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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

#41

Post by rovr138 »

SllX wrote: post #36
ec109685 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to make this happen is to vote with your eyeballs and attention. If you and other internet users that feel the same way don’t consume from sites without micropayments, they will be encouraged / forced to offer a new way of monetization.

Sometimes I wonder if people actually believe this, because it sounds more like nobody should read anything on the web that is monetized with a subscriber or ad-based business model. Not even sure how newspapers would be able to figure out that all those readers they are not seeing is because they don’t take micropayments.

> Not even sure how newspapers would be able to figure out that all those readers they are not seeing is because they don’t take micropayments.

By interacting with their users. I’ve written to newspapers in the past asking about their subscription. I remember one ocassion I did it with 2 newspapers. One replied they’d look and I never heard back. The other didn’t reply.

If I write asking if there’s a way to use micro donations and there isn’t or they haven’t heard about that, it might be a good idea to research it.

Another is following news about competitors. ‘We’ve increased readership by x% since we added micro donations’. Or following industry conferences where it might be discussed.

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

#42

Post by buboard »

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.

actually, google should do that. Review all their ads and give them a rating, then allow publishers to pick only high quality ones. But i guess they don't have the money to do that (/s)

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

#43

Post by rovr138 »

fwn wrote: post #22
JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

If you consider the page code, you requested it and it’s bundled in there. Same with CSS and JS used for features.

In that case, you requested the page and allowed them to.

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

#46

Post by barnabee »

rovr138 wrote: post #43
fwn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

If you consider the page code, you requested it and it’s bundled in there. Same with CSS and JS used for features. In that case, you requested the page and allowed them to.

Requesting the code doesn't mean I'm obliged to run all of it. If you serve data to my computer I am free to do whatever the hell I want with it, if you don't like that, don't serve me the data.

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

#47

Post by dmortin »

buboard wrote: post #39
dmortin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean automatic micropayments when reading articles then you'll still be tracked, because the payment provider has to track what you read to make the payments and even has to be able to provide a log of it in case there is a payment dispute, so they will store what urls you visit and when. Without a proper log payment disputes can't be resolved legally.

if there was something like anonymous payments (cryptocoin-based maybe?) then it would be possible without any tracking. In the few cases where you ask your penny cash back because something happened, most companies would just give it back without questions asked assuming they dont get tons of cashback requests from your IP.

That's why they need a log, because there will be cashback requests which people could abuse. And this will not necessarily be only pennies. A penny for a single page, for example, but if you visit many pages of the same site then the amount will be much higher and a user could claim then he has never visited that site and wants his money back.

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

#48

Post by dao- »

fwn wrote: post #24
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.

It's unlikely that there's a corporate decision behind this. I wouldn't even call this a corporate platform. Let me copy-paste a comment from further below that deserves more attention:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18568302

> 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

#49

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

avian wrote: post #33

> Release and Beta versions of Firefox do not allow unsigned extensions to be installed I'm really disappointed at Mozilla regarding this. I recently wanted to do some Firefox customization for my own private use (not even an extension, I just wanted to have some visual indication of which Firefox windows belong to which profile). I was surprised to find out that even just a header .png in a theme can't be loaded loc…

Is for your own good comrade! If Mozilla let you make your own decisions, you might make wrong ones, so is better this way.

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

#50

Post by johnnyfaehell »

buboard wrote: post #40
Aissen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flattr set out do that, many years ago. They still exist. Brave is trying to address that. There's patreon, and many others. Have you tried them ?

i dont agree with the tracking that goes along with all of them. i shouldnt be recording my action to a bunch of unrelated companies just so i can give a few cents to a website.

Well... If you can think of a solution, make it because there are lots of other people who also want this.

But without a 3rd party payment system, it seems like you're screwed.

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