Hardcore users use only https://boingboing.net/ascii
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BoingBoing is a repository of cat videos. There’s some good, serious stuff as well, but it’s reprinted here as well as being posted on more serious long form journalist sites. I have never gotten the impression that BB had some kind of journalistic reputation to maintain or any sort of ethical standards to relaxe from, it just has a lot of writers and readers who happen to lean the same way I do. Other than silencing hate speech or anything that might be mistaken for hate speech, Ive seen very little editorial power being exercised here. Am I missing something?
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I would have thought that of the forum users, the majority would have used the BBS view. An advantage of the BBS view is that the set of active topics (including blog front page topics) is given as a list, so many are visible at once and one can choose without scrolling.
The ascii view is certainly the easiest way of avoiding ads. (And cat videos.)
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I only ever use the https://bbs.boingboing.net/ address. The site looks great for me. I do have Privacy Badger turned ‘on.’ But it indicates that there are no trackers to block!
I disengaged Privacy Badger to see if I could see what you all are talking about…and I still don’t see any ads (here on the bbs.boingboing.net location).
Oh, wait…I spoke too soon!
Now I went from this blog page view to the ‘unread’ and ‘new’ pages which I haven’t read yet and:
- the first 10 posts look like ‘sponsored content’= advertorials
- there do seem to be hardly any new news posts; I think everyone must be away on holiday (which would be understandable, given the time of year!)
But, still, I have none of the page-jumping problems you guys mention.
And on mobile, Firefox (on iOS) is excellent as you can set it to automatically block pretty much everything (ad trackers, etc).
Probably. My one and only account here has been banned twice for talking about stuff similar to the topics in this thread - which is the prerogative of the site owners. I can say definitively that it does not take hate speech or being unruly to get banned. (This was well before the the general moderation thread was created that publicly mentions bans and reasons for the ban.) The owners are somewhat sensitive to the details of the revenue stream, though they do variably give some latitude when people discuss it.
Personally, I’d love to read a history of all the struggles they’ve had to go through to keep the revenue sufficient to support the site over the years as the internet, and Boing Boing’s place in it, has changed - I think turning their historical editorial eye on themselves would be insightful and interesting. I’ve been told by at least one Boing Boinger that it would not be interesting. They seem to consider the details not only to be proprietary but perhaps also zero sum.
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Perhaps some of us here from the Happy Mutant days have fond memories of BB being more than just a repository of cat videos, one with enough of a journalistic reputation to be its own channel on Virgin Air. Yes, you’re missing quite a lot.
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I’d love a peek at it, tbh. Even if they can’t use crowdfunding to eliminate all of the ads it’d be nice to have some sort of tiering system where like “If we can get x amount of money via patreon then we can eliminate the Cool Tools” ads or whatever.
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BB got mentioned by Obama in a speech. I don’t quite recall the context; I think it was about critcism of his policy on mass surveillance? That was fairly major too.
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Trump mentioned BB as well when his fathers ties with white supremacists was exposed (except it was referred to as “some small web site” if I recall correctly.
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The page-jumping problem crops up for me after I click through to a story from blog view. Various ads load midway through the story, including a large, completely unnecessary “POPULAR POSTS ON BOINGBOING” video thingy. Ads also now load on top of every image, which doesn’t contribute to the page jumping but is suuuuper tacky.
To be sure, the page jumping has not quite reached the level that it has hit on other sites, where it’s not even worth looking at the screen until a minute has passed and the ads have all loaded and you can click away the newsletter popup. But I’d hope that BoingBoing would aspire to offer a better experience than “not as awful as the worst site you visit today.”
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I am assuming that there’s a reasonably small amount of money that an individual user could pay as a monthly subscription fee that would nevertheless exceed whatever marginal revenue is generated by plastering garbage ads all over that user’s screen plus whatever it costs to collect the subscription, and I’d likely be happy to pay it. Maybe I’m misapprehending the underlying economics (and, as discussed, BoingBoing isn’t sharing what those economics are), but I can’t imagine that we’d be talking about more than $3-$5 a month.
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This post here shows me how far it’s fallen, to be honest.
I remember when BoingBoing was pretty much required reading amongst a lot of people. When it was a zine in the late 80s and got noticed even outside of zine culture. (Which was and is still very hard for zines to do).
If you think it’s about cat videos, I’m sorry that you weren’t here for the better days. For the best days.
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Thank you so much!
That’s infinitely better. I took the opportunity to stop seeing posts by my least-favourite polemicist, too.
I have not and likely will never buy from the BB store. I have ad blockers and privacy agents set to maximum shield when I am on the site. BB isn’t making much, if anything, from my site visits. A guaranteed income stream of $x.00 monthly vs close to $0.00 seems like a win for the site. How well that scales, not sure? What seems apparent is that is not a style the BB leadership wishes to engage with their readers.
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BB was listed as the number 1 blog at Technorati in 2005 and 2006
It was in the top 10 until 2012 at least, and then disappeared from the top 100 in 2013 … just about when the owners decided to take these comments off the article pages and put them here instead 
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I’d go as far as to say that $1 would far exceed the amount, given that everyone piping up in the thread is pointing out that they feel the need to crank the privacy and adblock dials to 11 to wade through the morass of content. I’d happily give BB $10 or $15/mo.
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I alternate between the blog view and the grid view.
Never the front page!
I would absolutely contribute to a Patreon, or even more ideal, purchase actual curated items of interest instead of random algorithmically selected tat.
I would also assume that either people are buying this stuff or Stack Social pays them something whether anything sells or not as an advertising fee to be allowed to run their ads across our eyeballs.
I think in all my years of following bb – extending several more than my account shows because I lurked for many years – I’ve bought something from the store twice. But lately, there isn’t anything they are offering that I’m even tempted to buy.
Try Brave browser.
I counter that with: are the people who would object to a direct support model instead actively clicking on ads or buying stuff from the bb store? If not, then they don’t matter when it comes to offering another income model that they won’t like/use. Whereas those of us who don’t click on ads or buy from the store would provide them with direct revenue if the option was available because we love the site and the community, and hate the direction it’s heading when it comes to overwhelming advertising.
So, your hesitation toward giving money directly to bb is that you are subsidizing the people who get the same content but don’t contribute? Hmm.
I think I would find that fascinating as well. Certainly informative.
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No, it is because I would be subsidizing people who actively engage on the forum but object explicitly to contributing. As I wrote above, I already do subscribe to news media where my contribution makes it possible for others to access the content.
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