Read the ads or pay cash or say goodbye

[mike acker]

according to this article a well known site is now saying "read the ads, pay cash or say goodbye"

ok: Bye.

other better sources will be happy to take your place . the internet was meant to be a free forum for the voluntary sharing of information .

[Crewp]

agreed, see ya

[Distro-Don]

Sounds good to me. Bye

[daveinuk]

Got to admit that's the biggest personal gripe I have, being 'forced' to look at adverts or 'prompted' to watch/like/share etc etc etc. I also just leave the page, never to return, there is another page I seem to frequently come across, I think it's a news site, that doesn't let you read unless you disable your ad blockers, then if you do, it still doesn't let you in! So I've never seen what it's got to offer to this day lol. . . . . . .

[killer de bug]

that doesn't let you read unless you disable your ad blockers, then if you do, it still doesn't let you in! So I've never seen what it's got to offer to this day lol. . . . . . .

Came across this also. Same result. I said goodbye.

There is still enough website to browse

[z31fanatic]

teh M$$$$$$$$ keep us down!

[BenTrabetere]

I suspect my side of the table will be empty....

other better sources will be happy to take your place . the internet was meant to be a free forum for the voluntary sharing of information.

When was the "internet" ever free (as in beer)? Its earliest ancestors were government programs funded by taxes paid by people who were blithely unaware the programs existed. And even then it was not an entirely free (as in speech) forum because access was severely restricted.

The internet as we know it today has always been a commercial operation. And while there may have been a brief point where everything was a free (as in speech) forum, I cannot recall a time where Frea Speach advocates were not smacked upside the head with a "My Server, My Rules" lart.

Personally, I am very surprised free (as in beer) access to media outlets like WIRED is as widespread as it is. Shortly after the Eternal September I thought by 2000 the major print and broadcast outlets would be available only by subscription. Today I think this was thwarted almost entirely by injecting ads into the content.

I use Adblock and NoScript, and the default setting is 'Never Allow'. I am willing to grant permission to sites (two appropriate examples are linuxmint.com and Pjotr's "10 Things") that want, need or (IMO) deserve it. These sites have bills to pay, and accepting ads is a way for me to provide financial support.

I rarely read WIRED, but I will temporarily enable permissions without hesitation if that is what it takes to gain access to an article interests me. My only objection to WIRED's new pricing scheme is the $3.99 for 4-weeks access - $5 will get you a 6-month print+digital subscription and a Trash & Trinket.

[Flemur]

Here's what it looks like with two things blocked:
||optimizely.com^
||fonts.googleapis.com^

wired.jpg

Classy! I never read Wired anyway...

[Habitual]

Who?

I want wired ads, I'll buy it in print media.

[Ozo]

Since Linux Mint is funded by ads, I am sure we all agree not to use Adblock Plus to block them. Right?

[killer de bug]

Since Linux Mint is funded by ads, I am sure we all agree not to use Adblock Plus to block them. Right?

It's different. Linux Mint is not a commercial program and therefore we accept to see ads to help them.

Or you can simply refuse the ads and compensate by making a donation.

[Ozo]

After reading more of the posts above I see that the solution is simply to allow ads from Linux Mint if you have Adblock installed. That's what I get for skipping ahead.

[Fragezeichen]

What you seem to forget is that writers also need to make a living somehow.
Writing a quality article requires a lot of time, research and effort, so I really don't see why someone should be expected to do it for free.
You wouldn't expect a plumber, electrician, mechanic, it administrator, etc. to do his job without any pay, would you? So why should it be different for a journalist or writer?

[z31fanatic]

What you seem to forget is that writers also need to make a living somehow.

No they don't need to be compensated! If you do you're a sellout! It should be about the good of community!
You M$ shill, you!

[killer de bug]

What you seem to forget is that writers also need to make a living somehow.

You do seem to forget that Wired is selling magazines, and that's their business.
Therefore authors are already being paid by the sales. If the sales of wired are not high enough, maybe they should look at the price of it. Especially if you live in Europe. 70$ per year. That's far from cheap. In the US you have the 5$ for 6 months offer.

Like many magazines, what they posted on the web was a marketing action to attract more reader to the "real" wired. But they finally (like a lot of other companies) forgot about this since it was generating revenues. And now they try to compensate a decrease of their bonus.

I would love to see the figures. They say 20% of the visitors have an adblocker. Would love to see how many will accept to pay. How many will watch ads. And how many will never come and never mention wired. This is also a key figure. On long term, they may experience a strong decrease of the number of visitors if their links are not as frequently reposted.

[futanari]

I will never see ads when I only add sites I visit to my router configuration. Ads are always hosted on external servers, so they won't display at all. Everything else would be simply blocked and no one can punish or blame me for doing something like that. Best "adblocker" ever

@Fragezeichen
Technically you can live without newssites or news. They aren't a neccessary "thing" for us, most informations you get are crap anyway or won't help you at all in your life. F.e. today two trains collided head on in Germany. Many people died or were injured. It was either a mechanical, technical or human error which made that happen and someone or some people most likely will get a trial, depending on what actually happened. Also people will check for mistakes made so you won't repeat them in the future. THE END. Why should I pay for an information like that?

[Fragezeichen]

What you seem to forget is that writers also need to make a living somehow.

You do seem to forget that Wired is selling magazines, and that's their business.

Circulations of printed magazines and newspapers have been declining in general while more and more people are reading their articles online. So in order to be able to continue delivering quality articles and paying their writers, publishers somehow need to compensate for that...

Technically you can live without newssites or news. They aren't a neccessary "thing" for us, most informations you get are crap anyway or won't help you at all in your life.

Noone forces you to read a newspaper or magazine. However, if you choose to do so, I don't see why it should be free, since a lot of time, effort and research has been invested into it.
You can also live without a architect, engineer, painter etc. However, if you decide to hire one or employ their services, do you also think they shouldn't be paid for their work?

[BigEasy]

according to this article a well known site is now saying "read the ads, pay cash or say goodbye"

ok: Bye.

they do not read this forum so they still do not know about their great loss

[futanari]

Noone forces you to read a newspaper or magazine. However, if you choose to do so, I don't see why it should be free, since a lot of time, effort and research has been invested into it.
You can also live without a plumber and try to fix everything yourself. However, if you decide to hire one, do you also think he shouldn't be paid for his work?

A plumber is kind of an "expert" who knows or should know everything about the stuff he does. He went to school, learned all technical terms and for that knowledge he gets paid for. Not only that, since he passed that school you also have some kind of insurance that the work he does will actually help you to get rid of your plumbing problem.

A journalist usually only gathers informations from other sources (which I often times can also visit) and sums them up or re-writes them in his own words, to be able to publish it on his own site. Yet anyone can do that and you actually see that anyone can do it because there can be up to 500 sites informing about the one same thing. Is neither difficult nor time consuming to sum something up, you can do it from home, you can do it at any given time and because of that there is way too much journalism nowadays. It is actually a really cheap way to gather people to read your site when you inform about things happening here and there, but we simply do not need so much and the site owners still expect us to "pay" for such an easy task. If they cannot handle the costs, they should simply close it and we are good to go. I wouldn't mind it if there were suddenly only 100 instead of 500 news-sites Also there are tons of forums where users sum up news voluntairily... Why should I honestly pay for it?
I should add here, that there is obviously a differnce between mass produced news-articles and bigger articles where people actually invest a lot of time into it. I am speaking about the mass produced articles. For the others most often you have to pay already to access them and I do not mind that.

[z31fanatic]

A journalist usually only gathers informations from other sources (which I often times can also visit) and sums them up or re-writes them in his own words, to be able to publish it on his own site. Yet anyone can do that and you actually see that anyone can do it because there can be up to 500 sites informing about the one same thing.

No, not everyone can do it. Journalism is also a skill. Many journalists invested to learn their skills by going to school and etc...
You can say the same about plumbers. Everyone should be able to turn a wrench, right?