What happened with the Web Monetization API? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#21

Post by stevekemp » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

internetter wrote: post #14

seanwilson wrote: post #5

> It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it’s incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. Are there any promising avenues toward…

Frankly, this is probably just going to manifest as a digital currency. Add 10$ to your wallet. At the end of the month that's distributed or something

Flattr tried to do something similar, but yes I agree. It's unfortunate that bitcoin became a hoarding/speculation thing, rather than a useful thing.

Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#22

Post by PretzelPirate » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #18

hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

I remember Brave introducing BAT tokens that you could earn for seeing ads and then donate to other websites and content creators. How did that experiment end up? Was it just a crypto hype thing?

The concept is a deliberate scam. Brave removes the legitimate ads from the website owners, and puts their own ads on top. Then presents that as somehow helping website owners.

> puts their own ads on top.

I haven't used Brave for years and don't own their token, but that's just not how Brave ads work at all.

The ads are shown as notifications and aren't replacing ads embedded in websites.

Why mislead people?

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#23

Post by soco » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

seanwilson wrote: post #5

> It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it’s incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. Are there any promising avenues toward…

I had for a while Coil installed in the browser and nobody cared about it, so I uninstalled it half a year later. I honestly couldn't care less if there's a blockchain behind it or whatever, but as long no sites (useful to me) implement it... Under the line I paid Coil some money for nothing, so maybe for them it was a business success.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#24

Post by internetter » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

stevekemp wrote: post #21

internetter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, this is probably just going to manifest as a digital currency. Add 10$ to your wallet. At the end of the month that's distributed or something

Flattr tried to do something similar, but yes I agree. It's unfortunate that bitcoin became a hoarding/speculation thing, rather than a useful thing. Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension.

> Decentralized micro-transactions would have been cool had they been used with a decent friendly UI and been integrated into a browser or two as an extension.

My position on cryptocurrency as well. I think that the ability to send money in this decentralized manner is fascinating. It's too bad it went far, far beyond that. Cryptocurrency should have never tried to replace normal currency, or any of that NFT bs.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#25

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:13 PM UTC

PretzelPirate wrote: post #22

carlosjobim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept is a deliberate scam. Brave removes the legitimate ads from the website owners, and puts their own ads on top. Then presents that as somehow helping website owners.

> puts their own ads on top. I haven't used Brave for years and don't own their token, but that's just not how Brave ads work at all. The ads are shown as notifications and aren't replacing ads embedded in websites. Why mislead people?

The browser has a built in ad blocker, effectively removing the ads that pay for a website. To then put your own ads _anywhere_ after that and pretend that you're helping website owners is a scam. Imagine if YouTube started blocking sponsored content and put their own ads there.

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#26

Post by Mistletoe » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

seanwilson wrote: post #5

> It needs to be built into the browsers and web standards such that it’s incredibly smooth and fast. I wanna send $1 to a website, it happens instantly and anonymously, and the developer can do things around this. Like unlock features! For instance, stop showing ads, offer more complete downloads, unlock tutorial courses, etc. Make it easier and faster than using a credit card. Are there any promising avenues toward…

Of course there is, there are tons of cryptocurrencies that can do this but everyone here hates crypto and throws the baby out with the bathwater and won’t stop parroting “SCAM!” every time they hear the word. It’s too expensive to use on-chain transactions on things like Bitcoin or Ethereum but there are other coins.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...

You could also use Lightning Network on Bitcoin or any of the Layer 2s on Ethereum like Arbitrum or Optimism. Fees are in the cents range.

https://l2fees.info/

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#27

Post by jsnell » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

myfonj wrote: post #20

I was ruminating around this topic the other day and came to conclusion it is probably terribly missed opportunity for certain advertising company. Now it sounds super scary privacy-wise, smells monopol-y and overall may not happen anymore (I think), but consider: In situation when "all" users are being in fact "logged into" their service anyway, then features such as - pay to hide ads on this particular web (basical…

> it in fact had been implemented somehow in the past

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#28

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

myfonj wrote: post #20

I was ruminating around this topic the other day and came to conclusion it is probably terribly missed opportunity for certain advertising company. Now it sounds super scary privacy-wise, smells monopol-y and overall may not happen anymore (I think), but consider: In situation when "all" users are being in fact "logged into" their service anyway, then features such as - pay to hide ads on this particular web (basical…

[deleted]

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#29

Post by svieira » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #25

PretzelPirate wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> puts their own ads on top. I haven't used Brave for years and don't own their token, but that's just not how Brave ads work at all. The ads are shown as notifications and aren't replacing ads embedded in websites. Why mislead people?

The browser has a built in ad blocker, effectively removing the ads that pay for a website. To then put your own ads _anywhere_ after that and pretend that you're helping website owners is a scam. Imagine if YouTube started blocking sponsored content and put their own ads there.

Brave removes unsolicited advertisements and trackers. That is a feature of the browser and is effectively the same as shipping older versions of Chrome with a bundled version of µblockOrigin.

Separately (probably not in "planning how to make Brave a profitable company", but definitely so in feature scope) IFF the user opts-in to seeing Brave's ads then they get paid (in a crypto-token that represents a unit of "Attention"). They then can choose to offer those tokens to web sites (either as one-time "tips" or by giving the site a certain percentage of the tokens the user earns over the course of a month, possibly based on the total percentage of time the user spent with the site over the course of the same month.)

This latter feature is attempting to create a parallel economy to the ad-supported industry, not a scam (unless they don't believe they can create such an economy and are just trying to fleece-the-suckers, but I don't think that's the case).

Re: What happened with the Web Monetization API?

#30

Post by mhitza » Tue, Feb 06, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #2

I think another interesting development related to this space is GNU Taler[0], which has gotten EU and NLnet grants, and could probably hook into these APIs. [0]: https://taler.net/en/index.html

I'm eager to see what the extra funding does for the project. UX, setup, and everything else that relates to integration wasn't something I wanted to work with last time I took a serious look at the project.