Comment by yaportmax
9 days ago
Controversial but honest question: How do anti-ads people propose the free open internet monetizes itself?
9 days ago
Controversial but honest question: How do anti-ads people propose the free open internet monetizes itself?
I don’t have any proposal because it’s not my problem to solve. I’m no businessman or economist.
The free, open internet keeps chugging along (for better or worse) regardless of how many ads I block. Especially those companies who run ad networks.
Feel free to make a moral judgement on those who block ads, because most everyone who is blocking ads has already made a judgement about online advertising and its surveilling bedfellows.
Easy. No corporate social media networks. Hobbyists run local light social networks (such as forums) again (like they do currently; see Mastodon, Lemmy), with super efficient SSR HTML that is cheap to host.
That doesn’t answer their question, like at all.
Yes it does. Hobbyists are willing to spend their own money, hence their blog doesn't need ads.
Businesses make money by selling products/services, so they don't need money.
Wikipedia is donation supported.
GP is pretty much saying - if it can only survive by running ads, let's do without it.
6 replies →
They don't want it monetized.
They want it to go back to how it was circa the late 90's.
In a lot of ways they're going to get their wish. LLM's via endless spam and replacing google search have basically made monetizing legit and useful content impossible, so I imagine nobody will upload it anymore (except for on youtube which is still monetizable in a meaningful way)
Compared to the past there's basically no incentive to put useful info on the web any more, so it's just not going to happen.
Volunteer basis or charge users. Optional subscriptions keep small webforums alive, like HN would probably be fine with some kind of 10/mo thing. Maybe charge a small fee for new accounts?
For things that need to scale past that like very large social media, the question is if that's worth those sites existing.
First, regarding the idea of charging people to access websites:
This notion is a very Silicon Valley / coastal elite mentality IMO. A significant majority of people on the internet do not and will not pay for anything - largely because most people around the world just don't have the money for stuff like that.
The data on this is pretty consistent - take Netflix for example. A majority of Netflix users choose the cheaper ad supported tier, even though it is very easy and only marginally more expensive to switch to the non-ad supported tier. And this is already filtering to the subset of people who are willing and able to pay for a streaming subscription to begin with. The same case exists for Reddit -> you can pay to have ads removed, but only 1% of users do.
I see what you mean by Hacker News, but it's not a great example, since there are currently no ads and it's free. It's provided by Y Combinator, which monetizes via investing in startups (not something all internet businesses can reliably just start doing). For example - how would Reddit monetize? You cannot really expect people on Reddit all to be willing to pay to use it. And if some were - the whole value of a network is its scale -> so the drop in users would effectively kill the site. That's why there are no subscription only forums out there (at least none that I know of).
With regards to your second point of if these social media sites should even exist in the first place -> that's where you the consumer get to decide. If you don't get value from it, just don't use it. People who do get value from it -> use it. If enough people collectively decide it's not valuable, then the website becomes irrelevant (see Google+ and MySpace).
This is where I get very confused by anti ads people - show me a reliable alternative that is proven to work. Show me that people across the world, not just in San Francisco or London, can and will pay to access these websites/apps. And I'm not just talking about Meta - what about every random small website you have ever accessed that is ad supported? What about news websites like BBC? Or independent content creators who monetize via Instagram / YouTube ads? What about that wiki for that favorite video game of yours? Or that cooking blog? Don't get me wrong - I hate seeing ads as much as the next guy - but I can't really picture a realistic alternative.
I do some volunteer time on a small web forum, and we have subscription options on there. It pays for server costs reasonably fine, if not dev time for new features or anything. Users come from lots of places around the world, although the discussion is still mostly in English. It is optional, but the number of power users willing to pay for it covers the rest. You could also look at SomethingAwful as a reasonable strategy?
If people love a community and like spending time on it, they'll be willing to help keep it running and avoid shutting down. You don't get any real profit, but do you need that to run a website? And if people don't love it enough to pay for it, you do have to wonder if it really needs to exist.
I think Reddit could get away with their reddit pro and paying for awards deal, honestly. They would need to rely more on volunteer labor and volunteer development, but a site could exist like that. I assume it's how Lemmy and Lobsters run?
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The real answer, like with any service in the real world is to charge for it.
That is the only way to keep any service online sustainable without ads.
There are also donations, but that can only take you so far.
Things cost money, server costs and domain costs rise, bandwidth gets expensive as bots and AI agents surge and scrape websites.
It is the only way, without having ads all over the place.
You make things that cost money cost money? I don't think I really understand the premise of the question.
See my response to the other guy who replied -> remove the free ad supported tier and people will not pay and the network will cease to exist.
Thats pretty silly. It existed before ads.
I think at best your perspective is “threatening me with a good time.” There’s really nothing online I value that can only exist because of millions of free users.
from people without ad blockers, but honestly facebook is not the free open internet.
government subsidy
The internet, its forums, chats, and rings were just fine until techbros came into the picture
They don't. Trying to monetize it was mistake #1.
Mistake #2 was letting the tech bros anywhere near it.