So his business model is to hijack advertising and funnel it through his own little scheme, forcing publishers to pay him in order to get their customer's ads seen. Hope he loves getting his browser's user agent treated like Ebola.
Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
261–270 of 580 posts
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#262I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe…
> I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I don't understand this argument. How are ads "manipulating" you? They're just ads. They're not an argumentative authority figure with a gun. The only reason to block ads is because of speed of user experience. The "manipulation" argument is the weakest reason to block ads. In any case, you manipulate other people for your own perso…
I am affected by my environment. Aren't you? A page full of ads for things that tend to make me feel slightly less optimal is, well, suboptimal.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#263Does anyone else remember when adsense first launched and it was text-only ads?
People would actually stop to read the ads because they were interesting and relevant.
Then google caved to images and animation and 100+ objects on a page, each with their own tracking scripts to slow browsers to a crawl.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#264I will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.[1] I don't adblock for privacy, security, or speed. Those are just nice-side effects. I adblock because I do not want to be manipulated into buying things I do not need. I wonder what would happen if, as a society, we said, "enough, no more ads". Would it really be the capitalist apocalypse that the ad industry is trying to make us believe…
I can't emphasize this enough. Every time someone rattles out a list of "annoyances" regarding ads, I wish that I could plead with them to consider that there's even bigger reasons. Plenty of people try to sell the idea that ads let us have content "for free", and that all we have to tolerate is "a little annoyance". It's insane. If companies are buying ad-space, it's because they expect to get more business in retur…
If these costs are not borne evenly, and some people are paying for the consumption of more disciplined people, it's probably contributing to terrible cycles of poverty (ie: some kid spending money on fancy new shoes he doesn't need and can't afford is paying for a well-paid tech-users YouTube habits, because it preys on their lack of education).
Isn't it usually the opposite, though? The poor kid can access the sites for free, because the rich old guy is clicking on the ads and subsidizing the whole site. If there was a paywalled subscription, on the other hand, the kid would be SOL. I don't like web ads, but if anything they seem to be a progressive redistribution system to me.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
The purpose of advertising is to make you buy more than you need. The economy relies strongly on people buying much more than they need. If you got rid of advertising, it would temporarily destroy the economy, until a new normal is reached, and long term it would save the environment due to heavily reduced consumption. Also, it could bring about the keynesian fantasy where people work only 12 hours a week, because th…
> The purpose of advertising is to make you buy more than you need. That's an incredibly cynical way of looking at the situation. There is also the purpose of telling you about a product you can buy that might possibly be beneficial to your lifestyle. Through advertising you get to find out about that product faster, something especially important in these days of brisk innovation.
I can't recall ever having learned anything of value from an ad, but YMMV. Still, it's not cynical to say that advertising is meant to make you buy more, because that's why ad space is bought: to boost sales. And it's also not cynical to say that those extra sales would not have occurred without the ad, hence they were for goods people could have done without. Something which can be done without is unneeded, hence, it is not cynical to say ads are meant to make you buy things you don't need. Or rather, they're meant to make you think you need more than you did before. Advertising is the engine of consumerism.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes him a homophobe? All I knew about was a political donation. Homophobe implies a fear or hatred of homosexuals, I haven't seen evidence for that yet. Does this word apply here?
It's really, really difficult to make a coherent argument against equal marriage without being a homophobe. The desire to exclude a group of people from marriage based on their sexuality is pretty inherently a 'hatred' of homosexuals. This is reinforced when the campaign is like the Prop 8 one which—let's not forget—was pretty strongly homophobic, full of 'watch-out-the-gays-are-coming-for-your-children' arguments. I…
There are (happily) gay people who are against gay marriage. They're homophobes as well?
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get your point, and it is a good one. We have a micro payments channel to publishers, frictionless and anonymous, under construction, for folks who want no ads and who will pay. Other users than you will be able to mix and match, too: better and more private ads on sites they don't support, with a revenue share to these users that they can spend on sites they do. We aren't saying "only ads". We do see ads as a nece…
I fall into the camp of blocking all ads because frankly I don't like them. They are visual pollution. I also doubt I would pay for written content (maybe on a very rare occasion I might) if given a micro-payments solution because it doesn't seem worth paying for. I write blog posts from time to time and I do it for pleasure because I enjoy writing about things that interest me and sharing it with others. Honestly I…
> I write blog posts from time to time and I do it for pleasure because I enjoy writing about things that interest me and sharing it with others.
I do the same thing, but I realized a while back there is a flaw in this model. It means the available creative works—which in turn effectively means the engine of culture—is determined almost entirely by people who are well-off enough to have the free time to do that.
I don't have "free" time. I paid for that time by buying a more expensive house close to where I work, spending less time shopping by not chasing the best deal, paying others to do home and car repairs, etc. etc. etc.
People who aren't as financially lucky as me don't have that opportunity. I'm not crazy about the idea of living in a world where those people don't get to participate in determining culture.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virtually no one was opposed to marriage equality. Many people were and are opposed to the judicial redefinition of marriage.
Uh, no, don't try to rewrite history. The attacks were directed at gay people. Quoting this article: Early on, Prop 8’s supporters decided to focus their campaign primarily on children, stoking parents’ fears about gay people brainwashing their kids with pro-gay messages or, implicitly, turning their children gay. Another notorious commercial shows an earnest school administrator fretting that a “new health curriculu…
I'm rewriting nothing. I have no dog in this fight. I'm not in California. I'm not gay. I'm not currently married.
I am reminding people of a recently unpopular truth.
Prop 8 only happened because of judicial activism on the issue.
Notice that in states where the voters legalized same sex "marriage", there was no similar backlash.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diversity, I think, is really important. Diversity of thought as well as all the other kinds of diversity. It's important to be able to work with people who come from different backgrounds, who have different beliefs. I see this on both sides (I see it more often on the left, but that's just because my filter bubble is a somewhat leftish one.. when I step out of that bubble, I see plenty examples of people on the rig…
Yeah. If the only way you can get people to (pretend to) believe an idea (such as "gay marriage is a good thing") is by threatening their livelihood if they don't, it reflects poorly on both you and the idea.
What Eich believes is irrelevant. But he didn't just "believe something". He did something. Beliefs don't have consequences, but it's absolutely reasonable and possibly necessary to attempt to enforce consequences for actions.
Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup
#270If it can add top class security / anti tracking / anti fingerprinting, it would become far more compelling.