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The book publishers had a problem. As people spent more of their time online, their attention spans kept withering, and fewer even felt they could finish a book. The lack of book readers translated to a lack of sales, and even more people thinking they were "just not book readers."

Adblockers had a problem. As soon as they found a way to block annoying ads, advertisers would find a way to circumvent their software. This required further development, which meant ongoing maintenance costs and money just to keep the software working as expected.

The solution to both problems ended up being an ad:

"Why are you still reading ads? You should be reading a book"

If you clicked that ad, you got offered a wide selection of books to buy, which was pretty standard. What was innovative was that after you bought a book, you never saw that ad again. Instead, you saw the last paragraph of the book you had read. This meant people no longer got as distracted seeing stuff they didn't want, and instead focused more and started finishing more works. That in turn increased the overall amount of books sold, and since the adblocker got a piece of every sale, contributed to the software's development. It also inspired other companies to design other pro-social ad-experiences.

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This is the best article I've read in a long time. I love it. And if it didn't have bad language in it, I'd be restacking it and sharing it everywhere I am present on social media. Not trying to change your behavior; just explaining mine.

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author

this is good feedback, thank you! i didn't think about it. I'd love to write a version of this that people feel comfortable sharing in their company slack

I think I could just remove it from here, but also, which parts do you feel like resonated more? I was thinking of writing a version of this that's focused on the "the day society watched itself" as a smaller piece that people can read/share more easily

(but, honestly, if you want to steal this/take pieces of it/rewrite it in your vision, that would honestly be awesome, to help the idea spread/make it more legible to your audience etc?)

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I've been 100% anti-ad for a long time.

Now I'm not.

Damn. Great post. 👏

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author

See: workflowsauce's "response essay" with inline guesses to the answers https://github.com/workflowsauce/writing/blob/main/writing_reviews/defender_of_basic/the_best_ad.md

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