Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

I heard part of this interview yesterday on the radio and found it very interesting, personally. I know when I post stuff like this it falls completely on deaf ears - not exactly the right audience - but in this case the topic impacts all of us who use the web on a daily basis. This is an interview with Tim Wu, the guy who created the term Net Neutrality, about how the rise of obnoxious advertising on the web (and the related growth of clickbait) has damaged the actual content of the web.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconside...s-and-clickbait

This kind of stuff is important to me, because this is my livelihood (not CoN, of course, though I figure most anyone who might actually read this knows that by now), and I've seen things that I've worked on be overwhelmed by advertising and sponsorship in a way that can detract from the content I've worked so hard on in my career. And that means a lot for CoN, too, because we don't do ads and we don't do clickbait. And this site has probably suffered for that, in terms of longevity, because we long ago elected to put the content first and not revenue.

Anyway, I think it's an interesting story that might resonate with anyone who reads this site or uses social media or whatnot, so I thought I'd share with a few bits of my own opinion. Should I put CoN on a subscription model so that I don't have to introduce paid ads?

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

How much control will you have over the paid ads? VideoGameDC literally got destroyed by the ads on its website because they where super intrusive and tried to download viruses onto your computer when they popped up. The owner of that site made it back when making flash videos was a cool thing to do with your free time in college so I figured he wouldn't keep it up forever but still worth noting.

What kind of subscription model are we looking at?

--------------------

He's Back. He is The_TrueBOSS.
Check me and my partners out at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTrueBOSSofJupiter

It's certainly destroyed web-design. The initial concept of a webpage being a database of information you can access has been replaced pretty much entirely with what I can best describe as 'guided' content, where actual navigational functionality has been almost completely erased in favor of directing the user as the website sees fit to meet its own goals.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 19th October 2016 20:35

--------------------

Arts

Farts

Twarts

One thing about ads that bothers me is that it seems a lot of ads expect you to have the latest high end specs on you're computer. There are always a couple of websites I visit where the ads are so high end that my computer that isn't that old can't handle them and will crash the web browser. (Wikipedia is one of them for me) This also is counter productive for the site when the ads are forcefully deterring fans who don't have specs on there computer capable of handling the ads.

--------------------

He's Back. He is The_TrueBOSS.
Check me and my partners out at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTrueBOSSofJupiter

That is a very interesting article, thanks R51!

Obnoxious ads and clickbait do do my head in. I find it pretty frustrating and it ruins good copy most of the time (although, admittedly, it appears good copy is harder to find these days anyway). It's a pretty damning article and to be fair, whilst I've been frustrated by it for a while, I haven't ever thought of it from quite the same perspective as Tim Wu frames it.

The Google and Facebook comments are pretty interesting, given that both companies were created on very anti-advertising, pure, internet-liberal bases, and that the two are now arguably the biggest and worst offenders of targeted advertising. I think if nothing else, it's an article worth reading to make people think more about their online activities and the power of their personal data. I've always been pretty resistant to the ad-driven expansion and integration of Facebook - I don't log in to other things using Facebook, I don't click likes on other websites, and I don't even tolerate tags/links etc within Facebook itself. Part of that is due perhaps to grumpy paranoia, but it's also due to having studied it and wanting to retain my privacy and autonomy, like Wu says. I'm often ridiculed for it by my mates though, haha...

I think practically, there is a compromise which can work. A happy medium. CoN is so pure that, perhaps, it has stifled its expansion (though I know that isn't exactly CoN's aim); but the clickbait nightmares that are so many other sites should all be dropped into oblivion.

Coincidentally, have you read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig? He's another of the initial academic commentators on the Internet and its effect on society - it might pique your interest.


--------------------

We apologise for the inconvenience

Quote (TrueBoss)

How much control will you have over the paid ads? VideoGameDC literally got destroyed by the ads on its website because they where super intrusive and tried to download viruses onto your computer when they popped up. The owner of that site made it back when making flash videos was a cool thing to do with your free time in college so I figured he wouldn't keep it up forever but still worth noting.

What kind of subscription model are we looking at?

There won't be ads on the site unless they're ones I make or personally approve, at this point; I'll elaborate on that a bit below. We never made much money from paid ads even during the brief time we ran them, and the only reason I'd bring them back would be so I could start running all of our old clever CoN ads again - "This Site is a Gift from God," indeed. I also wouldn't put up a paywall, ever, in case that wasn't clear. Would I consider something like a Patreon for the site? Absolutely, but I don't think it would get much use, and really, I'd prefer people use AmaCoN anyway, because then everyone gets stuff they want, even if it means a bit less raw money in CoN's pocket.

Quote (Narratorway)

It's certainly destroyed web-design. The initial concept of a webpage being a database of information you can access has been replaced pretty much entirely with what I can best describe as 'guided' content, where actual navigational functionality has been almost completely erased in favor of directing the user as the website sees fit to meet its own goals.

Optimally, the goals of a site would be do something mutually beneficial. To do something that's not is putting short-term financial success over longevity. Companies that can afford to use their sites as a loss-leader can definitely do that, though, and it sucks.

Quote (TrueBOSS)

One thing about ads that bothers me is that it seems a lot of ads expect you to have the latest high end specs on you're computer. There are always a couple of websites I visit where the ads are so high end that my computer that isn't that old can't handle them and will crash the web browser. (Wikipedia is one of them for me) This also is counter productive for the site when the ads are forcefully deterring fans who don't have specs on there computer capable of handling the ads.

For what it's worth, virtually never does a site have any control over what ads they show. They contract with an ad provider, and that provider's sales team goes out and actually gets the advertisers to buy in. The sites that a lot of us go to regularly, though, aren't beneficial enough to advertisers to command high prices, and as such we get ads for fly-by-night companies and scammers, and those advertisers tend to do the get-eyeballs-at-all-cost approach, which leads to terrible ads like what you describe. I've dealt with this more than a few times in my job, and it's extremely frustrating to have to contact the ad vendor with proof of a debilitating or malware ad just to have it pulled.

Quote (Stiltz)

I don't log in to other things using Facebook, I don't click likes on other websites

Well, YOU'RE not helping my social media strategy any, then, are you.

Quote (Stiltz)

Coincidentally, have you read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig? He's another of the initial academic commentators on the Internet and its effect on society - it might pique your interest.

I've read and heard quite a lot of Lessig; having spent a lot of time around Boston in technological circles, it's a name that shows up a lot. I've never read any of his long-form works, though, and I should. I was actually looking forward to his presidential run this year, and I wish he'd taken it further if for no other reason than to exert influence on party platforms.

Also, a fictionalized version of him showed up in West Wing at one point. That's pretty awesome.


--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 27th October 2016 22:41)

I was actually looking forward to his presidential run this year, and I wish he'd taken it further if for no other reason than to exert influence on party platforms.

Also, a fictionalized version of him showed up in West Wing at one point. That's pretty awesome.

I did not know either of these things! I'm now gonna have to investigate.

--------------------

We apologise for the inconvenience

I have Free Culture somewhere on my computer though I haven't read it. I have been somewhat interested in intellectual property, IP law, digital piracy, and related topics, though I really haven't had much time to look into them too much.

As for content being free -- I think that to some extent some people were expecting a sort of post-scarcity economic environment where people could just provide things freely and also use things freely, and especially since distribution costs can be very low on the internet (basically just need the electric and communications grids to work).

But unfortunately things haven't worked out this way.

But in the meantime, it's hard to compete with "free", so everyone is "free" competing with "free".

Some entities have found niches where they can provide convenience and bonus services, and thus can push up people's willingness-to-pay that way. Others have tried to go freemium, with varying degrees of success. Still others work on donation funding -- be it from small donors or owners with means or foundations and endowments. A combination of these latter two methods is branded goodies sold at a profit to help run a site.

But for everyone else, especially for sites whose content has a large viewerbase (high server costs) but low viewer retention/loyalty I'd presume, it's gonna be ads.

And the ads are often horrible. They eat up bandwidth on metered connections, they can crash pages, they often lead to scam sites, and sometimes they even attempt to install malware.

And the ads are also often ineffective. People like myself have learned to tune out ads -- assuming I even let them load in the first place. And when I am forced to see them they're more likely going to be annoying me rather than attracting me (though there are some who will say that annoyance makes for greater mental retrievability...).

Meantime there's now a sort of two-tiered system where you have "legitimate" websites that get "good" Google ads, and "illegitimate" websites that get more malice-prone ads, where by "illegitimate" I mean anything from the shadiest of sites with clearly-pirated-stuff up for download to any site that even has any sort of sexual content -- e.g. various sexuality-related tropes on TV Tropes that got that site into trouble a few years back.

All in all I think advertisers are fighting a losing battle with both consumers and their fellow advertisers, and they're basically going lower and lower in the proverbial barrel to find more intrusive and annoying ways to grab users' attention. But a major problem with the internet is that the internet is predicated on the assumption of the provision of free information -- and the internet hasn't figured out a sustainable way of paying for this service yet, beyond ISP costs.

(I wonder if it might be possible to nationalize ISPs and then use their profits to subsidize these things. Might not be anyone's favorite idea based on multiple trust reasons though...)

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 28th October 2016 17:15

--------------------

current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins