I still think the only serious options are paywalls (“pay with your money”) and ads (“pay with your attention”), and in the case of the web the value of moving fluidly from site to site pushes strongly for ads.
It’s true that a lot of content is supported by ads and would not exist without ads.
I want that content not to exist.
There are other ways for content to be funded:
There are people who just have something to share, and post on reddit/here/etc for free.
There are people on youtube supported by patreon and donations.
There are periodicals/substacks/etc supported by subscriptions.
Those mechanisms lead to higher quality and higher consumer surplus. There is not a shortage of content, there is a shortage of curation. Ads, as a funding mechanism, incentivize clickbait and virality. That causes publications to find ways to get attention, and those ways are bad for readers, but a lot of people just can’t help but have their attention drawn despite consuming that content being a net negative for them. And then ads make it more of a net negative for them. And that ad-funded content does its best to pull attention away from higher-quality content with less money for promotion.
Jeff touched on this, but I want to underline the point more strongly: How do the sharing platforms themselves (Reddit / YouTube / etc) exist without ads? To be clear, I’m no fan of the audience-distorting incentives of ads… but the infrastructure for free content isn’t exactly free, either, and we need to pay for that somehow or else that otherwise-funded content doesn’t get distributed (and then the lack of distribution inherently prevents donation / patronage models from working). I’m having trouble seeing another realistic way for that to work?
We could look at Substack‘s model and say that the donation/patronage mechanisms should get subsumed by the distribution platforms, who’d take a percentage off the top of that revenue. If there are enough donations then they can afford to support the platform. As Jeff says, we’ll see how that works out for Substack; in theory it seems like this model could work, but as of now Substack is still losing millions per year. As for your other mentioned platforms: At a glance, it seems pretty clear that Reddit (which has platform-supporting ads) is still losing money (given that they were losing money the last time they shared info in 2021, and are now studiously avoiding all discussion of profitability while ostensibly preparing for an IPO), which helps explain their motivation for shenanigans like the current API pricing fiasco. YouTube is the one site of the three that is making money, and it probably only became outright profitable in the pandemic era as they increased their already-high ad loads (and expanded supplemental product lines like YT Music and TV).
YouTube lost money for a long time. It’s questionable whether it was even bought for financial reasons rather than influence and data collection reasons.
Reddit made $100M in ad revenue in 2019, increasing to $500M in 2022. Their owners pushed for rapid growth for an IPO even if the revenue increase would be temporary. If they’re losing money right now, they’re overspending.
If public goods are supported by small donations despite platform fees, I think the government should get involved. I think the US government should run a YouTube, a Substack, a Patreon, and a Reddit.
Most of those sites (and very near 100% when weighted by traffic) are funded by ads, though.
There are people on youtube supported by patreon and donations. There are periodicals/substacks/etc supported by subscriptions.
Most of these have a model where some visitors pay while others don’t pay and see ads. Substack is an exception, with free users not seeing any ads, but I’d bet that this is just them being new (most new sites deprioritize advertising to maximize growth) and that in a few years they’ll show ads to free users, limit how many articles you can read as a free user, or both.
There is not a shortage of content, there is a shortage of curation.
I think this is mostly not true? Unless you want to call standard journalism curation?
But this is also in the world today, one which has ads. I think you’d need to claim that even if we, say, banned ads, we’d still not see a shortage of content?
It’s true that a lot of content is supported by ads and would not exist without ads.
I want that content not to exist.
There are other ways for content to be funded:
There are people who just have something to share, and post on reddit/here/etc for free.
There are people on youtube supported by patreon and donations.
There are periodicals/substacks/etc supported by subscriptions.
Those mechanisms lead to higher quality and higher consumer surplus. There is not a shortage of content, there is a shortage of curation. Ads, as a funding mechanism, incentivize clickbait and virality. That causes publications to find ways to get attention, and those ways are bad for readers, but a lot of people just can’t help but have their attention drawn despite consuming that content being a net negative for them. And then ads make it more of a net negative for them. And that ad-funded content does its best to pull attention away from higher-quality content with less money for promotion.
Jeff touched on this, but I want to underline the point more strongly: How do the sharing platforms themselves (Reddit / YouTube / etc) exist without ads? To be clear, I’m no fan of the audience-distorting incentives of ads… but the infrastructure for free content isn’t exactly free, either, and we need to pay for that somehow or else that otherwise-funded content doesn’t get distributed (and then the lack of distribution inherently prevents donation / patronage models from working). I’m having trouble seeing another realistic way for that to work?
We could look at Substack‘s model and say that the donation/patronage mechanisms should get subsumed by the distribution platforms, who’d take a percentage off the top of that revenue. If there are enough donations then they can afford to support the platform. As Jeff says, we’ll see how that works out for Substack; in theory it seems like this model could work, but as of now Substack is still losing millions per year. As for your other mentioned platforms: At a glance, it seems pretty clear that Reddit (which has platform-supporting ads) is still losing money (given that they were losing money the last time they shared info in 2021, and are now studiously avoiding all discussion of profitability while ostensibly preparing for an IPO), which helps explain their motivation for shenanigans like the current API pricing fiasco. YouTube is the one site of the three that is making money, and it probably only became outright profitable in the pandemic era as they increased their already-high ad loads (and expanded supplemental product lines like YT Music and TV).
YouTube lost money for a long time. It’s questionable whether it was even bought for financial reasons rather than influence and data collection reasons.
Reddit made $100M in ad revenue in 2019, increasing to $500M in 2022. Their owners pushed for rapid growth for an IPO even if the revenue increase would be temporary. If they’re losing money right now, they’re overspending.
If public goods are supported by small donations despite platform fees, I think the government should get involved. I think the US government should run a YouTube, a Substack, a Patreon, and a Reddit.
Most of those sites (and very near 100% when weighted by traffic) are funded by ads, though.
Most of these have a model where some visitors pay while others don’t pay and see ads. Substack is an exception, with free users not seeing any ads, but I’d bet that this is just them being new (most new sites deprioritize advertising to maximize growth) and that in a few years they’ll show ads to free users, limit how many articles you can read as a free user, or both.
I think this is mostly not true? Unless you want to call standard journalism curation?
But this is also in the world today, one which has ads. I think you’d need to claim that even if we, say, banned ads, we’d still not see a shortage of content?
I think the only content left would be the actual art. not the stuff that only deserves the name content.