LogFAQs > #881365882

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Zeus posted...

And it's not your provider's fault that you chose to watch videos with ads. More importantly, I'm pretty sure there are ad-blockers for mobile so just use that.

The problem there is that, when you use ad-blockers, you're shifting the cost to the video hosting site, which in turn dramatically increases the odds that it will eventually devise ads that bypass blocking software, or will become a "pay-per-view" or "pay-to-view" site anyway.

The operating cost ALWAYS gets passed on to the user one way or another. That's just how the world works. At best, you can exploit loopholes in the system, but since the mere act of exploiting them is usually enough to eventually get them closed, it's not really a long-term solution.

People have been saying this for years, but the "Wild West" mentality of the Internet was never going to be a permanent thing. It was just the period of chaos before everyone figured out just how this thing works and how to profit from it. Now we're all just the outlaws mourning the loss of the West we knew as Civilization rolls in and sterilizes everything (see also Shane, Red Dead Redemption, etc.). The idea that everything should be free online is kind of childishly naive, and eventually, the bill is going to come due.

The main reason why some of that cost is getting hidden in various ways is because so many people react so poorly to being told they have to pay. Though it does seem like things like Patreon or Kickstarter are changing that perception a bit.

The problems with that line of thinking are manifold. First, we didn't get more invasive ads because people were using ad-blockers. That's just a bad assumption. The increase in ad intrusiveness is more due to a mix of improved technology -- letting them do more with ads -- and diminished efficacy on the older forms of ads. Even if nobody ad-blocked, it was inevitable that we'd get these newer kinds of ads because companies get paid more for them.

Ad blockers and prevention will *always* be a battle. Every time prevention makes improvements, ad blockers make improvements as well. Prevention is better today than any time in history, yet ad blocker use is also more prevalent than any time in history and, for the most part, ad blockers work pretty damn well. So yes, you can shut loopholes but you can't shut them faster than they open.

As for the costs getting passed along to the consumer, that's not automatically true either. There are other ways to monetize an audience. The most obvious method is data collection which, even if it's not used for advertising in other forms, it can be used for market research purposes where it comes to product development, background checks, etc. More importantly, you'll always have services which take a loss to build an audience.

However, the advertising itself can change. Heavy commercials weren't always the norm. In fact, even as tv adoption grew, the amount of advertising time grew as well; this, of course, contradicts conventional wisdom since a growing audience logically would logically any additional costs associated with programming. However, the added factor was greed where people saw that they could make considerably more (and, frankly, there's nothing wrong with greed but there's only so much you can take). Right now there's a lot of fat which can be trimmed down while still giving companies enough to keep the lights going. Consequently, we *could* see commercials gradually vanish in favor of content baked into the programming itself -- like the old "word from our sponsors" or product placement.

And, given human ingenuity, it's damn near impossible to "civilize" the wild west of the internet.
---

(\/)(\/)|-|
In Zeus We Trust: All Others Pay Cash