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Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

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Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#151
post #54

This is sort of unfortunate news to me, as I take this as a sign that they won't do adblocking by default. I think this is a mistake; users want ads to be blocked. Especially on mobile, where it's more important from a perf perspective. Brave has ads blocked, Opera has ads blocked. If Firefox wants to follow the lead and be a privacy focused company like they say, then they need to block ads.

Successful ad blocking would kill the advertisement revenue stream. This revenue stream is what pays for the content you enjoy, so ad blocking kills content. I like content, and I don't mind paying for it. I'd prefer to pay with money, not via ads. Give me that option. Further, I don't want a subscription. I want to pay as I go, at the rates ads pay. 50¢ per thousand pages sounds ok to me.

Keep in mind that Firefox is a "user agent", their job is not to make websites happy, it's to make their users happy.

Ad-blocking is a lot like using a DVR, or a VCR. Someone sends you data and you have the right to not view all of that data. The company has the right not to send you the data if you don't pay for it, but they don't have the right to tell you that you must view all of it.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#152
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Successful ad blocking would kill the advertisement revenue stream. This revenue stream is what pays for the content you enjoy, so ad blocking kills content. I like content, and I don't mind paying for it. I'd prefer to pay with money, not via ads. Give me that option. Further, I don't want a subscription. I want to pay as I go, at the rates ads pay. 50¢ per thousand pages sounds ok to me.

Ads pay a lot more than that on quality websites such as the Scroll ones. 50c per thousand page is so low I can't see how you find it fair. We're talking lets say 1000h of work, and your fair price is 50c ?

If they read 3 articles a day, they've decided that quality journalism across multiple publishers should cost 50 cents a year.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#155
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because your average HN reader understands that "unbiased journalism" is an oxymoron. Water is wet, and pointing that out brings absolutely nothing of value to the discussion.

My point was never that journalism is not unbiased, I was pointing out that Mozilla has a leftist bias.

"Water is wet, and pointing that out brings absolutely nothing of value to the discussion." That's most of the comments on HN, the only reason I browse this place is because the rest of the internet is even worse.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#156
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily want ads blocked, especially on sites that I regularly enjoy that I don't pay for with money. I do want to block the underlying tracking/fingerprinting/profiling etc. This is why I'm very much against Brave - I don't really see why they have the right to edit or censor other people's revenue models and replace them with their own. That seems.. unethical.

They don’t. You, the end user, do. They’re selling you a tool to do that.

They provide an entire replacement economy from which they profit 5% of transactions, I don't see them as being innocent bystanders here.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#157
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about time somebody tried this. I mean , isn't this essentially the idea behind patreon? You batch the micropayments payments into single transactions on the credit card network to reduce the marginal cost of the fixed fees? Didn't Google already do something similar with new subscriptions? Didn't flattr do this a decade ago? It's not a new idea, and as I ranted elsewhere, is only even required because of the…

I've never heard of Flattr, whereas I think most people know Mozilla or at least have heard of them through Firefox. I'd expect Mozilla to be more invested in the "pay with $, not ads" approach compared to Google. Mozilla owns Pocket, which has been relatively good at finding longreads type material on the net and rendering it in a reader-mode view, so I think they're a better cultural/philosophical fit. I don't use…

> I don't use Patreon. IIUC, you need to sign up to support different content providers individually. That's not what I want.

Well, isn't the the same thing in the end? Both you and the person you want to pay need to have ths same platform? If someone uses chrome, won't they need to go and "find" the site using Firefox to pay.

What you want is to be able to pay for something once you've found it? I get that, and it's a slightly different model than patreon, but in the end it is the same problem: micropayments are expensive and currently require someone to batch them.

The bigger problem is that requires another shared middle man that some people may not like fot whatever reason.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#158
post #150
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to regain control of your browser is to either reboot the iPad (that's what many normal people do) or you force-close Safari... That's seems more like a browser issue, but none the less, any links on Hacker News could do the same. I don't consider that malware to have to close an application, just like I don't consider a malware a link that rick roll me (which still force me to close a tab ;) unless I want to stay…

With ad networks you didn't click on some shady link. You just get the malware Javascript served. Without clicking or visiting anything shady. Reputable sites deliver malware through their embedding of ads. That's not theoretical (like your "but HN could deliver malware, too), that's reality.

> You just get the malware Javascript served.

Which happens on any link you click on Reddit, Hacker News or Facebook. Unless you don't click on them and only visit website that you consider trustworthy, you get the exact same risk. Actually even if you may feel that a link is trustworthy, it doesn't even means it actually is, like it happened for the past Firefox 0-day exploit. This guy nearly got it by trusting that [0].

[0] https://robertheaton.com/2019/06/24/i-was-7-words-away-from-...

> That's not theoretical (like your "but HN could deliver malware, too), that's reality.

My textual example was to discredit the Forbe example. I have an hard time understanding your point about it being theoretical. Are you actually refering to my other example about links from HN that could contains malicious Javascript? That's to know if you check links or you click on them arbitrarily with all the risk that come with it.

My point is that malicious Javascript is extremely rare and when it does happen, it's targeted and doesn't use ad network. Theses vulnerabilities are gold mine and it makes no sense to put it on an ad network and hope that you'll get enough out of it before it get caught and removed/fixed. Selling it to the highest bidder or targeting a specific group of people make much more sense.

If you have any example of where an actual malware was spread using ads, I would be happy to learn about it.

I'm also curious to know if you block Javascript and if you do, why do you block ads on top of that?

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had filed a bug report I would have then had to gather logs and other such things to get the developers whatever information they need to fix it, and frankly I just don't care about helping them fix it enough to bother with that. I didn't choose it for these devices it was just the default. For my purposes it was just much easier to switch to a browser that wouldn't hang the system if it was left open for a few…

For the record I didn't downvote you, and I agree being honest doesn't deserve this response, but I would guess it's related to the high amount of devs here who are probably upset that you took the time to complain, yet don't want to take the time to at least check if a bug report exists. In some respects I agree, in that, if we want change the world and fight the "good fight" against the near-monopoly Google has on…

It seems so easy to reproduce, just install Lubuntu and run the Twitch dashboard for a few hours. I'd be surprised if there wasn't already a bug report, a cursory search of bugzilla shows several hundred bugs containing the words like "hang" and "freeze".

And, again being frank, I don't care enough to bother with scouring that for one that seems related enough to add to it, and then again reproducing the problem and collecting the appropriate logs and etc. And if experience is any indicator it'll just languish in their bug database for months or years anyway. I've got shit to do man, so I'll just use a product that works, thanks. It is not my responsibility to fix yours.

And I only brought it up because someone mentioned how much "better" a product Firefox is and my experience differed.

Re: Partnering with publishers for a better journalism experience

#160
post #158
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With ad networks you didn't click on some shady link. You just get the malware Javascript served. Without clicking or visiting anything shady. Reputable sites deliver malware through their embedding of ads. That's not theoretical (like your "but HN could deliver malware, too), that's reality.

> You just get the malware Javascript served. Which happens on any link you click on Reddit, Hacker News or Facebook. Unless you don't click on them and only visit website that you consider trustworthy, you get the exact same risk. Actually even if you may feel that a link is trustworthy, it doesn't even means it actually is, like it happened for the past Firefox 0-day exploit. This guy nearly got it by trusting that…

> If you have any example of where an actual malware was spread using ads, I would be happy to learn about it.

I just gave you a first-hand account of exactly that happening, and you keep dismissing that, claiming that it does not happen.

If you don't believe me, google for it. There have been plenty of articles about ad networks as malware services.

I find your behaviour here very dishonest, and for me it's EOD.

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