

Inadmissible assumptions underlying Internet policy - cstross
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/the-inadmissible-assumptions.html

======
mike-cardwell
If you create a website that users pay for and it becomes popular, somebody
will come along and create an Ad funded version and take some or all of your
users (assuming everything else is equal).

I have no problem with this whatsoever. I have no problem with advertising.
What I do have a problem with is advertisers tracking people _across websites_
, and that all of the major browser vendors are happy to facilitate/encourage
this.

If all of the major browser vendors just tied third party cookies to the
domain of the top level origin, this sort of cross site tracking would be
blocked, with the bare minimum of damage. It wouldn't kill advertising, it
would just stop advertisers compiling data that they didn't ask permission
for.

There are of course lots of other tricks to track users even if they turn off
third party cookies altogether. But lets at least try to get the low hanging
fruit first, please.

EDIT: It would probably help if the major browser vendors didn't make large
sums of money from this sort of advertising. Talk about a conflict of
interest. It would be better for everyone if the evolution of the web wasn't
so heavily guided by advertisers.

~~~
uxp
_What I do have a problem with is advertisers tracking people across websites,
and that all of the major browser vendors are happy to facilitate/encourage
this._

I think everyone has a problem with this to a degree. I'm ok with Google
giving me personal search results and Facebook recommending me products based
on recent wall posts. What I'm not ok with is my Fiancé searching for wedding
ideas one night on her laptop at home, and the next day having all the website
ads being shown to me from a particular ad network on my iPhone being wedding
related while connected to my home WiFi. This really happened to me 2 weeks
ago.

I expect a certain amount of privacy, for both her and myself. Nothing needs
to be written in law that says that I cannot be tracked, but there should be a
moral code on what kinds of ads are displayed and where they will be
displayed. If advertiser networks can't develop a system that isn't invasive
then they need to go away, via adblock or otherwise.

~~~
bad_user
To add to your point, the problem with cross-website tracking is that it
breaks the mental model that people have about these web services.

For instance, one would expect for Google to know everything you searched for.
I don't think that anybody is naive enough to not realize it, even non-
technical users. So if you're searching for something and you don't want
Google to find out about it, then the simplest thing you can do is to NOT
search on Google.

And the problem with cross-website tracking is that this model breaks. Now
Google / Facebook know what websites you visit, even if you were careful about
not searching on Google, or not sharing/following links on Facebook.

It's pretty scary actually.

------
tomjen3

        The idea that "most people only want to consume" is
        profoundly offensive and serves the interests of abusive 
        "producers" who tend towards rent-seeking (see the MPAA    
        for a worked example—most notably in how they run the   
        film classification system in the USA),
    

It does not matter if it is offensive, so I will just have to ask the
question:

Is it true?

~~~
aidenn0
It is absolutely true that the majority only wants to consume. I think the
author is taking offense at a stronger assumption, which is "Only an elite few
want to produce" the number of people which want to produce is much higher
than the number of people that have historically been given a wide audience
for their productions.

------
mseebach
I take issue with:

 _b) Funding content via ad sales holds our public arts hostage to a boom/bust
bubble economy. Furthermore, there is an incentive for web publishers to
prioritize paid ads over editorial content, and to censor editorial content
that threatens advertizing revenue_

First, while public arts sounds good, it means entertainment. In a bust,
you're likely to wind down your entertainment expenses, in a boom you wind
them up. Restaurants are not ad-funded, but still very sensible to the
business cycle.

Second, whether ads or not, editors have an incentive to do whatever nets them
the most money. For movie producers, it's make a movie that the most people
will want to go and see. For authors, it's writing a book that people will
want to read.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be a euphemistic endorsement of TV
Licensing-style financing. However, that runs contrary to point _d) Nobody can
be trusted_.

~~~
sounds
I agree.

Other commenters take issue with c), that the majority are consumers. If the
art we consume is to be excellent, it will be _rare_. Not just from the supply
and demand curve, but with the internet's ease of distribution comes a global
"bazaar" of artistic creations that pushes up the threshold of excellence.

Artists then face an essentially limitless supply of "good enough"
competitors, even though only a small percentage of internet users are
actually content producers. (The rest of us, in my opinion, are those
"consumers.")

Advertising works when scarcity does not - Advertising can be shown for all
the mediocre works that aren't going to make much money any other way.

For the truly great stuff (AAA Games, Hit music, Movies, and so on) the price
of admission will generate a lot of revenue. But for the mediocre stuff, the
business model has to adjust.

Personally, I think the real challenge lies in the "below mediocre" art. The
market mostly ignores things like flash games, small bands, fanfiction, etc.
To me there's a missed opportunity to cultivate the "startup artists" as a
sort of Y Combinator.

------
cstross
Footnote: after some naval-gazing, I have to conclude that all of these
assumptions are based to some extent on the axiomatic belief that market-based
approaches are the best way of managing a cultural communications medium.

~~~
emeltzer
Would you mind explaining what the alternative is? (that is, what non-market-
based approach to web publishing is better than the status quo?)

~~~
jerf
As a little-l libertarian, I'd accept that there's a bit of market failure
here as the friction of making payments has exceeded the relative ease of
"just slap some ads on it". However I suspect this problem is fixing itself
over time. Ad inventory is only going to increase, which drops what you can
change on average, which is slowly but surely going to take "just slap ads on
it" out of the reach of more and more people, and alternate payment methods,
while not quite as easy as just shouting "Micropayments!" and walking away
with a smug expression, are in fact developing. Kickstarter is one example,
and other models like that will develop and return the concept of "patronage"
to the field of culture by mixing in a heavy dose of "crowdsourcing". And once
we're comfortable with that, who knows what else we might come up with?

And hey, maybe somebody will figure out that whole micropayment thing too. But
at least now there are increasingly concrete demonstrations that they were
never the only solution, which is fortunate since they don't seem to work.

I'm actually more optimistic now that we can escape from ads as the only
choice than I've ever been before. I'm hoping that this is the last year or
two that cstross could make this post and have it still seem a reasonable
concern.

~~~
krschultz
I don't know, it seems like it is going the other way. At least for the buyer,
internet ads have become more expensive over time. I imagine mobile ads will
become more expensive as well.

------
dageshi
Advertising has less friction than any other possible solution (so far). That
simple fact overrides all other concerns because it means stuff gets paid for
where otherwise it wouldn't. Any other solution that creates more friction
will fail.

~~~
tomp
There are costs to advertising, but most are hidden. They will start showing
on the long run, IMHO. There will be a lot of friction.

~~~
zmj
Like what?

------
inlined
It's a bit immature to link to a dystopian fiction as a citation to show that
"everyone" can be evil

------
mcguire
I'm sorry, was there a point? All I see is a series of assertions. (Most of
which agree with my ill-considered prejudices, but....)

------
ktizo
This is only true for certain segments of the internet.

Internet gaming, for instance, has successfully leveraged a subscription based
model, as do some specialist interest sites.

Personally, I suspect that the main reason that the first Internet mega-corps
have been ad based, is just because that is the easiest industry to implement
on what most people are still regarding as merely another media channel.

However, I strongly doubt that it is even close to being the most profitable
thing you could do with a global computer network.

