I like to say that advertising is not how we make money, but how we avoid losing money. But that’s no longer the case, because of what I suspect are changes to Google’s algorithm to promote utter crap instead of good original work. Our long-term goal is to improve our sustainability by leaning into membership, so this is going to be my biggest ask of the year: If you’re not a member yet and you love this website, please become a member.
This is the only way a site like ours can continue far into the future, given the recent change from Google. It’s not just us, of course, because other publishers are seeing the same thing. The difference is that we’re a member-supported business and have a lever to pull that most others do not.
This all gets a little complex, so I’ll try to make what’s happened as simple to understand as possible. Because Google is a black box, I’m just inferring based on what I’ve seen and what other publishers are telling me.
Google Discover Has Been A Huge Help In Growing This Website
First, an acknowledgment. Jumping from a popular website to start a brand new one in 2022 was a brave move for Jason and David, and I have a deep respect for those two and Beau for embarking on this journey. It became a successful and beloved website faster than I could have ever imagined, looking in from the outside. It turns out there are a lot of people who miss websites that were written for people and not algorithms.
The algorithms are important, however. We do a great job of turning people into loyal readers and turning those loyal readers into members. It’s a wonderful thing. The challenge has always been finding new readers, especially when the old levers of social media are broken. We don’t have a long tail of search, a Facebook page that got millions of readers in the initial social heyday, or many of the other advantages competitors have.
Google, though, provided a wonderful tool for us. This was Google Discover. It’s a feed that appears across Google’s many products that’s personalized to you. Without doing anything other than publishing, we were rewarded for writing great and unique stories that people loved to read. We were rewarded primarily with traffic, and it helped us grow the site from something that was a fraction of the size of the industry stalwarts to a site that was recently bigger than many of them. For a few years, our site’s excellent work was rewarded in that it was put in front of the faces of many people, who clicked and enjoyed our work.
And then this significant chunk of our readership coming from Google Discover mostly stopped working, and it stopped working around the time that David had a baby and went on paternity leave. We first assumed it was a short-term blip caused by being overworked and understaffed; what we later learned is that it was likely a Google Core Update that reduced our visibility on the platform (on top of already seeing search traffic dropping because of what we suspect is an AI-related cause). Just look at this:
That’s weekly traffic from Google Discover. You can pretty much see the moment when it happened. Suddenly, we went from having 4 million visits a month as measured by SimilarWeb — bigger than Road & Track, The Drive, and many much older publications — to 2-2.5 million. That’s a reduction of about 30-40%. To make it worse, when you drop down below a certain level, the amount you make per impression is less, so we’re being hit with the 1-2 punch of less traffic and lower rates.
What was great about Google Discover in the past was that it felt like a more even playing field. It was a place where our newness didn’t impact us as much because people clicked on our stories and read them. A lot! And then that changed. We don’t know why. We’re looking for technical fixes, but the fact is that this is happening to our competitors as well, so there may not be a specific or simple cure.
Here’s The Slop That Google Is Promoting Instead
I did a trial with a company that provides a monitor of Google Discover traffic to surface which stories are doing well. You can see what’s working above in the automotive category, and it’s largely AI hallucinations coming from websites that are in the “MFA” or “Made for Advertising” category. [Editor’s Note: We did cover that DIY plate also, to be fair. – JT] This is the worst of the worst, with terrible interfaces, awful toe fungus ads, and content that is both made up and boring.
This is the opposite of what Google tells us to do, both in terms of presentation and content. There’s a helpful section of Google’s own publication guide that talks about the company’s desire to surface “helpful, reliable, people-first content.” I think you’d all agree that’s what we mostly do around here. There are even more specific guidelines, called E-E-A-T, that we have always naturally followed [Editor’s Note: One of my founding documents here established the “EE Rule,” which requires that all articles be enlightening or entertaining, ideally both. -DT]
Google’s automated systems are designed to use many different factors to rank great content. After identifying relevant content, our systems aim to prioritize those that seem most helpful. To do this, they identify a mix of factors that can help determine which content demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what we call E-E-A-T.
Of these aspects, trust is most important. The others contribute to trust, but content doesn’t necessarily have to demonstrate all of them. For example, some content might be helpful based on the experience it demonstrates, while other content might be helpful because of the expertise it shares.
I can’t even link to the sites that are being promoted because I don’t want to be associated with them, but it’s really bad, and little of the content there seems true, trustworthy, or written by or for humans. There is no Mustang Pickup truck coming, nor a 2026 Chevelle SS, and the new Corvette doesn’t look like this.
We can’t do this, obviously, and we wouldn’t. Not only does Google tell us it’s a bad idea, but as journalists, we are ethically opposed to it. I also think it’s long-term bad business. What is valuable is a genuine audience, and we’ve mostly built that.
One alternative is to do “Trending” stories that are mostly rewrites of TikTok stories. The biggest car website on the web (I won’t name them) does this. It’s not that any of the employees there like it, but it keeps the bills paid. Could we do that? The problem, when you look at the numbers, is that they’re pushing out 100-150 of these a month, and they’re only hitting about 2-3 times a month. That’s a terrible ratio, and we’d have to drown The Autopian with slop (even if it’s slop written by people, and not AI).
We may not always be the largest website, but our audience is real and we have more direct traffic than even some bigger sites:
I’ve anonymized the data, but those are three other websites in our competitive set. We’ve been around the same size for the last year, although we’ve been bigger than the other sites at various points. You can see that we have a much larger share of direct traffic, even if organic (Google products) is lower. In general, we have a lot of direct traffic, which is good. We also have a lot of engaged time as people read our articles. Most of our stats have stayed approximately the same, and just to make it more confusing, we’ve performed better on Google News since Google rolled out the Core Update we think hit us.
There’s just more AI-powered slop, and human-powered slop, and it seems to be pushing out our human-made, non-slop writing.
We Were Kicking Butt, And Now We’re Kicking Less Butt
I felt great in April, because it wasn’t quite clear that this was happening yet. We’d had a long run of sustainability as a business, and it seemed as though we’d succeeded in our original mission. Memberships and partnerships were growing faster than planned, and so long as we could stay roughly where we were with ad income, we’d be en route to a great year. We even turned off ads for members, because it didn’t seem like we needed that revenue.
Now, that source of once reliable traffic is way less reliable, for no discernible reason, and it’s knocked out one of the legs of the stool.
As I said above, my goal here is to get you to become a member if you can afford to and haven’t already. Based on traffic patterns, there are a lot of you who read this site daily. About 12% of you are members, which is awesome, and I’m so grateful we have that many. It allows us to paywall very few articles so that more people can read the site, and it has allowed us to hire great writers.
If we can go from 12% to 24% then we’ll cover a lot of the gap we now have to cover because of this loss of Discover traffic. If we can get to 33% we’ll be in a position to support more writers with freelance work and, hopefully, more full-time work.
No one has had a better chance to make a great car website than us, and I think we’ve done it. If this doesn’t work, I’ll be haunted by the reality that either we’re not smart enough to figure it out, or no one is, because it’s impossible. We’re so close to getting there, and any help you can provide will be returned with more of the kind of work that brought you here in the first place.
Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read about the two vegetables that’ll kill all this arm fat, on the way to the Oldsmobile dealer to pick up my new Cutlass 442.
Top Photo: AI nonsense, Deposit Photos, Jason Torchinsky
Do it…. Join us…
If I could be a higher tier member, I would.
They should really do a “double eagle” a la Futurama trim level. My ThunderCougarFalconBird needs more eagle
Long term reader, long term member, I bumped up my membership tier awhile ago, not for any particular gain, but to continue supporting this place. I can’t afford to bump up another tier again, but I would if I could!
There’s little more for me to say, but if you’re passing through these comments and you’re on the fence, do it. Join us. There is nowhere and I mean nowhere in the digital car culture space like The Autopian and we can all help to make sure we don’t lose that.
Look they’ve got a fancy designer to keep in black turtlenecks and martinis. So cough up.
On my way to convince Matt to change the header image to one of you in a plain tee with a can of premix in one hand and a cup for change in the other.
He’d HAVE to create that picture using AI.
A convincing argument. Corinthian leather here I come.
Edit: Well, velour, I guess. An upgrade from vinyl at least.
Just joined, principally to ensure funds are available for future Rhodius acquisitions and other important Make-Adrian-Miserable projects 😉
It’s the Reverse Make-A-Wish Foundation!
Goths are only happy when miserable, so we’re actually helping.
They also enjoy sacking Rome, but have you seen the Eurostar prices these days?
I see what you did there.
Adrian, I’m very pleased to support someone with the same bad habits as me.
I’m one of the software developers at Cars & Bids. We had the same Google Discover problems last year. Traffic from Discover dropped from pretty healthy to basically zero. Did a bunch of SEO tweaks, no joy. The good news is that it did eventually come back, but we have no idea why. Wish I had better advice. Hang in there, folks.
Thank you!
We experienced the same thing many years ago. Used to have tons of traffic and orders because of Google, then it went away one day and was much less predictable after that. We call that “Google giveth, Google taketh away.”
I’m guessing they change their algorithms, and/or someone pays them a bunch of money for paid search results to appear at the top of the search results page. I knew right away I wasn’t going to get into a bidding war to see who would give Google the most money to appear at the top, the product isn’t that lucrative.
I’m your huckleberry
SOLD!! Just reupped and even moved up a badge! Your article really hit home with me. Get a lot of enjoyment out of reading the articles. I would hate to see Autopian disappear. Do not want to go back to…the J word. J land? Lol
Keep it up! And….
May the Universe Smile Upon You!
<—– Now a member. This is the best place on the internet.
You don’t seem angry anymore
The magic of membership.
New member, and he already needs to change his name:
Slightly-less-angry Bob
i’m 35 and was raised not to believe anything I read on the internet. and our parents/grandparents are just soaking up whatever slop is presented to them.
I blame Walter Cronkite. He was the source of news for a generation on TV. 100% trusted by all (he’s the one that editorialized the mistake of continued fighting in Vietnam and pretty much ending it for the US). So there’s a large portion of the population who believe anything the hear/see regardless of source. If it’s on a screen somewhere, it must be true!
I frequently remark to my father that he grew up believing everything Walter Cronkite said about the Vietnam War, and I grew up watching police officers beat someone unprovoked. I don’t mean it as an absolute truth, but it serves as a good reference point for how our generations differ in their outlook
You got me! Vinyl (sorry). I’m sold. I love you guys, going back a long time before this site. I realized that if wikipedia can make me donate, why wouldn’t I do it for something closer to what I hold dear? I really want to see this community flourish.
Google Discover was/is artificial juice, or sort of the steroid of the internet. It produced a high that wasn’t sustainable or real but certainly helped a number of sites build muscle they then depended on. Some of the fruits of that are people that saw something in their feed they liked, and then stayed and are now regular consumers of the content and either members or ad-exposed, but both generating income in some form for the site. Without it, at the beginning (like in the old days before GD), you had readers that came here due to hearing about it elsewhere. Then others heard about and saw it organically and volume built up over time (like in the old days). Which is how it will likely continue, however the growth curve will now be slower as it was pre Google Discover. Relying on an external site/provider to always provide more fresh meat is not sustainable either, as seen that spigot can be tuned off for any reason or for no reason. Talking negatively about AI (not that I like the current state of AI) probably doesn’t help, perhaps that’s a determining factor? (The internet is not a democracy, despite the “do no evil” clause in Google’s founding documents, I assume if a site posts negatively about Google long enough, they may decide they “like” anothert site more).
There’s a lot of content on this site, something for most people, and I enjoy a portion of it. I don’t read everything, and I’m trying to wean myself away from some of the stuff I do read as there may be other stuff I could or should be doing. I’m trying to figure out how many posts I read because I can and have the time or am too bored to do anything else or just because it’s “free” – or at least the ads are sufferable and do provide SOMEthing versus how many posts I read and would still read if I had to put a dime or a quarter or a dollar in a jar every time and send the total in at the end of the month. It’s like Netflix or whatever, there is a LOT of content, it’s paid for, but every month I wonder if I’m actually getting the dollar value back or did I just waste $7 or $10 or $14 or whatever to sit on the couch and be not particularly entertained by whatever I watched.
At this point, my kids’ education is pricier, all insurance is pricier, utilities are higher, health insurance will likely TRIPLE out of pocket for my family next year if nothing happens soon, my own income streams have not increased and are certainly not guaranteed for any period of time, and a recurring $20 or $10 or $5 or whatever membership fee every month is still money I need to justify to myself and my family as being worthwhile, espcially since I’m the only reader of the site. The paywall articles (so far) haven’t looked enticing or numerous enough to be worth the cost of admission.
And lastly, please do note that not all content is provided by you, the writers of the site, the posts themselves are often just the “firestarter”, so to say. The comments drive a HUGE amount of the engagement here. I do comment, sometimes substantively, usually not minutely, generally not purely glibly, although even the most throwaway comment does sometimes drive further engagement or makes someone else enjoy the site more. So I do see it as a two-way street in that regard as I can read a post in a couple of minutes and click away to somewhere else but the comments take far longer and if I enjoy the post I usually enjoy or am engaged with the comments for much longer.
I guess the next level would be to go CNN style, i.e. you get three or ten or whatever posts a month, and beyond that you see all the headlines but need to pony up $1 for 3 or ten more or $3 for 50 more or $10 monthly for all the posts to actually see and engage with them. Not sure how that’s working out for them (or most newspaper sites in general) but that model doesn’t seem to be going away…
Curious if you have received your renewal notice with the actual increase yet.
My wife and I will be retiring next year and entering the ACA market. Needless to say the projected increases are making us a bit nervous as we shop for a state to reside in.
The other – actually serious – option we are considering is to move out of the USA to someplace more affordable. (I cant see paying $20,000 a year for a high deductible plan that doesn’t pay anything until a $14,000 deductible is met)
Not yet, I am using our existing plan’s current premium and adding the projected/approved increase that was published a couple of months ago. However even if the price of the plan remained the same, if the credit portion goes away our rate effectively triples unless we decide to just tank our income for next year which is obviously not a great strategy but there are other ways to get our “effective” income down through our business(es) with capital expenditures etc. (we are self-employed but in fields that experience unanticipatable short-term swings and have the ability to in some years “swing” big chunks from one calendar year to another). The deductibles though are still brutal and frankly we are already at the point where some medical procedures are done if/when we travel abroad, especially later in the year if we haven’t hit the deductible and especially more elective ones. Switching plans is also an option but any monthly savings would be wiped out by increased outofpockets and deductibles etc.,
Moving away (if possible, lots of people seem to think and talk like it’s simply a matter of doing it, not even remotely the case unless you want to be on the receiving end of your new home country’s own ICE squads…), far easier when actually retired with money, and very simple if one has multiple passports; and MUCH LESS so for the average American 40 year old that needs to still work but is a very likely option for us as well, especially if there is another January 6th scenario.
The whole deductible thing is such BS as far as it “resetting” every year. I get the point of them but they should be on a rolling 12 months schedule if you remain on the same plan year after year. The way it is now everyone who has met theirs for the calendar year tries to cram everything that comes up and anything else they can think of in the last quarter since there is nothing more to pay and anything that comes up in the first few months of the year gets more of a let’s see if it gets better by itself rather than having to cough up cash on the spot. That’s not the way to have a healthy population (or family).
Medicare needs to be expanded to all. The cost savings would far exceed any increase in taxes and additional pay/income that would be available for employees. We all do better when we all do better…But can’t have that, some people need to not only win but make sure someone else loses.
I just checked prices. Now a BCBS Silver plan with a $12,000 deductible would be $2319 per month. No tax credit. Last year that plan was $1179 a month with a $7,000 deductible and I would have received a $658 per month tax credit. $6,252 to $27,828. Medical insurance would consume 1/3 of my income.
Which means moving out of country is the only realistic choice. It isn’t simple but it isn’t all that hard either. I know quite a few people that have lived abroad and my brother has been doing it for 15 years now.
My wife and I have actually travelled to 6 countries in the last few years specifically to scope out possible retirement locations. Lots of places it is very easy if you have social security. We don’t- yet – but many countries have pretty modest buy-ins for residency. Either putting a lump sum in the bank or invest a modest amount into a house. Others not so modest. Last I checked Canada was a 2 million buy in. Costa Rica on the other hand just requires putting $60K into a local bank and passing some background checks.
Then there is the nomad option. The US passport is still pretty powerful and you can jump from one country to another 90 to 180 days at a time. Slow travel the world 90 days at a time. You can rent a years worth of apartments for way less than that $28K in medical insurance premiums. We like to travel.
Yes, Medicare for all should have happened decades ago. I just can’t see it happening. So it looks like we travel and then (maybe) come back to the US when we qualify for Medicare.
Yes, my renewal rate came in slightly higher than I expected above. With no changes for our family it would be about the same cost as a new Camry. Every year. That’s not sustainable.
I can’t say I blame you, similar boat here and similar is in the planning long term, but can’t do it as quickly due to kids still in the house. The US Passport may still be fairly powerful, however the US population is looked at with far less sympathy than just a few years ago by the average man on the foreign street depending on where on goes. I’m glad we already have more than just the US passport, it also has made travel easier by using whichever one is most advantageous at whatever port we enter a country when traveling.
I was looking at a new vehicle for the business the other day (not 100% necessary but will be helpful next year for taxes), after some pressure by the sales manager when I demurred purchasing immediately I got irritated and suggested he speak to his owner about who that owner likely voted for and explain that a $30k+ annual health insurance bill for a healthy family with a private business pretty much directly puts the kibosh on purchasing a new vehicle from his establishment, i.e. it will hit him in the wallet too. He didn’t have an answer for that, the first thing I’ve discovered him not having an answer to. I may be having that conversation more often going forward.
If you’re abroad and established for several years you’ll likely find very little impetus to come back. All BS to the contrary, even with Medicare the US health system does not have the best standard of care or results, you’ll be directy able to compare over the next few years and see reality vs what the “media” or politicians would have you believe.
It’s endlessly baffling but with our educational system I suppose not surprising that people think paying a little more in taxes but getting sustainable health care in return is a bad deal.
Google literally got rid of the ‘do no evil’ motto a while back, says everything you need to know.
Kaypro. Lol! I haven’t thought of them in decades.
Andrew Kay lost the Kaypro trademark in bankruptcy, but came back with a new company, Kay Computers, that lasted from 1998-2007, and cleverly called their products the “Pro Series” with the words lined up under each other
Weirdly, another company also briefly revived the Kaypro name in the late 90s/early 00s, but they were supposed to be pretty shitty
to think the same boomers that fall for this are still considered coherent enough to hold office
Much of it is those same boomers voting for each other every time. They fall for the same fakery on the political side as well.
God I hate those ads… Also, does anyone else find it entertaining that the generation of folks that always told us “don’t believe everything you see on TV” now believes everything they see on the Internet?
“The internet has done to our parents what they thought videogames would do to us” -Unknown
That’s so accurate.
That’s not a unknown quote. Theodore Roosevelt said it. I know it’s true because my grandpa read it on the internet
Websites HATE this one weird trick [by Google]!
^A bad joke to try to mask how annoyed I am by all the slop. And Google may get elderly folks more but it really does span to any age. I’ve had more than one convo with others born in the ’90s where they saw the “new” Accord or RAV4 in those AI vids on Tiktok.
Maybe you could stuff “Toyota Stout” at the bottom of every post (like a CL ad listing every make and model under the sun) to see if latches on to it somehow and bumps you back up. It is coming after all! In
2023!2024!2025!2026! 2027!I use google discover often and I did notice in the past few months it is 50-70% AI slop car content. The other sites’ contents are not as good as they used to be.
I’ll probably end up getting the cloth membership to support y’all and purchase any kind of swag you guys have in store.
Seems like those other websites are hanging on by a thread, I can see them succumbing into the AI algorithm within a year.
Just jack up the rates you charge. Oh, wait, you’re not my health insurance, energy provider, phone/internet provider, auto insurance, land lord, or refuse service. All of those bills have increased by at least 15% this year. And, GET OFF MY LAWN.
Before AI, you had the clickbait sites and unmoderated forums that would just repost photos of 10-year-old concept cars and try to claim they were actual, upcoming models. AI has made things worse, but it basically just added to what was already happening
And I have absolutely no idea how people fall for this garbage – but I have had more than enough unsolicited conversations with various, usually elderly, people over the past few years about “that new Nomad they’re coming out with” or, “did you hear? They’re bringing back Pontiac for 2025, you know, the model year that has technically already ended”. As if any that happening would only be covered by one single sketchy no-name website, instead of, like, all over the mainstream automotive news or in corporate press releases and quarterly earnings calls.
Hah I heard the same stuff about Pontiac coming back or people saying the FJ Cruiser (since I drive one) was coming back next year (for years) obliviously this was way before that new mini FJ was announced which is not even coming to the US. Normally this is older people or people who just seem to randomly click those spam links but I never understood it would take 10 seconds to do a quick search to see that nonsense is false. Like if the new FJ was announced there would most likely be info on the Toyota website.
The Pontiac one literally happened in the parking lot at the Safeway’s while I was loading groceries into my trunk, guy excitedly ran up and wanted to know if I heard about the “new 2026 Fiero that’s coming out”, this was in like, July of 2025, so basically when an all-new 2026 anything should at least be in pilot production, if not already at full-scale to get inventory ready, so what the hell plant did they tool up? Detroit/Hamtramck? Lansing Grand River? A new brand means new dealers, have you seen any Buick-GMC dealers adding new third logos to their totem poles lately? No? Is a tiny sliver of logical reasoning so much to ask for once in a while?
Just try to remember: you (and me) also believe at least one thing equally as idiotic/untrue as the resurrection of the Pontiac Fiero. Hopefully we believe less nonsense than the people cited, but it’s more than 0.
OMG. I own an FJ Cruiser with 220K miles and still kicking. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard about the new FJ coming out from people. And screw you Toyota and your mini FJ, I will just have to drive my FJ into the ground.
Hah I feel the same way mine is at 170k miles will most likely die sooner from rust then anything else and a mini FJ would have been an awesome replacement mine always feel a bit to big for some trails when wheeling.
Man I hate those ads. It blows my mind that legitimate, credible news sites (I’m looking at you NBC, CNN, etc) all allow this slop on their pages. And you’re right about the grandpa thing- my dad will mention these ads from time to time and I have to explain to him that its all clickbait garbage that isn’t real.
The internet is dying. At least this place and Defector still put out good content, made by people who care, which is why I’m happy to subscribe to both.
I hate subscriptions/recurring payments to the point where I would rather do without something, but I’m a member because there is no other site that comes close. Everywhere else has plummeted in quality and even the stuff that probably isn’t AI has the stink of it. This site reminds me of the old internet before social media and AI turned it to garbage. We got a new Library of Alexandria, but we filled it with tabloids, advertising, self-aggrandizement, and videos of the caliber of “Ow! My Balls!”, only to find that, yes, the floor can actually go lower: welcome to AI slop.
It’s like you are reading my mind!
you forgot professionally-produced propaganda and undisclosed sponsored content.
Sadly I would rather have professionally produced propaganda than drown in a sea of Ai slop propaganda.
Not here though thankfully.
That was an oversight, but I’m sure that they had professional propaganda in the original library, if probably not undisclosed sponsored content.
Thank you! To be acknowledged as the highest quality car website by Cerberus is a huge honor!
it doesn’t count for much, I’m just a dog, but all three of us heads agree.
And a very good dog at that!
Thank you! Nobody appreciates what could happen if I let these souls sneak out! OK, sure, they still have to get across the river and the dead don’t have the coin, but I have little doubt that Charon could be persuaded to take them on his return trip after a drop off. Especially if they’re one of those soft whisper people? I don’t think anyone knows this, but Charon is an ASMR fiend.
SPEEEED had a good video on the AI Slop problem on YouTube. Other real channels have as well. It is infuriating how pervasive it is in such a short amount of time.
The AI voice can be annoying, but I can also understand why some creators might not want to do it. But the ones that are pure slop that just drag out a 2 min story out to 10+ minutes so the video can be monetize drive me nuts. Zero real research. They’ll repeat and restate topics several times to pad out the video, then go off on hallucinogenic tangents that have little to do with the main topic.
I always downvote them even though I know it doesn’t do anything anymore.
I usually rapidly decide videos or stories are burying the lead, so are incompetent or corrupt . . . and I’m gone
Scumbags gonna scumbag. I save my ire for YouTube not doing a better job cracking down on this. It’s not like they are unaware…
From what I’ve heard down voting actually benefits the video because it is “engagement”, if you can click away in under 30s that will hurt them, it signals that it was clickbait.
I miss the user rating system warn other viewers when a video was bad.
Of course YT would have it that a downvote is somehow a “good” thing. No wonder there is so much slop on that site these days. They seem to find ways to fuck up their platform.
The problem with clicking away in the first 30 seconds is that AI has gotten so good it really does take more than that to figure out if you are hearing simply an AI narrator (which is mostly fine) versus a whole AI generated video.
I’ve been reporting every one of those videos when I see them. They were off my feed for months, but just started creeping back in about a week ago.
I went through the same thing with Scotty Kilmer, but eventually the blocks worked and the algorithm stopped trying to recommend him
Guys, if you have to…turn my ads back on.
Seriously.
I never read them anyway so it’s not a biggie for me. But if I can’t have my occasional fix of Torch-derived taillight weirdness, or the next installment of Tracy’s Rust Addiction, it’ll just be another step down into the abyss. If you have to take some ads to keep the lights on, do it. Because The Autopian has value as an automotive-appreciators’ community. I don’t come here for news, I come here for takes, for outlooks and philosophies It’s the personalities that make this place what it is
This is the only automotive website I ever joined as a paid member – even when I was a far more involved member of the commentariat at Jalopnik, I didn’t send it any money. This place is just that skosh different, and I value that skosh pretty highly. I don’t want you nuts going anywhere – if Mercedes can’t write for you, who’s going to fund her Scion habit?
If you have to run ads, I won’t fault you for it.
Unless they’re AI ads and then I will absolutely fault you so hard.
This. I don’t mind ads, or use an ad blocker, and I even click on relevant ones.
The auto play videos are a different story.
The header ad has a crawl and active video and a pop-up. And it never stops moving.
Cut, zoom and pan
Agreed! It was nice to see them go away, but I’d rather keep ignoring them to keep this site healthy.
Got to feed the beast. I read Autopian on my Phone at home but on my news feed at work I did a search on Autopian and then selected follow this site. And when my feed comes up I do a thumbs up any Autopian stories.
Well, good luck. The majority of people who visit a site wouldn’t dream of paying to do so. I’m clearly including myself in that group. I don’t pay for any website and can’t ever imagine doing so. I migrated over here from the last place because I like your content and style better. I didn’t pay there, and with the pop-ups and auto-play videos increasing here, well, I’m not paying for that, either.
If you become a member, all of the ads and the auto-play video goes away.
I am very happy to pay for content I like because it increases the chances of more of it existing. I pay for a few sites that produce interesting and unique content because I know those sites don’t have wide appeal and can’t get enough traffic to support themselves on ads alone. I am glad to kick in a few dollars to keep the web weird
Another (less dirty) Aussie here agrees 100%. Even at 66 freedom cents to the Kangaroo dollar!
I don’t follow how you think producing reasonably good content of any type would work on aggregate if the people consuming content are, like you, happy to assume that it should be free. I presume you don’t go around picking up groceries or, for that matter, using the internet via some provider assuming that the default state should be that they give that stuff to you for free. Or is it more a case of being happy to free ride? Because I and many others do pay for this content you are happy to free ride on the rest of us suckers actually valuing the stuff we consume?
We got by like that for a good 10-20 years before social media was a thing.
Though to be honest, I really never understood it. ‘Ads are scams at best and outright malicious at woirst’ has always been one of the most basic lessons of the internet, right alongside ‘always be anonymous’ and ‘don’t click links’. And yet the ads everyone ignored or blocked funded the majority of the internet for a few decades.
I do somewhat wonder what percent of users are of the traditional ‘go directly to a handful of bookmarks’ type rather than ‘click on random links’. The charts seem to suggest a much higher percentage than I’d thought. At one point nearly everyone was in the former group, but the ‘public at large’ at least gives the impression of very much the latter.
Yeah that was part of my point. The people running this site need (and should!) get paid for their work. If there was a time where some “reasonable” amount of ads could do that, then great. But the state of the world cannot be, by definition, “content should be free” as some inherent expectation. If you want your content to be paid for by ads, then sure go get that content and deal with whatever amount of ads (and usability thereof) that requires. If you don’t like ads then you should pay for the content you want. The only other option (which I assume is what Canyonsvo implicitly wants) is to free-ride. I guess that is ok? I am happy to pay people for the work they do and if that means that a bunch of free-riders also get the content for free, I prefer that to the alternative (which in this case would be no autopian)
Then make it members only. I pay for internet access, electricity, etc. I just don’t feel the need to pay extra for websites.
If you had zero access to websites what would you do with the internet?
Watch TV. I’m pre-internet so I know about things like libraries, magazines, the outdoors, etc. I’m thrilled that you all want to pay for a website if that’s what you choose to do. I don’t visit any one site enough to pay for it. If this site disappeared tomorrow, I’d miss it for a bit and then move on.
But by all means, if it bothers you all so much that I post and read here without paying to do so, then I’ll happily cruise off to somewhere else. Find out how long the Autopian lasts if they depend solely on memberships.
I read the article as saying the Autopian can’t last without depending (more) on memberships. The model of relying on ad revenue no longer works, with plenty of recent examples of great sites either shutting down or turning into shells of what they used to be. I have no idea if membership is the answer, but I do agree the old model is, for all intents and purposes, dead.
Yeah I use libraries, the outdoors etc too. I was asking because you mentioned you don’t mind paying for the internet, but do mind paying for websites. So you’re ok with paying for internet access and streaming services, but not individual sites? I’m not trying to convince you to do anything differently but I genuinely don’t understand that part of your premise.
I decided a few years back that I’m willing to pay for quality content that I like, especially if it means I don’t have to see ads. Hell, I would pay for an ad free experience on Instagram or Facebook if they’d offer it.
For me it is either / or but not both. I’m not willing to pay for something AND see ads. Which is what an annoying number of places are trying to move to. (Thinking of streaming services here)
Oh absolutely. That has me ready to raise the pirate flag.
I don’t pay for any other sites either, and am annoyed by paywalls even on my local newspapers site. That’s what I’m used to since the early days of the internet. This is the only site I pay for a membership though. Everyone has their own reasons to do the same or not. I don’t see it as something I have to pay for “access”, but rather I feel part of an excellent community, and am happy to help support a group of amazing writers. In a way it’s probably not much different than subscribing to mags like Car Craft, Hot Rod, etc back in the day.
I get that, and that subscription fatigue is a thing. However:
Autopians, thank you for bringing perspective, research, and fun to transport journalism.
I wonder if there’s anyone out there who pays for every site they visit. I get why people would say “well I’m not going to/can’t spend hundreds of dollars a month supporting all the sites, so why bother?” People need to be swayed that they should be paying for at least one site they read regularly. In aggregate, that would make a huge impact.
That does make a lot of sense. After all, in the before-times, people didn’t subscribe to EVERY newspaper or magazine.
A part of me wishes there was some sort of service I could subscribe to that would give me access to thousands of sites and would divide my money proportionately based on the amount of content I was consuming per site. But then I think that system would lead to unintended consequences I cannot begin to imagine.
Real question: how are the sites you visit supposed to make money to contribute doing the things that you presumably want them to? No subscription, no ads. Truly, this is why the internet sucks.
Have all the ads you want. Just don’t make them autoplay, pop-ups, etc. I visit many sites and they seem to do just fine without that nonsense. Whatever, see you members later.
Your comments sound like the people who don’t want to pay taxes, vote to kill taxes and then wonder why the schools, roads, police forces etc. turn to shit. Pull your weight, man.
Hear, hear!
Which means you’re part of the problem.
Websites aren’t free. The people who write for websites don’t work for free.
If you won’t pay to subscribe, I guess you’ll just have accept ads and pop-ups and videos…