How I Experience Web Today (2021)

There is a whole lot more to this than just whether content creators or publishes should get paid, and whether there should be ad blockers (and whether they get paid).

There are people who have been fed up by this because they remembered how the web was like in the late 90s, before social media pushes became the dominant experience. People have formulated ideas around the Small Web (https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/), or even opted out of the browser ecosystem entirely with Gemini (https://geminiprotocol.net/) or keep the torch burning for Gopher (https://hackaday.com/2021/09/28/gopher-the-competing-standar...)

From there, it is also a short hop and skip away to folks working on local-first (https://localfirstweb.dev/), decentralization, collapse computing (https://100r.co/site/philosophy.html and http://collapseos.org/)

I get that, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people whose job content is, and who may have had the same job in the 90s, e.g. newspaper journalists.

So I'm asking those who don't want to pay for a subscription, but want to use an ad blocker: How does it work?

As said, I opted for paying the creator directly, because I hate the ad ecosystem. Seems like a lot of people want to do neither, but still expect their content to magically exist.

Many of my favourite blogs are ad-free. The people behindert it just do it with passion and don't expect anything in return. This is in contrast to nrwspapets and magazines, which just pump out clickbait shit while bring full of ads and tracking. Another option is the patreon/twitch model, where people Sonate money to creators.

Lots of us don’t want to pay a dime because it’s like negotiating with terrorists. Do you really expect the people that ruined the web to act nice after the first round of extortion goes well for them? Many paid services still have ads and dark patterns. Those that don’t are waiting for a position of strength (whether that is a market monopoly or just user sunk-cost fallacy to kick in) and then the enshittification will start.

My heart goes out to journalists, etc, but I can’t really help them by paying their bosses because the bosses are not interested in journalism. If you think that paying into rent-seeking protection rackets is any kind of permanent solution you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Yes, the irony I have seen with written content is, with the exception being books, most paid written content is still crap.

> Lots of us don’t want to pay a dime because it’s like negotiating with terrorists.

For a concrete example of the implacable amorality of advertising, consider how cable-TV once offered the promise of subscribing to end the ads, but still ended up showing you ads and demanding a subscription fee anyway. Then the same pattern happened again with online streaming services and Youtube: Every would-be savior keeps getting corrupted by the same darkness.

I choose to do both.

uBlock Origin everywhere. Steven Black host list on everything that can use /etc/hosts. Subscriptions to the things I value (but not to all the things I read).

I run an open source project called Ardour. One of our mottos is "It doesn't matter if everybody pays, it only matters than enough people pay". I wish more people could make some effort try to follow this idea in some way.

The only folks expecting the content to "magically continue to exist" are folks who lack information. But folks who do have information may also be totally fine with neither paying for content nor seeing ads; for a lot of us, the content that we watch is pretty transitive and if it went away tomorrow because no one watched any ads, we'd go do something else.

Or consider the commuter that is obliged to pay hundreds a week for gas, and is assaulted by ads at obnoxious volumes while they fill up. Or the jet passenger that endures ads on what should be the PA that is reserved for emergency communications, after they’ve been gouged on ticket prices, because hey, why not monetize a captive audience for all they are worth? Does a first class ticket buy the right to avoid harassment? Everything points to “not for long”..

The point is that "people whose job content is" should just get a regular job, where they actually contribute something valuable to society. All these "news" websites that are 90% ads can just die, to make room for valuable sites in the search results.

Joke’s on them, I just don’t listen to the PA.

At some point, you stop selling content, and you start selling an audience with a known demographic to advertisers.

In such a market, the business is disincentivized to produce thoughtful content, and need to churn the bait the draw in the audience. So it isn't as if creators are being compensated for creating, and instead content producers are compensated for producing words that will lure in readers.

There's this "legend" that, I assume, has some truth to it, that only about 1% of Reddit users post, and only about 10% comment. The other 90% lurk.

On the internet as a whole, I do mostly lurk, but I have my own website where I try to post meaningful, useful content. To me, that's enough to have paid my dues. If you never, ever post anything. Yeah, paying is fair, but so long as you contribute back, you've paid, IMHO.

This gets tricky only because the web isn't small anymore. Youtube, for hosting, should probably get a cut, yeah. But the majority? no. The ability to monetize something someone else made and wants to distribute for free? Also no. They, IMHO, abused their way to near monopoly on video distribution, so they shouldn't have that right.

Similarly, I won't pay for content when I'm creating my own and distributing it for free (Actually, to some cost to me) and without ads.

Saying "Well, then only consume other's free content" is a fair rebuttal, but there's a larger social/societal problem that incentives making paid content or using platforms like YouTube which will monetize content made by anyone even if the creator never sees a Penny: The dominance of those platforms has stifled innovation to the point of depriving them of a real choice. (Again, opinion. Don't sue me Google <3)

By using adblock, I'm willfully, intentionally hurting that perverse incentive system.

It's a similar vibe to the idea that piracy may be moral, if it disenticives overbearing DRM. I pay for things when the DRM is non-existant or non-invasive. I've chosen not to when it is. I've let companines know on their forums before that I'd love to buy their product, if only they didn't use iLok, or Denuvo, etc. I usually don't pirate though, I just find an alternative, even if I think they have the better product and would otherwise be willing to pay.

>Yeah, paying is fair, but so long as you contribute back, you've paid, IMHO.

I actually agree with this viewpoint, it makes me think of Peter Serafinowicz's why I steal movies article https://gizmodo.com/why-i-steal-movies-even-ones-im-in-55394...

however - I'm not sure if Serafinowicz would think that some guy on the internet writing articles is actually contributing back in the same way he might feel if you were distributing your own short comedic videos.

You may be contributing in a distribution channel, but are you contributing in a media?

The same goes for authors etc. They may think other authors should get a free pass on buying their books, because they're contributing, but not think that someone writing fan fiction on the web should get a pass.

The same with musicians, I'm sure you get the point. An artist in some field might think you are contributing if you are producing work in their field and should be given a pass on paying (I certainly would) but posting some meaningful to you on the web might not pass the bar of what they consider a contribution.