Earlier today, I made the decision to remove all advertising from OSNews. From here on out, you will no longer see any ads, cookie banners, and other ad-related privacy-invasive technologies on this website. While this means a hit to my income, making OSNews even more reliant on our Patreon supporters and Ko-Fi donors, it genuinely feels liberating. I should’ve made this decision years ago. Read on for how you can support us, and our big fundraiser.
I have always been open and honest about my dislike for the modern online advertising industry. It’s incredibly privacy-invasive, a massive security risk, generally lacking in taste, and genuinely intrusive. As such, despite running ads on OSNews, I have always advocated for the concept of “your computer, your rules”, meaning only you, the user, gets to decide what gets run on your computer and displayed on your screen. This includes the use of ad-blockers.
I have a Pi-Hole, and you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Because of this, maintaining ads on OSNews became untenable. Everything about the ads on our site, from the actual ads themselves to the annoying cookie banners talking about “our 1500 partners”, gave me the ick, as the young, hip people say, and I’ve been considering turning them off for a long time. Today, after yet another reader rightfully pointing out how absurd our cookie banner was, I finally made the call. One email to our owner, David Adams, later, and we’re now entirely ad-free, for everyone.
This is a hit to my income, and as such, I kindly ask anyone capable of doing so to support the continued existence of OSNews. How can you support OSNews?
- You can become an OSNews Patreon, and get some comment bling if you so desire.
- You can make individual donations through Ko-Fi. For this purpose, I’ve set an incredibly ambitious, long-term fundraiser goal of €5000.
- You can buy our merch! T-shirts, mugs, sweaters – with amazing designs and top-notch quality.
We’ve been online since 1997, meaning soon we’ll be hitting our 30-year anniversary. Very few websites can boast about such a long, uninterrupted existence, and despite all the changes both the industry and the world at large have gone through, OSNews is still here, doing what it has always done. The removal of ads means we’re even more dependent on you, dear readers, but I’m confident in saying that we’ll make it another 30 years.
Thank you for all your continued support over the decades, and let’s keep going. Without icky ads.
I just tried to make a custom pledge amount on Patreon but I could not find that option.
This is going to make OSnews a lot more fun to surf on Ladybird.
If you select one of the plans, you can put in a custom amount higher than that plan at checkout.
Also, maybe a lower tier plan should be added below silver? Like bronze or “liquid glass”..
I like to spread my Patreon money around in very small amounts over a larger number of patronees, so even the “silver” level is higher than I would generally select. Put in a $1 level with zero perks and I will sign up. Yes, I know that the fixed, per-transaction Patreon fee takes up a huge fraction of these small payments, but that’s what I want to give. Too bad there isn’t a system that would randomly give my entire month’s Patreon payment to a single patronee each month – that would have a bigger impact for the patronees long term.
Yes, please, Thom: add a lower tier (say, USD 1 or 2) on Patreon so more people can contribute, myself included. That is, if those options are viable economically for you.
At the moment I can’t afford a USD 6.50 subscription but I could do USD 2 or 3.
(In my country there’s a government imposed limit on how much I can spend in USD, there might be ways to extend it that I’m not yet aware of).
literally been mostly lurking since 97 and at the height of BeOS and still regret getting rid of my dual Pentium Pro, but hey, gotta drin.. eat. Have a Core2Quad that I might spin up into a BeBox. Fun Times!
This is great, I hope the move pans out.
Can we get an OS/2 CLI t-shirt in the merch store? I never got to play with BeOS, but I was a die-hard fan of OS/2.
I joined up as a Patreon! I figured after 20 (maybe 25?) years of lurking, it is the least I could do. I’m sure I’ve cost y’all more than that in electricity bills.
I would love to buy an OSNews shirt! Maybe to commemorate going ad free, it might be fun to ask the community for some design ideas?
Thom, Kofi is processed via Paypal which wants my address, phone etc. Patreon doesn’t have the one-time amount option. It would be nice, in a future campaign, if there was a third option which has one-time amounts and doesn’t require sucking my personal details. OpenCollective or Liberapay are options I know of.
Thanks for all the hard work over the years
You’re in luck!
https://en.liberapay.com/thomholwerda/
Isn’t that still processed through paypal, or is there something wrong at my end and should it also offer an option for (European) bank transfer?
No need for us Europeans to rely on such backwards payment methods.
Thank you!
I will support you when you put more AmigaOS news. I love PCs and Macs, Linux, BeOS. etc.. but I think that the Amiga community does so much that many don’t know about. Ignored the release of AmiFox for classic Amiga or AmiTube the youtube client. Now AmiBrowser has been released using the ARM for speedups etc, for the new A600GS and A1200NG AmiBench AROS system, and no mention of it either.
Also, more alternative OS news. Not just AmigaOS. I think that people should know that Amiga is alive and not dead, which tons of PC magazines have been spreading false information about. Its like all who loves Amiga computers must battle daily with tons of PC users spreading untrue things about Amiga.
I use my Amiga 2000 68040 1.4GHz and my Amiga 1200 68060 100MHz machines daily, together with my iBook G4 1.33GHz with MorphOS and PCs with AROS. I also use macOS, windows and Linux. I love all sorts of operating systems, but for 40 years which Amiga is celebrating this year, the PC industry has had a bad heart at trying to kill the Amiga…
….but the hard fact is that the Amiga community has always been so strong because of Commodore’s decision to support tons of Amiga User Groups all over the world. Then, when Commodore had to leave in 1994, the communities were still alive, and 3rd party developers, both in the hardware and software sectors, made it clear that the Amiga would never die.
Without the strong Amiga community, A-EON, MorphOS Team, Apollo Team, PiStorm team, Cloanto +++ would never exist today. I am going to Amiga 40 in October, Germany… over 1000 people will attend. There are 40s celebration events all over the world too… Amiga stands for having fun using computers, and that is its strength,… Amiga is NOT a PC and it will never be, but you can still install Linux or BSD distros on it. Amiga is for freedom that Microsoft and Apple are totally against today. All I need to say at the end.. SnoopDOS 🙂 <3
I don't mind seeing tons of Windows and modern IT OS news here. I just wish that OSNews would take the underrated OS systems more seriously.
good point. I had an eMac i was going to put MorphOS on but it was never returned to me after I loaned it out. I actually have never laid hands on anything Amiga – intend to try and make the time (and investment, if I have to).
You should submit some Amiga news when you hear about them!
Maybe that’ll spark Thom’s interest in picking up more of them himself 🙂
This is a big upgrade, and I will certainly do my part.
Inside EU – isn’t there a way to send money over simple IBAN/SEPA transaction (onetime or regular)? Does there have to be a company in between? Or am I too naive?
Through liberapay you can pay using only IBAN. It still uses stripe as processor AFAIK.
You mean in theory?
But it is not set up currently for/with OSNews?
paid
I like the ad-free approach. Patreon’ed up.
I have been donating (just a little bit, but monthly) for several months already. I would like to make a request: Thom, would it be possible for OSNews to know I am already a donor, and spare me the constant begging? I mean, all articles now start with «We removed ads from OSNews. Donate to our fundraiser to ensure our future!». Even in RSS feeds. Not only it is too insistent, but it also obscures a bit the text I’m interested in!
Maybe you could come up with something similar to what LWN has done? They now offer full articles via authenticated RSS feeds to subscribers.
Thanks!