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Hey everyone, my team is in Mozilla's ”fix-the-internet” MVP Lab right now. We're working on Vngle, a decentralized grassroots news network combatting news deserts across America. We're working in Georgia now and will be moving to other states soon. Sign up to stay updated at Vngle.com or follow us on social @VngleStories. https://www.instagram.com/VngleStories/
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Here's my "fix the internet" idea: build a search engine that is itself ad-free, and searches over only the ad-free segment of the web. More options: allow users to exclude sites with ads, sites with ecommerce, sites with tracking, or simply allow users to build and share lists of sites to exclude. Rationale: the unmonetized or under-monetized web was awesome, a lot of it still exists under the radar now, and it woul…
Is there enough content where searching just the ad-free segment is ... worth it? What happens if you're a top result on the add free segment and you start incurring some level of costs? Do you drop off if you add an ad? Granted I really like the idea, I'd love to see it tried, but I wonder what all the unintended consequences would be / skeptical of the value of segregating "ad-free" vs. "has an ad of any sort" vs.…
Hey all, Patrick here & one of the mentors for the Mozilla Builders "fix-the-internet" incubator https://builders.mozilla.community/ . We have 3 different offerings for this Summer. All incubator style, meaning you meet weekly or biweekly with mentors and we really try to help drive you from point A to point C. 1. $75k investment in a startup. MUST be serious about wanting to build something awesome and put in the ha…
Sounds interesting. Any more detail on what Mozilla sees broken about the internet and what a company would be doing to fix it? Your link gives some example types of companies but doesn't really define the mission. "Positive impact" is completely subjective. I have ideas about what this is all about but would like to see it defined by Mozilla better.
This is certainly not limiting and we know that there are more categories and just this, but it's a start.
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Really trying to be constructive here: consider investing in one or two more vowels. The "vn" is...rough.
Looks to be a play on the word “Angle” - in the context of news, this is the point you’re trying to convince your readers of. “What’s your angle?”
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Here's my "fix the internet" idea: build a search engine that is itself ad-free, and searches over only the ad-free segment of the web. More options: allow users to exclude sites with ads, sites with ecommerce, sites with tracking, or simply allow users to build and share lists of sites to exclude. Rationale: the unmonetized or under-monetized web was awesome, a lot of it still exists under the radar now, and it woul…
I launched a new search engine a few months ago and have been looking at several alternative ways to fund it, but none of them seem to be a viable path. The best balance of privacy and user experience seems to be display ads related to search term context that don't do any tracking (like billboards in the real world). But even that isn't an easy proposition and will need a custom network built to generate those type…
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Sounds interesting. Any more detail on what Mozilla sees broken about the internet and what a company would be doing to fix it? Your link gives some example types of companies but doesn't really define the mission. "Positive impact" is completely subjective. I have ideas about what this is all about but would like to see it defined by Mozilla better.
Here's some more details on this: https://builders.mozilla.community/who-we-fund.html This is certainly not limiting and we know that there are more categories and just this, but it's a start.
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Here's my "fix the internet" idea: build a search engine that is itself ad-free, and searches over only the ad-free segment of the web. More options: allow users to exclude sites with ads, sites with ecommerce, sites with tracking, or simply allow users to build and share lists of sites to exclude. Rationale: the unmonetized or under-monetized web was awesome, a lot of it still exists under the radar now, and it woul…
https://wiby.me
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Is there enough content where searching just the ad-free segment is ... worth it? What happens if you're a top result on the add free segment and you start incurring some level of costs? Do you drop off if you add an ad? Granted I really like the idea, I'd love to see it tried, but I wonder what all the unintended consequences would be / skeptical of the value of segregating "ad-free" vs. "has an ad of any sort" vs.…
The add-free segment of the internet does indeed sound like a niche market. I wonder if quality of results could be drastically improved by just penalizing domains that contain a lot of referral links and ads. I remember the days when it felt like you could learn anything by searching the web a bit until you found some suitable content to read. Now it's like sifting through reams of affiliate spam that I have to at l…
The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. In the beginning there were rules. No commercial use. When that was lifted we started the descent into where things are now. It began with a lawyer posting an ad about immigration services to Usenet. It has come a long way since then. All the while, the web browser has supported always advertising, making it easier and easier to consume ads, buy and sell via th…
> The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. Regulation always requires coordination, which is simply not possible at internet scale. Facebook and Twitter can't even regulate the content on their own platforms, and you're talking about regulation at an even larger scale against strong interests with large financial reserves. What's needed is a secure/private by default browser sandbox so these interests…
How are we supposed to know this given that they don't have an actual incentive to do so? Look at the allegedly "unworkable" enforcement of hate-speech legislation in say, Germany. What did Facebook do when they were faced with 4% global revenue fines? Hire some moderators and it appears to work reasonbaly well.
Same goes for advertising. Get out the hammer and I bet it wouldn't take long until those companies suddenly discover how creative they can be in cleaning their act up.
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Are there groups that have A.) A team assembled, B.) A product that's far enough along to have C.) Users, who 75 grand makes a meaningful impact? Is the expectation that those teams maintain other jobs while working with the incubator? ^ Probably a more succinct way to ask my question. I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to negatively paint the program, it's clearly more than most companies are doing to fix the int…
This is our first time running this Summer Incubator ($75k iteration), BUT we are in the middle of our Spring MVP Program. These teams each got around $8-10k. We have some really good projects from this much smaller program, including https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/neutral/oagdejngkg... (Firefox extension releasing this week), https://ameelio.org/ , and more! So we're not entirely sure whether $75k is the…