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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

#51

Post by vetinari »

einr wrote: post #34
eksemplar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so. They'd best gain the ability, then, or fade into irrelevance and die. And honestly, we're talking about serving a few images from their own webserver. It's not rocket science.

Technically, serving few images is not a problem.

The question arises, what images to serve. Someone has to sell advertisement, find clients, persuade them to advertise with the given site, etc. That's something they are getting with ad networks for free.

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

#52

Post by einr »

vetinari wrote: post #51
einr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea, but they are not tech companies, so they likely lack the ability to do so. They'd best gain the ability, then, or fade into irrelevance and die. And honestly, we're talking about serving a few images from their own webserver. It's not rocket science.

Technically, serving few images is not a problem. The question arises, what images to serve. Someone has to sell advertisement, find clients, persuade them to advertise with the given site, etc. That's something they are getting with ad networks for free.

You could easily outsource ad sales while still serving the images unobtrusively from your own server.

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

#53

Post by Aissen »

soapdog wrote: post #31
boomboomsubban wrote: post #27

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.

yes!!! people don't realize that volunteers review the addons and that sometimes they make mistakes. They start acting as if Mozilla sent an internal memo to kill something when it is usually not the case.

If you read correctly, it was removed 15 days ago, and we have no idea what's the status since then.

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

#54

Post by anoncake »

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.

What if I accept ads but reject paywalls?

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

#55

Post by gpvos »

buboard wrote: post #42
gpvos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Google will continue to try to track me across unrelated websites, so I'll keep blocking them. I crucially specified "serve the ads from the website's own domain".

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

#56

Post by buboard »

johnnyfaehell wrote: post #50
buboard wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

some cryptocurrencies come to mind. unfortunately none has caught up

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

#58

Post by buboard »

dmortin wrote: post #47
buboard wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

something similar is happening with ads nowadays. There is tons of fraud in ads and all earnings / payouts are approximate. yet the system works, even approximately. My guess is fraud will be a small percent, certainly tolerable

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

#60

Post by oarsinsync »

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.

I think it depends on your particular morality.

Is it moral to allow people to only consume the things they believe they need, even if the things they believe they need are only that because they are addictive and potentially harmful?

If allowing cherry picking exactly what they want is the only moral way to provide the news, does that mean all prior forms of broadcast news publication were immoral (e.g. television & radio news broadcasts)?

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