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Why don't you accept donations?

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Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#71

Post by e-neko »

binwiederhier wrote: post #67
approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts. A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of…

It would be a lot safer if ad companies vetted their ads responsibly. After a third case of an ad on a perfectly reputable site trying to exploit my browser, an ad-blocker became just a standard part of network hygiene.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#73

Post by dr-detroit »

approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

they built adequate blockers into browsers but I dont expect your ilk to ever change your opinion or learn something

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#74

Post by Dylan16807 »

munificent wrote: post #65
ghufran_syed wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds more like you are uncomfortable billing your market value, like most of us - you should charge at least a day’s worth of your old (or current) salary for one hour of this kind of on-demand work. If they don’t want to pay, that’s great, it means it really wasn’t that important after all…

No, there is real psychological research behind this. If you charge people for something, it kicks their perception of the act into a different category. That in turn effects how they think about the interaction and what their sense of entitlement and expectations are in ways that can be counter-intuitive. A famous related study is: https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-wha... They found that when…

What you're skipping is that it was a tiny fine. $3 per incident! Small amounts of money can be really distorting that way. Paying a full day's salary for the consultation is not the same, and it's pretty likely it would increase the company's respect of their time.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#75

Post by AussieWog93 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #6

> no donations = no expectations No donations should result in no expectations , but unfortunately all sorts of people will have all sorts of expectations from you when you release an open-source project, donations or not.

There are absolutely different expectations that come when someone makes a donation.

Hell, look at all of the expectations that come with receiving a gift from a relative.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#76

Post by munificent »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #74
munificent wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is real psychological research behind this. If you charge people for something, it kicks their perception of the act into a different category. That in turn effects how they think about the interaction and what their sense of entitlement and expectations are in ways that can be counter-intuitive. A famous related study is: https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-wha... They found that when…

What you're skipping is that it was a tiny fine. $3 per incident! Small amounts of money can be really distorting that way. Paying a full day's salary for the consultation is not the same, and it's pretty likely it would increase the company's respect of their time.

It's hard to know how the company would respond, or what the ideal charge would be.

What I do know is that I completely respect snarf21's choice to either charge or not as they see fit.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#77

Post by viraptor »

vikingerik wrote: post #33
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #27

> I don't want the administrative workload coming with donations. It's absolutely shameful that over three decades into the internet age, we still don't have zero friction ways of accepting, sending and accounting for money on the internet.

Bitcoin is pretty close to this, right? Anyone can publish a Bitcoin address and accept donations with no friction.

There's still friction. Do you know how to do your taxes on international income, CGT, discounting transfer fees, etc? There are services which will do most of that for you, but that's still time to export/import the transactions, ~$50 to get the summary, some more time to deal with actually putting that info on your tax return.

Realistically that's probably 3h of work in a year, but I'd probably pay a bit of money not to have to do it.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#78

Post by matheusmoreira »

binwiederhier wrote: post #67
approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts. A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of…

I bet that website still has ads despite the paywall.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#79

Post by matheusmoreira »

kingcharles wrote: post #55
approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

Browsing the Web of 2021 with a mobile hotspot on a desktop is impossible without an ad blocker. There is so much shit on web pages now that: (a) site assume you're on a desktop and have infinite bandwidth, (b) on a mobile connection the pages take forever to complete, and (c) the pages use up all of your mobile data allowance. I'm ethically against taking money away from people who want to generate revenue through a…

> I'm ethically against taking money away from people who want to generate revenue through advertising

Why do you say that? They're the ones who sent you HTML for free. They assumed you'd look at the ads, but you have absolutely zero moral obligation to validate that assumption. If you have a magazine, you can totally rip out the ads and throw them in the trash. If you have a newspaper, you can cut out the articles you care about and discard everything else.

Use the ad blocker and be proud. If anything, you're helping free the web from the scourge that is advertising. If they want money, they're totally free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of serving a free web page.

Re: Why don't you accept donations?

#80

Post by nocturnial »

binwiederhier wrote: post #67
approxim8ion wrote: post #3

I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.

I have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts. A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of…

I have the opposite viewpoint about ads.

I don't think we should reward a business model which relies on the premise that humans like to watch ads. I never had someone tell me to drive slower because they wanted to take a closer look at a billboard. Never had I had to rewind a video because someone missed an ad. etc... etc...

Let's be honest. If someone told you to do any of the above things regularly and consistently, you would question their sanity.

But somehow it's normal for businesses to assume people like to watch ads and make it their primary income revenue. Well, sure, some companies succeeded using this model. But I don't see why this should result in me paying more attention to ads.

I don't hold the extremist position that all ads are bad or should be abolished. I have always tried to ignore ads. Adblockers automate what I normally do. And if your business model relies on me watching your ads, maybe you should reconsider your assumptions.

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