(This mail is meant to be a comment to your blog post)

First of all, your sixth paragraph[1] doesn't finish it's thought.
I also notice that you're referring users on your site on multiple 
different e-mails, when a single e-mail would probably suffice. Namely, 
you're referring users to this inbox on sourcehut, but also on your 
contacts mail on your main page. Worse still, contact you give with the 
shell puzzle on screen is different from that given to the solution you 
link to on onecomplier.com differ! (also I broke your CV: I clicked on it)
regardless, I am Cc-ing this to all of them, just to be sure.

Back to my main comments, although yes, the ad placement on the sites 
you gave as an example is hilariously repulsive, most news sites tend to 
be more moderate about it, balancing it with readability.

But my main concern is that paying for a subscription is no solution, at 
least, not in most cases, especially for the news sites. That reason 
being that the competition for news agencies is fierce. How fierce? 
Incredibly: they essentially have to compete with the entire internet. 
Any sort of internet site or user account who is providing real world 
information in a digital form is presenting competition for a news 
company. And although yes, you can argue that unlike online blogs and 
forums, news sites provide some level of aggregation, it's very easy to 
argue that those benefits are rather fringe in the world where 
centralized social platforms are the de facto norm of communication, 
with user-curated feeds bringing information from individual users to a 
single place, made all the worse by news networks posting on them. But 
even in more free and independent network spaces, blogs and forums are 
made ever more manageable by internet tools such as news aggregators* 
(duh) and browser bookmarks. Given all that, an average user might ask 
themselves, "why would I pay these guys $5 a month when everything they 
provide me with I can get for free elsewhere?". Of course, this is not a 
very good mindset to have, as you point out later in the post yourself, 
but it is the one most people seem to have. And we do know that it IS 
the mindset most people have, because we live in the world where free 
(as in, no monetary compensation required) is reigning supreme, even at 
the cost of a worse experience or privacy infringement: Any social 
platform that allowed free account registration was automatically more 
popular than one taking subscription fees. Any videogame that was free 
to download and play automatically had great advantage over any 
videogame that cost even $1 dollar to download**. This seemingly extreme 
tendency towards free stuff, even with the most extreme cases where 
people aren't willing to give $1, literally less than pocket change 
nowadays, leads to the second reason why classical monetary compensation 
is frequently unfeasible: thanks to the way banking and online payment 
systems are set up, anything that requires any sort of payment presents 
a huge barrier of entry. I mean just think about it: if I were to 
subscribe to some paid service right now, I will likely have to to 
through 2 or 3 redirect windows to get to credit card info entry page, 
at which point I will have to go find my wallet, type over my credit 
card info, click confirm, then have my phone ready to open up my banking 
app, and authorize the payment. even if you had a payment processor like 
paypal, its still a multi-click process to go and wait through, and yet 
another online account to create and have, whereas if it were just free, 
I probably would've already been halfway done reading the article I was 
here for: asking for any sort of payment is an automatic deterrent for 
user traffic.

And, again, don't get me wrong: I am absolutely certain that you're the 
sort of good Steward to pay or seek to otherwise compensate people in 
whom you see value, seeing by the fact that you are offering file 
hosting services for artists, from what I gather free of charge, and 
little things such as that javascript notice. But I'm afraid that 
practice has shown over and over again that the world is not like that. 
And though I'm no expert at economics or marketing, I am certain that 
there is a reason why we are where we are, and I am afraid that no 
matter how much you or I might dislike it, that's not going to change 
quickly or easily.

Best regards,
Filip

[1] 
https://moritz.sh/blog/how-to-not-make-money-with-advertising/#if-the-need-for-money-is-the-issue-withholding-it-is-not-the-solution

* Assuming, of course, that any given blog will offer an RSS/Atom feed, 
which is not really a given nowadays it would seem, and honestly I feel 
like they've shot themselves in the foot with that, given how easy it is 
to setup and use.
** This is a somewhat contestable point, as PC platform has been 
thriving with paid games until present day. Though there is arguably 
microtransaction and ad-ridden sludge here as well. Console, and 
especially mobile platforms are much better exemplars of this.

On Mon 03 Jun 2024 09:37:58, Filip Jamuljak wrote:
> (This mail is meant to be a comment to your blog post)
>
> First of all, your sixth paragraph[1] doesn't finish it's thought.
> I also notice that you're referring users on your site on multiple 
> different e-mails, when a single e-mail would probably suffice. Namely, 
> you're referring users to this inbox on sourcehut, but also on your 
> contacts mail on your main page. Worse still, contact you give with the 
> shell puzzle on screen is different from that given to the solution you 
> link to on onecomplier.com differ! (also I broke your CV: I clicked on it)
> regardless, I am Cc-ing this to all of them, just to be sure.

All of them work, but you're right, I should probably clean that up
a bit. It reached me at least :D

Thanks, interesting error. rsync suddenly stopped applying the
permissions. I'll investigate.

> Back to my main comments, although yes, the ad placement on the sites 
> you gave as an example is hilariously repulsive, most news sites tend to 
> be more moderate about it, balancing it with readability.

At least not in germany. Here, auto-playing videos, banners over the
entire content, and flickering that gives techno raves a run for it's
money is a common sight.

> But my main concern is that paying for a subscription is no solution, at 
> least, not in most cases, especially for the news sites. That reason 
> being that the competition for news agencies is fierce. How fierce? 
> Incredibly: they essentially have to compete with the entire internet. 

I absolutely agree that the competition (or more like "the war of SEO")
has taken absurd dimensions. A subscription certainly isnt the best
solution (or a good one for that matter), but to my knowledge there is
currently no widely available, privacy friendly ad platform (please let
me know, if you are aware of any).

> Any sort of internet site or user account who is providing real world 
> information in a digital form is presenting competition for a news 
> company. And although yes, you can argue that unlike online blogs and 
> forums, news sites provide some level of aggregation, it's very easy to 
> argue that those benefits are rather fringe in the world where 
> centralized social platforms are the de facto norm of communication, 
> with user-curated feeds bringing information from individual users to a 
> single place, made all the worse by news networks posting on them.

Just from my experience as an author for tech-adjacent news, I can
assure you that blogs are not at all the issue. Most troublesome, at
least to us, are AI junk summaries, websites that just 1:1 rip the
articles and the great ones just being absurdly high scored in SEO
rankings. If a major news site ran a piece on me, my website would be
absolutely buried.

> But even in more free and independent network spaces, blogs and forums
> are made ever more manageable by internet tools such as news
> aggregators* (duh) and browser bookmarks. Given all that, an average
> user might ask themselves, "why would I pay these guys $5 a month when
> everything they provide me with I can get for free elsewhere?".

Oh, 5 $ a month is way more than what I would ask for. I would rather
suggest 5 $ per year. Even that likely far exceeds the costs a user
would incur and help offset the majority that don't pay. Naturally, in
the long run, that is still insufficient and at most a band-aid.

> Of course, this is not a very good mindset to have, as you point out
> later in the post yourself, but it is the one most people seem to
> have. And we do know that it IS the mindset most people have, because
> we live in the world where free (as in, no monetary compensation
> required) is reigning supreme, even at the cost of a worse experience
> or privacy infringement: Any social platform that allowed free account
> registration was automatically more popular than one taking
> subscription fees. Any videogame that was free to download and play
> automatically had great advantage over any videogame that cost even $1
> dollar to download**. This seemingly extreme tendency towards free
> stuff, even with the most extreme cases where people aren't willing to
> give $1, literally less than pocket change nowadays, leads to the
> second reason why classical monetary compensation is frequently
> unfeasible: thanks to the way banking and online payment systems are
> set up, anything that requires any sort of payment presents a huge
> barrier of entry.

Indeed, I was initially hoping crypto could be of help there, but
unfortunately that's another thing broken by greed. Wanna buy my
20.000 $ jpeg of a pile of dung? I promise, I will spend it on something
more reasonable and useful for everyone :D

> I mean just think about it: if I were to subscribe to some paid
> service right now, I will likely have to to through 2 or 3 redirect
> windows to get to credit card info entry page, at which point I will
> have to go find my wallet, type over my credit card info, click
> confirm, then have my phone ready to open up my banking app, and
> authorize the payment. even if you had a payment processor like
> paypal, its still a multi-click process to go and wait through, and
> yet another online account to create and have, whereas if it were just
> free, 

That is understandable. When I went on my donation drive at the end of
last year, just the 10-ish people I sponsored took more than 30 minutes.
And that was with my credit card already being registered with GitHub.

> I probably would've already been halfway done reading the article I was 
> here for: asking for any sort of payment is an automatic deterrent for 
> user traffic.

I kind-of wish that all the blogs, free researchers, and the likes would
just put all their stuff behind a paywall or take it down completely, so
everyone can see what a barren media-wasteland that would leave. At the
same time, I dread even the thought, because most people probably
wouldn't even notice (which is even sadder).

> And, again, don't get me wrong: I am absolutely certain that you're the 
> sort of good Steward to pay or seek to otherwise compensate people in 
> whom you see value, seeing by the fact that you are offering file 
> hosting services for artists, from what I gather free of charge, and 
> little things such as that javascript notice.

Indeed, I try to minimise the damages I cause/help when it is easy to
me. (Yes, the hosting is free of charge, but most who have asked
immediately though that it wass suspicious. Oh, the sweet irony.)

> But I'm afraid that practice has shown over and over again that the
> world is not like that. And though I'm no expert at economics or
> marketing, I am certain that there is a reason why we are where we
> are, and I am afraid that no matter how much you or I might dislike
> it, that's not going to change quickly or easily.

I couldn't have put it better myself. The only conclusion I have come to
is to do what I can: try doing some convincing and be a "good example".
Even if it ultimately doesn't work, I can't say I didn't try.

> https://moritz.sh/blog/how-to-not-make-money-with-advertising/#if-the-need-for-money-is-the-issue-withholding-it-is-not-the-solution

Thanks, I indeed had an "alternate ending" of sorts uncommitted. Will
come up as soon as I figure out what's going on with rsync.

> * Assuming, of course, that any given blog will offer an RSS/Atom feed, 
> which is not really a given nowadays it would seem, and honestly I feel 
> like they've shot themselves in the foot with that, given how easy it is 
> to setup and use.

You wouldn't imagine how unpopular RSS is outside of a few bubbles.

> ** This is a somewhat contestable point, as PC platform has been 
> thriving with paid games until present day. Though there is arguably 
> microtransaction and ad-ridden sludge here as well. Console, and 
> especially mobile platforms are much better exemplars of this.

I wouldn't dare contest that. Just seeing Ubisoft and the likes selling
games and milking their customers after, really reignited my love for
indie games.

-- 
Moritz Poldrack
https://moritz.sh

> No postage necessary if mailed in the United States.

On 6/3/24 8:38 PM, Moritz Poldrack wrote:
> All of them work, but you're right, I should probably clean that up
> a bit. It reached me at least :D
> 

I was browsing the sourcehut earlier today and yeah, I noticed that 
people here tend to use multiple different emails for different 
occasions. I guess that's one benefit of having your own domain.
I apologize for the spam. I am still quite new to this whole "internet 
but the only account you need is your mail" thing, and honestly, I must 
say, I quite like it! It's very nice not having to click through EULAs 
and cookie usage agreements, and being bound by arbitrary usage limitations.

Anyways sorry for that, it will happen again.

> I absolutely agree that the competition (or more like "the war of SEO")
> has taken absurd dimensions. A subscription certainly isnt the best
> solution (or a good one for that matter), but to my knowledge there is
> currently no widely available, privacy friendly ad platform (please let
> me know, if you are aware of any).
> 

I've seen no really widely available solutions, though I have seen a 
number of types in the wild that I am somewhat fond of. First of it 
being just homebrewing it. It's more common on small and medium forum 
and community websites, that instead of relying on some third party ad 
provider like google adsense, use its own system, wherein the platform 
users or some third party might sign a contract with the provider 
itself, usually for a monthly fee, to show its ads on the website.
These are usually much more tame, usually materializing as a singular 
banner ad somewhere between the search bar and website content, and ads 
are usually actually good: advertising something relevant to the topic 
of the site, most frequently an actual physical product (sometimes 
regionally available, depending on the reach of the site), or someones 
software project, usually a videogame.

One other form of advertising you'd probably agree is even more 
palatable than that is something akin to openring, as seen on the Drews' 
blog. Sure this one isn't going to bring you in any stacks, but if you 
care more about traffic, its a very kind way to let people know of other 
blogs that might be similar to yours. (I guess you could theoretically 
ask for money to keep blogs appearing in the openring. I don't know if 
Drew is doing that. I hope he isn't).

> Just from my experience as an author for tech-adjacent news, I can
> assure you that blogs are not at all the issue. Most troublesome, at
> least to us, are AI junk summaries, websites that just 1:1 rip the
> articles and the great ones just being absurdly high scored in SEO
> rankings. If a major news site ran a piece on me, my website would be
> absolutely buried.
> 

Blogs are just one example, but any user-generated content site, 
including forums, and even closed platforms like twitter and Facebook, 
are really presenting threat to the classical journalism of getting out 
there and actually reporting on whats going on in the world. This has 
become painfully obvious to me during the peak of the Ukrainian 
conflict. Though it's not a  topic I've personally really followed at 
all, my dad has, and any time he sent me a link to an article to check 
out, it almost always became quickly obvious that the whole piece was 
based on one or two Twitter posts/threads. Similar story on corruption 
and fraud reportings during the recent croatian parliamentary and 
serbian presidential elections, which both happened not too far apart 
from each other. I cannot name a single article from any major news site 
that wasn't quoting nothing but other Facebook posts (bit more popular 
than Twitter locally). In all of these cases, practically only value 
news networks provided, at least local ones, is aggregation: any user 
that has finished middle school will be easily able to point to which 
places this information comes from, and as such would be able to very 
easily bail on the news site and rely on using search bars in 
aforementioned sites should the news site decide to place a paywall on 
its content

> Oh, 5 $ a month is way more than what I would ask for. I would rather
> suggest 5 $ per year. Even that likely far exceeds the costs a user
> would incur and help offset the majority that don't pay. Naturally, in
> the long run, that is still insufficient and at most a band-aid.
>

I honestly think that, depending on the actual size of the news network 
in question, $2-5/month is a sweetspot: its still enough of a pocket 
change type of money that anyone able to pay would be willing to pay, 
but also because going any less you're just going to endanger your 
bottom line, but not be able to scoop up that part of the audience who 
would only use the platform for free, but not willing to pay for 
accessibility issues I stated before.

I can't tell you how many different types of games and movies I would've 
loved to have bought when I was 15, but simply couldn't because I lacked 
regular income, and was not willing to go through the hell of reasoning 
with and getting conditioned by my parents for it. And depending on what 
platform you're hosting, such adolescents could easily make up from a 
third to over a half of your market: having a one-time 1 cent purchase 
would still present an insurmountable obstacle to such people, not 
because of money, but because its a purchase.

> Indeed, I was initially hoping crypto could be of help there, but
> unfortunately that's another thing broken by greed. Wanna buy my
> 20.000 $ jpeg of a pile of dung? I promise, I will spend it on something
> more reasonable and useful for everyone :D
> 

That wasn't exactly my point: the sheer process of legitimizing a 
transaction, regardless if its crypto or traditional, is by its nature 
daunting to many users.

Though, honestly I always felt like crypto was a missed cause: unless 
you're dealing with old silver-standard or bimetallic monetary systems, 
in which transaction medium is itself regarded as having the equivalent 
value of goods its being exchanged for, your monetary system must rely 
on some third trusted entity, likely centralized, which would be able to 
guarantee the value of the transactional medium in some way: that's what 
national banks are for*.

by removing that trusted authority, while still presenting itself as 
legitimate money, crypto essentially invited a mountain-sized horde of 
scammers and con-artists into it's domain.

> I kind-of wish that all the blogs, free researchers, and the likes would
> just put all their stuff behind a paywall or take it down completely, so
> everyone can see what a barren media-wasteland that would leave. At the
> same time, I dread even the thought, because most people probably
> wouldn't even notice (which is even sadder).
> 

That is a horrible idea, and I hope I don't need to illustrate why.

> I wouldn't dare contest that. Just seeing Ubisoft and the likes selling
> games and milking their customers after, really reignited my love for
> indie games.
> 

Indie space is not safe in this regard either, as getting any 
significant success seems to drive creators into despicable greed.
Just take a look at Rimworld.
Oh Tynan, you fart! You're 4 DLCs in and you still didn't add 
multithreading, or fix bugs like opportunistic foxes. And flammable 
steel walls? really?

*This is oversimplfying it by a large margin, but the basic gist is that 
the lack of trust due to its decentralized nature is the major issue of 
crypto.