Plant trees while you search the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#61

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #27

WA wrote: post #14

If you don't click on ads, or have an Adblocker installed, you generate no money for Ecosia. Thus, no trees get planted. I think it's important to point this out, because in their marketing, they make it sound as if searching alone is enough. There's also this little counter in the upper right corner. 45 searches (on average) are required to plant a tree. Of course, only if you click on an ad. You could even argue th…

What if I repeatedly click on ads by advertisers I dislike?

https://adnauseam.io/ is a tool for doing that. I wonder if it would make them money or be detected as fraud.

I suspect Google is much less conservative about ad fraud determinations than they lead the public to believe - It's in their financial interest to do as poorly as possible without damaging their reputation.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#62

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #42

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.

Advertising spending is inversely correlated with product quality.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#63

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #43

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.

[deleted]

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#64

Post by sanbor » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #58

bad-joke wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If instead of almost 8 billion humans there were 4 billions we wouldn't be in this mess either. I'm not sure your logic follows. The US outputs roughly 13% of global CO2 emissions despite having 4% of the world population. If the ratio of population to CO2 output was scaled in this case, 7.5 billion US citizens would output 118,000 Mt of CO2 per year. Halving that (to less than 4 billion humans) would be 59,000 Mt…

Half the population would produce half the emissions and consume half the resources considering the same emissions per capita per country and equivalent population density per country.

We cannot kill half of the population but we can consume half. We could avoid replacing phones every two years. We could eat less meat. We could avoid having so many cars.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#65

Post by cglace » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

elektor wrote: post #53

https://blog.ecosia.org/content/images/2019/06/Financial-Rep... From their infographic, you can see that Ecosia donates 51.6% of its income to planting trees, the rest going to employee incomes, reserves, and "spreading the word". You can save yourself the extra step and simply donate to the foundations that Ecosia donates money to: edenprojects.org hommesetterro.com greenbeltmovement.org itpa.org.br

I don’t see why this is an either or situation. You could do both.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#66

Post by jonas21 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

WA wrote: post #14

If you don't click on ads, or have an Adblocker installed, you generate no money for Ecosia. Thus, no trees get planted. I think it's important to point this out, because in their marketing, they make it sound as if searching alone is enough. There's also this little counter in the upper right corner. 45 searches (on average) are required to plant a tree. Of course, only if you click on an ad. You could even argue th…

I mean, maybe this is obvious, but whenever you visit a site that derives revenue from ads with an adblocker installed, you generate no money for that site, and thus X doesn't get supported, where X might be journalism, services, or in this case planting trees.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#67

Post by Forbo » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

Hoasi wrote: post #20

WA wrote: post #14

If you don't click on ads, or have an Adblocker installed, you generate no money for Ecosia. Thus, no trees get planted. I think it's important to point this out, because in their marketing, they make it sound as if searching alone is enough. There's also this little counter in the upper right corner. 45 searches (on average) are required to plant a tree. Of course, only if you click on an ad. You could even argue th…

> I think it's important to point this out, because in their marketing, they make it sound as if searching alone is enough. Thank you for pointing that out. There is no point using it for search if you are using ad-blocking software.

> There is no point using it for search if you are using ad-blocking software.

I'd disagree. The network effect can help. Acquaintances tend to be interested whenever they see me using any search engine that isn't Google.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#68

Post by jordigh » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #43

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.

Global warming was first becoming convincing in the 1960s, when the world's population was well under 4.0e9, but industrialised nations were enjoying post-WW2 economic prosperity.

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#69

Post by thekyle » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

jk2faster wrote: post #3

I used ecosia for a period of few months, and stopped when I read this their privacy policy( https://info.ecosia.org/privacy#privacy-policy-section-7 ): > For example, when you do a search on Ecosia we forward the following information to our partner, Bing: IP address, user agent string, search term, and some settings like your country and language setting. So when a search is done, our IP address is send to Bing. I…

If anyone is wondering why they send Bing the IP address, it's most likely because the Bing API uses the searchers IP address if you want location specific search results like weather, local restaurants, etc.

> Results are customized to the location or market of the user. The location or market can be determined implicitly (via IP address) or configured explicitly.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...

Re: Plant trees while you search the web

#70

Post by thekyle » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

danskeren wrote: post #47

stffndtz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would assume they send the IP so that Bing will return location specific search results for weather, local businesses and such. I see no reason to assume malicious intent.