Why are these forums worth more than the tech side?

[Drach]

What financial incentive does purch, sorry "Future PLC" have in maintaining these forums. They killed Anandtech without warning so what keeps this place here?

 

[biostud]

Raw data for AI training which is not infected with bots.

 

[ribbon16]

Running a forum is relatively inexpensive. A single administrator can manage the system, and moderators are often unpaid volunteers.

That said, a forum of this size isn't cheap, much less free. Unless someone is eating the bills because they're generous, then the forum has to be monetized in some way.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I do wonder who is paying for it and how much. I doubt the forum makes any money so are they just being nice, or is it something that has fallen through the cracks that will eventually get caught as an expense that can be cut at some point?

If it comes to that I hope there's at least warning, and maybe even give the opportunity for someone to just take it over.

 

[lxskllr]

maybe even give the opportunity for someone to just take it over.

Probably sold to the highest bidder, who will have a quality you'd expect from someone buying an old tech forum. Spam, malware, ads... Bottom of the barrel shit.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Probably sold to the highest bidder, who will have a quality you'd expect from someone buying an old tech forum. Spam, malware, ads... Bottom of the barrel shit.

Yeah sadly I could see that happen. Some crap marketing company that will stuff it full of ads, and put anti ad blocking measures and tons of annoyances like modals etc.

 

[Greenman]

I don't see why any business would continue to support a depreciating asset that doesn't generate revenue. One way or another future plc is making money off this place. When expenses exceed revenue the forums will be shut down. That might be before I hit the "Post Reply" button or twenty years from now.

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm guessing that the cost is fairly negligible. It's not like Future is just paying to host these forums, the cost is mixed in with all the costs of hosting their other stuff. I guess if they ever get bandwidth constraints we might get cut but, in the greater scheme of Futures hosting, our needs are probably pretty minor.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I looked it up. The info is on the corpo site i.e. privacy policy, press releases, etc. They make money off of us as we are part of their "audience". They launched Aperture in 2021, an audience data platform.

Hashed email addresses = "Future's privacy policy states that it uses a "hashed, pseudonymous code" created from your email address. This code is then shared with advertising partners like The Trade Desk to enable targeted advertising across different sites and devices

Ain't that grand?

The company works with a variety of advertising networks to serve personalized ads. These networks track browsing habits across Future's websites and others to build a profile for relevant advertising.

You don't say...

Future has explicitly announced partnerships to enrich its audience data. This year there was an announcement of a deal with Ocado Ads and Permutive to securely integrate Ocado's shopper behavior data with Future's first-party data to create more precise audience segments for advertisers.

Sweet sweet data ripe for the picking.

Future uses third parties for a range of functions, including website analysis, data analysis, and running promotions. These service providers have access to your personal information for specific business purposes.

Of course they do.

Future's policy mentions it may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information with advertisers, sponsors, and other organizations.

Data brokers gonna data broker.

 

[IronWing]

It's the high quality of posts here driving their valuable data model.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Great, now we will get ads for IHOP.

 

[lxskllr]

Selling ads and data on a tech site is a tough gig. The people here are smarter than the average bear, and block the bullshit.

It would be interesting to know what the data brokers know about me. I don't see ads anywhere, and the only other corporate site I log in to is ars. I have a pro subscription there that turns off ads and trackers. That wasn't why I got the subscription though, cause I don't get ads or trackers anyway. I got it to support the mission, cause they're probably the finest general tech/science site on the web.

 

[lxskllr]

Blacklight – The Markup

A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

themarkup.org

 

[KLin]

View attachment 132612

Blacklight – The Markup

A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

themarkup.org

 

[lxskllr]

Some of those are easy. Third party cookies? Get fucked. That's the first thing I disable when setting up a browser. I also dump first party cookies on tab close unless I whitelist a site.

NoScript blocks a lot of the tracking. If you want to make it easy instead of hard the way I run it, allow all scripts by default, and start blocking them as you feel like researching them. You're starting from a neutral position, and it can only get better. googletagmanager is an easy block, and it's everywhere on the web.

 

[Hoober]

Some of those are easy. Third party cookies? Get fucked. That's the first thing I disable when setting up a browser. I also dump first party cookies on tab close unless I whitelist a site.

NoScript blocks a lot of the tracking. If you want to make it easy instead of hard the way I run it, allow all scripts by default, and start blocking them as you feel like researching them. You're starting from a neutral position, and it can only get better. googletagmanager is an easy block, and it's everywhere on the web.

Ublock, Ghostery are good, too.

 

[lxskllr]

Ublock, Ghostery are good, too.

Ublock in medium or hard mode can largely replace NoScript. I had an issue once years ago where NoScript was required for a site to perform the way I wanted it to. Ublock on it's own wouldn't do it. I can't remember exactly what the issue was, but that ended my experiment of trying to solely use Ublock. Might be good enough for other people though. It would be nice to simplify. The modern web has really turned into a hassle, and it isn't due to amazing new features that make sites better for me :^/

 

[Red Squirrel]

The keystroke part is what's the craziest. I'm sure everyone has typed a post before then decided not to post it, well they have it either way now!

Noscript can be a pain, lot of sites refuse to even load without allowing like 30 different domains and when you're doing research on something it's a huge pain in the ass dealing with that for every single result you click on. It also breaks banking and similar sites. It would be nice if it blocked specific type of js instead of just go by domain. Like block the tracking stuff, modals, etc. But not formatting stuff.

 

[lxskllr]

The keystroke part is what's the craziest. I'm sure everyone has typed a post before then decided not to post it, well they have it either way now!

There is a disclaimer if you expand the box, that logging can be for legitimate purposes. Saving drafts in the reply box is an obvious use. However, illegitimate uses can be disguised in legitimate traffic. How well do you trust the site? I don't trust much by default, and money corrupts a lot of people/companies...

edit:
BTW, I got that site via NoScript. If you hover over a script in the box, you'll get a question mark you can click, and that sends you to a NoScript page with tools that can help identify the script, and what it's reputation is. It's largely in the context of malware, but there's other tools like the one above available also.

 

[Chaotic42]

Mostly because of the secret code buried in the older posts from before 2011 that show the location of the sacred.... wait... I mean, uh, the good memories and discussions....

 

[ribbon16]

View attachment 132612

Blacklight – The Markup

A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

themarkup.org

Hum.

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Whatever happened to tfnn,anyways?

 

[Greenman]

Whatever happened to tfnn,anyways?

It's still around. Just need to look and hope Loki feels like approving a new member when you try to join.