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Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

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Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#401

Post by noamyoungerm »

untog wrote: post #347
hackuser wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love to see micropayments replace ads. I don't know much about the technical reality of it, but I've thought that an effective micropayments system could be revolutionary, one of thhe most important innovations in tech: 1) It could be a way of financing an incredible amount of essential work that current funding models fail, because the payments are one-off and not worth the high trasaction costs (in fees a…

Micropayments already exists for journalism in the form of Blendle and others. It isn't as effective as you might hope: https://medium.com/@wfederman/micropayments-for-news-article... (key takeaway from that article: people are moving away from micropayments where they already exist (e.g. music) to subscription models. It doesn't work)

Subscription models and micropayments are not mutually exclusive, as in Spotify - you pay a subscription fee to listen to unlimited music. In practice that is the same as paying a fraction of a cent to the artist each time you listen to a song.

I would be willing to pay for a service that tracked each site I visited and billed me at the end of the month at a price-per-pageview comparable to CPM prices today.

EDIT: This is very distinct from asking me to pay 20 cents each time I want to open a particular page. The time I would spend considering whether to open a particular page or not isn't worth 20 cents, without regard to the fact that 20 cents/view is easily 100 times over the going rate for a page view.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#402

Post by jbigelow76 »

agumonkey wrote: post #398
jbigelow76 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't like ads at all (99.9% of the time not their target) That seems dubious unless you spend all your time browsing sites you have no interest in. If I spent all day browsing ad-supported sites about antique Czechoslovakian sewing thimbles, then yeah, I'll buy your argument (no pun intended), but the sites I view show ads that fit expected areas of interest for my demographic. Just because you don't ever act on…

Then enjoy your doubting. Even on the geekiest websites I don't click on ads, I barely even see them; except when they slow down loading and rendering, Then I go mean in and pass it through printfriendly.com. And for other products well meh, I'm not a "consumer", and few ads will ever make me believe any product is really that valuable to me. I have soap and water thank you.

I wasn't implying that I was dubious that you aren't interested in whatever is being advertised (though I see how it reads that way now). I was dubious that you aren't still a target no matter how futile the effort. If I throw a water balloon at you but don't hit you it doesn't mean you aren't the target.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#403

Post by PhasmaFelis »

amazon_not wrote: post #334
taurath wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it interesting the level of monetary value we put on most written content on the web (nothing) vs the time we spend reading said valueless content? Is it truly so valueless, or is it only valueless because similar content isn't worth anything? I click on the links I click on because I think they'll have more value to me than the rest of them, but I'm still not to the threshold of reaching any monetary value, on…

What you are describing is called Flattr. It was launched in 2010 and never went anywhere, like every other micropayment service.

Flattr is still running and is used by more than a few major webcomics (presumably other sites as well, I've only really looked at it for webcomics).

Granted it never took off like it wanted to, but Patreon operates on a similar model and is absolutely booming right now. Several comic artists I'm aware of have been able to quit their jobs and go full-time on the strength of Patreon alone--A Ghost Story, for example. So it's definitely not true that micropayment services always fail.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#404

Post by GhotiFish »

golemotron wrote: post #151
petra wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manipulation is subtle, but even if we assume ads don't manipulate you at all, they do manipulate people around you and shared societal consciousness - and that definitely impacts most people.

Maybe "manipulation" is a manipulative way of saying "influence".

It's hard to call the de beers advertising campaign as anything other than manipulation. Maybe the worst example of the set of all advertisements, where the best would be advertisements that only explain what a product is, and where you can get it.

The problem is, Advertisers don't earn their paychecks by being honest.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#405

Post by shostack »

logingone wrote: post #92
jordigh wrote: post #70

I 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 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. Interesting. I'm the opposite. I've yet to encounter an ad that has a hope in hell of manipulating me at all. I couldn't be more dismissive of them. And if I encounter one too often my dislike of the company starts to grow. "It's show time, and you've b…

Not all ads manipulate, and not all advertisers are evil people looking to manipulate their target audience.

(Disclosure--I do digital media for a living)

Case in point, I once had a vet clinic as a client. People were seeking out information on Google for certain pet symptoms that owners may not have realized warranted a vet visit, and we ran paid search ads against those terms. People were clicking them and then coming in to get their exam, and often getting in front of what could have been a much worse outcome for their pet.

Was that manipulative or helpful?

Point is, people like to paint with overly broad strokes when speaking about advertising. Make no mistake, the lengths to which publishers have gone over the past couple of years is disgusting. Would you be surprised to learn that many in the industry also hate this kind of crap? I'm not trying to make excuses or anything as there are definitely bad actors (among advertisers, networks and publishers), but there can be very legitimate and helpful uses for ads that also respect privacy and aren't in-your-face. Not all ads are sponsored content or autoplay video units.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#406

Post by PhasmaFelis »

jordigh wrote: post #70

I 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 will repeat this one more time, because Eich seems to be missing the point.

Not everything is about you. Some people are fine with seeing tasteful, non-intrusive ads to support content they really like (in my case, mostly smallish blogs and webcomics). By all means continue using the tools that serve your needs, and I'll do the same; but please stop acting like you're the only user who matters.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#407

Post by dreamfactory2 »

smacktoward wrote: post #123
jordigh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Sell premium movie ticket prices that do not have ads (although I like previews, those can stay). Sell me a subscription to duckduckgo, payable in bitcoins or similar. Paywall every newspaper website. These are far more honest approaches in my view.

> Paywall every newspaper website. Nearly every newspaper website is already paywalled, and every time someone posts a story from those sites to HN all the comments are people complaining about the paywalls. HN even added a special little link to let people skip around them, because why would we want to encourage people to pay for quality work they appreciate?

And funnily enough they are finding that model doesn't work and removing the paywalls as of course there is no scarcity of material in an attention economy, just scarcity of attention. As strange as it may sound, ultimately publishers need to compete for and pay the viewers - and they do that with quality content. This is why youtube own the video space.

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#408

Post by chongli »

taurath wrote: post #304
rorykoehler wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't it interesting the level of monetary value we put on most written content on the web (nothing) vs the time we spend reading said valueless content? Is it truly so valueless, or is it only valueless because similar content isn't worth anything? I click on the links I click on because I think they'll have more value to me than the rest of them, but I'm still not to the threshold of reaching any monetary value, on…

Isn't it interesting the level of monetary value we put on most written content on the web (nothing) vs the time we spend reading said valueless content?

Welcome to feminism. Women have done untold amounts of uncompensated labour throughout history. What is the value of all that?

Capitalism favours those whose labour has a high monetary value assigned to it. It leaves everybody else out in the cold. I find it extremely frustrating that those who have been shunted from column A into column B have resorted to crab mentality[0] instead of becoming critics of capitalism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

Re: Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

#410

Post by eropple »

losteric wrote: post #384
munificent wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 do…

> 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. I can't see why those users couldn't publish through a network that charges for access but guarantees a high bar of quality (both content and browsing experience). Think of something like Medium, with opt-in micropayments... p…

Because the current market value of that content appears (for reasons that I personally find pretty bullshit, but I'm not the decision-maker here) to be a pittance.

We have, culturally, decided that art is worth very little, and this is the (inevitable? I don't know) result.

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