Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/14/salon-gives-readers-a-choice.html
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Salon is where comments go to die.
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this is nuts. but the way they phrase it, a lot of people might actually go for it.
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This is stunning news - I had no idea Salon was still around!
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Sigh, when will these media organizations get it?
Your content is not made of solid gold and unicorn glitter. If you insist that I make myself vulnerable to malware, privacy invasion, and allow whatever shitty advertisers gave you money today to firehose their fecal material into my eyes, then I guess I didn’t want to read your article so much after all.
If it so happens that I really do want to read an article very much, then I will email the link to my tablet, which has 1blocker installed on it, and which (to date) blocks most ads quite nicely without causing any websites to moan at me about how my adblocker is stealing food from the mouths of baby kittens.
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I will now choose option #3 - not visiting Salon’s site.
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Isn’t this kinda like self-imposed anti-net-neutrality? “Visit our site and we will slow your computer down!”
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At least they’re up front about it.
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For sites like these, I usually turn off javascript on the domain using the Script Defender extension for Chrome. It might limit some functionality (e.g., comments), but it usually gets rid of anti-adblock messages.
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The thing is they have another alternative. Several sites I go to are using Google Contribute. They get $.01 every time I visit their site. I add to Google Contribute when my account hits zero. That way I pay for what I use and don’t get ads. I have no problem with that. It’s fair to me and a LOT better than what Salon has come up with.
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Salon used to be cool. (Slate’s where it’s at now.)
This might not be such a bad idea, except I doubt they’ll make enough money even to pay for the technology they’re using, especially since cryptocurrencies are tanking. (They are still tanking, aren’t they?)
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Or adblock the “I see you’re using adblock!” message.
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Distrowatch is a web site that tracks Linux and BSD distributions. If you want people to know about your newest release, Distrowatch is a good way to get the news out. They also have a weekly newsletter where they typically review a Linux or BSD distribution and discuss recent news. They also run a “sister site” about cryptocurrency named “CryptoCoin.cc”.
The most recent Distrowatch Weekly polled readers on whether they’d prefer ads with the option to switch to mining; mining with the option to switch to ads; or something else, like Patreon. People in the comments were not happy about the idea of the site using mining to generate revenue.
(Edit: hopefully the links work now)
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I’d rather do neither, thank you very much.
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If you want a contribution, don’t cover your site with crappy ads and then tell me I have to pay to get access. Additionally, don’t make it so complicated that a microtransaction takes longer to process than reading your prose, and keep the transactions in line with the access. I might pay a dollar one-off for 1-2 articles, but I don’t want to pay forever if i don’t hit your site at least a few times a week.
Yeah, how dare they want to be paid for their work? They should be glad for the exposure I give them by reading their articles.
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Something like this seems like the most sane way to handle this moving forward. It needs to be large and distributed enough that you avoid the minimum financial transactions that are a big problem with this sort of thing, and it’s actually based on number of visits/traffic/etc.
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I’ve seen this kind of guilt tripping before. Sorry, but the websites in question have chosen a business model that involves spying on me and renting their site out to any criminal willing to pay for a malware injecting ad. If they go bankrupt because I and other people concerned about privacy and security choose to protect ourselves by blocking their ads, that is on them, it is not on me.
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Time to add a line in /etc/hosts.
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