this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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I'm probably going to be downvoted for saying this, but since the ad supported internet is here to stay, wouldn't you rather see ads that at least somewhat match your interests, if they use a technique that moves some of the attribution logic that used to run on third-party servers to instead be done in your web browser?
There's a few models that have worked well online:
The last is very common. People expect to get high quality content and services, but don't want to pay anything for it (or can't afford it), which is why the ad supported model is so prevalent. It's not going away any time soon, and advertisers are already tracking you. Wouldn't you want to use a system that involves less tracking?
I'd rather not have ads at all and just pay $5 a month and have all the websites I visit get a portion of that $5. Some people tried this years ago, but the payment infrastructure wasn't ready for it. Nostr can do it now though, their users "zapped" (tipped) nearly 1M USD (950k) over the past two months alone to content creators on their platform (twitter clone). And there's a feature to automatically split a set donation among all the posts you've liked. No reason that can't be done for the entire web. All instant, all with incredibly low fees, all payments made directly from you to the site you visited, no middlemen having to manage custody risk.
Browser extension tracks what sites I visit and then at the end of the month send them all tips. Sites could detect such an extension and automatically not show ads if you have it installed.
I like the idea. I used Flattr for a while maybe 10 years ago, which was a similar concept.
Having said that, for many sites, a portion of $5/month wouldn't be enough to cover all their expenses, and in some cases they'd make more money via advertising.
Wait, so you want a browser extension that tracks you… so you can avoid Mozilla not tracking you??
I understand wanting the micropayments thing. I want that as well. But you’re literally advocating tracking here.
The difference is that such an extension isn't reporting my traffic to a "trusted third party". My browser is doing the tracking locally and sending micropayments to sites I visit.
You said browser extension. And how do you think those payments go through? Mozilla isn’t a payment provider. And even payment providers use downstream companies to actually move the money around. So either you trust Mozilla to choose a trusted third party……orrrr you trust a third party extension to choose another trusted third party, and that one is now handling your payment information.
There's lots of ways this could be done quickly, easily, and privately. A previous attempt at this (flattr) was promising but before its time. Making Bitcoin micropayments via lightning comes to mind as a way to do this. In the past two months alone, Nostr users (decentralized twitter clone similar to mastodon) have tipped each other around a million dollars for their posts. There have been nearly three million tips in the last two months. Sending funds via lightning takes under a second for pennies or less in fees. No intermediary to report your browsing history to, no need to trust an intermediary to handle payments, no burdensome need for Mozilla to run payment infrastructure, and it all works in every country right out of the box. And there's plenty of room for this to scale since it's not limited by blockchain space.
Nostr already has a feature to automatically split up your tips according to which posts you reacted to. You can say "I want to tip $5 a month, split it up among posts I react with a heart to". This could easily be extended to which websites you visited, all websites would need to do is put their lightning url in the page source, DNS record, etc.
Nostr stats: https://stats.nostr.band/
Here's a thicket of weeds: Why would you want to show ads to someone who can't afford your product?
No, that means they're tracking me.
The more of my data that stays on my system, the better. I'm not against ads or necessarily relevant ads, I'm against tracking.
Yes. I'm willing to disable my ad blocker if they don't track me. If the browser places the ads and the only data that leaves my machine is deanonymized and can't reasonably be used to identify me, that's enough.
However, I'd much prefer to just pay whatever the revenue from the ads I see is. Unfortunately, most services are either $5-10/month to remove ads, and there's no way they make that much from me (it's probably <$1/month, if not per year). I wish Firefox would do something like GNU Taler where I can load up a fund and websites take a faction of a cent for each page view or something.
Exactly this. I know a very good local tech website (Tweakers.net) which offers antonymous ads but they are still relevant because they're tech related being on a tech related web site. That's a way I could support!