Comment by bumblebeard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bumblebeard | Hacker News Reader

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I guess I'm cheap then. I have no interest in paying any amount of money to read most of the things I read online. It seems to me that it's not so much that people are demanding this content for free as it is that people don't think it's worth paying for. It's not that I particularly wanted to see an article about the usefulness of advertising as it is that it's something to read on the bus. I would probably just look out the window instead if the alternative weren't free.

Most articles/videos on sites like HN fall into this category - I wouldn't have paid to read this article for example. To me, this comment thread is worth much more than the article itself and I don't see anybody here upset that they aren't getting paid to comment.

I guess that means that I would probably pay a subscription fee to a site like HN but that I wouldn't generally pay for the content itself, which does seem a little backwards. Still, that's what's valuable to me. Does anybody else feel this way or am I weird?

You're definitely not alone.

For some reason comments are often more interesting than the articles themselves, and people never think of monetizing their comments. Somehow karma is enough of a reward.

If I had to watch an ad for 30 seconds or pay $0.25, the proceeds of which would be distributed to commentators by proportion of karma they earned in the comment section ... I probably wouldn't bother.

It doesn't make much sense to me how I arrive at these utility valuations though.

Paying commentators would immediately destroy the quality of comments as people tried to exploit the system.

I for one will NOT use an Android app if there's no premium, ad free version of one.

I'll readily buy the ad-free version if it's any good, and I have the track record to prove it.

I've completely given up trying to control the torrent of spammy apps (games) on my son's IPad. His next device will be an Android.

At least within your home or on some other place where you control the network infrastructure, you can use dnsmasq and block many in-app ads at the DNS level.

I think it depends on the content, but in general i agree with you.

There's some really valuable info on the net: medical research, good product recommendations, educational materials regarding hobbies and work, etc. I wouldn't mind paying for them(and i do buy some books), but most of these are free, or availble via places like sci-hub.

As for the rest, which is basically enterntainment - i can't imagine no good free alternatives for those - hey, there are many blogs from people who aren't professional writers who offer much better content than the pro media.

I wish there was a search engine focused on the best of those - i feel it would improve the internet by so much.

"Websites love talking about how much their readers are cheap, and how, no, they don't publish crappy content, they would totally check facts and whatnot.

Let's be honest - many websites are after monetizing whatever they can. They want content cheap to produce. And if readers don't want to buy it, they'll sell your attention and your privacy to advertisers, until eventually it's a race to the bottom."

Logically I can't wrap my head around your position. Content, like comments is just the output of someones thoughts. The majority of comments are short off-the-cuff statements, but articles on websites stand a better chance of having gone through a process of deliberation/research/etc. Perhaps you could argue that most content is fluff but even so, all I'm saying is that it stands some chance, versus no chance of being thorough.

So.. to me, the opposite holds true. If lets say I was interested in reviews on some technical product I wanted to buy - I would definitely prefer to have a lengthy article that goes over all the details rather than a comment thread which might detail one tiny slice of their experience with the product. So maybe if enough people comment, I can waste some time reading them all and cobble together a larger slice in my head, but again, its tedious, its just easier to go to a single source that has already done it.

Maybe what we really need is better curation than the current voting model.

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