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Mozilla and Scroll Partner To Test Alternative Funding Models for the Web (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: News subscription service Scroll, which is yet to launch to consumers but has received the backing of several top publishers, courted another major player today: Mozilla. The browser maker says it will work with Scroll to better understand how consumers react to ad-free experiences on the web and subscription-based funding models. As part of the deal, Mozilla said it would test features and product ideas provided by Scroll, which itself has been conducting internal tests with a number of outlets. Small groups of Firefox users will be invited at random to share feedback and also respond to surveys, Mozilla said.
I am happy to pay a fair price for content, but am unwilling in any scenario to be subjected to invasive advertising. Netflix is a good example of an ad-free subscription based library of video content.
One of the early promises of the Web was micropayments, remember that? It has yet to happen because the cost of a secure financial transaction is simply too high. I think the best answer is subscription aggregators, who provide access to a libraries of content and track which customers are accessing said content. At the end of the month, the subscription aggregator sends a single payment to each content provider, which represents the sum of all accesses that month.
Various pundits in political and gaming news sphere (of those I follow) generally played around with subscription model to the point where most of the content is free with constant nods to paying patrons on youtube and such. And then they have some kind of a small paywall for extras, with various tiers of payment for more benefits.
It's a model that found its backers.
If you're not willing to pay a few cents a day for a website without remuneration, then maybe you shouldn't have a website. Here's the dirty little secret: All the newspapers exist because someone wants their voice to be heard. No, they're not in it for the profit. That's a means to an end, because newspapers aren't damn near free like servers and bandwidth. All the manufacturer web sites exist because that's the cheapest way to support their products, and you don't sell anything without support. Do you really want the blogs and vlogs that only exist because someone wants your money? People are unwilling to pay for the web because there's already more than anyone can consume in a lifetime. The web doesn't need a coin slot.
As far as I am concerned, news sites that won't let you use an adblocker but start autoplaying videos obviously don't give a shit about how much their bandwidth or content creation costs...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
... as long as they're served from the domain that I'm visiting. Just like print media up until a few years ago, there's nothing to say that websites can't sell ads to legitimate advertisers and put up advertisements. I'd have no problem with that. I won't submit any of my computers, though, to any of the garbage ad networks out there (Google, Facebook, etc.).
I don't respond to AC's.
Looking at multiple descriptions of how Scroll will work, they explicitly say the Scroll subscription fee won't cover individual news site paywalls -- you'll also have to have a subscription to the underlying site to get unlimited (or, in some cases, any) articles.
So unless I'm missing something, the only apparent benefit from my $5/month to Scroll is to get ad-free content (and, I suppose, less anti-adblocker cat and mouse).
People don't want a political gatekeeper between the content they enjoy and their ability to send payments.
No CC brand connected to a political party stopping payments.
No 3rd party payment platform making political connections about who gets users funds.
No payments system that can remove the ability to move funds around.
No secretive banking system to shutdown bank accounts due to politics.
People enjoying connecting in a more direct way with the people who create the content they enjoy.
To support content with funds, long term payments, bandwidth.
Make the internet free and open again. For art, history, politics, reviews, news, projects, hobbies, comedy.
Without needing the political approval of a bank, CC company, platform, political party, government, nation, mil, think tank, NGO.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Hosting the website is dirt cheap, yes. Significantly less than maintaining printing presses.
The problem is that the information on that site costs orders of magnitude more to to produce that it does to present. Reporters, editor, et al, need to eat. If you're consuming the material, it would be nice to get paid for it. I'm pretty sure nobody disputes this.
The problem is what is the best means of doing that? For any given website, I may read their articles daily. Or maybe once a month. Or maybe only once a year. How do you charge for something consumed so sporadically? I'm certainly not going to pay a monthly subscription for something that I rarely use.
And because the internet is so democratizing, there are a bajillion different sites available that you can read at any given moment. And because it's all an even playing field, it turns into a Hunger Games style fight for eyeballs and revenue. In addition, the current situation incentivizes organizations to produce content that their perceived audience wants to consume, rather than content that is of actual value. That is how how train wrecks like Info Wars and Brietbart have managed to get such a following despite the fact that the "content" they produce is of such shockingly low quality that their viewers are less informed than people who don't watch/read news at all.
So we have a classic economic situation where supply grossly outstrips demand. And there are no checks and balances to help narrow the available options because people arn't interested in checks and balances. There is literally no solution possible that won't have a bunch of people jumping up and down screaming "censorship!" or "bias!". There is no way to regulate the field without that regulation being perverted by some future party hell bent on autocracy.
Solution? I have no bloody idea. All I know is that the unfettered democratic approach to content creation and news in particular, just isn't working.
Your websites are a hobby. Your contribution to Linux is a hobby. Your free software is a hobby. Your free artwork is a hobby. It's fine to have hobbies, but what puts food on the table and a roof over your head to support your hobbies?
there's nothing to say that websites can't sell ads to legitimate advertisers and put up advertisements.
This works for Daring Fireball and Read the Docs. But before you recommend requiring the ad-supported web at large to adopt their business model, please consider the following nothings:
1. A publisher selling ads on its own website has to somehow convince advertisers that the publisher exists in the first place, is worth the advertisers' time, and can detect and not charge for fraudulent page views or clicks. If a web publisher hired you to market the publisher's ad space to advertisers, what steps would you recommend taking to do so?
2. Interest-based advertising pays three times the CPM compared to context-based advertising according to a study by Beales and Eisenach.
Woosh. I meant NYT and WaPo... NE is more likely to get a story correct than NYT or WaPo. I listed 3 examples of news stories so bad that you should only expect them to happen once every 5 years or so.
But the stories you list show the opposite story from what you implied.
Story 1. Buzzfeed is some internet site. Says nothing about real sources.
Story 2. I assume you didn't actually read the New York Times story of Covington. Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... and follow-up here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...
and editorials here https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... and here https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...
The way you can tell legitimate media from spin is that the legitimate media updates their stories when new information becomes available.
story 3. The journalists reported the police report; and when the police report changed the story, the media reported that. This is what you want from journalism. This is what you don't get from internet gossip.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com