a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  1917 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.

... and then I find out what Chrome and Safari's default "automatically pay" amount is and request an empty file that costs that much every random() seconds on my clickbait site, which exists under many identities that I retire when they start getting added to blacklists. And the arms race continues, only instead of picking advertisers' pockets we're picking everyone's.





kleinbl00  ·  1917 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Absolutely. The difference is, if I'm an advertiser and I'm paying in CPM, I'm not paying attention to individual users. If someone is scamming me for .01% of my content I call that "breakage" and move on. But if I'm getting scammed I'm getting scammed and I care a lot more.

It's the difference between being shoplifted and being pickpocketed. Shoplifters target your business. Pickpockets target you. It's the degree of remove that allows most of this to go on and getting rid of that degree simplifies things.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if I'm the New York Times, I probably have no interest or reason to allow you on my site. You can't inject code. And if I've given money to a site that has allowed you to inject code in the past, I'm that much less likely to give money to that site in the future. What kind of nightclub are you running? The kind where you can get a drink and call a cab and be fine or the kind where you have to keep your hand over your drink because the GHB flows freely? There are probably reasons for both clubs to exist but if you try to be one while actually being the other you'll lose your clientele quickly. Right now it's all free and it's all supported by ads; as soon as users become the market instead of the marketplace users end up voting more.