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Show HN: Adblock to Bitcoin

128 points by ksowocki 11y ago

felixangell1024 11y ago
Really nice idea, might try this out for a project of mine :)
- ksowocki 11y ago
  Please get in touch if you do. I'm @owocki on twitter and need some data to support what kind of results this gets.
4e1a 11y ago
This does not work for me. I'm using 'ghostery' to block ads though, not 'ad-block'.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  Well I'm using Privacy Badger. It is not about the used technology. It's about the idea, the concept. If you don't want to see ads, you pay a small amount using bitcoins. I don't see it working unless it's forced upon you.
  - contravariant 11y ago
    >If you don't want to see ads, you pay a small amount using bitcoins. I don't see it working unless it's forced upon you. Reminds me of that Black Mirror episode. Spoiler: things go very badly if it's forced upon you.
    - JohnTHaller 11y ago
      Very different concept. In Black Mirror, you're forced to watch media and ads every moment you're awake unless you pay not to. Here, if you choose to willingly visit a website to consume some sort of content but refuse to look at the ads that fund that content, you're asked to make a payment to fund said content. This is, afterall, what the majority of adblock and anti-tracking proponents have been lobbying for. 'We don't want to have to deal with ads. We don't want to be tracked. We want to pay for content.' This simply gives them the opportunity. Note that it is also voluntary and doesn't prevent the content from being displayed. Heck, it says "would you consider" and has a suggested bitcoin donation equivalent to 1 penny.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Black Mirror simply falls down the slippery slope and tells the story of people living at the bottom of it. Voluntary transaction is truly voluntary only if neither side needs it to live a productive life.
    - pyython 11y ago
      This is exactly what I've been thinking about re:the recent slew of adblock news on HN. Content creation and distribution have real costs, and I see other, far more intrusive models developing to combat loss of ad revenue if ad blockers become the norm. Not to mention the contribution to rising income inequality/decreasing social mobility. If all useful information is behind a paywall, only those that can afford it will have access - further increasing the return to capital. All this to say, be careful what you wish for...
      - hardwaresofton 11y ago
        Yes, except the most useful content out there is available largely for free (or would cost a crazy small amount to keep funded, if the userbase contributed as little as $1 or $3). In particular, I'm thinking of: Wikipedia Google Also, maybe it will lead people to start putting trust in offline archives of information, which wouldn't be terrible either. Honestly, a lot of the "content" on the internet is garbage/not productive. I can at the very least argue that lots of bandwidth that's being used on the internet is just watching shit that's usually not educational.
        pyython 11y ago
        Google runs the largest ad network on the planet. It's absolutely critical to their business model. Wikipedia is great, but they produce no content of their own and lack any sort of curation. Of course there's a lot of crap on the Internet, but I personally find many types of well-curated, professional content extremely valuable. I personally would be willing to pay for much of it, but I'm in a better position to do so than many - which is exactly my point.
        hardwaresofton 11y ago
        My point was that if Google decided to change it's business model, and charged something like a $1 for a monthly subscription to using it's search services, it would be more than safe. I don't think the fact that wikipedia produces it's own content is relevant, and whether it lacks curation being relevant either. Regardless of those two facts, it is immensely useful. The majority of articles, especially on highly technical/useful topics (like farming techniques) are mostly accurate. Just because some may not be in a position to buy/afford something doesn't mean that everyone should endure inefficiency. Also, depending on the price, the truly important information would still be worth it. I don't think what's going to keep the less fortunate from using web services is a reasonably priced web service. Currently, you can get a VPS for roughly $10/month, and a domain name for something like $70 (a .com usually costs this much I think). If you had monthly subscribers who were asked to pay $1 a month, the amount of subscribers to keep you in business (nevermind that today's tech can easily scale up to thousands of users on one box), is not high at all.
  - ksowocki 11y ago
    It all depends on the customer's relationship with the brand. The thesis here is that consumers will support brands they are loyal to and/or have an affection for. Even with it being forced upon them.
  - teps 11y ago
    When I go have a beer in a bar, I often give between 0.2 and 1$ tips. Why? Because it really easy and require no effort. I would with no hesitation give 0.1$ to a interesting article if it were only one click away. I would easily give 0.5-1$ after a good episode of a TV show if I only had to do one click. Yes, that include pirated TV shows. The problem is that there is no way to easily give a small amount of money to a content creator on its creations.
    - schorgie30 11y ago
      Hey teps, Cameron Schorg with a new startup called SnipBit. We are working on making a platform very similar to what you talked about. The main difference is that we would charge for the content on the front end and then offer a refund option if you didn't like the content. You should check us out at www.snipbit.io and if you would be willing, I'd would love to have a chat as we are ALWAYS doing customer discovery (schorgie30@gmail.com).
    - rogeryu 11y ago
      Take a look at Blendle. https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/
  - happimess 11y ago
    I think 4ela was talking about a technical problem, not a philosophical objection.
    - ksowocki 11y ago
      This project is in 'proof of concept' stage right now. Will be solving the technical problem of cross-device/browser/adblocker testing next.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  OP here. Thanks for the feedback, I've tested with uBlock and AdBlock Plus, will give ghostery a go as well.
Klathmon 11y ago
This is cool, and it won't pester you about donating if you are using something like Google Contributor which is nice.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  OP here. Would really like to gather some data about what kind of conversions this would get on a site with some scale. Thesis is that for brands that have a loyal following, we might be able to get close to PPC unit economics.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    i havent used bitcoin for years, so excuse me if i'm asking stupid questions, but how many steps is it to donate from the time i see it to when the money flows? Realistically i could only see myself doing this if it was less than 3 clicks and a grand total of about 30 seconds of time. Any more than that and i'm just not going to bother if i'm honest. Also, this might go against what you are trying to do, but would it be possible to maybe keep a counter of how many of these "ads" were blocked (only on the client) and maybe update the suggested donation based on that? I personally might be more willing to donate if i saw "You've blocked 384 ads on this site" or something like "you've visited this page 26 times over the last month" and an updated suggested donation to match the usage. Ninja-edit: And finally, is there a service that you could work with to allow easy donations via other currencies and have them auto converted to bitcoin? I don't have a bitcoin wallet any more, but if there was a button next to the donate button that took you to a 3rd party website that allowed me to pay in USD and have it converted to bitcoin and sent to the website I might contribute.
    - ksowocki 11y ago
      > i havent used bitcoin for years, so excuse me if i'm asking stupid questions, but how many steps is it to donate from the time i see it to when the money flows? There are no stupid questions, cryptocurrency is not intuitive in many ways :) Steps on mobile: 1. Open iPhone / Coinbase app 2. Scan QR Code 3. Input amount 4. Press send Similar process on desktop, but probably with a copy/paste code instead of QR code. Realistically i could only see myself doing this if it was less than 3 clicks and a grand total of about 30 seconds of time. It's definitely less than 30 seconds as long as your iPhone is across the room and/or you have coinbase. > Also, this might go against what you are trying to do, but would it be possible to maybe keep a counter of how many of these "ads" were blocked (only on the client) and maybe update the suggested donation based on that? Yes, data and testing of conversion percentages and unit economics is going to be important if this ever takes off. > I personally might be more willing to donate if i saw "You've blocked 384 ads on this site" or something like "you've visited this page 26 times over the last month" and an updated suggested donation to match the usage. That's a great idea! I'll have to add this copy to the 'to test' list!
elmar 11y ago
The Killer App for Bitcoin :)
- kordless 11y ago
  There are a few of these. :)
  - ksowocki 11y ago
    OP here. Big fan of changetip, which is IMHO the first implementation of cryptocurrency/micropayments that has truly taken off.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  If you're a bitcoin enthusiast, you can help grow the universe of real-world use cases for BTC. If you see this tool on a website, please donate! How you can help: https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin/blob/master/README.md#how-you-can-help https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin/blob/master/REA...
dheera 11y ago
If your real objective is to get actually some income in place of the ad, I would highly suggest supporting traditional forms of payment in addition to Bitcoin. Pick your battles and reduce friction for the user to donate. Although Bitcoin is interesting/cool/worthy of existence, 99.9% of users don't have a Bitcoin wallet, so you'll be missing out on a lot of potential income.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  It's worth testing. The reason we started with bitcoin is that traditional forms of payment charge a egregious fee (credit card, 3%) or require sharing private information (ACH). With bitcoin, I can send micro-payments trustless-ly.
  - jszymborski 11y ago
    Paypal does do a "Micropayments Discount" for sums less than $10. It's still 5% + $0.05, so it won't work for your $0.01 suggestion, but you can ask for $0.25, although you get just over a half of it back ($0.13), which still feels might feel like armed robbery, but you'd be increasing your donation volume greatly. Perhaps a Gratipay, or Flattr link? edit: speeling edit: thought Flattr was dead -_-
    - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
      Why is there no gateway that can handle micropayments properly? Just do the following: * Let me (in whatever guise, publisher, consumer, etc.) have an account that I can deposit/withdraw real world money into. Charge me a fee (percentage/fixed/minimum/maximum/whatever the market is willing to pay) for these operations. * Let anyone transfer any amount of money (OK, impose some granularity, but make it like 20 decimal places, that's fine) from their account to another. Do all the right security stuff that we already do for this kind of thing to ensure no abuse. * If the cost of transfers exceeds the income from deposit/withdrawals, charge some additional fee on a certain number of transfers, or charge a percentage on every $x transferred, or whatever it takes, so long as micropayments are still possible. Now sit back and count the profit. How is this not a solved problem yet?
exo762 11y ago
Nice little project! The issue is, at this moment Bitcoin does not really support micro-transactions. There is a proposal in progress which will fix this though. Its called "Lightning Network" and it will act as aggregator of transactions which will prevent dust from hitting blockchain while correctly and safely counting every penny. This is not yet ready - they are working on safe and private payment routing in network consisting of open set of nodes, which is (IMHO) crazy hard.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  > The issue is, at this moment Bitcoin does not really support micro-transactions. Whats your source on this? I'd thought that the block size was large enough that even transactions around the size of $0.05 would go through regularly.
  - exo762 11y ago
    I personally use it for amounts starting from 30c. But two questions should be answered. How micro is micro-payment? Popular fee right now is at 0.0001 BTC which corresponds to ~0.04USD, which could be considered not very "micro-fee". And other question. Single transaction real cost right now is around 10USD. Payment fees are low, only because they are hugely subsidised by block reward (25BTC every 10 minutes). What will happen when block reward will go down 2, 4, 8 times? And finally, quote from LN whitepaper: > If all transactions using Bitcoin were on the blockchain, to enable 7 billion people to make two transactions per day, it would require 24GB blocks every ten minutes at best
    - Nutomic 11y ago
      If the block size is increased, a lot more transactions will fit in a block, so transactions would get much cheaper. And while it's a great goal to have all monetary transactions use Bitcoin, that is very very far from reality for now.
      - exo762 11y ago
kragen 11y ago
An interesting issue here is that Creative Commons Noncommercial licenses permit use on ad-funded sites, but not on micropayment-funded sites. I'm thinking specifically of this: https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127 https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127
- paulgb 11y ago
  My reading of this* is that if the primary purpose of the use of an NC work is not to make money, you're fine. I don't see any references specifically to advertising or payments, but I don't see why a donation is any less valid than advertising. * https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...
- xigency 11y ago
  I think the idea of micro-payments instead of ads is that it covers costs. In that respect, and in general, if the site isn't turning a profit isn't that still non-commercial?
  - Zikes 11y ago
    > if the site isn't turning a profit isn't that still non-commercial? Wouldn't that mean Twitter and Facebook are non-commercial?
    - xigency 11y ago
      Good point
    - kragen 11y ago
      If Facebook is commercial, does that make it legal for you to post a CC-NC-BY document you didn't write as a Facebook Note? If it's legal for you to post it, is it also legal for Facebook to display it, thus drawing people into their site to view advertising? What if I set up a paid-subscription-only Facebook clone called Flone and you post it on Flone, so that you have to pay Flone to see the Note? Does it matter if Flone charges per pageview instead of per month? Does it matter if Flone charges more for certain pageviews? When Verizon sells you a data connection, are they in some way different from our hypothetical Flone?
Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
I'd like to see a browser plugin that does something similar. I fill it up with a small balance of bitcoins, and it automatically pays websites when I visit.
- eternauta3k 11y ago
  This fits your description https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/protip-peer-to-peer-crowd/obpohohcmdaklmaagjgdaldgjhohegak https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/protip-peer-to-pee...
  - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    Close! I don't use Chrome.
  - benten10 11y ago
    This needs to be more common. I'd put in a not unreasonable amount of money (~20$) monthly to automatically pay to the sites I regularly visit. Need this for firefox, stat!
    - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
      One thing that prevents me from wanting to use this is that it just looks for bitcoin addresses on the page. If joe bloe posts on reddit begging for money with his bitcoin address, I don't want to automagically send him some.
      - benten10 11y ago
        I don't really care about the bitcoin TBH. There needs to be a technology to pay the publishers directly a cut for my '% time viewed', the technology matters less to me. Perhaps Google contributor et al. could implement paying publishers based on '% of total time spent on the site' metric.
tobltobs 11y ago
This library looks good. But I wouldn't hold my breath that you will get any donations. I recently created a similar solution and the result after about a million few was nada, nilch, zero. If you now consider that by accepting donations you have to solve the EU VATmess it is not worth the effort.
- DennisP 11y ago
  Bitcoin transactions were just ruled exempt from Europe's VAT: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-is-exempt-from-vat-says-european-court-of-justice/ http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-is-exempt-from-vat-says-euro... That doesn't mean you don't have to pay the VAT just because you buy something with Bitcoin, it just means that bitcoin/dollar exchanges don't owe tax. I don't know whether VAT applies to donations.
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    The question is not if donations are excempt from vat, but if your tax collector will believe you that you are a non profit organisation.
    - DennisP 11y ago
      So pay taxes on the income, it's still better than not having the income. If you are attempting nonprofit status, donations are less of a red flag than advertising. But I don't see what that has to do with VAT, which you brought up.
arbabu 11y ago
I think the basic problem is that people are not going to give you any money at all! Let it be bitcoin or their dollars. Or if this project works out, would be pretty interesting!
- ksowocki 11y ago
  Next step in the project is to gather some data to validate the project thesis. Here's how you can help if you care to be part of the experiment (not much downside as space is only used when Adblockers are on). https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin#how-you-can-help https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin#how-you-can-hel...
henningpeters 11y ago
Looks similar to what you can do with https://satoshipay.io https://satoshipay.io, but they allow even tiniest Bitcoin payments (down to a single Satoshi) using sidechains.
throwaay123 11y ago
You might also be interested in https://github.com/kallerosenbaum/poppoc/wiki/Proof-of-Payment https://github.com/kallerosenbaum/poppoc/wiki/Proof-of-Payme..., which will let you "login" by prooving that you made a small bitcoin transaction. The disadvantage of this sort of microtransaction is that people may actually be willing to pay more through donation then through forced payment.
Sealy 11y ago
I like what your concept is a lot. I do not think a huge number of payments are going to be made using it, HOWEVER, I think this is just the beginning of a much larger movement behind micropayments for ad-free content. I've been wanting this for a very long time to read good quality articles online that are behind paywalls. I would totally pay with bitcoin, but refuse to sign up using any form of credit card.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  > I do not think a huge number of payments are going to be made using it First, this is an experiment and I'll be testing different permutations of cost, copy, and invasiveness. Curious as to why you think there won't be much volume. Could you elaborate? > I would totally pay with bitcoin, but refuse to sign up using any form of credit card. This is an interesting data point. Was talking to a blogger about this project this morning and he asked why not use traditional payment methods. I presume (and hope) there might be more people out there like you than we all think.
  - Sealy 11y ago
    > Curious as to why you think there won't be much volume. Could you elaborate? My reason for this is entirely practical. By displaying a bitcoin payment address, there are at minimum an additional three or four clicks, with perhaps a copy and paste of the bitcoin address to complete a payment (this is even more difficult if the user's bitcoin wallet is on his mobile - unless a QR code is displayed). For me, it is more of a practical usability reason as opposed to the reader not wanting to donate their $0.01. A solution I would love to use, would be to have a browser plugin with a pre loaded bitcoin balance of a few dollars and a single one click to accept a 1 cent payment to the content owner to proceed to the article. On Bitcointalk.org, a forum dedicated to bitcoin geeks, people always leave a tip address in their signatures, look up the usage and you'll find it surprisingly low.
    - ksowocki 11y ago
      > A solution I would love to use, would be to have a browser plugin with a pre loaded bitcoin balance of a few dollars and a single one click to accept a 1 cent payment to the content owner to proceed to the article. Interesting feedback. Changetip or coinbase could likely provide a one-click button to tip content providers.
Skunkleton 11y ago
I really dig this idea, but would love to see two more features: 1. Integrate with something like coinbase so that users can fund a wallet with fiat currency. 2. Provide a feedback mechanism that shows the payments had a positive effect. For example, if a GPU review on Anandtech gets lots of tips, Anandtech could do another GPU review and publish that effect somehow. I personally have a hard time spending money when the effect of that money disappears into a black hole. If paying a tip had some sort of feedback, I would probably do it more often.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  OP here. > 1. Integrate with something like coinbase so that users can fund a wallet with fiat currency. Thats a good idea. The QR code gets us close to this implementation, but not quite all the way there. > 2. Provide a feedback mechanism that shows the payments had a positive effect. Yes, THIS. I'd very much like to include feedback into the system (author name, topic, title, etc) such that publishers know what their audience cares deeply about (paid for) vs just casually reads (pageview). > I personally have a hard time spending money when the effect of that money disappears into a black hole. If paying a tip had some sort of feedback, I would probably do it more often. Your comment reminds me a lot of tip jars I sometimes see in coffee shops in NYC. Tip in bucket A for "Star Wars', tip in bucket B for 'Star Trek'. Sort of a ruse in a way, but the staff gets more tips because they made a game of it.
finnn 11y ago
Glad to see that blocking 3rd party javascript is still effective at blocking all of this https://i.imgur.com/8LbGk2G.png https://i.imgur.com/8LbGk2G.png
- ksowocki 11y ago
  OP here. Whats your motivation for disabling javascript? I could create a javascriptless-version of this, but would you ever consider supporting/tipping a publisher via it?
  - finnn 11y ago
    I don't disable javascript. Just Javascript (and most resources) from 3rd party domains. I didn't come up with the idea, there's a browser plugin (uMatrix) that does it for me. And I selectively re-enable by domain or resource type. I like it because (1) it blocks just about every annoyance on the web and (2) it means that when I visit a webpage, the number of 3rd parties that the information about my visit is automatically leaked to goes down. It's like automatic blocking of ads, social buttons and just whatever new unpleasantry thing comes up next. For example, this is what uMatrix displays on the demo: https://i.imgur.com/0mtkpXY.png https://i.imgur.com/0mtkpXY.png
    - ksowocki 11y ago
      Interesting tool; I'm going to have to play with have that turned on my Chromium install.
codezero 11y ago
This is pretty neat, and gives me an idea that I assume someone has already made. Do any ad blocking tools aggregate the total estimated amount of ad revenue that I've prevented across all sites that I block ads on in, say, the past month, or year?
- ksowocki 11y ago
  Op here. > Do any ad blocking tools aggregate the total estimated amount of ad revenue that I've prevented across all sites that I block ads on in, say, the past month, or year? I'm sure there's a programmatic way of finding that information, but one could plausibly create a tool that guesses an ad spots CPM and then displays that information.
quantumtremor 11y ago
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490
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128 points by ksowocki 11y ago

felixangell1024 11y ago

Really nice idea, might try this out for a project of mine :)

ksowocki 11y ago
Please get in touch if you do. I'm @owocki on twitter and need some data to support what kind of results this gets.

4e1a 11y ago

This does not work for me. I'm using 'ghostery' to block ads though, not 'ad-block'.

rogeryu 11y ago
Well I'm using Privacy Badger. It is not about the used technology. It's about the idea, the concept. If you don't want to see ads, you pay a small amount using bitcoins. I don't see it working unless it's forced upon you.
- contravariant 11y ago
  >If you don't want to see ads, you pay a small amount using bitcoins. I don't see it working unless it's forced upon you. Reminds me of that Black Mirror episode. Spoiler: things go very badly if it's forced upon you.
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    Very different concept. In Black Mirror, you're forced to watch media and ads every moment you're awake unless you pay not to. Here, if you choose to willingly visit a website to consume some sort of content but refuse to look at the ads that fund that content, you're asked to make a payment to fund said content. This is, afterall, what the majority of adblock and anti-tracking proponents have been lobbying for. 'We don't want to have to deal with ads. We don't want to be tracked. We want to pay for content.' This simply gives them the opportunity. Note that it is also voluntary and doesn't prevent the content from being displayed. Heck, it says "would you consider" and has a suggested bitcoin donation equivalent to 1 penny.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Black Mirror simply falls down the slippery slope and tells the story of people living at the bottom of it. Voluntary transaction is truly voluntary only if neither side needs it to live a productive life.
  - pyython 11y ago
    This is exactly what I've been thinking about re:the recent slew of adblock news on HN. Content creation and distribution have real costs, and I see other, far more intrusive models developing to combat loss of ad revenue if ad blockers become the norm. Not to mention the contribution to rising income inequality/decreasing social mobility. If all useful information is behind a paywall, only those that can afford it will have access - further increasing the return to capital. All this to say, be careful what you wish for...
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      Yes, except the most useful content out there is available largely for free (or would cost a crazy small amount to keep funded, if the userbase contributed as little as $1 or $3). In particular, I'm thinking of: Wikipedia Google Also, maybe it will lead people to start putting trust in offline archives of information, which wouldn't be terrible either. Honestly, a lot of the "content" on the internet is garbage/not productive. I can at the very least argue that lots of bandwidth that's being used on the internet is just watching shit that's usually not educational.
      - pyython 11y ago
        Google runs the largest ad network on the planet. It's absolutely critical to their business model. Wikipedia is great, but they produce no content of their own and lack any sort of curation. Of course there's a lot of crap on the Internet, but I personally find many types of well-curated, professional content extremely valuable. I personally would be willing to pay for much of it, but I'm in a better position to do so than many - which is exactly my point.
        hardwaresofton 11y ago
        My point was that if Google decided to change it's business model, and charged something like a $1 for a monthly subscription to using it's search services, it would be more than safe. I don't think the fact that wikipedia produces it's own content is relevant, and whether it lacks curation being relevant either. Regardless of those two facts, it is immensely useful. The majority of articles, especially on highly technical/useful topics (like farming techniques) are mostly accurate. Just because some may not be in a position to buy/afford something doesn't mean that everyone should endure inefficiency. Also, depending on the price, the truly important information would still be worth it. I don't think what's going to keep the less fortunate from using web services is a reasonably priced web service. Currently, you can get a VPS for roughly $10/month, and a domain name for something like $70 (a .com usually costs this much I think). If you had monthly subscribers who were asked to pay $1 a month, the amount of subscribers to keep you in business (nevermind that today's tech can easily scale up to thousands of users on one box), is not high at all.
- ksowocki 11y ago
  It all depends on the customer's relationship with the brand. The thesis here is that consumers will support brands they are loyal to and/or have an affection for. Even with it being forced upon them.
- teps 11y ago
  When I go have a beer in a bar, I often give between 0.2 and 1$ tips. Why? Because it really easy and require no effort. I would with no hesitation give 0.1$ to a interesting article if it were only one click away. I would easily give 0.5-1$ after a good episode of a TV show if I only had to do one click. Yes, that include pirated TV shows. The problem is that there is no way to easily give a small amount of money to a content creator on its creations.
  - schorgie30 11y ago
    Hey teps, Cameron Schorg with a new startup called SnipBit. We are working on making a platform very similar to what you talked about. The main difference is that we would charge for the content on the front end and then offer a refund option if you didn't like the content. You should check us out at www.snipbit.io and if you would be willing, I'd would love to have a chat as we are ALWAYS doing customer discovery (schorgie30@gmail.com).
  - rogeryu 11y ago
    Take a look at Blendle. https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/
- happimess 11y ago
  I think 4ela was talking about a technical problem, not a philosophical objection.
  - ksowocki 11y ago
    This project is in 'proof of concept' stage right now. Will be solving the technical problem of cross-device/browser/adblocker testing next.
ksowocki 11y ago
OP here. Thanks for the feedback, I've tested with uBlock and AdBlock Plus, will give ghostery a go as well.

Klathmon 11y ago

This is cool, and it won't pester you about donating if you are using something like Google Contributor which is nice.

ksowocki 11y ago
OP here. Would really like to gather some data about what kind of conversions this would get on a site with some scale. Thesis is that for brands that have a loyal following, we might be able to get close to PPC unit economics.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  i havent used bitcoin for years, so excuse me if i'm asking stupid questions, but how many steps is it to donate from the time i see it to when the money flows? Realistically i could only see myself doing this if it was less than 3 clicks and a grand total of about 30 seconds of time. Any more than that and i'm just not going to bother if i'm honest. Also, this might go against what you are trying to do, but would it be possible to maybe keep a counter of how many of these "ads" were blocked (only on the client) and maybe update the suggested donation based on that? I personally might be more willing to donate if i saw "You've blocked 384 ads on this site" or something like "you've visited this page 26 times over the last month" and an updated suggested donation to match the usage. Ninja-edit: And finally, is there a service that you could work with to allow easy donations via other currencies and have them auto converted to bitcoin? I don't have a bitcoin wallet any more, but if there was a button next to the donate button that took you to a 3rd party website that allowed me to pay in USD and have it converted to bitcoin and sent to the website I might contribute.
  - ksowocki 11y ago
    > i havent used bitcoin for years, so excuse me if i'm asking stupid questions, but how many steps is it to donate from the time i see it to when the money flows? There are no stupid questions, cryptocurrency is not intuitive in many ways :) Steps on mobile: 1. Open iPhone / Coinbase app 2. Scan QR Code 3. Input amount 4. Press send Similar process on desktop, but probably with a copy/paste code instead of QR code. Realistically i could only see myself doing this if it was less than 3 clicks and a grand total of about 30 seconds of time. It's definitely less than 30 seconds as long as your iPhone is across the room and/or you have coinbase. > Also, this might go against what you are trying to do, but would it be possible to maybe keep a counter of how many of these "ads" were blocked (only on the client) and maybe update the suggested donation based on that? Yes, data and testing of conversion percentages and unit economics is going to be important if this ever takes off. > I personally might be more willing to donate if i saw "You've blocked 384 ads on this site" or something like "you've visited this page 26 times over the last month" and an updated suggested donation to match the usage. That's a great idea! I'll have to add this copy to the 'to test' list!

elmar 11y ago

The Killer App for Bitcoin :)

kordless 11y ago
There are a few of these. :)
- ksowocki 11y ago
  OP here. Big fan of changetip, which is IMHO the first implementation of cryptocurrency/micropayments that has truly taken off.
ksowocki 11y ago
If you're a bitcoin enthusiast, you can help grow the universe of real-world use cases for BTC. If you see this tool on a website, please donate! How you can help: https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin/blob/master/README.md#how-you-can-help https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin/blob/master/REA...

dheera 11y ago

If your real objective is to get actually some income in place of the ad, I would highly suggest supporting traditional forms of payment in addition to Bitcoin. Pick your battles and reduce friction for the user to donate. Although Bitcoin is interesting/cool/worthy of existence, 99.9% of users don't have a Bitcoin wallet, so you'll be missing out on a lot of potential income.

ksowocki 11y ago
It's worth testing. The reason we started with bitcoin is that traditional forms of payment charge a egregious fee (credit card, 3%) or require sharing private information (ACH). With bitcoin, I can send micro-payments trustless-ly.
- jszymborski 11y ago
  Paypal does do a "Micropayments Discount" for sums less than $10. It's still 5% + $0.05, so it won't work for your $0.01 suggestion, but you can ask for $0.25, although you get just over a half of it back ($0.13), which still feels might feel like armed robbery, but you'd be increasing your donation volume greatly. Perhaps a Gratipay, or Flattr link? edit: speeling edit: thought Flattr was dead -_-
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    Why is there no gateway that can handle micropayments properly? Just do the following: * Let me (in whatever guise, publisher, consumer, etc.) have an account that I can deposit/withdraw real world money into. Charge me a fee (percentage/fixed/minimum/maximum/whatever the market is willing to pay) for these operations. * Let anyone transfer any amount of money (OK, impose some granularity, but make it like 20 decimal places, that's fine) from their account to another. Do all the right security stuff that we already do for this kind of thing to ensure no abuse. * If the cost of transfers exceeds the income from deposit/withdrawals, charge some additional fee on a certain number of transfers, or charge a percentage on every $x transferred, or whatever it takes, so long as micropayments are still possible. Now sit back and count the profit. How is this not a solved problem yet?

exo762 11y ago

Nice little project! The issue is, at this moment Bitcoin does not really support micro-transactions. There is a proposal in progress which will fix this though. Its called "Lightning Network" and it will act as aggregator of transactions which will prevent dust from hitting blockchain while correctly and safely counting every penny. This is not yet ready - they are working on safe and private payment routing in network consisting of open set of nodes, which is (IMHO) crazy hard.

ksowocki 11y ago
> The issue is, at this moment Bitcoin does not really support micro-transactions. Whats your source on this? I'd thought that the block size was large enough that even transactions around the size of $0.05 would go through regularly.
- exo762 11y ago
  I personally use it for amounts starting from 30c. But two questions should be answered. How micro is micro-payment? Popular fee right now is at 0.0001 BTC which corresponds to ~0.04USD, which could be considered not very "micro-fee". And other question. Single transaction real cost right now is around 10USD. Payment fees are low, only because they are hugely subsidised by block reward (25BTC every 10 minutes). What will happen when block reward will go down 2, 4, 8 times? And finally, quote from LN whitepaper: > If all transactions using Bitcoin were on the blockchain, to enable 7 billion people to make two transactions per day, it would require 24GB blocks every ten minutes at best
  - Nutomic 11y ago
    If the block size is increased, a lot more transactions will fit in a block, so transactions would get much cheaper. And while it's a great goal to have all monetary transactions use Bitcoin, that is very very far from reality for now.
    - exo762 11y ago

kragen 11y ago

An interesting issue here is that Creative Commons Noncommercial licenses permit use on ad-funded sites, but not on micropayment-funded sites. I'm thinking specifically of this: https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127 https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17127

paulgb 11y ago
My reading of this* is that if the primary purpose of the use of an NC work is not to make money, you're fine. I don't see any references specifically to advertising or payments, but I don't see why a donation is any less valid than advertising. * https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpre...
xigency 11y ago
I think the idea of micro-payments instead of ads is that it covers costs. In that respect, and in general, if the site isn't turning a profit isn't that still non-commercial?
- Zikes 11y ago
  > if the site isn't turning a profit isn't that still non-commercial? Wouldn't that mean Twitter and Facebook are non-commercial?
  - xigency 11y ago
    Good point
  - kragen 11y ago
    If Facebook is commercial, does that make it legal for you to post a CC-NC-BY document you didn't write as a Facebook Note? If it's legal for you to post it, is it also legal for Facebook to display it, thus drawing people into their site to view advertising? What if I set up a paid-subscription-only Facebook clone called Flone and you post it on Flone, so that you have to pay Flone to see the Note? Does it matter if Flone charges per pageview instead of per month? Does it matter if Flone charges more for certain pageviews? When Verizon sells you a data connection, are they in some way different from our hypothetical Flone?

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago

I'd like to see a browser plugin that does something similar. I fill it up with a small balance of bitcoins, and it automatically pays websites when I visit.

eternauta3k 11y ago
This fits your description https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/protip-peer-to-peer-crowd/obpohohcmdaklmaagjgdaldgjhohegak https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/protip-peer-to-pee...
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  Close! I don't use Chrome.
- benten10 11y ago
  This needs to be more common. I'd put in a not unreasonable amount of money (~20$) monthly to automatically pay to the sites I regularly visit. Need this for firefox, stat!
  - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    One thing that prevents me from wanting to use this is that it just looks for bitcoin addresses on the page. If joe bloe posts on reddit begging for money with his bitcoin address, I don't want to automagically send him some.
    - benten10 11y ago
      I don't really care about the bitcoin TBH. There needs to be a technology to pay the publishers directly a cut for my '% time viewed', the technology matters less to me. Perhaps Google contributor et al. could implement paying publishers based on '% of total time spent on the site' metric.

tobltobs 11y ago

This library looks good. But I wouldn't hold my breath that you will get any donations. I recently created a similar solution and the result after about a million few was nada, nilch, zero. If you now consider that by accepting donations you have to solve the EU VATmess it is not worth the effort.

DennisP 11y ago
Bitcoin transactions were just ruled exempt from Europe's VAT: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-is-exempt-from-vat-says-european-court-of-justice/ http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-is-exempt-from-vat-says-euro... That doesn't mean you don't have to pay the VAT just because you buy something with Bitcoin, it just means that bitcoin/dollar exchanges don't owe tax. I don't know whether VAT applies to donations.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  The question is not if donations are excempt from vat, but if your tax collector will believe you that you are a non profit organisation.
  - DennisP 11y ago
    So pay taxes on the income, it's still better than not having the income. If you are attempting nonprofit status, donations are less of a red flag than advertising. But I don't see what that has to do with VAT, which you brought up.

arbabu 11y ago

I think the basic problem is that people are not going to give you any money at all! Let it be bitcoin or their dollars. Or if this project works out, would be pretty interesting!

ksowocki 11y ago
Next step in the project is to gather some data to validate the project thesis. Here's how you can help if you care to be part of the experiment (not much downside as space is only used when Adblockers are on). https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin#how-you-can-help https://github.com/owocki/adblock-to-bitcoin#how-you-can-hel...

henningpeters 11y ago

Looks similar to what you can do with https://satoshipay.io https://satoshipay.io, but they allow even tiniest Bitcoin payments (down to a single Satoshi) using sidechains.

throwaay123 11y ago

You might also be interested in https://github.com/kallerosenbaum/poppoc/wiki/Proof-of-Payment https://github.com/kallerosenbaum/poppoc/wiki/Proof-of-Payme..., which will let you "login" by prooving that you made a small bitcoin transaction. The disadvantage of this sort of microtransaction is that people may actually be willing to pay more through donation then through forced payment.

Sealy 11y ago

I like what your concept is a lot. I do not think a huge number of payments are going to be made using it, HOWEVER, I think this is just the beginning of a much larger movement behind micropayments for ad-free content. I've been wanting this for a very long time to read good quality articles online that are behind paywalls. I would totally pay with bitcoin, but refuse to sign up using any form of credit card.

ksowocki 11y ago
> I do not think a huge number of payments are going to be made using it First, this is an experiment and I'll be testing different permutations of cost, copy, and invasiveness. Curious as to why you think there won't be much volume. Could you elaborate? > I would totally pay with bitcoin, but refuse to sign up using any form of credit card. This is an interesting data point. Was talking to a blogger about this project this morning and he asked why not use traditional payment methods. I presume (and hope) there might be more people out there like you than we all think.
- Sealy 11y ago
  > Curious as to why you think there won't be much volume. Could you elaborate? My reason for this is entirely practical. By displaying a bitcoin payment address, there are at minimum an additional three or four clicks, with perhaps a copy and paste of the bitcoin address to complete a payment (this is even more difficult if the user's bitcoin wallet is on his mobile - unless a QR code is displayed). For me, it is more of a practical usability reason as opposed to the reader not wanting to donate their $0.01. A solution I would love to use, would be to have a browser plugin with a pre loaded bitcoin balance of a few dollars and a single one click to accept a 1 cent payment to the content owner to proceed to the article. On Bitcointalk.org, a forum dedicated to bitcoin geeks, people always leave a tip address in their signatures, look up the usage and you'll find it surprisingly low.
  - ksowocki 11y ago
    > A solution I would love to use, would be to have a browser plugin with a pre loaded bitcoin balance of a few dollars and a single one click to accept a 1 cent payment to the content owner to proceed to the article. Interesting feedback. Changetip or coinbase could likely provide a one-click button to tip content providers.

Skunkleton 11y ago

I really dig this idea, but would love to see two more features: 1. Integrate with something like coinbase so that users can fund a wallet with fiat currency. 2. Provide a feedback mechanism that shows the payments had a positive effect. For example, if a GPU review on Anandtech gets lots of tips, Anandtech could do another GPU review and publish that effect somehow. I personally have a hard time spending money when the effect of that money disappears into a black hole. If paying a tip had some sort of feedback, I would probably do it more often.

ksowocki 11y ago
OP here. > 1. Integrate with something like coinbase so that users can fund a wallet with fiat currency. Thats a good idea. The QR code gets us close to this implementation, but not quite all the way there. > 2. Provide a feedback mechanism that shows the payments had a positive effect. Yes, THIS. I'd very much like to include feedback into the system (author name, topic, title, etc) such that publishers know what their audience cares deeply about (paid for) vs just casually reads (pageview). > I personally have a hard time spending money when the effect of that money disappears into a black hole. If paying a tip had some sort of feedback, I would probably do it more often. Your comment reminds me a lot of tip jars I sometimes see in coffee shops in NYC. Tip in bucket A for "Star Wars', tip in bucket B for 'Star Trek'. Sort of a ruse in a way, but the staff gets more tips because they made a game of it.

finnn 11y ago

Glad to see that blocking 3rd party javascript is still effective at blocking all of this https://i.imgur.com/8LbGk2G.png https://i.imgur.com/8LbGk2G.png

ksowocki 11y ago
OP here. Whats your motivation for disabling javascript? I could create a javascriptless-version of this, but would you ever consider supporting/tipping a publisher via it?
- finnn 11y ago
  I don't disable javascript. Just Javascript (and most resources) from 3rd party domains. I didn't come up with the idea, there's a browser plugin (uMatrix) that does it for me. And I selectively re-enable by domain or resource type. I like it because (1) it blocks just about every annoyance on the web and (2) it means that when I visit a webpage, the number of 3rd parties that the information about my visit is automatically leaked to goes down. It's like automatic blocking of ads, social buttons and just whatever new unpleasantry thing comes up next. For example, this is what uMatrix displays on the demo: https://i.imgur.com/0mtkpXY.png https://i.imgur.com/0mtkpXY.png
  - ksowocki 11y ago
    Interesting tool; I'm going to have to play with have that turned on my Chromium install.

codezero 11y ago

This is pretty neat, and gives me an idea that I assume someone has already made. Do any ad blocking tools aggregate the total estimated amount of ad revenue that I've prevented across all sites that I block ads on in, say, the past month, or year?

ksowocki 11y ago
Op here. > Do any ad blocking tools aggregate the total estimated amount of ad revenue that I've prevented across all sites that I block ads on in, say, the past month, or year? I'm sure there's a programmatic way of finding that information, but one could plausibly create a tool that guesses an ad spots CPM and then displays that information.

quantumtremor 11y ago

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2490

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