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The AD-BASED internet is DYING, and it's getting WORSE in the process
tilvids.comLearn how to deal with a ransomware attack with this free whitepaper: https://bit.ly/44cNIcr Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/ Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp 👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/ 🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd #internet #ads #marketingdigital 00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Learn how to deal with ransomware attacks 01:32 The ad-based internet 04:08 Twitter: anything but the kitchen sink 05:46 Reddit: shooting themselves in the foot 07:14 Youtube: nickel and diming 08:58 Alternative platforms won't save us 11:43 Three possible outcomes 14:41 The Ad Based internet is on its way out 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel Google has shown that with enough scale, just running ads on a website is enough to keep the content free of charge. But of course, as with everything where money is involved, it went way too far. This limited the ad revenue, and so websites decided to add more ads. To compound that, ads started paying less and less, so websites started chasing profits by making the internet worse for everyone. Twitter's revenue is 89% ads. It has existed for more than 10 years, and has never made any money. So even at that scale, ads are just not working to sustain a company. All the changes Musk is making to Twitter, like firing most of the workforce, charging for the API, limiting the number of tweets, Twitter Blue, it's all to try and turn a profit. So, the experience of Twitter is now ten times worse, because ads don't work. Now let's look at Reddit. Reddit is about as popular as Twitter. And Reddit isn't profitable either. They're kept afloat by raising money from investors. And so Reddit charges for their API now. Reddit made their site worse for everyone: the regular users, and also everyone browsing the internet and landing on reddit to see a "this subreddit is private" message, making any web search ultra inefficient. And we can also look at Youtube. Youtube is HUGE. And it's hard to know if youtube is profitable or not. The consensus seems to be that it is, but the actions of youtube seem to indicate that maybe it's not THAT profitable. For example, youtube seems to be planning some moves against adblockers. Youtube is also taking steps against third party frontends, like Invidious. They wouldn't do stuff like that if profit growth was awesome. I love alternative platforms, but they'll probably never replace the giant ones: they don't offer a business model for people to create content on them. As a user, you probably don't care about that. And the person running the instance of said platform maybe is ready to fund it out of pocket, but the people creating the content on these platforms? They're not making money from them. And so as ad-based internet models start dying off, I have a feeling we're going to be faced with 3 options First, the big platforms survive as-is with the ads, you can still have ads on your own website, but the platforms will start keeping more and more of the ad revenue. This is where we're heading now. People are tired of ads and their privacy invasion, and the over abundance of them, but platforms seem to think this is the way to go. Second option, the big platforms and websites evolve to another model, like paywalling everything behind a paid subscriptions like Youtube Premium. It would basically kill off an entire portion of the internet, but it probably wouldn't be the worst portion to lose. Third option, the big platforms and the internet as a whole can't find a new model to replace ad based ones, and big platforms and big websites die off. Content creation becomes a hobby mostly. This is probably the best outcome for the internet as a whole, as it would probably kill off most clickbait, disinformation, AI generated crap. We would have far less things to read and watch, but a lot of if would be higher quality.
I can’t help but think of a comparison with print newspapers, which undoubtedly is where the idea of funding the internet through ads started. It made a certain sense: newspapers and magazines partially support themselves through adverts, so websites (particularly those with regularly updated content) could also rely on ad revenue.
But the big difference is that with a print newspaper, the customer pays to buy the paper, and the customer also has the choice to not look at the ads. I’ve got a print newspaper subscription. All the ads are clustered together on a few specific pages, not interspersed amongst the real content, which allows me to just skip right past them.
Ads on the internet, however, have become increasingly insidious over the years, often blocking access to the website’s real content. And the more obnoxious they are and the harder they are for people to avoid, the more likely people are to utilise adblockers, because ultimately they want to see ads on the internet about as much as I want to read the adverts page in the newspaper (apart from the personal ads, those are a good giggle). Forcing people to look at content they don’t want to look at is always going to end badly.
I’m quite happy for the ad-based internet to die. Websites with good content and good communities don’t need revenue from adverts, because they will always have support from the communities they create. Most people aren’t averse to donating even a few {currency of choice} to help keep something they love running, especially when they know it’s not an extractive, exploitative business model.
I started delivering newspapers when I was 10 years old. The problem I inevitably ran into was that certain people didn’t want to pay for the product and I was out the money I had to pay to initially buy the newspaper for them.
When customers refused to pay for their subscription, I stopped delivering their newspaper.
While nobody wants an Internet behind a paywall, there does need to be a certain equilibrium between content and services while maintaining the ability to fund and perpetuate them.
But, I agree that the whole modern ad and marketing system is completely rotten.
The equilibrium would be fine if they never made the mistake of annoying their users. I got tired of pop-ups, animated desktop stripper ads, random loud audio, drive-by malware and fake download buttons, and most recently, interrupting my videos and games to show me 30 second ads. It’s that kind of overzealous creep the led to this problem on their end.
Ha! You just reminded me of that random girl that would start dancing at the bottom of your browser, but that’s pretty dated now. Unless they’re still there?!
You could even install that on your computer, then she would dance all day! Not that I would ever do that
I would rather pay for the services I use if they don’t charge much more than they make off of us in ads, and remove ads entirely. Then advertisers could not control what content I can see. It also adds another barrier between people and the services, look at what happens when a game goes free to play. The quality of the playerbase drops. Trolls might think twice if being banned means they have to pay for a new account.