> if it's valuable and nonexcludable (usually isn't)...
That right there is the problem, though. You are right that most information is "non excludable" (if that actually is a word).
But that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. That's an illusion, conceptually very much like clean water: almost free, but vital.
The stuff the wire services collect and sell (and that everybody republishes) does cost quite a lot to produce, and it's the backbone of the news ecosystem. It's subjective value is further diminished by its anodyne voice, making it difficult to picture the actual people reporting it.
Maybe the publishers do actually have a case for a new class of intellectual property protection. I'm horrified of the prospect, but within the current market dynamics, I don't see much of a future for quality journalism. Public opinion is critical of every and all publications, indiscriminately, and quick to use that as an argument for not subscribing. Wall Street may still pay for Bloomberg and the like, but Main Street doesn't see why. Maybe the NYT spent two or three million on some investigation. Once published, the information is delayed by little else than the time it takes the guy at BillingsMorningNews.com to switch a few sentences around.
With regards to ad blockers, you are right in that there is nothing in the law that should stop anyone from using them. But that's not really the argument. Nor is anybody disagreeing that ad tech needs drastic changes.
But fundamentally, the question is if blocking ads isn't hurting your own interests. Sure, there are many sources for the same information, usually. But the one you're reading probably has some small advantage, which is why you are using it. Once that publication folds, you have already lost something. And I'm not optimistic that the process will stop before it has drastic consequences on diversity and availability.
It also sometimes needs reminding that for an individual, news often seems like a guilty pleasure. But for a society, news is vital. Without it, you can't even keep up the appearances of democracy.
It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, obviously: blocking ads is vastly advantageous for the individual, just as fishing with the really big net is for the fisherman. But, thinking a bit broader, the question becomes: What's better – reading the news with annoying ads, or not reading the news?
My view is that if the population is watching ads, and somehow that is enough to float a business, then the population is actually paying for the business already, but through an indirect middleman.
The population pays for it by buying more or paying more of some products -- in a time and manner that provides evidence to networks, content vendors, and advertisers of business justification.
If we drill down further into the population, I think we'll find that some population of people either view or don't view ads, but don't adequately change their purchasing behavior in a time and manner so as to provide signal.
In other words, some people are takers, and some people are contributors. The people who are takers -- that is, whether or not they look at ads, click through, or whatever, they don't sufficiently change their their market behavior in a time and manner that provides evidence for business justification -- possibly detract from all mentioned parties because they diminish the business justification of the whole affair.
In tension against the takers, the people who are contributors are paying more than what they need to for the service because they're subsidizing "news" for other people.
Note that I don't really consider revenue in situations where eventually advertising clients figure out that they lack the business justification to pursue some advertising venue, such as intermediate marketing metrics that payout to businesses, but then the lack of justification for an advertising decision is later discovered. People who are marked by intermediate marketing metrics but don't go on to yada yada market behavior, are still "takers" in my view.
With that said, I think the money is there, people are already paying for news, but maybe the people who are paying should have more say than those who don't pay. Otherwise, it's the advertisers who have say, and the advertisers sponsor some pathological news outlets.
So in my view, people who argue for advertising are arguing that only advertisers can do the financing of the news world, and that contributors should continue to float takers.
It is very much in the interest of these indirect middlemen, the third-party advertising networks, to obfuscate the direct connection/signal between advertising and buying products, while on the other hand trying to make this connection seem as favourable as possible, to both sides (publisher and product-advertiser). So they work to remain in full control of this evidence and which parts of it are shown to either party. I don't want to imply they are lying (not without proof, anyway) but it's a very open secret that are very selective in how and what information they reveal to which of the two sides they are middlemen between.
It kind of seems like an arbitrage situation. But if I understand correctly, those are only good as long as they naturally "deflate" and sort restore balance back. Instead, there is some information-hiding going on that artificially props up this situation at cost for everyone but the third-party ad industry and middlemen. I think that situation is not very good.
Your argument sounds either as if people are obligated not only to watch ads but to change purchasing decisions based on them or the less gullible people ought to pay more.
I'm not even sure how to effect the latter without making the current fish bowl infinitly more invasive.
Even your choice of words is revelatory of a profoundly scewed perspective full of imaginary obligations. Of course those whose livelihood depends on a particular arrangement often seem to feel that the current state of affairs is necessary to the world at large as if the current good effects are both essential and couldn't be achieved any other way.
"News" are bad for you and bad for democracy. "News" are not what we think about when we think about the word "news", ie, reporting about important issues in the world, put in perspective -- historical perspective, geographical perspective, etc.
Actual news are, in essence, gossip. They destroy people's ability to think and reason.
News agencies are the worst. They define the agenda, what is important and what isn't. They pollute the "news ecosystem" right at the source.
Adblock is one way to fight back. Not the only way but a good way.
I agree in the sense that I think "news" alone is rather worthless. You need an analysis, a context to make sense of it. Agenda and partisanship are not necessarily deal breakers IMO, as long as people are being forward and honest about it instead of faking "neutrality", whatever that is. You can be partisan while keeping your eyes open and your thinking critical instead of devolving into propaganda pamphlets. In a sense I believe that the idea of a completely fair and unbiased reporting is completely absurd.
For this reason I only subscribe to weekly or even monthly newspapers. It means those journalists are not racing to be the first ones to relay any information completely raw. Instead they can take a bit of distance, take time to analyze the situation and think of its possible consequences.
I don't know what to do when I'm told that there's been a terrorist attack in a country thousands of kilometers from me. Then we get a stream of picture, and a death count updated every femtosecond. It's sad, sure, but then what? Learning about the causes and consequences of this attack and how they fit in the history and geopolitics of our societies, now that's a lot more interesting and maybe even actionable.
It's hard to find. Even NYT does this as opinion pages. Go to their home page, it's got a significant area of opinion. It gets progressively worse the further down the line (of news companies) you go.
The problem is news agencies is the only way to get information. Spicer doesn't invite "regular dude Joe." We in an information desert.
Disclaimer: I live in the US, and run an adblock indiscriminately and urge others to do the same.
Yes, news as we generally know it contains a lot of fluff, is almost certainly biased - whether politically or racially - and misleads through omission and incredible sources, we can go on. But, who will then do the reporting if these big news sources do not? Imagine a world without CNN or NYT or whatever. All of these sources are blamed by one political party or another to be biased and left/right/radical/whatever leaning. If we got rid of them and relied only on the smaller news entities and blogs and such, who will do the reporting on wars in Syria and Ukraine? Or who will report on whistle blowers and interview them? Why would someone of Edward Snowden's level of infamy be interviewed by a no-name news paper? Actually, on the topic of infamy, would it have even been possible for Edward Snowden to stay alive so far if general opinion was not so divided? If no one knew about him, what would save him? I would credit those same big news entities with spreading his story around and making him known. I believe that credible news sources are required for a healthy democracy, and that news organizations need to make money. Last thing we need is a government-run news entity (how can we trust one to keep us informed about grievances our governments may commit. Lets not kid ourselves and declare that the government is perfect or has the citizens' best interests at heart).
> Lets not kid ourselves and declare that the government is perfect or has the citizens' best interests at heart.
Let's also not kid ourselves about the notion of the current, big, established news organizations being independent of the same conflicting interests that ensare various parts of the federal government. No, the government doesn't control the media. Rather, big corporations and rich moguls control the government, AND the media, to the same ends.
> reading the news with annoying ads, or not reading the news?
False dichotomy.
Firstly, ads don't have to be annoying.
Secondly, news doesn't have to be financed by ads.
There are lots of smaller and independent news sources that don't rely on ads for funding. The news organisation linked to in the article is a case in point. They make their money from donations. Another one is insurge intelligence (https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence) which uses crowdfunding.
> Maybe the publishers do actually have a case for a new class of intellectual property protection.
No. They gambled that they could make money giving their content away for free with ads on it. They were never guaranteed an income that way, and to legislate one for them is a terrible way to proceed. We have a name for those people in Australia: rent-seekers.
It's a good question, and I was about to mention the tragedy-of-the-commons trade-off, but you already did half of that in your final paragraph.
The other half is, that the third-party ad networks themselves are in fact already feeding a tragedy-of-the-commons situation. Somewhere in the whole maelstrom of shitty clickbait websites funded by ads for other shitty clickbait websites. I read an article recently linked here about those weird vague thumbnail image clickbait links (the ones about celebrities, diets and skin diseases, mostly) that appear below low quality articles. They followed the links, and it just led to more and more of the same, but it did so while spiraling downward into a lowest common denominator like way, way lower than I'd have imagined.
There's some really out-of-control complex systems (in the systems theory sense of the word) in the guts of the advertising industry and they are already causing tragedy-of-the-commons situations way before, and regardless of, people using ad blockers.
Disabling the ad blocker is not going to help fix those (they'll just gobble up the extra profit). And even then, to (personally) answer your question, yes I think using ad blockers is a net benefit if it keeps those systems at least somewhat in check.
Paper newspapers aren't best for society as a whole when you consider the environment impact of production and distribution. Even with recycling, newsprint causes a lot of pollution. And then the distribution vehicles have to drive around every day.
With "in paper", I mean mostly that you subscribe to a daily or weekly single release.
Be it paper or as e-paper on your tablet.
But in either case, subscription costs are a lot more reasonable than subscribing to the website, and you get high quality content with only very few, handpicked, ads. Which also can't track you on paper or in the PDF
Find journalism with taxes? Then wouldn't it follow that those journalists would have a disincentive to serve as a check to their masters that pay them?
Journalism's oldest and most important role is to serve as a watchdog over government. When they start profiting from government, they'll be less likely to be critical of it.
Journalism should be supported by the free market. If people want it, they pay. If nobody wants to pay, then you either adapt or die. The really good media outlets are doing just fine (i.e. The Economist, NY Times,) those on the margins are at risk -- but that's their own fault.
State supported media has the potential to turn into Pravda (for the political party from whom they garner the most support, usually leftists,) and it generally does, albeit with much more subtlety.
> Find journalism with taxes? Then wouldn't it follow that those journalists would have a disincentive to serve as a check to their masters that pay them?
Do you think the BBC is biased? ARD, ZDF? They are not.
Because they don't get paid by the government, but they have the right to collect their own taxes instead. That way they are independent, and still always funded.
>Find journalism with taxes? Then wouldn't it follow that those journalists would have a disincentive to serve as a check to their masters that pay them?
How is this different than your "masters" being mega-corporations?
At least in a publicly funded organization there would be transparent checks and balances in place.
That right there is the problem, though. You are right that most information is "non excludable" (if that actually is a word).
But that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. That's an illusion, conceptually very much like clean water: almost free, but vital.
The stuff the wire services collect and sell (and that everybody republishes) does cost quite a lot to produce, and it's the backbone of the news ecosystem. It's subjective value is further diminished by its anodyne voice, making it difficult to picture the actual people reporting it.
Maybe the publishers do actually have a case for a new class of intellectual property protection. I'm horrified of the prospect, but within the current market dynamics, I don't see much of a future for quality journalism. Public opinion is critical of every and all publications, indiscriminately, and quick to use that as an argument for not subscribing. Wall Street may still pay for Bloomberg and the like, but Main Street doesn't see why. Maybe the NYT spent two or three million on some investigation. Once published, the information is delayed by little else than the time it takes the guy at BillingsMorningNews.com to switch a few sentences around.
With regards to ad blockers, you are right in that there is nothing in the law that should stop anyone from using them. But that's not really the argument. Nor is anybody disagreeing that ad tech needs drastic changes.
But fundamentally, the question is if blocking ads isn't hurting your own interests. Sure, there are many sources for the same information, usually. But the one you're reading probably has some small advantage, which is why you are using it. Once that publication folds, you have already lost something. And I'm not optimistic that the process will stop before it has drastic consequences on diversity and availability.
It also sometimes needs reminding that for an individual, news often seems like a guilty pleasure. But for a society, news is vital. Without it, you can't even keep up the appearances of democracy.
It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, obviously: blocking ads is vastly advantageous for the individual, just as fishing with the really big net is for the fisherman. But, thinking a bit broader, the question becomes: What's better – reading the news with annoying ads, or not reading the news?