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Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

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Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#21

Post by mschuetz »

snaky wrote: post #18
matt4077 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

publishers don’t like micropayments because (a) they don’t work, and (b) what people read doesn’t correlate with what’s important. It becomes a lot harder for journalists to justify spending months on a subject when the business side has hard data showing it brings in barely more than reprinting the soccer scores. What’s potentially workable is a Spotify-style subscription model.

> what people read doesn’t correlate with what’s important What people read does correlate with what's important for them, by definition.

And that's why we have clickbait. Letting people cherry pick exactly what they want is seriously going to hurt quality content. Subscriptions to a wide range of stuff like Netflix and Spotify are perfect. There's something in there for everyone's taste.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#22

Post by fwn »

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #16
ileitch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is the idea behind the Brave browser and their Basic Attention Token https://basicattentiontoken.org

What Brave is doing is highly unethical. If you don't want to see ads then fine it's your computer. But Brave is hijacking ads by force then strong-arming websites to sign up to their own shitty crypto currency if they want to be paid. It's basically an extortion scheme, or a mafia stye "protection scheme"

I wonder who's more unethical: The guy who comes in, smashes your stuff and leaves or the guy who comes in, smashes your stuff and leaves a check for you at his place.

I bet that's a common battle ground between consequentialists and idealists.

Fun aside, I don't think the comparison holds up very well. I don't think that anyone has a right to execute code on my devices just because I'm browsing a website. In this concept, "hijacking" ads is completely void of any ethical meaning.

Braves platform attempt is still not very good. A good solution for paying content creators would need to be open, decentralized and accepted by the stakeholders involved.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#23

Post by snaky »

mschuetz wrote: post #21
snaky wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what people read doesn’t correlate with what’s important What people read does correlate with what's important for them, by definition.

And that's why we have clickbait. Letting people cherry pick exactly what they want is seriously going to hurt quality content. Subscriptions to a wide range of stuff like Netflix and Spotify are perfect. There's something in there for everyone's taste.

It depends on how you define 'the quality'. Letting people cherry pick exactly what they want is the only moral way to provide the news actually.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#24

Post by fwn »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #6

The worst bit here is that they aren't explaining exactly which part of the ToS is being violated, and what needs to be done to fix it...

A large part of corporate platform power is due to the ambiguity in decision making arising from the absence of clear and transparent processes or accountability regarding how the rules are applied.

That's just a giant gateway for despotism.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#25

Post by snaky »

fwn wrote: post #20
snaky wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what people read doesn’t correlate with what’s important What people read does correlate with what's important for them, by definition.

I would love to know more about this definition. If doing my taxes were as exciting as my reading list I would get much more out of my paycheck.

If the endorphins you get reading the content from your list is more important for you, so be it. You decide what's important for you, and that's the definition.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#26

Post by matt4077 »

snaky wrote: post #18
matt4077 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

publishers don’t like micropayments because (a) they don’t work, and (b) what people read doesn’t correlate with what’s important. It becomes a lot harder for journalists to justify spending months on a subject when the business side has hard data showing it brings in barely more than reprinting the soccer scores. What’s potentially workable is a Spotify-style subscription model.

> what people read doesn’t correlate with what’s important What people read does correlate with what's important for them, by definition.

You are reading this comment. The are billions of lines of text on the internet you will never read. Is this comment strictly more important to you than every single other text on the internet? A comment that includes a nonsense paragraph of just “banana”, repeated over and over?

Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana Banana.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#27

Post by boomboomsubban »

Here is what the creator actually said

>One of the community reviewers removed it from the store claiming it violated the ToS, which is BS. The ToS never mentions the word paywall once. Please support me in appealing! https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons#Getting_in_touch

Which sounds more like a zealous community member than Mozilla taking a position.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#28

Post by fwn »

snaky wrote: post #25
fwn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know more about this definition. If doing my taxes were as exciting as my reading list I would get much more out of my paycheck.

If the endorphins you get reading the content from your list is more important for you, so be it. You decide what's important for you, and that's the definition.

So your definition would be "Everything someone does is good for them"?

That reminds me of Austrian praxeology.

Behavioral patterns that lead individuals away from their goals do exist. Such irrationality is what most of behavioral economics policy advice is all about.

It's easiest to explain with the difference in long term goals and short term decision making. There it gets obvious very fast that peoples immediate preferences do rarely reflect their stated and consistent long term preferences.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#29

Post by nindalf »

snaky wrote: post #23
mschuetz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why we have clickbait. Letting people cherry pick exactly what they want is seriously going to hurt quality content. Subscriptions to a wide range of stuff like Netflix and Spotify are perfect. There's something in there for everyone's taste.

It depends on how you define 'the quality'. Letting people cherry pick exactly what they want is the only moral way to provide the news actually.

You don't understand the problem of clickbait. What people say and what they do are two different things, and you need to choose which to listen to.

This is one of the reasons clickbait was so prevalent on facebook a few years ago - people clicked on these so much that they were ranked very highly. But in user surveys, the same users claimed they hated clickbait and wished it wasn't there. So what do you do?

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#30

Post by eksemplar »

gpvos wrote: post #14
dmortin wrote: post #11

The hard truth is someone has to pay for content in the end. It's either ads or some kind of paywall or micropayment. It's okay to say no to ads, but then we shouldn't circumvent paywalls. Free content is free only as long as someone somehow still pays for it.

Publishers should take some basic control of the ads on their site, just like it used to be with newspapers and broadcast. Serve them from their own domain, restrict their format (no moving parts or sound, no Javascript at all), vet them for basic decency before publishing. My uBlock Origin setup wouldn't block that.

Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so.

I guess they could upscale in tech, but how would they pay for it when they can barely earn enough money to fulfill their primary function?

I don’t think publishers have a problem. I think users do. I hate online news as much as everyone, but I still want deep, intelligent and critical journalism, so I subscribed to a paper which sells it.

It’s one of the most successful news papers of my country, financially, and up until April this year they didn’t have a website. They do now, but it’s basically just a digital version (also available in audio from apps) that you can still only access if you subscribe.

I couldn’t be happier, and they earn money. So maybe the whole free content thing isn’t really a good way to go for either the user or the publisher?

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