I started to notice that more sites are turning into paywalls, and I don’t like that and would prefer ads over subscriptions.
I am curious, what does the general community think about that?
I wouldn’t mind paying but once more and more site adopt the subscribtion model, then prices like $10 a month becomes unsustainable when you need dozens of subscribtions. I believe that microtransactions are the future of the internet. All content should cost for you to view but only a little bit so that it adds up to like 20 - 50 bucks a month and the money goes mostly to the creators rather than platform.
Depends on the site. Ads don’t bother me because ad block. I support paywalls in the case of sign up for some services, like InsaneJournal. Though, I otherwise have no preference either way since I usually don’t go places with paywalls and when I do, I usually find a way to bypass them.
Ads. But only when the ad doesn’t stan.
The ones that invade privacy, I feel, are taking too much advantage.
Ads. It’s way easier for me to block ads than bypass paywalls.
False dichotomy, I’d rather see other funding models like Patreon/Kickstarter. Paying gets you early access/bonus stuff/whatever, and you don’t need intrusive technologies like ads/paywalls.
Yeah, I want to pay you directly. I, admittedly, pirate things. When those things are good, I make an effort to go send money to the creator directly. Sometimes it’s hard, especially with things like books. I don’t want to buy it on Amazon. And unless someone is self-published, they’re getting peanuts. I’d much rather Venmo an author money direct. When Radiohead released In Rainbows way back when and put it out for “pay what you want,” I gave them five bucks I think.
I understand it can’t always be like that, and that the people between a content creator and me do serve some purpose.
Ads over pay wall BUT with the option to pay to remove ads for a reasonable price. Then I have a way of supporting the content of I enjoy it enough
This is a complex and nuanced question that is not as black and white as the binary choices you give. Both paywalls and ads, as they are implemented currently, suck and erode away at the usefulness of the Internet.
Paywalls
They typically tease content in the hopes people will be interested enough to pay for the content and other content. Sounds good on the surface, because the people putting in the effort to write articles should be paid. The problem is, the quality of journalism has also eroded to the point where it’s not worth paying for as much as it used to be. Excessive SEO has poisoned search results in such a way that paywalls content crowds out other valid search results. Throw in the fact that there is a possible future where articles may be written by AI, and it’s especially not worth it.
Ads
Ads are intrusive, they can contain malware/viruses, may be inappropriate for an audience (e.g., porn or violence related ads shown to kids). I’ve even had ads redirect the webpage to another website. Using fingerprinting to target “relevant” ads is a privacy nightmare, intrusive, and still is mostly irrelevant to the user. Those cookie pops are annoying as fuck — my guess is it’s malicious compliance with the EU — even when using a site that is based in the US that targets only US citizens. Certain browsers are blurring the lines between useful browser functionality and increasing ad revenue.
Either way you look at it, these companies are eroding public trust in search of the almighty “engagement” dollar. And then they’re all shocked pikachu when people find ways to circumvent paying for content. So they double down on making things as difficult as possible for the end user, which makes the user double down on hating these companies and their malicious practices.
Ads and paywalls can work, but everybody (from publishers/content creators to advertisers and ad networks) need to sit down fix the glaring problems:
- No PII or fingerprinting in any analytics
- Search engines need to either remove paywalls content from results, or flag the result as paywalled and allow users to filter them out
- Journalists need to step up their game and stop writing garbage nobody wants to read
- Ad networks need to be more hands on with making sure ads are appropriate and not malicious in any way
- STOP CROWDING OUT YOUR CONTENT WITH ADS!
I’m sure we all could come up with more solutions. But we all know that all parties involved won’t do a damned thing to make things better for us.
And yet no matter how bad it gets, it still somehow is profitable. So pirating material doesn’t seem to be an effective means of protest because it seems there are enough people out there willing to pay for all of this garbage.
I would rather have ads. If I were to subscribe to every website that asked me to subscribe I would be paying $1,000 a month.
I can block ads 100% reliably, and haven’t seen one, except in streams where the streamer had to watch one, or someone else’s device, in years. Paywalls are much harder to circumvent and need a whole plethora of extensions and 3rd party sites, instead of just uBlock + FF.
The question assumes that you will have to experience whatever you choose, so without ad blocking, what would you choose?
Fresh air.
Ga, go outside? No way man 😱
You assumed that, along with assuming your binary is true.
If that’s what you meant, then that’s what you should’ve posted.
Your binary isn’t true, and there will always be ways to block ads.
Honestly, paywalls. I’ll just not use anything not FOSS then. Ads are much more annoying and 99% of times brainrot.
I wound not mind ads if they met the following conditions (in no particular order).
- Actually vet them, no scams and viruses.
- minimal obstruction to what I’m there for. A bildboard on the side of the highway is fine, but when they put in the road, there’s a problem.
- Mix it up. YouTube playing the same ad 500 times in a row is obnoxious.
- No yelling/loud shit. Play your ad, don’t blow out my speakers.
- If on a silent website, video ads must be auto muted.
- if I’m on data or a metered network, don’t auto play ads and keep the total data usage to a minimum.
- Medical and health ads aren’t allowed. You can have PSAs about conditions and that there are treatment options, but it should your doctor researching and recommending specific medicine not a patient going in with some ad.
Add political ads to the last one too.
99% of the time it’s either an outright lie or stretched exaggeration of the truth. No one is getting any correct information from a political ad except either side’s specific spin on it and it causes a lot of average people to incorrectly believe they are informed on who and what they are voting on that they don’t need to do more due diligence before heading to the polls.
Also favors rich politicians and more well funded campaigns over less well off politicians and less well funded organizations and causes.
Ads, because even though they waste my time, I still have my money. Also:
Ads. I’ve been online since the age of Gopher. I’ve gone through every kind of ad or a pop-up you can throw at me. Even though I use an adblock, even without it I can subconsciously filter out ads so well that they won’t bother me.
Ads, tastefully. Many websites have too many in too many places, pretty much asking for the viewers to use an ad blocker.
Ads. I was born in the 1900s so I’m used to it.
The question is a bit loaded, since “prefer ads” means you see the content, whereas “prefer paywalls” means you don’t.
A fairer framing would have been: “how do you prefer to pay for content?”
Because, contrary to many opinions here, there is a price to pay when you watch an ad. At the very least, you’re paying with your sanity. And very possibly you’re paying with your wallet too, later, when you buy some product or service you don’t really need. If ads didn’t work, there wouldn’t be so many of them.
Next, in a world where content is funded by advertising, the people who control our tech have an infernal incentive to spy on us - so we all end up paying with our privacy.
Advertising is the lifeblood of consumer capitalism. It’s what powers the pseudo-needs and pseudo-desires and status competition that drives all that material throughput of JUNK that is killing our planet. That price tag is gonna be pretty hefty.
Advertising is sheer poison. But paywalls are not the enemy. It is not immoral to pay for things that have value.
