Ads are killing us. Our addiction to free information has forced content creators to use advertising as their primary source of revenue. These advertisers throw their weight around by indirectly censoring content, and silencing even mildly controversial viewpoints. We no longer value the content we enjoy enough to pay for it, and that is damaging the health of content creators and the public as a whole. Click bait headlines, poorly investigated topics, and wildly polarizing articles are now the norm. Journalists simply can no longer afford to research a single article for a month at time, potentially causing a great crisis to public health and knowledge. If a massive corporation undergoes a long, meticulous covering up of some toxic dump into public waterways, without proper financial backing, it may never be uncovered by investigative journalists. Something has to change regarding the way we get our information. It cannot continue on this path forever without a great deal of risk.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Personally I think that advertisers shouldn't care about what content theirs ads precede. Just inform the viewer that the advertising is random or targeted a certain audience. I don't understand why people are associating the advertising with the content of the video!?
MichaelGoodson
Level 3
Mar 18, 2019
0
Advertisers pull their adds from any content that can be deemed even remotely controversial, that causes the voice behind the content to lose revenue, vs offering the opportunity to speak freely. Advertisers care because if they are found to support certain individuals or ideas, they may face public backlash
@sceleste90 I understand, me point is that the advertiser and us common viewers should disassociate the content from the advertising. Rather we should associate both the content and the advertising to the platform but not to each other.
Absolutely and respectfully disagree. Free information is the best advantage of the modern world, because it elevates the general knowledge of the population to a level that would be impossible in an environment where one had to for content. The reasons for this are twofold, firstly and most obviously that some people would be unable to access a sufficient volume of information relative to their cognitive capacity, and secondly that we would be less likely to experiment with new information providers. When there’s involved, people like to go with a safe bet.
You make a very valid point about their role in the censorship we experience though, and I still haven’t worked out how to create a system wherein they have no control over the content being presented, without inadvertently associating the brand being advertised with content said brand may find objectionable.
StrykerWolfe
Level 5
Mar 17, 2019
0
I’m not disputing how awesome and important the access to information is. My concern is only that the way revenue is generated for this content is flawed. Being dependent on advertisers isn’t ideal, nor is putting everything behind a pay wall.
@sceleste90 I concur. My question to you then is this; without advertisers or a pay wall or some combination of the two, how can we expect to finance said access to information? Putting a full monopoly in the hands of companies like Patreon and the like seems like it will narrow the scope of discourse beyond repair.
Idk. I wish i did. The Sam Harris/PBS model won’t work for everyone. So idk. The real idea behind this post was to try & figure that out. How do maintain our current level of access to information, yet forgo the bombardment and risk behind advertising as sole source of revenue. It seems currently the option is 100% pay wall, or 100% adds. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, as is most always the case, and unique for each content provider. Sam Harris’s PBS model most likely won’t work for the independent journalists who spend months investigating GM’s plant closures simply because they don’t release content often enough for that formula to work. But the content they do finally release will be well written and well researched. How to get that article into the most hands possible......hmmmm
@sceleste90 Now you’re on the subject of how we maintain the attention of the general populace long enough to investigate a complex situation and present them perfectly polished content on it. World Hunger might be easier to solve. I agree that we’ll find a happy medium between the two, that’s usually how these things go. Cheers.
I concur, perhaps there is a better way that has yet to be conjured up?
SpikeTalon
Level 10
Mar 17, 2019
0
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