SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
The popular content blocking extension uBlock Origin blocks CSP reporting on websites that make use of it if it injects neutered scripts.
CSP, Content Security Policy, can be used by web developers to whitelist code that is allowed to run on web properties. The idea behind the feature is to prevent attackers from injecting JavaScript on websites protected by CSP.
CSP reports any attempt of interfering with the site's policies in regards to scripts to the webmaster. This happens when users connect to the site, and is used by webmasters to analyze and resolve the detected issues.
[...] Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin, replied stating that this was not a bug but by design. The extension blocks the sending of CSP reports if it injects a neutered Google Analytics script.
Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/19/ublock-criticized-for-blocking-csp/
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday October 23 2017, @02:58PM (21 children)
Would you prefer having to pay $4 for each unique domain that you visit in each month? Because in practice, that's the alternative to third-party ads and trackers for sites that aren't run as a hobby. Or if you know of a third way (other than ads or subscriptions) proven to provide enough revenue to pay writers, I'd like to read about it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @03:26PM (3 children)
I already pay for Internet. Why aren't sites paying me to visit, they're so enamored of monetizing my traffic to it. There's no free lunch.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday October 23 2017, @05:54PM (2 children)
Your ISP bill pays to connect your computer to the Internet. It doesn't pay the writers on the other side of the Internet. Would you prefer to have to subscribe to website packages through your ISP the way you subscribe to channel packages through a multichannel pay TV (cable or satellite) provider? And would you prefer to lose access to websites because your ISP refuses to pay the carriage fee? (I'm looking at you, ESPN3 [wikipedia.org].)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:53AM (1 child)
That's why I pay for NYT and I receive all the content I care to read written by professional journalists.
I do not wish to pay some random dush for their random ad-infested site with 50 weird things your mama thought about her wiener. If it weren't for these shit-ads everywhere, there would be very little incentive for all the fake news sites out there. All you have to do is look at the new Android "front page" by Google to see utter SHIT on the internet being packaged and regurgitated so some asshole can make a free buck. In the grand scheme of things, soylentnews is one of the better sources of information and that is fucking sad state of affairs.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 24 2017, @01:05PM
Your subscription to NYT doesn't help when one of your friends shares with you an article that happens to be on the LA Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, or another widely respected publication not affiliated with the NYT Company. You end up in NYT's fliter bubble.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @04:13PM (4 children)
Yes, please. Let's go back to when websites were a labour of love created by people that wished to share their hobbies and their knowledge. Let's go back to when websites were informational. Drop this corporate shit now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:05PM
^ I've stopped exploring the web, its a pain in the ass! I've found a few tiny corners, and I search for anything specific I need, otherwise I ignore it.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday October 23 2017, @07:47PM (1 child)
Sorry to tell you this, but back "when websites were a labour of love created by people that wished to share their hobbies and their knowledge," your connection to the Internet was 0.05 Mbps or slower. A 300 kB JPEG image would have taken a whole minute to load. There wasn't enough demand to view "labour of love" websites among the non-academic public to ensure the economies of scale needed to provide high-speed Internet access in homes.
Your home and mobile ISPs are probably a corporation or LLC. So good luck running a city-wide last-mile network without "corporate shit". Good luck even obtaining rights-of-way from your city's public utility board or from the national radio regulator without such an entity in place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @08:08PM
Good luck with that shilling, I hear India and China are really bringing down the cost of decent quality garbage.
(Score: 1) by RedIsNotGreen on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:45AM
Agree. Most advertising-supported websites are useless drivel.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday October 23 2017, @04:55PM
Dream On. Keep your delusion.
Oh, boo hoo!
I've already quit visiting certain news web sites that seem to have that attitude that I should just bend over for anything that they want to do. And I'm not talking about some no-name web sites.
Advertisers [soylentnews.org] brought this problem [soylentnews.org] on themselves [soylentnews.org]. I have no sympathy.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @03:11AM (1 child)
Go ahead and try to charge 4 bucks for visit. Go right ahead - for every one of you idiots, hundred others will offer up the same/better shit without charging.
You are a shill/moron, probably both.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 24 2017, @01:15PM
If a viewer uses a tracking blocker on WIRED, the website doesn't charge $4 per visit. Instead, it charges $4 per 28 days. Whether a subscriber visits 1 or 28 times in the subscription period is up to the subscriber. But I see site-specific monthly subscriptions like this as an attempt by websites to shift viewer behavior toward visiting fewer websites in a month, in order to put viewers into a particular site's filter bubble.
Those who transmit entire articles from WIRED without permission from Conde Nast will get sued out of existence by Conde Nast for copyright infringement.
Please cool it with the ad hominem attacks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @03:25AM
The world doesn't owe you a living because you run a website.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:54AM (2 children)
"having ads" != "fucking your users' privacy, bandwidth, and security with ad networks, trackers, non-vetted third-party JS, and ad videos and scripts that can reach hundreds of megabytes"
You can have static ads and host them yourself. There's a bunch of sites doing this. There's also services like Flattr and Patreon. If ad networks die a fiery death, other means of payment can be developed in the vacuum, and non-hobby websites can adapt or fail, as any other business.
Web without adblockers is almost completely unusable and way too dangerous. Browsing without disabling that bullshit is like eating sushi you picked up from the street. Have fun with ransomware, hope you have good backups.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:12AM
Exactly this. We could go back to basic text and static image ads, but they kinda shat the bed. It would take a bit to regain trust. Or not. How many people still don't run ad blockers?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 24 2017, @01:17PM
What other prominent websites have gone this route, other than Daring Fireball [daringfireball.net]? I want to pass on the recommendation to self-host a site's ads, but I want to avoid replies to the effect: "That works for Daring Fireball but won't work for any other site."
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 24 2017, @08:26AM
The $4 number doesn't pass a basic smell test. If you look at half a dozen sites regularly per month (a pretty conservative estimate), then that's $24/month that advertisers are willing to pay for you. That means that they'd have to be confident that they'd generate an average of (significantly) more than $24/month from sales to each random Internet person (including the ones that are in a completely different country that they can't even sell to). Does that sound likely?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @01:30PM (3 children)
You're utterly delusional if you think ads pay anywhere near that amount. If you're *lucky* you'll get maybe a tenth of a cent per visit; if you're unlucky it'll be a few hundredths. So how exactly is reducing the amount of content a site has to serve supposed to increase their costs by several orders of magnitude? $4 would get you a dozen page views per day, every day, for a year. It wouldn't be $4/month/domain, it'd be $4/month overall. Possibly less.
Meanwhile I've literally invested hundreds of dollars in firewall hardware and hundreds of hours in development and administration to bring some sanity to my browsing experience, so I'd gladly pay ten times that estimate for an ad-free web...
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 24 2017, @01:56PM (2 children)
Then WIRED is utterly delusional, as it charges that amount for a 28-day tracking blocking pass. Sites like WSJ and NYTimes charge even more.
Who collects this $4 payment from subscribers and remits it to site operators? It can't be (say) a 50 cent transaction to each of eight site operators, as the credit card processor would eat up most of that in the swipe fee.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @03:01PM (1 child)
Yeah, and a Soylent subscription starts at $4/month too. Most users don't subscribe at all and don't view ads at all, but the few who are willing to pay are able to subsidize the site for everyone else. Probably Wired/WSJ/NYT have similar business plans. Ads weren't paying enough, so they started to look for more lucrative funding from their core audience.
However they want to do it. I've got some sites/organizations that I pay $3/month to through Patreon, and you can do even smaller payments there then they bill it in bulk and divide it up...or there's sites that I pay maybe $10/year for an annual subscription which would be fine too. You could also avoid the card processor fees by not using the cards -- do direct bank transfers or something along those lines.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:56PM
An ACH transfer doesn't take a percentage of the total like a Visa or MC transaction does. But it still takes a fee of $0.15 to $0.95 per transaction [firstach.com]. And the first ACH payment processor I looked at charges a fee that starts at $359.40 per merchant per year [firstach.com], whether any payment happens or not, compared to $0 per year for something like PayPal.