broad sense) enterprises reddit uses the products of users unpaid labour to reach an audience, and it attempts to make a profit from selling this audience to advertisers. Unfortunately for those wanting to profit from reddit, its strong community is resistant to being exploited in this manner. Im not claiming here that all or even most reddit users are 'anti-capitalists', or directly opposed to the profit making of reddit, but simply that there is not (or has not yet ben discovered) a means of adequately monetising its community which doesn't give the effect of taking control from said community, and things like the revolt against reddit gold and the use of ad-block are movements in this struggle over ownership.
I dont, personally, see any resolution to this impasse which maintains both a profit for reddit and the autonomy and control desired by the reddit community, and in this we are in some sort of agreement. The two are irreconcilable. I would choose to back the other horse though.
