Mozilla and Creative Commons Want To Reimagine the Internet Without Ads, and They Have $100M To Do It (fastcompany.com) 146
An anonymous reader shares a report: Funding online content with small consumer payments rather than intrusive and privacy-compromising ads has for years been a goal for many internet theorists and publishers. "We're at a point where it's clear there's kinds of negative side effects for people and even for democracy of the data-driven ad economy that funds the internet," says Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. Now, Mozilla, Creative Commons, and a new micropayment startup have announced a $100 million grant program to finally bring that dream to fruition.
The program, called Grant for the Web, will give roughly $20 million per year for five years to content sites, open source infrastructure developers, and others building around Web Monetization, a proposed browser standard for micropayments. "When we started Coil, Coil was essentially the first Web Monetization provider," says founder and CEO Stefan Thomas. Coil users pay a fixed monthly fee that's distributed among sites they visit that have Web Monetization enabled, such as the web development site CSS-Tricks, based on how long they visit the sites. The underlying technology supports other providers routing user funding as well.
The program, called Grant for the Web, will give roughly $20 million per year for five years to content sites, open source infrastructure developers, and others building around Web Monetization, a proposed browser standard for micropayments. "When we started Coil, Coil was essentially the first Web Monetization provider," says founder and CEO Stefan Thomas. Coil users pay a fixed monthly fee that's distributed among sites they visit that have Web Monetization enabled, such as the web development site CSS-Tricks, based on how long they visit the sites. The underlying technology supports other providers routing user funding as well.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
or just roll a payment (Score:2)
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for what its worth, I think such a tax could benefit society.
This doesn't look like a winner to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I can block ads, and use the internet as is, or I can pay a fee to Coil and not have to block ads?
Wow, that's a tough one - on the one hand, no ads, on the other no ads plus a fee....
Re:This doesn't look like a winner to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be happy to make small payments to sites I want to support.
The problem is that there is no way to make small payments because all payment processors charge too much to handle the transactions. There is also the issue of anonymity - most payment processors don't allow payments to be made anonymously, and will share my details with the site operator.
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Turn ads on, get the content.
Allow micropayments, get content.
Just as the "the site operator" can detect ad blocking, they can also detect ads been allowed, that micropayment are in place for that user...
The internet will the only work for ads and/or micropayments
Every site becomes a vending machine.
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If the website can tell if you paid then the system is broken. It needs to be anonymous and make it impossible to associate payments with site visitors, unless they give permission to do so.
Re:This doesn't look like a winner to me. (Score:4)
If the website can tell if you paid then the system is broken. It needs to be anonymous and make it impossible to associate payments with site visitors, unless they give permission to do so.
You make a good point, but I'm wondering if there's a solution.
Why not pay into a bucket account?
Payments into the bucket are secured by e-verification and payments out are made by the bucket?
Registered sites can draw from the bucket only.
PII should get lost in the bucket.
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That seems like the only reasonable option. Some kind of central fund, and an anonymous but also fraud-proof method of counting page views.
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No, but there needs to be a new payment system that accepts anonymous yet secure payments to meet the other requirements anyway. Maybe it's impossible.
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No, but there needs to be a new payment system that accepts anonymous yet secure payments to meet the other requirements anyway. Maybe it's impossible.
bitcoin?
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Turn ads on, get the content.
I can think of two kinds of web ads:
A. Self-hosted ads or other ads that respect the user's privacy
F. Ads that track the user's activity across websites
Privacy tools, such as Disconnect, allow privacy-respecting ads and block trackers. Printed magazines and newspapers display self-hosted ads due to the limits of print, and a few websites, such as Daring Fireball and Read the Docs, emulate this print model with self-hosted web ads. Since May of last year, The New York Times in Europe also displays self-host [techcrunch.com]
Re:This doesn't look like a winner to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Part "A" is so rare, that it is assumed that if an ad appears, it is doing its best to scrape what is possible to the machine for browser fingerprinting, be it battery status, canvas ID, screen resolution, physical serial numbers... anything the JavaScript can get ahold of. Since malvertising is the #1 attack vector behind trojans, one should assume that ads also bring with them exploits on all levels, from browser add-ons, to the browser, to CPU based attacks. Anti-adblock is just the next stage, but thankfully the sites that go to those limits are not worth going to, or one can find the same info from sites that are less of a potential security threat.
It would be nice to have some organization that handled ads, where they were display only, but with how abused any Internet item gets, I would say the good rep would only last a limited time before the organization started allowing a little bit of info to trickle back... then some more, then some more... until their snout was just as deep in the analytics/telemetry pig trough as the other ad networks.
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NoScript solves most of this. It doesn't block ads, just scripts. If a site displays simple image ads, fine, they work. If they want to run untrusted code on my computer, that gets blocked.
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"The internet will the only work for ads and/or micropayments :) "
The Internet will work just fine. You are confusing an APPLICATION that uses the Internet with the Internet itself.
Re:This doesn't look like a winner to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
My fear is that things will happen similar to cable companies. At first, if you paid for cable TV, you received no ads. Then they were sparse, and now just as common, if not worse than OTA TV.
I want a simple rule. Pay == no ads. No ifs, ands, or buts. If I get ads, I cancel and update my PiHole.
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My fear is that things will happen similar to cable companies. At first, if you paid for cable TV, you received no ads. Then they were sparse, and now just as common, if not worse than OTA TV.
This was my first thought and how I see this going down exactly.
Just because you pay a site to use it, doesn't mean they won't still look for other ways to make even more revenue.
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I'd be happy to make small payments to sites I want to support. The problem is that there is no way to make small payments because all payment processors charge too much to handle the transactions.
The solution exists now; Brave distributes BAT cryptocurrency (presently 5.68 BAT/USD) to sites based on usage. This site, for instance, has been receiving regularly scheduled BAT distributions from me in addition to adhoc "tips" that I've sent. In about 1 week the following participating sites will also receive BAT from me; duckduckgo.com, wikipedia.org and bitchute.com in addition to slashdot.org. This is automatic and involves no effort or attention from me. To date ad buyers have funded my BAT accou
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How does Slashdot get paid and what are you paying per page impression?
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However, they could have just made the 99 cent item have a processing charge or something. Pass the fee onto me, this way I pay for only what I want and not a cent more.
I suppose that is hard to do since the av
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Re:This doesn't look like a winner to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, too bad they shat all over that business model.
Look, it wasn't me who decided to stick a full motion video flash advertisement for a Chevy Silverado on a page in 1999 that I was accessing quietly late at night with the volume cranked to 11.
It wasn't me who decided to use more and more extreme trackers to watch me as I move from website to website.
It wasn't me who decided to run a vast ad network and allow spammers and hackers to put whatever executable code they wanted into the ads I was seeing.
Websites collectively have shat all over the ad-based business model. Sorry, but I was done with that shit 20 years ago. Now? They would need to pay me a lot of money for me to let them do that to me. They have utterly ruined that business model for myself and anyone else who's been paying attention.
I don't let ads run on my computer, full stop. When it's either ads or I don't see the website, I don't see the website. If they want money from me, they're going to have to come up with another way to get it, because they have so utterly trashed the ad-based way to do it.
I do not in the least cry for those who abuse trust to the point that they wither and die. And online advertising has done that.
Fuck the lot of them.
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You have that incorrect.
You can continue to block third-party cookies and block ads, and block javascript, in which case you will not be tracked, you will see no ads, and all the risks associated with unrestricted execution of untrustworthy third-party code on your computer will vanish.
Or, you can get rid of the ad blocker, pay Coil, enable third-party tracking cookies, and get rid of JavaScript blocking letting any old scumbag run whatever they want on your computer; in which case you will now be tracked e
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Why not both? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do I envision this ending up like cable t.v.? Sites may begin earning enough via micropayments, and then it won't be long before management has the desire to earn even more by having both micropayments and ads and we're right back to where we started...
I guess it could help smaller / personal / hobby type sites where the owner doesn't need huge profits and just runs a few ads to help keep the lights on and would consider replacing ads with micropayments.
A lot of content creators can't get adverts (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of them switched to Patreon. But some of them stopped making Atheist videos and switched to anti-SJW videos. And, well, some of them aren't attacking SJWs in a reasoned fashion (there's plenty ways to do so, SJWs can be annoying as heck) they're gaming the YouTub
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I'd use it but keep running an ad blocker anyway. In fact I'd want the ad blocker to block micropayments if it detects 3rd party ads.
Re:Why not both? (Score:5, Interesting)
I deal with this now. I'm teased by a great headline that leads to The New York Times and danged if I ain't blocked for 1.) being in private mode and 2.) blocking ads.
I just search for the same headline and find an alternate source.
I like NYT, but it's huge in scale and I'm only interested in some, you know: like cable TV.
I'm not gonna subscribe.
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The problem with ads is actually ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A good product would not need advertisement. A public database of products, with their properties, measured in SI units, with open, standardized and reproducible (so, scientific) testing methods, would suffice. You could filter and sort by your preferences, including price per unit (e.g. GB or kWh), and then show a table of results.
Ads exist, so you don't buy the ideal product, like in a healthy market, but an inferior one, so they can make more money while actually *earning* (aka *working for it) less money. People call that profit. But the only difference from theft amd robbery, is that a little bit of leftover earned work is kept in there. As an alibi. As if that would make a, morally criminal act OK.
Would companies pay websites to present to me actually honest and nice products and services,
That is the real problem.
Re:The problem with ads is actually ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily lies. A lot of ads are on products where there is little differentiation. Bud vs Coors? Who gives a shit, its all pisswater. Some people are swayed by flashy ads.
Cola wars? This one makes no sense to me. Coke and Pepsi are different. No amount of marketing can fix that. The marketing budget that goes in to buying exclusive deals with venues at least makes sense, even if its anti-competitive. Most people I have met prefer one but would drink either. Would Coke or Pepsi go out of business if they just stopped marketing and focused on exclusivity deals?
Ads also push people to make entirely unnecessary purchases. Does anyone need any of those useless As Seen On TV(tm) products?
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You're correct and I would ad (see what I did there) that, like TV and magazines and newspapers, people blank the dang things out. Advertising online is a profitable business model of ad agencies and ad hosting servers ... for business? not so much.
What replaces PSAs? (Score:2)
ads [...] are, de-facto, lies, for the sole and only purpose to defraud you / rip you off.
Without advertising, how do you even build awareness of product categories? I occasionally see "help-seeking" announcements to build awareness of treatable medical conditions: "If you have symptoms X, Y, and Z, they could be ABCosis. Tell your doctor about these symptoms and ask about available treatments." Drug companies like these because not mentioning a brand name means they don't have to rattle off side effects and thus don't have to buy a TV spot longer than 30 seconds. I also see "It's flu season. Pr
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Those drug ads are not public service announcements. They're very specific ads for things where the sponsoring company has the only, or at least the dominant, drug. The idea is to get you to go to your doctor and demand pills to treat your condition. At the same time you drum up support among doctors to actually prescribe the stuff, and that's you end up with 80% of the population on penis pills, opioids, mood modifiers and cholesterol medication.
Re:The problem with ads is actually ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Think back to, oh, 1981. Now, imagine that NOONE ever mentioned the IBM PC. So, how would you have found out that the possibility of buying a computer existed?
Now, consider the dawn of the internet era - how would you find out that you could buy access to the internet without, well, advertising?
How about all those hybrid or electric vehicles that have been coming out recently? Where would you find out they even existed without some form of advertising?
Alas, advertising is absolutely necessary for NEW things to enter the world. That said, I don't want to use bandwidth I pay for to watch ads. If I were getting the bandwidth for free, and it were paid for by ads, I wouldn't have much issue with ads (I don't feel compelled to buy something just because I've seen an ad for it).
But I'll be damned if I pay for the bandwidth used to advertise things to me....
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How about all those hybrid or electric vehicles that have been coming out recently? Where would you find out they even existed without some form of advertising?
I know all about Tesla, but I've never seen an ad for one.
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No silly. What you're describing would be perfect consumer information, i.e. capitalism. If we actually implemented that, all the theoretical properties of capitalism might actually apply. So much easier to keep the consumers making irrational guesses in the dark.
I already pay for internet (Score:3, Interesting)
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Do you ever buy products on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or smaller websites? Or do you subscribe to Netflix, Sling TV, or a BitTorrent seedbox? If so, you're paying both for Internet access and for the goods and services you purchase through the Internet.
Nope and nope (Score:3)
Are you ready to consent-popups on each link you click?
Or a meter of (favorite currency of the month) spent as you're browsing?
What does auto-loading content have to do to re/gain consent?
Who ensures the account is actually the person browsing, or has secure permission?
What prevents malicious content from racking up fees, one-time or in a loop?
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How about this: Websites that need money ask for it. If they run out of money, they go away.
If Slashdot goes away for this reason, would that please you?
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Do you ever buy products on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or smaller websites? Or do you subscribe to Netflix, Sling TV, or a BitTorrent seedbox? If so, you're paying both for Internet access and for the goods and services you purchase through the Internet.
And you're getting something tangible in exchange.
Awful analogy.
Let's use a car analogy instead. Do you ever buy a car? If so, you're paying both for the car and road taxes.
See? Still doesn't work.
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do you subscribe to Netflix, Sling TV, or a BitTorrent seedbox? If so, you're paying both for Internet access and for the goods and services you purchase through the Internet.
And you're getting something tangible in exchange.
How are the articles available through a subscription to a micropayment network any less "tangible" than the videos available through a subscription to Netflix?
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There are some services I use that I don't pay for like \. but I pay for netfilx, hulu, and amazon and although I'm not paying for manufacture website access to drivers, help, and support I did buy the product. Most of my internet searches are for products or services I intend to purchase or have already purchased. It's all the other stuff that people use like facebook, twitter, etc... I wouldn't pay for them and wouldn't loose very much.
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So you only want an internet full of subscription corporate crap, no smaller sites that rely on other means of funding themselves? Sod that.
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So you only want an internet full of subscription corporate crap, no smaller sites that rely on other means of funding themselves? Sod that.
Agreed. Sites want somewhere between 5 bucks a month and 15 bucks a month. I got to a hell of a lot of sites. At those rates, I'll be paying double or triple what I pay for TV.
I can't afford it.
For that reason, I vote to just keep things the way they are.
I'll use ad blockers and let the rest of you bastards (or bastardettes) subsidize my surfing.
I would like, at this time, to express my gratitude to those who pay for my content. Thank you so much. Y'all rock and stuff. You're the best.
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Sites want somewhere between 5 bucks a month and 15 bucks a month. I got to a hell of a lot of sites. At those rates, I'll be paying double or triple what I pay for TV.
The objective of a micropayment network, such as Adult Check, Webpass.io, or Coil, is to put "a hell of a lot of sites" under a single subscription so that the overall rate doesn't end up like paying for cable TV with all the premium channels.
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How much do they make from an ad impression? $0.001 seems not unrealistic from a quick search, i.e. 1/10th of a cent per view.
If I could pay $0.01, so 10x as much as the ad, to a site for a page view and set a limit of say $10/month (1000 payments) per month then I'd be quite happy with that.
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I already pay for internet.
Indeed you do. Unfortunately no one is obligated to wear the cost of providing you content. You'll end up with a very empty internet if you forgo both the advertising as well as micro-payments. You only pay for your end of the access. Are you expecting companies to pay to deliver you content rather than the other way around? Didn't think so. Click their ads.
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Some users would be satisfied if the information available through the World Wide Web contracted to three categories:
1. Websites that sell physical goods to be shipped, such as Amazon
2. Websites associated with a service already provided to a user, such as a credit union or a library's card catalog
3. Websites operated in an enthusiast's free time as a hobby, not for a living, such as NESdev.com
These users would not consider a web with only these categories of sites to be "very empty."
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If you got rid of #1 and #2, you'd be back to what the Internet was in the 90s. We considered it full of wonders.
It's still full of wonders (Score:2)
Don't let a few jerks and haters get you down. The good still outnumbers the bad, it's just we nerds have a bad habit of focusing on the bad.
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if 2 where include all services sites including streaming like netflix and hulu, and payment sites for things like insurance, electricity, etc... you could add 4. Manufacture websites for products already purchased (help and support pages) and cover about 90% of my internet experience.
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You are paying for the pipe, not the content.
Nothing wrong with ads for sites that you don't want to pay for.
If all sites simply had the option for you to pay directly what would have been generated by ad revenue, I think that would go a long way toward solving this issue.
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Try telling that to my goddam Dish® provider.
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I already pay for roads. Your business model is flawed. Life is not about money. Your fuel is not so important that I cam going to pay extra when I already pay for roads.
I'm glad the parent post was modded interesting. It is interesting. It's also not how the world works, but it is interesting to see that there are people who think that way.
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Life is not about money.
Life *is* about money, until you have enough of it.
It is not a metaphor. With very few exceptions, if you don't have money, or if you don't have someone else to spend money for you, you die.
This is also true for content producers. Some of them have another source of income and are generous enough to let you access it, but for most of them, you paying them (directly or not) is how they stay alive.
As for the "I pay for internet" argument, it is just as stupid as saying that if you go to a concert, you shouldn
Back to the future past? (Score:5, Informative)
Just a reminder for those who never knew an ad-free Internet, the Internet traces its roots to ARPANET in 1969. Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, "the Internet" - that is, the collection of inter-operating TCP/IP networks - was largely government-funded had restrictions on "commercial" use.
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True. Back in the Gopher days, the internet was not yet taken over by "monetizers" who wanted to profit from other people's efforts. So if they want to reimagine an internet without ads, they cannot be just another monetizer, especially not "one monetizer to rule them all".
First they googlified firefox in every way possible, and now this. What are they thinking?
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Wasn't the original ad also the original spam? Some lawyer firing entirely unwated messages into a newsgroup.
Oh, I guess he was beat by a few others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Just a reminder for those who never knew an ad-free Internet, the Internet traces its roots to ARPANET in 1969. Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, "the Internet" - that is, the collection of inter-operating TCP/IP networks - was largely government-funded had restrictions on "commercial" use.
Your point is precisely correct.
When the observant realized that the Internet was a collection of eyeballs with money, businesses (people blame advertisers but business pay for that service) started circling the waters.
That realization did (at least) two things: It monetized the Internet and that is directly responsible for the nice things we have today.
Without ads, we'd still be gluing soft porn binaries together, download one fragment at a time, from Usenet.
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Just a reminder for those who never knew an ad-free Internet, the Internet traces its roots to ARPANET in 1969. Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, "the Internet" - that is, the collection of inter-operating TCP/IP networks - was largely government-funded had restrictions on "commercial" use.
And some may call those the glory days of the internet. But that ship has sailed, and I honest don't want it back. Did I enjoy BBSs, Gopher, usenet, IRC, and maintaining and sharing a website that had links to favorite content? You bet I did! But I don't want it back. I'll take today's internet over all of that any day.
I would venture that I dislike and avoid advertising more than most people. But if that is the price to pay for the internet we have now, so be it.
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Clickbait (Score:2)
It seems to me that the current system encourages clickbait - stretch the truth to whatever will attract as many page impressions and referrals as possible. So coil moght help there - in that it might shift online content towards quality. But they seem to have missed something, as payments would be relative to visitors and so the incentive to get as many people through as possible has not changed.
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YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
We the People are directly responsible for content no matter the source.
The stuff on TV is there because the viewers respond. If the viewers aren't paying attention, the content disappears.
That basic business structure motivates bombastic headlines, lightning-bolt announcements, and megaphone radicalization as well as just out and out lying.
The rule of business is to make money. The "how" part of it is irrelevant.
This is true of magazines, newspapers, radio and the Internet.
Bubble
The TV Model.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cable was supposed to be the same way. And surprise, it took no time at all before adds infested almost all the channels.
Frankly, ads don't bother me. They never have. Just like TV ads (over the air TV - or free TV if you will) don't bother me. You just learn to ignore them. The problem comes with the tracking. And you better believe that a monetized system where you have to PAY each site to visit, which guarantees they have all your information and don't even have to guess who you might be, will abuse the holy hell out of all that data at their disposal.
Anonymous proof of purchase (Score:2)
And you better believe that a monetized system where you have to PAY each site to visit, which guarantees they have all your information and don't even have to guess who you might be, will abuse the holy hell out of all that data at their disposal.
Depends on whom you mean by "they." If by "they" you mean participating publishers, then the micropayment platform provider would hold all the payment credentials, providing only anonymous proof of purchase to the participating publisher. If by "they" you mean the micropayment platform provider, what sort of misuse of data had you anticipated?
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Ah. So the micropayment platform becomes the tracker that every participating publisher can use.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Agreed (Score:2)
Ads per se aren't the problem. All that has to happen is stop the unneeded tracking. Ads can work via the page content/subject instead.
Selling ad space on a 1- or 2-person site (Score:2)
Ads can work via the page content/subject instead.
This is called contextual advertising. But even if an ad network or ad exchange serves only contextual ads, not interest-based ads, this ad network or ad exchange can still track users. In order not to track users at all, each website would need to sell its own ad space to advertisers. That's practical for a site as big as The New York Times, but I see a tougher challenge for a smaller website operated by one or two full-time employees. How can this be made efficient?
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Well said.
While almost all people on the receiving end see ads as evil and a big money-maker, the real gold is in the fucking data. That data can be had for a buck or two.
And the buyer can be governments (foreign and domestic), LEO, insurance companies, big pharma ...
Judge: "And just where did you get this evidence? I don't see a warrant or subpoena in the record?"
Plaintiff: "Oh, we just bought it at the Big Box Store. We picked it right off the shelf. We didn't violate anyone's right."
Judge: "Wow. Which Bi
Cryptocurrencies (Score:3)
Reddcoin [reddcoin.com] was created specifically for micro-payments of web content.
Adult Check was around before Coil (Score:3)
"Adult Check: Because grown-ups can pay for nice things." (not its real tagline)
From the featured article:
This reminds me of a micropayment network called Adult Check [wikipedia.org] that was doing this sort of thing back in the late 1990s. For a $10 per month subscription, a grown-up could subscribe to a network of thousands of websites, and Adult Check distributed a commission per page view to publishers of participating websites. Coil's about page [coil.com] doesn't list a date of founding, but I highly doubt it preceded Adult Check.
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Looks like it has the same flaw too. From their RFC:
The payment method specification for this payment method is still under development
In other words they have not solved the one huge problem that none of these systems are able to overcome: there is no way for me to send you 0.1c over the internet.
The rest of it is full of holes too. For example they think they made it protect user privacy by using random IDs, but those are trivial to associate with users due to the the timings of the requests. This is currently being fixed in the new pingback API proposals from Google and Apple where the
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Could I, umm, launder some money using this?
Asking for a friend.
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Payments = identity (Score:4, Insightful)
The horse left the barn, so they want to sell it (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't think that this is done to do you a favor. They just notice that the ad model is failing because they had to slaughter the goose laying the golden eggs. We had an internet that worked pretty well with ads, but advertisers wanted more. People were actually accepting them. There were banners, even animated ads above, below and around all the content we actually came for, and we accepted that. The problem is that advertisers thought that whether users accept their ads in the user's space didn't matter. They were too used to how ads worked on TV. They could push more and more of them and you'd sit, grin and bear it. Because you had no choice.
Well, people had a choice now.
And people blocked ads. But even that would not have been too much of an issue because of the 99% lazies. You know the kind. The fairly clueless user that has a modern machine that takes half an hour to start because of all the installed gadgets and trinkets that think they MUST start when booting. The users that have about a stamp sized browser window on a 22" screen because the rest of the browser real estate is taken up by plugin bars and other bullshit. They did put up with popups, popunders, popwhatthefuck windows that blared music at them. The tide turned when even they started to install adblockers. Can you imagine just HOW annoying those ads have become to get THOSE people to block them?
And they won't uninstall anymore. Ads are broken. And you, dear advertisers, broke it. By being SO obnoxious that even the laziest fuck on the internet got off his fat ass and installed something to block your crap.
So now pages need a new business model. I say fuck it. You made your bed, now lie in it or get lost. The internet is a better place without you.
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By being SO obnoxious that even the laziest fuck on the internet got off his fat ass and installed something to block your crap.
This is one possible explanation. I certainly would like to believe such narrative, because it has appealing bad-guys-lose narrative. Only I don't think any of it is true. Online advertising never worked, because they have no way to monopolize viewer's attention. Human brain is exceptionally good at blocking background noise to focus on content, and this noise exactly what all advertisement is. In a way we evolved to be uniquely good at ignoring online ads.
What is happening now is that advertisers finally
Ads still work just fine (Score:2)
Ship Sailed 10 years ago (Score:2)
Facebook Earned $55.8 BILLION in 2018 https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
All this selling YOUR personal information. $20 million is nice.. tiny, cute and insignificant but nice. Way too little, way too late. The world has already moved to the information economy. You might as well try to bring back switchboard operators.
The problem is not ads (Score:2)
The problem is not ads. The problem is ad networks that track you.
I have ads enabled on a few sites that serve their own ads with no tracking. The sites are specialised, and the ads are specialised to that site: not to individual users.
IMHO, this classic way of serving ads should be the way forward, not abolishing ads altogether.
Then there are ads that are obtrusive. But there are web sites that don't know how proper conduct either, with popups and auto-playing videos that have nothing to do with ads.
Finding advertisers (Score:2)
I have ads enabled on a few sites that serve their own ads with no tracking.
Say you were to run such a site yourself. As a publisher, how would you go about finding advertisers to whom to sell your site's ad space?
Re: (Score:2)
The same way that people have sold ads for hundreds of years. Hire a salesperson and have them sell ads.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is not ads. The problem is ad networks that track you.
[Snip]
Then there are ads that are obtrusive. But there are web sites that don't know how proper conduct either, with popups and auto-playing videos that have nothing to do with ads.
Both good points. I'd add the issue of ads as a malware vector. There was a time when ads were simple gifs or jpegs; but these days ads mean allowing third-parties to run javascript on my machine. Thanks, but no thanks.
Did that a decade ago, for free (Score:2)
I found 3 sizeable ad server blacklists, merged them together, and put the resulting 130,000 lines in my hosts file all mapped to 0.0.0.0.
Of course that only works on hardware where the user has control, which they don't on mobile devices unless they've been rooted. Or set up your own DNS server.
If I see an ad, I add that hostname. I don't care about the lost ad revenue, I'm not among the 6% of people who click on ads anyway... it's wasting my bandwidth.
'Micropayments' expose you to hacking risk (Score:2)
How this will end (Score:2)
We will get ads AND micropayments. And those "micro" payments will be on the order of $2.50 per page, which then gives you access to 100 views, even though you will never visit that site again.
I get why they want it, I just don't think human nature will allow it to work.
Home ISPs that block or terminate home servers (Score:2)
Web for 10, even 100 visitors, even with significant amount of database, could be managed well with a regular desktop computer.
Not as long as home ISPs block inbound TCP connections because of insufficient IPv4 addresses or terminate service to home users who run a server out of a desire to upsell business class service.
Instead of pay from money (well, it's an option too, but not the best), pay in resources. Reserved mirror disk and CPU cycles and help the model to call in a decentralized way.
You mean like a Monero miner? Coinhive tried this but shut down because of all the abuse it got.