
Content is dead - vkb
http://veekaybee.github.io/content-is-dead/
======
danso
I know these anti-ad posts are a dime a dozen here, but this is one of the
more self-entitled pieces of dreck in the genre. She spends the first part of
her essay slagging on WIRED ( _" Wired has dabbled in and eventually succumbed
to the technology it once skewered and analyzed. Its latest efforts inevitably
include pandering to the Instagram crowd."_), implying that she's too good for
their lowbrow content, and then the rest of it is about how dare they have the
temerity to make her resort to using cURL to read their content. Or is this
post supposed to be a sly retelling of the joke in Annie Hall? [1]

What's so difficult about just opening an incognito window and suffering the
couple of seconds it takes for a computer halfway across the world to deliver
you content while you sit at your desk? The WIRED thing annoys me too but when
they've got a good story, I'm willing to give them the adnetwork revenue.
Forbes, on the other hand...that whole thing with their infected ad network,
I've just stopped going to Forbes articles, period, even when they're posted
here. It's been a long time since I can remember Forbes exclusively breaking a
story...most of the time, it seems their articles are from their "contributor"
network just blogspamming someone else's story.

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/quotes?item=qt0373261](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/quotes?item=qt0373261)

~~~
vkb
> What's so difficult about just opening an incognito window and suffering the
> couple of seconds it takes for a computer halfway across the world to
> deliver you content while you sit at your desk?

The whole point of the post was that I'm doing something inordinately
ridiculous to access a little bit of good content. Scraping and incognito
browsing are both anti-patterns that are symptoms of a sick media industry. A
media that is sick cannot provide us with good news and content that we can
use to further our critical thinking, and we should be worried and thinking
about how we can possibly solve this problem instead of trying to bypass it.

~~~
danso
> _Scraping and incognito browsing are both anti-patterns that are symptoms of
> a sick media industry._

No, the cause (and, well, symptoms, too) is lack of revenue, something which
was set in motion long before ad networks came into play and were the devil
that many publishers felt they had to sign with.

It's worth noting that in the early years, publications just threw up their
content for free and went within the flow [1]. Within the industry today, it's
(pointlessly) debated whether that was the right thing to do [2], as now
everyone comes to expect the content to be free (nevermind the problem of
other sites just copying-and-pasting entire articles).

Either way, readers weren't offering to pay up back in the heyday when news
outlets had plenty of money to do indepth journalism and offer it for free.
Now news outlets have neither but they continue to offer their content for
free. And apparently, those years of free, good content wasn't enough to
convince consumers, years later, that it'd be nice to get financial support
(via subscription). And so now the mechanism that many of them resort to to
capture revenue -- third party ad networks -- is odious to people like
you...and I sympathize...so you should do what you would be doing if those
places threw up a hard paywall that requires a subscription: don't read their
content.

Instead, you go out of your way to take their content for free. Then you
complain that the content is shit, and finally, you complain that publishers
should be making it easier for you to take their shit. OK, sure, whatever. But
at least recognize that there are business mechanisms more complicated than
"stupid publishing company is using stupid ad network to get money"

[1] [http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/01/20-years-ago-today-
nytimes-...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/01/20-years-ago-today-nytimes-com-
debuted-on-line-on-the-web/)

[2] [https://gigaom.com/2012/02/06/debunking-the-original-sin-
of-...](https://gigaom.com/2012/02/06/debunking-the-original-sin-of-online-
newspapers/)

------
Animats
We'll know that ad supported content is dead when AOL, or "Aol.", or whatever,
and Demand Media, go bust. They will not be missed.

Micropayments are going nowhere. As I've pointed out before, the enthusiasm
for micropayments comes from people who want to collect them. There's very
little consumer demand for the ability to send somebody a dime.

Subscriptions work only for very high quality content. The Economist, yes;
Wired, no. Newspapers with big reporting staffs, yes; pundits, no.

The trend we're seeing in advertising is that only Google and Facebook really
matter to advertisers. The third-party ad industry is mostly bottom feeders,
and it's getting worse. (See earlier article today about Forbes distributing
malware.)

~~~
virmundi
Just a small point about micropayments. The current system is not micro. Micro
is hundredths of a cent or less. At that price point it might be possible to
use them. Sadly not even bitcoin (afaik) can handle such transactions.
Transaction costs are too high under every system. Even IBM's research- a few
years ago, bottomed out at 25 cents.

~~~
pcmaffey
Seems awkward (and pricey, as mentioned) to handle an actual transaction each
time. Why not just have a browser extension that aggregates and bills monthly?
Like the opposite of an ad-blocker, an ad-unlocker.

This has probably been discussed somewhere...

~~~
leereeves
How would you do that without needing a way to deal with many of the same
issues: to authorize every pageview, track account balances, deal with fraud,
and correct errors?

You definitely couldn't afford to interact with the financial system (ACH,
credit cards, or even Bitcoin) for every pageview, but you'd have the same
challenges to solve.

~~~
pcmaffey
It's all done client side? Except auth.

~~~
leereeves
The client can't be trusted.

~~~
pcmaffey
Not 100%. But what about 80%? Even 50%? Is it still worth it for publishers?
The greatest cost of digital fraud in a case like this would be perceptual...
given the current paradigm.

~~~
leereeves
The cost of fraud would be roughly the same as browsing with an adblocker now.

But probably the hardest part of creating any system like this is getting
everyone on board at once. There's a big incentive not to join the system.
(People who don't want to or can't be bothered to join will visit your site
instead.)

~~~
narrowrail
I think it would be quite straight forward to develop an extension that does
client-side analytics of your browsing history, just to show you which sites
you visit and how much time you spend per url/ TLD. It would be on your honor
to choose to give 'patronage' and the code is auditable as a browser
extension.

~~~
leereeves
If it's "on your honor", why not just ask for donations?

~~~
basch
frictionless. if i had an extension that let me put an amount into it at the
begining, and then let me divide up who i thought was worthy of my pledge at
the end of the month... no need to find tip jars and make a bunch of payments

------
kukx
Let's be honest, why they shouldn't block adblock? The ads bring them money.
And they need money to survive and, if they lucky, develop. The writers have
families or plan to have ones, they need to be rewarded for their work. It may
be their main or only source of income. Now, if they also provide a valuable
information for you, I think that trying to trick them into giving it for free
(ad free) is wrong. I think and it may controversial here, but every valuable
site that lives on ads should block adblock. And don't get me wrong, I
actually use adblock myself, but I'm more than happy to add exceptions for the
sites I need or value.

~~~
intrasight
Just remember that "adblock" doesn't block ads - it blocks ad networks. If
publications ran their own ads (like they do in print) the ads would likely
a)be of much higher quality, and b) not be blocked by "adblock"

~~~
misterbwong
Adblock can (and does) block ads that are not a part of an ad network.

If you're thinking making publishers handle ads will bring them back to the
"good ol' days" of static print ads, you're mistaken. The only reason we
haven't had these types of ads in the past is because the medium (print)
didn't support it.

1\. Most times, bad ads aren't written by the publishers at all-they are
written by the advertiser. The flashing/movie/360/ugly ads are shown because
they convert at a higher rate than "nice" ads.

2\. Forcing publishers to run the ads would be even WORSE for for privacy
since they would be considered "first-party" and have access to much more
information.

3\. Print publications that currently run ads don't even control 100% of the
ad content. The only ones they control are the ones that look like text.
Everything else is supplied by the advertiser.

~~~
anexprogrammer
1\. The ad network permits the bad ad, regardless of who writes them. If the
ad network didn't drop 400 domains worth of 3rd party cookies, with tracking,
and give me such shite as autoplaying video, maximise on rollover and the
like, I'd whitelist them. Or more likely never have blocked them in the first
place.

2\. They'd not be able to follow me around the net though, repeatedly showing
me some car ad I accidentally clicked because it maximised on me.

3\. Every print display ad I've ever run (quite a few) has been proofed by the
publication prior to run. I'm not Pepsi so perhaps different rules apply?

------
zem
the possibly naive pr{e,o}mise of the early web was that it would be a place
for people who created content for the joy of creating it to share said
content with people who would discover the delights of gatekeeper-free media
consumption. "premium" content, that people were trying to make a living from
selling, could go behind a paywall or into subscriber-only emails, the way
books and magazines worked pre-web.

sadly, the implicit contract was broken on both sides. people didn't want to
pay for content, but they also wanted to consume (pirated) premium stuff,
rather than commons material, so there was never a concerted push to have
better discovery mechanisms atop the freely-provided web. likewise, producers
wanted to impose user-hostile measures like drm and geographic segmentation on
a medium that was not conducive to them, making piracy the more attractive
option even if you didn't care about free-as-in-beer.

professional producers had to go free because it was not a case of paid
professional content competing with free amateur content; it was a case of
paid professional content competing with free pirated professional content.
that also sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the amateur ecosystem; who wants
to dig through the virtual slushpile when you can get pre-curated professional
material for free?

i'm sad about the whole thing because i was really looking forward to seeing
if the creative commons would compete on its own merits as a mass
entertainment option. once the reward of putting something up is not people
reading and appreciating it, but money from ad clicks, though, the producer's
incentives are suddenly misaligned with the consumer's, and we end up with the
web of today :(

~~~
saumil13
@zwm so i partially agree with you. there are few other reasons why both the
content and ad industry is in a funk.

Married to Business model not their consumer: most of the content producer
(music, video, tv, books, news etc) were trying to hold out with their old
business model (think: buying album only or newspaper subscriptions). As new
platforms emerged consumption patterns changed yet the model did not changed.
In a leaked email by Jobs to Murdoch regarding e-books publishing, Jobs
clearly warned that if books were not made available at price points, delivery
methods and platforms to today's consumer behavior, we shouldn't be surprised
to see a Napster moment in publishing industry. Those who have held stedfast
in their old ways have suffered. Only now we can see some revival of music
thru subscription via Apple Music and Spotify--but it took years and a lot of
failed startups to get here.

Ads: Head in the sand moment: Having worked in this industry i see a few
common occurrences: 1_ ad agencies have made it a point not to learn about
emerging tech, actively invest in them or be the agent of innovation. Just
like content industry they are happy to pick u 15% of cut from the buyer and
the seller of ads, just b/c they can 2_ over last 20 years there is a steady
increase in marketing budgets as a % of revenue by everyone in some cases up
to 20%. Obviously CEOs will expect the CMOs to be accountable and present a
ROI model vs the traditional 'sunk marketing costs'. Thats where data came
into play. However, in actuality data is really being applied with very little
thought.

Combination of laziness and apathy are some of the reasons for shitty ads.

What i find it intriguing if the quality of ad content is good and delivered
in a meaningful ways then people wouldn't mind it (eg: Super Bowl ads).

But then again it takes a lot effort and thinking. I'm however, hopeful.

~~~
zem
agreed. another problem with the ad industry is that it has almost universally
succumbed to the lure of tracking. tracking and targeting ads has a very high
return on investment, but i have to wonder if it will ultimately be a case of
killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

------
takno
This +1000. The guardian, a paper I used to buy regularly, has transformed
itself comprehensively into a hell of lazy ill informed clickbait,
uncritically repeating unsupported conclusions from nonsense science and
refusing to differentiate their serious analysis from crappy user generated
content. Now I can't even bring myself to pay the 3 quid a month subscription
even though the crossword alone would probably be worth that.

~~~
ebola1717
I saw a talk by a product manager at the Guardian, and as I understand it,
that transformation was a reaction to declining print sales, shaky ad revenue,
the rise of Facebook & Google, the success of sites like Buzzfeed & Vox, etc.
They've been losing money for a long time and have been slashing costs as much
as they can, but that doesn't make a business sustainable.

Nowadays, most people will get to a news article from a friend sharing it on
facebook, or from reddit or hacker news, etc, not the Guardian homepage, and
that means clickbait pays the bills.

~~~
nuttinwrong
I say let them crash. Let them ALL crash. We don't need no stinking news!

~~~
xemoka
Certainly if that's what they call news and that's how they want to deliver
it.

------
m52go
I agree with the author concerning content and ads, but find it ironic that
the article's title is so click-baity and misleading (considering she never
implies content is actually dying, just that its business model is).

------
pier25
We need a Netflix for content. You pay a (reasonable) monthly subscription and
they pay each content provider depending on number of views.

~~~
qrv3w
[https://blendle.com/](https://blendle.com/) is attempting just this. They
have a beta service available now, and its rather nice. You pay a few cents
per article and you can easily get refunds if you don't like the article or if
it isn't what you expected.

~~~
ebola1717
I think the pay-per-article model is still worse than a single flat fee.
Because there's a marginal cost per article, each time you have an article
link you have to ask yourself "do i definitely want to read this?" Even if
there are refunds and stuff, this has a psychological cost. It makes sharing
content harder too. It also might be weird to say even more directly that
"this article produced exactly X dollars of profit," or "this journalist's
articles produce X dollars of profit on average."

Also, one of the best things about the Internet & the ad model is that it made
content available to everyone. Someone from a relatively poor background, or
someone who's just strapped for cash at a certain time, will still have equal
access to information.

------
golergka
So, the author didn't even think to question her assumption that she is
entitles to get the content for free, without paying dorectly or through being
subjected to ads?

------
Swizec
> today can’t epxect to put out mostly junk filler

I wonder if that's a litmus test to see if people finish reading. Great
article, perfect sentiment, last paragraph has the only typo in the entire
thing.

And I totally agree. There are _shitloads_ of people on the internet making
money from content. Hell, I make some sometimes. If you build a real audience,
listen to them, then solve _their_ problems. Then content isn't dead.

If you're trying to be mass media that appeals to everybody and nobody at the
same time. Then content is dead.

I mean, shit, look at someone like GaryVee or Casey Neistat, or even Kim
Kardashian. They all make shitloads of money from content.

And if you're looking for examples closer to HN home. Look at Amy Hoy, Brennan
Dunn, or even Ramit Sethi. They might not make tens of millions, but they def
print millions of dollars with their content businesses.

~~~
return0
There is a typo in the first line as well.

~~~
vkb
Fixed, thanks.

------
klint
(Disclosure: I write full-time for Wired, but I'll try to leave my feeling
about our content aside here)

Even if you pay for a subscription to The Economist, you're still going to see
ads, both on their website and in their apps. Even though I'm a subscriber and
logged in, Ublock Origin is showing over 100 blocked requests on an article I
just pulled up there, some of them coming from the same third party ad
networks everyone else uses. And my $1 a week subscription only buys me access
to three articles a week.

So while, as the OP points out, The Economist's Tom Standage [1] believes that
ad revenue isn't a futureproof business model, they still appear to be heavily
reliant on it.

I don't know anything about the Economist's overhead, but the reason
subscribers are still subjected to ads is very likely that subscription fees
come nowhere near covering their costs. The truism in newspaper publishing is
that subscriptions don't even cover the cost of printing and delivering the
paper to a subscriber.

Subscription-only business models have historically been tough.

A lot of people ask "why can't all advertising be like The Deck," but the
trouble there is that The Deck probably doesn't bring in enough revenue for
publishers to operate a large newsroom [2]

Personally (not speaking for my employers) I like Brave browser's idea, but
they're already facing legal threats. And while they're promising publishers
70 percent of their ad revenue, but even if that's a larger percentage I don't
know if that will work out to more than publishers get through the third party
networks they use now.

[1] [http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/04/the-economists-tom-
standage...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/04/the-economists-tom-standage-on-
digital-strategy-and-the-limits-of-a-model-based-on-advertising/)

[2] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-content-producers-who-
are-...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-content-producers-who-are-apart-of-
The-Deck-ad-network-make-monthly)

~~~
vkb
Thanks for reading. The Economist ads are a great point that I didn't address,
and makes me even more worried for the high-quality news and content industry
than I initially noted.

------
misterbwong
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Adblock is going to cause ads to
become MORE invasive, not less. Native ads, native content, and other
"partnerships" are going to drive revenue-all of which are much worse that
what we have now, privacy-wise. Adblock is only fueling an arms race between
consumer and publisher.

In the future, we might see a viable micropayment solution but there are some
fundamental problems with this approach.

~~~
nuttinwrong
I disagree. Sure, we'll see promoted content as norm, but those wise enough
will shy away from those sources entirely.

------
darpa_escapee
I can't remember the last time I read an article and thought it was worth
paying for.

Even a fraction of a penny. That's the sad truth.

------
Cozumel
Why not just open firebug and delete the ad overlay? The author is either
trying to 'show off' or is just genuinely oblivious that there's a much easier
way.

I'm not against ads per se, I have quite a few sites 'white listed' but when
they beg for ads like Wired, then it's an automatic nope!

------
ebbv
Wired has always been garbage. You're just getting old enough to realize it.

There's always going to be garbage content sources that are more popular than
the quality content sources. If you appreciate quality content, your duty is
not to bitch about the garbage content but to support quality content.

------
kirykl
Comparing the Economist to an iPhone to Android switch article is not a fair
comparison.

The Wired iPhone2Android article is and was never designed to be content. You
shouldn't expect it to be either honestly.

Apple has great content on the subject for free [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201196](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201196)

The 3rd party link bloat however is spot on

~~~
takno
And yet that was the article the author valued enough to bother fighting
through the adwall for. Everything else on wired was _really_ bad

------
foltz
A couple days ago I ran into Wired's ad-blocker blocker so I just clicked my
Instapaper toolbar button. Worked like a charm. I wonder if or how often Wired
makes an effort to block Instapaper.

~~~
Nadya
This might come in handy for you then. An anti-anti-adblocker.

[https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer](https://github.com/reek/anti-
adblock-killer)

------
wmccullough
Content is not dead. Our current content delivery mechanisms have failed.

------
skybrian
The trick is to open the link in incognito mode.

------
karatekidd32v
Long live content.

------
draw_down
There are a number of tools built to extract the content from those kinds of
pages, did the author try any or just start YOLOing Python scripts?

~~~
dimgl
I don't think that's the point of the article though. The author is
criticizing the rise of bloated webpages with very little good content.

~~~
tragic
Or not so much that, but the practice of putting terrible content up and
funding it by selling someone else's soul to the advertising apparatus. And
then demanding that _you_ give up that soul, in order to fund "high quality
content".

------
beeboop
I look forward to the day when media outlets start dying due to lack of ad
revenue. 99% of news content is rehashing of existing content done by someone
else. Remove the noise and the few real contributors will be easily recognized
and supported. Also helps lessen organizational bias when content creators are
less beholden to the whims of their billionaire employers.

