Plant trees while you search the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#41

Post by mistrial9 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #30

This really feels like greenwashing to me. The purpose of ads is (1) to make you buy something you didn't need before the ad made you aware of it, or (2) to make you choose the advertised brand amongst competing brands when you buy a product comparable to the advertised one. Runaway consumption is what has gotten us into this ecological mess in the first place. Watching ads to replant trees just sounds very strange.

where is the market to implement otherwise ? people talked about "needing a micropayments model on the Internet" almost twenty years ago.. and continually since then

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#42

Post by Hamuko » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

I'd rather just send $5 somewhere. If they earn a few cents per ad clicked, I'd have to click like 250 different ads in order to get to that $5.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#43

Post by pier25 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #30

This really feels like greenwashing to me. The purpose of ads is (1) to make you buy something you didn't need before the ad made you aware of it, or (2) to make you choose the advertised brand amongst competing brands when you buy a product comparable to the advertised one. Runaway consumption is what has gotten us into this ecological mess in the first place. Watching ads to replant trees just sounds very strange.

> Runaway consumption is what has gotten us into this ecological mess in the first place.

In part. If instead of almost 8 billion humans there were 4 billions we wouldn't be in this mess either.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#44

Post by nvrspyx » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #40

nvrspyx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don’t create personal profiles of you based on your search history. We actually anonymize all searches within one week. > Many web services collect user data in order to sell it without asking your permission. We don’t sell your data or your searches to advertising companies. > We protect your searches from potential eavesdroppers with a securely encrypted connection. This way we make sure that nobody between yo…

You just need to read it differently ... We don’t create personal profiles of you based on your search history. (but our partner Bing might) We don’t sell your data or your searches to advertising companies. (but our partner Bing is and hands us a piece of the rewards)

I guess the responsibility is on the user to dig through the FAQ or privacy policy to discover they use Bing and then read between the lines?

It’s disingenuous and misleading to the average user. They should be criticized for it.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#45

Post by Hamuko » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

RenRav wrote: post #6

7 million active users, 70 million trees... only 10 trees have been planted per user? I like the idea but I wonder on average just how many searches it takes for one tree to be planted.

Their own FAQ says that it takes about 45 searches to plant a tree. So at 10 trees / person, that's about 450 searches.

>We know that Ecosia earns an average of 0.5 cents (EUR) per search. It costs our tree planting partners about 0.22 EUR to plant a tree. 22 cents divided by 0.5 cents makes about 45 searches until we can plant one new tree. Depending on clicks on ads and how much search ad revenue these generate for Ecosia, it may take fewer searches. Think of it this way: we currently fund the planting of a new tree every second.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#46

Post by switchbak » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #30

This really feels like greenwashing to me. The purpose of ads is (1) to make you buy something you didn't need before the ad made you aware of it, or (2) to make you choose the advertised brand amongst competing brands when you buy a product comparable to the advertised one. Runaway consumption is what has gotten us into this ecological mess in the first place. Watching ads to replant trees just sounds very strange.

One also needs to be wary of tree planting as being necessarily altruistic. Nothing wrong with planting a tree of course, but many times they're planting a monoculture of financially viable & fast growing trees with the intent to log them in the future.

The forestry industry views forests as large scale gardening, and they spend big bucks to plant trees after they log an area. In many cases I think our good will is being hijacked to pay for something that they ought to cover.

I'd be much more interested in a program to plant a diversity of native trees in areas that are protected.

Failing that, I guess it's not the end of the world that we re-plant some logging company's patch, it just doesn't give me the same warm-fuzzies.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#47

Post by danskeren » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

stffndtz wrote: post #36

hoschicz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo also uses Bing and they don't send the IP AFAIK

AFAIK that is impossible

Definitely not impossible. Microsoft offers a pay-as-you-go Bing Search API (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-...).

I can only assume ecosia share this data with Microsoft because doing so has allowed them to land a more lucrative deal.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#48

Post by fourier_mode » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

chaosfox wrote: post #21

ecosia financial reports: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planti...

For 170k euors spent in salaries they are able to hire 39 people. Seems quite less from the US standard.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#49

Post by luckylion » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

nvrspyx wrote: post #44

luckylion wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just need to read it differently ... We don’t create personal profiles of you based on your search history. (but our partner Bing might) We don’t sell your data or your searches to advertising companies. (but our partner Bing is and hands us a piece of the rewards)

I guess the responsibility is on the user to dig through the FAQ or privacy policy to discover they use Bing and then read between the lines? It’s disingenuous and misleading to the average user. They should be criticized for it.

I absolutely agree that they should be criticized for it, or at least explain their deal with Bing. If one can trust Google not to create ad profiles from Google Analytics data, one can also trust Bing to not use ecosia data to build user profiles. But for that to be a trust decision, we'd need to know whether they actually have any such deal with Bing.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#50

Post by concert-gilled » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #15

RenRav wrote: post #6

7 million active users, 70 million trees... only 10 trees have been planted per user? I like the idea but I wonder on average just how many searches it takes for one tree to be planted.

Is anyone verifying these claims?

Do users know where these tree they have planted are?