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Normally, I refrain from writing such bad things about start-ups and people's ideas, unless there is something really awful about it. In this case, it's obviou

Normally, I refrain from writing such bad things about start-ups and people's ideas, unless there is something really awful about it. In this case, it's obvious how terrible this service is, both in terms of how it treats the user (who wants to do you a favor by signing up) as a cow to be milked, and how the implementation of it does very little to solve the actual problem of spam. It's just a greedy and short-sighted idea. I won't write any more about how stupid it is. What I will note is that it is somewhat inspiring to see that an idea like this can get off the ground. I haven't dug into the details of "Solve Media", but I assume that some people poured a sum of money into this. Maybe there's a sucker born every minute, or maybe confidence in anything internet-related is just that high. Hopefully, both things are true, and I think that's a good thing. I'm not advocating taking suckers' money, but rather believing the following: If your idea is anything better than this, which it likely is, you have a shot at it.

mikemol 16y ago
Users creating and using free accounts have costs associated with them. Those costs need to be met in order for the service to continue, either by tying a revenue model to the users directly, via charity, or by subsidizing their use of your resources by using something they contribute, such as content. Selling user content is not a stable net in proportion to user use of the site; you don't know that the content will continue to sell at a rate keeping pace with user-incurred costs. Charity is also not a stable net in proportion to user use of the site; nothing directly and reliably ties charity income to user-incurred cost, and nothing can--it's charity. The only way to meet proportionate cost incurred by user use is by tying a proportionate revenue to user use. Even if you don't charge a user to use the service, even if you only ask that they fill out a text box to use the site, just as they might with reCAPTCHa, it suddenly becomes 'milking the user'. Sadly, users no longer merely expect services to be free for them, they get offended if the service provider derives any money at all for their activity. (I think I sort of understand the mentality--"Why are they getting money for my work, when I'm not?"--but that logic doesn't hold up if no money was changing hands while they did the work anyway.) You're also rather vague about what "the actual problem of spam" is. What strikes you as a mere symptom, and what strikes you as a cause? Yes, these peoples' particular implementation of challenge-response is pretty poor. Is that what you were specifically referring to, or did you have something else in mind?
- photon_off 16y ago
  Very good points here. I failed to remember that captchas are indeed used for other things besides registering as a member to a site. Things like one-time viewing of information (eg: WHOIS), etc, will probably benefit a lot from this. I showed some oversight claiming this service was dumb. It's great for things where it's OK that I get insulted, because I want to see something bad enough anyway. I was in the mindset of imagining this being on a registration form to become a user of a website. I think the money lost from the amount of users getting turned off by this would be greater than the one-time profit incurred whenever a user registers. That is, unless your site profits from less users. In equation form: (amt profit per lifetime of user) x (number of users that won't sign up because of this) > (amt of users that do sign up with this) x N [where N is how much you make from this ad captcha]. Notice that the longer you plan on retaining users, the less you should be willing to risk slowing down your sign-ups, unless this ad captcha offers a high enough profit. It is my opinion that for sites seeking long-term relationships with users, that this thing sucks. On the other hand, if you can afford that the user not continue beyond a point, then it's great. That's why it'll work for porn and other seedy crappy sites, and probably why I have low regard for it. I admit this is a foolish mindset. In regards to "actual problem of spam," I was referring to the answer of the captcha being in the DOM, and the otherwise flawed implementation of it.

mikemol 16y ago

Users creating and using free accounts have costs associated with them. Those costs need to be met in order for the service to continue, either by tying a revenue model to the users directly, via charity, or by subsidizing their use of your resources by using something they contribute, such as content. Selling user content is not a stable net in proportion to user use of the site; you don't know that the content will continue to sell at a rate keeping pace with user-incurred costs. Charity is also not a stable net in proportion to user use of the site; nothing directly and reliably ties charity income to user-incurred cost, and nothing can--it's charity. The only way to meet proportionate cost incurred by user use is by tying a proportionate revenue to user use. Even if you don't charge a user to use the service, even if you only ask that they fill out a text box to use the site, just as they might with reCAPTCHa, it suddenly becomes 'milking the user'. Sadly, users no longer merely expect services to be free for them, they get offended if the service provider derives any money at all for their activity. (I think I sort of understand the mentality--"Why are they getting money for my work, when I'm not?"--but that logic doesn't hold up if no money was changing hands while they did the work anyway.) You're also rather vague about what "the actual problem of spam" is. What strikes you as a mere symptom, and what strikes you as a cause? Yes, these peoples' particular implementation of challenge-response is pretty poor. Is that what you were specifically referring to, or did you have something else in mind?

photon_off 16y ago
Very good points here. I failed to remember that captchas are indeed used for other things besides registering as a member to a site. Things like one-time viewing of information (eg: WHOIS), etc, will probably benefit a lot from this. I showed some oversight claiming this service was dumb. It's great for things where it's OK that I get insulted, because I want to see something bad enough anyway. I was in the mindset of imagining this being on a registration form to become a user of a website. I think the money lost from the amount of users getting turned off by this would be greater than the one-time profit incurred whenever a user registers. That is, unless your site profits from less users. In equation form: (amt profit per lifetime of user) x (number of users that won't sign up because of this) > (amt of users that do sign up with this) x N [where N is how much you make from this ad captcha]. Notice that the longer you plan on retaining users, the less you should be willing to risk slowing down your sign-ups, unless this ad captcha offers a high enough profit. It is my opinion that for sites seeking long-term relationships with users, that this thing sucks. On the other hand, if you can afford that the user not continue beyond a point, then it's great. That's why it'll work for porn and other seedy crappy sites, and probably why I have low regard for it. I admit this is a foolish mindset. In regards to "actual problem of spam," I was referring to the answer of the captcha being in the DOM, and the otherwise flawed implementation of it.