For example, I don’t use an ad blocker because I think pushing sites to switch to paywalls makes the web worse,
After reading the linked article, I got an impression that you see the quality of online content as constant. Like, depending on the way it is financed, there may be more or less of the content produced, but it would be the same kind of content. The only difference is that more is better.
I believe that the way the content is financed has a big impact on what is produced. The ads reward both good content and bad content, but they reward the bad content more. Both bad as in “toxoplasma of rage”, and bad as in “boring text, exciting headline (sometimes contradicting the text)”.
If one day someone creates a news website with a business model “headlines written by humans, text generated by GPT-3”, such website would be unprofitable behind a paywall, but might be quite profitable with ads, if the admins are good at SEO.
Ten years ago, I had a small blog and I experimented with Google Adsense. It was depressing for me to see that the stupidest articles made more money. Well, relatively more; like 10 cents for a stupid article, versus 1 cent for a smart one. My most profitable article was a review of some movie in TV that I wrote so drunk that I even got names of half of the characters wrong. Made about as much money as all the programming tutorials I ever wrote combined.
That was when I realized that I had basically two options: (1) write the kind of content I can be okay with, and get paid 1 cent per article, so I might as well do it for free, or (2) start following the incentives and become the very thing I hate, but potentially make a decent profit. The winning strategy is to have a good SEO (i.e. keep redesigning the HTML code following Google’s latest whims), use the popular keywords, write clickbait headlines (preferably multiple alternatives, and do the A/B testing), and don’t think about it too much, just write a lot as fast as possible. Add some nice pictures, so the article looks nice when shared on social networks. Become friends with the right people and hyperlink each other’s articles. Etc. So I have removed the ads and abandoned the idea of making money by writing stuff online. I didn’t like the direction it was pushing me.
There are options other than either ads or everything behind a paywall. There is the freemium model used by Substack (get some content for free, pay for the rest); there is also Patreon; or selling merchandise or selling with referral links. On the other hand, there is now so much adsense-stuffed content produced that if you don’t sacrifice to Moloch, you don’t have a chance. During the time you write an article, some guy working at a clickbait factory will write hundreds; at the end of the day, he will get the minimum wage, you—nothing.
After reading the linked article, I got an impression that you see the quality of online content as constant. Like, depending on the way it is financed, there may be more or less of the content produced, but it would be the same kind of content. The only difference is that more is better.
I believe that the way the content is financed has a big impact on what is produced. The ads reward both good content and bad content, but they reward the bad content more. Both bad as in “toxoplasma of rage”, and bad as in “boring text, exciting headline (sometimes contradicting the text)”.
If one day someone creates a news website with a business model “headlines written by humans, text generated by GPT-3”, such website would be unprofitable behind a paywall, but might be quite profitable with ads, if the admins are good at SEO.
Ten years ago, I had a small blog and I experimented with Google Adsense. It was depressing for me to see that the stupidest articles made more money. Well, relatively more; like 10 cents for a stupid article, versus 1 cent for a smart one. My most profitable article was a review of some movie in TV that I wrote so drunk that I even got names of half of the characters wrong. Made about as much money as all the programming tutorials I ever wrote combined.
That was when I realized that I had basically two options: (1) write the kind of content I can be okay with, and get paid 1 cent per article, so I might as well do it for free, or (2) start following the incentives and become the very thing I hate, but potentially make a decent profit. The winning strategy is to have a good SEO (i.e. keep redesigning the HTML code following Google’s latest whims), use the popular keywords, write clickbait headlines (preferably multiple alternatives, and do the A/B testing), and don’t think about it too much, just write a lot as fast as possible. Add some nice pictures, so the article looks nice when shared on social networks. Become friends with the right people and hyperlink each other’s articles. Etc. So I have removed the ads and abandoned the idea of making money by writing stuff online. I didn’t like the direction it was pushing me.
There are options other than either ads or everything behind a paywall. There is the freemium model used by Substack (get some content for free, pay for the rest); there is also Patreon; or selling merchandise or selling with referral links. On the other hand, there is now so much adsense-stuffed content produced that if you don’t sacrifice to Moloch, you don’t have a chance. During the time you write an article, some guy working at a clickbait factory will write hundreds; at the end of the day, he will get the minimum wage, you—nothing.