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Make Firefox Private Again

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Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#151

Post by LunaSea »

Intralexical wrote: post #134
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content This silences a large number of people and communities who can’t afford that privilege. Not saying that’s inherently bad. But it’s worth weighing in the moral calculus.

That's the general problem of economic inequality, though. It's not specific to the Internet. Disadvantaged groups will already have less free time to share content, less exposure to the technical skills needed to do so, less attention, respect, and opportunity from doing so, etc. Advertising places a fig leaf over unequal access, but really makes the inequality worse by centralizing wealth and control in the hands o…

> That's the general problem of economic inequality, though. It's not specific to the Internet.

Yes, but advertisement showed that it wasn't a structural limitation and that other options were available. Even if said options themselves had downsides.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#152

Post by rchaud »

xeromal wrote: post #143
raxxorraxor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also advertising is certainly not the reason the web is free. It was free before the insane amount of advertising. Maybe for platforms like Youtube or similar sites advertising is part of their business model. But the primary reason here is foremost people creating content. That Youtube has insane infrastructure costs is secondary and we certainly don't need Browsers to help advertising at all. If it doesn't stay opt…

I might not be old enough to remember when the internet was ad free but I'm 34 and since I've been on the internet, popups and advertising garbage have always been around. I want to say I started using it around 1996-1997

Ad space was sold directly by the website owner, and the ad banner was just static HTML or an image served from the site directly. Then iframes and DoubleClick arrived, and suddenly ads were served from third party sites via iframes, which would load advertiser scripts and it was downhill from there.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#153

Post by LunaSea »

Intralexical wrote: post #133
LunaSea wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube size estimates represent between 10 and 15 exabytes, that's not a possible volume for Torrents. And that is simply touching the easiest problem to solve which is the storage part. Serving the video fast with adaptive quality and having the available bandwidth close to the user is another much larger problem.

> The YouTube size estimates represent between 10 and 15 exabytes, that's not a possible volume for Torrents. Since filming, editing, and streaming videos already consumes users' storage and bandwidth resources anyway, the total amount of resources available to a P2P torrent-style network clearly is already in the ballpark of what's needed for YouTube. > Serving the video fast with adaptive quality and having the ava…

> Since filming, editing, and streaming videos already consumes users' storage and bandwidth resources anyway, the total amount of resources available to a P2P torrent-style network clearly is already in the ballpark of what's needed for YouTube.

I doubt it because a lot of this content doesn't exist outside of Youtube and because the content does exist on external drives has not internet connectivity or capacity to get it.

> No idea how well it works in practice, but in theory PeerTube has already solved this using WebTorrent.

It seems to currently have 220K users, not exactly what I would call representative or a success for that matter.

> The nice thing about P2P is that your network's capacity scales organically with load. More users⇒More capacity.

Only if they agree to themselves share the content they host which is not necessarily the case.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#154

Post by lelanthran »

mschuster91 wrote: post #104
raxxorraxor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also advertising is certainly not the reason the web is free. It was free before the insane amount of advertising. Maybe for platforms like Youtube or similar sites advertising is part of their business model. But the primary reason here is foremost people creating content. That Youtube has insane infrastructure costs is secondary and we certainly don't need Browsers to help advertising at all. If it doesn't stay opt…

> Also advertising is certainly not the reason the web is free. It was free before the insane amount of advertising. It never was free before modern internet advertising, the costs were just hidden somewhere else. I remember the time before that... IRC servers and a lot of code hosting (SourceForge, Linux distro repositories) were paid for by volunteers/donors/universities, newsgroup servers were ran by ISPs and paid…

> The influx of money through modern advertising, especially Google Ads, made many things even possible in the first place.

If the customers of online advertising platforms ever realise that much of their ad-spend is in vain and cut their ad-spend proportionally, do you think that the internet as it is today will change?

BTW: Serious question, I really want to know what you think.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#155

Post by rchaud »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #27
mrinfinitiesx wrote: post #4

wasn't aware that 'anonym' existed. I don't care if PII is stripped or not. the answer to 'helping advertisers' or anything with advertisement metrics in any fashion is always 'No.' - training things so that there's better data on how to best manipulate our psyche / give people data to psychologically manipulate us in to buying/doing things is a hard 'No.' > Asked whether Mozilla has any concerns that its user base,…

I don't wholly disagree, but it's always a tad ironic to read "money is ruining the free/open internet" discussion on a free forum powered by VC money.

It's no more ironic than the thousands of Google-related topics on this site that focus on their technology, and almost entirely ignores their ad business that holds up the entire operation and drives their strategy.

If Google drops some pet projects we'll see the same predictable stream of comments blaming ladder-climbing PMs, MBA management, H1B employees, everything other than the simplest explanation, that the powers that be got tired of subsidizing it with the one line of business that actually makes money.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#156

Post by rchaud »

nox101 wrote: post #67
kelnos wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing... people would still make free content, and since there wouldn't be as many shady ways to monetize, it would cut down on low-effort (and AI-generated) garbage. The internet would be such a better place. We would probably lose some good stuff, or see it moved behind paywalls. That would be a shame, but I think it would be worth it.

I'm pretty confident that without advertising, the majority of YouTube channels people love most would not exist. maybe overall that would be a good thing as there's so much trash too

Youtube didn't have ads for years. Yet there was plenty of content people uploaded with no expectation of payment. Just like the early Internet. MIT OCW and Khan Academy also pre-date YT.

As for all the high production value channels out there now, YT doesn't pay their bills, subscriptions, brand deals and merchandise do. YT is like MTV: good for exposure, the real product is sold through other channels.

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#158

Post by LunaSea »

blueflow wrote: post #150
LunaSea wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.99% of the web, full stop.

What about HN? What about make-firefox-private-again.com? Go through the HN frontpage and the links. Thats why i'm sure you are wrong.

> What about HN?

The same HN that is heavily moderated by a paid employee and paid for by a multi-billion dollars net worth company called YCombinator?

Re: Make Firefox Private Again

#159

Post by Terretta »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #120
nulbyte wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you think that the video content is going to be stored and served if not through paid infrastructure? Secondary doesn't mean nonexistent, it comes after the primary thing, content creation. When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content. Creation was the primary motivation; costs were a secondary concern. I think it resulted in more and better communities than today, wh…

> When the Internet was younger, people willingly paid for privilege of sharing content This silences a large number of people and communities who can’t afford that privilege. Not saying that’s inherently bad. But it’s worth weighing in the moral calculus.

> This silences a large number of people

I'd argue advertising silences many more.

Any niche topic is already so SEO'd to death with keyword rich but contentless content that those with something truly relevant to say are unlikely to ever be heard.*

* Unless commenting in a niche subreddit, a web-ring indexed by small web engines, or the like, where the audience are like minds who've previously found the niche.

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