[alberth]

Who would have guessed the Smithsonian of all organizations would have so many video popup ads.

Isn’t the greatest experience on mobile when so little of the content can be seen due to popups.

[quinncom]

Smithsonian Mag used to be the Institution’s brain‑child, now it’s just a click‑bait lifestyle tabloid full of celebs. The magazine’s editorial directives have diverged from the institutions mission. They care more about pageviews and ads than research.

[mmooss]

The front page has none of those things; I see:

* "Queen Bumblebees’ Tongues Aren’t Built for Slurping Nectar"

* "Why the Computer Scientist Behind the World’s First Chatbot Dedicated His Life to Publicizing the Threat Posed by A.I."

* "NASA to Resume Search for Missing Mars Orbiter"

* "Spaceflight Temporarily Changes the Position and Shape of Astronauts’ Brains, MRI Data Suggests"

... and more of the same.

Where have you seen what you describe?

[dyauspitr]

I can appreciate their troubles. How is someone supposed to pay for all the overhead that goes into research and writing these articles without a source of income. People also seem dead against subscriptions. The only way that seems to work is appealing to the LCD and raking in stream bucks but not all media/literature, especially the valuable kind, is conducive to that model.

[nephihaha]

"How is someone supposed to pay for all the overhead that goes into research and writing these articles without a source of income?"

Some people here think it's wonderful most of Wikipedia was built without paying its editors. Depends who you ask.

[shiroiuma]

>How is someone supposed to pay for all the overhead that goes into research and writing these articles without a source of income.

I'm not sure, but we've been trying the online advertising model for a few decades now, and it's been terrible. Pop-ups, pop-unders, malware, I could go on and on. At some point it's fine to just say "no" to the advertisers after so much abuse.

Also, there's nothing stopping a website from hosting their own ads: these generally are not blocked by ad-blockers because they're served from the same domain, rather than a known ad-serving domain. But they never want to do this for some reason.

[Zardoz84]

Ads ? What Ads...

I forgot that I use Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin. I don't see any ads NEVER.

[stronglikedan]

> I don't see any ads NEVER

So you see some ads occasionally? Then why are you asking "what ads"?

[shiroiuma]

It always amazes me how many people on "hacker news" don't use an ad-blocker.

[nephihaha]

Well, some people hold very conformist views which is surprising too.