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Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue. Ads solve the problem of how to fund websites witho

by Lio 8y ago

Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue. Ads solve the problem of how to fund websites without subscriptions but create the problem of annoying ads of no relevance. Google and Facebook mitigate the problem of annoying adverts by trying to make them relevant. That comes at the cost of their constant surveillance without permission, and use of that information to try to “influence” people’s opinions in unrelated ways. The big lie of recent years has been “we value your privacy” followed some details of how “we” don’t. BATs try to solve all of these problems by placing control of personal information back with the user. If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token. What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times. Google could get involved in this sort of research but I suspect that their interests go far beyond just serving ads.

simias 8y ago
>If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token. >What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times. I'm really perplex. People who care enough about their privacy to make use of something like that are probably those who don't want ads or tracking at all anyway. The rest of the population obviously doesn't care. I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. You want me to pay for your service? Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you. If you prefer to beg for me to turn my ad blocker off then be my guest but I won't do it. The idea of installing Brave, curating several "tokens" containing my interests and selecting what to send to which website is frankly preposterous to me and of dubious value for the advertisers.
- omnimus 8y ago
  Well you should maybe think about the content creators. If they live off the ads then you just killed their living. Bat is about micro transactions - you load Brave with 20usd and leave it to distribute money. It is actually great usecase for crypto. I doubt you want to be giving out your credit card to sites you read and micro transaction services would also invade your privacy by paying for you. All crypto is not bad and BAT is pretty legit in my opinion.
  - simias 8y ago
    I refuse to accept that ads are the only way for content creators to make a living online. It's not the first time that the cryptocurrency crowd sees a problem and thinks "clearly the blockchain is the solution here". Except that behind buzzwords and vague assertions I fail to see a coherent big picture of how that's all going to work. Instead of giving me Internet Fun Bucks to watch ads, how about you let me pay for your service? I pay for Spotify, I pay for Memrize, I pay for Tarnsap, I bought a Fontawesome subscription last friday, I used to donate to a couple Patreons. I donate punctually to FreeBSD, Wikipedia and a few other open source projects. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it. If content creators don't want my money but insist that I should let them spam me with ads and share my private info with third parties then it's their problem, not mine. Life is too short for me to curate "cryptographic interest tokens" in order for advertisers to serve me content that I don't want to see anyway. Some cryptocurrency projects wanted to develop a cheap and easy micropayment system. That seems a lot more interesting to me although that probably can't work as long as the "currency" part of "cryptocurrency" remains more aspirational than practical.
    - maxencecornet 8y ago
      >. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it. You don't have to, just don't opt-in for Brave rewards (aka ads), and fund your tipping wallet with your money (you can as of today) and voilà ! You'll have: - No ads, no trackers - You contribute toward content creators with your cash like you do with Spotify/Netflix using a built-in wallet in your browser - A fast and privacy-first browser
      - abainbridge 8y ago
        That sounds ideal. How do I fund my tipping wallet. I can't see anything about it in the Brave desktop brower's UI.
        maxencecornet 8y ago
- bhaak 8y ago
  > I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. I have a really hard time reconciling this opinion with "Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you." Even with ad blockers, I have much more control what information I give out than if I trust someone with my credit card number. Even if the content creator is genuine, there have been so many hacks in the past. Credit cards are also not good for microtransactions and BAT is a potentially enabler for them. Sure, we aren't there yet but it doesn't look as impossible as it were in 1999 when microtransactions came up the first time as a solution to the ads problem.
- Lio 8y ago
  If an idea is preposterous to you then fair enough the status quo sounds like a fit for your needs and you are free to stick with it. I'm old enough to remember the time when the World Wide Web and electric self-driving cars were dismissed as preposterous. For me, I like the idea of paying for content without having to supply my credit card number to each news outlet that I want to read. With no link to me directly the websites no longer need to track me and Brave can go out of it's way to back that up. No need to curate tokens. Just switch profiles if/when you need to. BTW you don't _need_ to see any ads at all. You can instead just buy BATs and use them for content payment without ads.
- gammateam 8y ago
  Its not several tokens, its just use of the BAT token User experience aside it makes it clear when you revoke permission to your data You can point to the public transaction where you did that and show consent to that advertiser and whoever they copied that data to, massive liability for them if they arent playing along A step towards cooperation, not a cure all Tokens are also useful in bootstrapping any two sided marketplace, and people would also be aligned in seeing it become more valuable. To you, that means damning unobjectiveness, to others that means necessary skin in the game to know what theyre talking about.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
>"Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue." To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine. I feel absolutely no obligation to support a flawed business model, in fact I feel absolutely no obligation to support the commercialization of the internet. Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen, I have absolutely no intention of ever allowing ads again.
- maxencecornet 8y ago
  >To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine. This reminds me of my friends that used to download games of thepiratebay because the gaming industry was a "flawed business model", but were still expecting content to be produced If you don't support content creators with money, how can you expect content to be produced ? Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones >Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen I like how Brave tackle the privacy issue by displaying only privacy-friendly ads from Brave publishers network while giving a way for users to contribute towards content creator with the built-in tip feature. And this is a opt-in feature, so if you hate ads, you just don't have to opt-in and can still enjoy a fast and privacy-focused browser I've ditched chrome 2 weeks ago, not going back anytime soon
  - dingaling 8y ago
    > Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones The vast majority of the World's photographers are amateurs, who derive little or no income from their hobby. Yet they collectively produce stunning photos that are amongst the best ever taken. Why can't websites be the same? Like they were in the 90s. Why must side-projects monetise ASAP instead of being a hobby? Perhaps Gmail wouldn't exist in that World, but Fastmail would. And postfix, dovecot, sendmail too.
    - Santosh83 8y ago
      Depends on what you do for a living. If you have an unrelated job/source of income, then yes, your site and your content can purely be a labour of love. It's an ideal aspiration, but it may not be feasible when EVERY Tom, Dick and Harry wants to have a site or produce content because a large proportion of people have poor or no income. It is also the case that not all content is 'free' to produce (except time & energy) like a blogpost. A news site for example needs to pay real money to employ people. Same with another SaaS solution. How will the creators recoup the expenses if they can't charge direct money or show ads? You need an ideal world of universal basic income, healthcare and a reasonable standard of living for all if you want people to abandon all ideas of monetising their activities. Sadly we're very far from that world.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
I have a simpler solution: websites host their own ads. Obviously this doesn't bring in as much money so as long as those of us who don't want to be tracked remains a small minority: business as usual.

by Lio 8y ago

simias 8y ago

>If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token. >What’s more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times. I'm really perplex. People who care enough about their privacy to make use of something like that are probably those who don't want ads or tracking at all anyway. The rest of the population obviously doesn't care. I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. You want me to pay for your service? Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you. If you prefer to beg for me to turn my ad blocker off then be my guest but I won't do it. The idea of installing Brave, curating several "tokens" containing my interests and selecting what to send to which website is frankly preposterous to me and of dubious value for the advertisers.

omnimus 8y ago
Well you should maybe think about the content creators. If they live off the ads then you just killed their living. Bat is about micro transactions - you load Brave with 20usd and leave it to distribute money. It is actually great usecase for crypto. I doubt you want to be giving out your credit card to sites you read and micro transaction services would also invade your privacy by paying for you. All crypto is not bad and BAT is pretty legit in my opinion.
- simias 8y ago
  I refuse to accept that ads are the only way for content creators to make a living online. It's not the first time that the cryptocurrency crowd sees a problem and thinks "clearly the blockchain is the solution here". Except that behind buzzwords and vague assertions I fail to see a coherent big picture of how that's all going to work. Instead of giving me Internet Fun Bucks to watch ads, how about you let me pay for your service? I pay for Spotify, I pay for Memrize, I pay for Tarnsap, I bought a Fontawesome subscription last friday, I used to donate to a couple Patreons. I donate punctually to FreeBSD, Wikipedia and a few other open source projects. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it. If content creators don't want my money but insist that I should let them spam me with ads and share my private info with third parties then it's their problem, not mine. Life is too short for me to curate "cryptographic interest tokens" in order for advertisers to serve me content that I don't want to see anyway. Some cryptocurrency projects wanted to develop a cheap and easy micropayment system. That seems a lot more interesting to me although that probably can't work as long as the "currency" part of "cryptocurrency" remains more aspirational than practical.
  - maxencecornet 8y ago
    >. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it. You don't have to, just don't opt-in for Brave rewards (aka ads), and fund your tipping wallet with your money (you can as of today) and voilà ! You'll have: - No ads, no trackers - You contribute toward content creators with your cash like you do with Spotify/Netflix using a built-in wallet in your browser - A fast and privacy-first browser
    - abainbridge 8y ago
      That sounds ideal. How do I fund my tipping wallet. I can't see anything about it in the Brave desktop brower's UI.
      - maxencecornet 8y ago
bhaak 8y ago
> I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. I have a really hard time reconciling this opinion with "Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you." Even with ad blockers, I have much more control what information I give out than if I trust someone with my credit card number. Even if the content creator is genuine, there have been so many hacks in the past. Credit cards are also not good for microtransactions and BAT is a potentially enabler for them. Sure, we aren't there yet but it doesn't look as impossible as it were in 1999 when microtransactions came up the first time as a solution to the ads problem.
Lio 8y ago
If an idea is preposterous to you then fair enough the status quo sounds like a fit for your needs and you are free to stick with it. I'm old enough to remember the time when the World Wide Web and electric self-driving cars were dismissed as preposterous. For me, I like the idea of paying for content without having to supply my credit card number to each news outlet that I want to read. With no link to me directly the websites no longer need to track me and Brave can go out of it's way to back that up. No need to curate tokens. Just switch profiles if/when you need to. BTW you don't _need_ to see any ads at all. You can instead just buy BATs and use them for content payment without ads.
gammateam 8y ago
Its not several tokens, its just use of the BAT token User experience aside it makes it clear when you revoke permission to your data You can point to the public transaction where you did that and show consent to that advertiser and whoever they copied that data to, massive liability for them if they arent playing along A step towards cooperation, not a cure all Tokens are also useful in bootstrapping any two sided marketplace, and people would also be aligned in seeing it become more valuable. To you, that means damning unobjectiveness, to others that means necessary skin in the game to know what theyre talking about.

KozmoNau7 8y ago

>"Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue." To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine. I feel absolutely no obligation to support a flawed business model, in fact I feel absolutely no obligation to support the commercialization of the internet. Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen, I have absolutely no intention of ever allowing ads again.

maxencecornet 8y ago
>To put it bluntly, that is their problem, not mine. This reminds me of my friends that used to download games of thepiratebay because the gaming industry was a "flawed business model", but were still expecting content to be produced If you don't support content creators with money, how can you expect content to be produced ? Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones >Based on the egregious attacks on privacy we've seen I like how Brave tackle the privacy issue by displaying only privacy-friendly ads from Brave publishers network while giving a way for users to contribute towards content creator with the built-in tip feature. And this is a opt-in feature, so if you hate ads, you just don't have to opt-in and can still enjoy a fast and privacy-focused browser I've ditched chrome 2 weeks ago, not going back anytime soon
- dingaling 8y ago
  > Content creators need to eat too, especially indie ones The vast majority of the World's photographers are amateurs, who derive little or no income from their hobby. Yet they collectively produce stunning photos that are amongst the best ever taken. Why can't websites be the same? Like they were in the 90s. Why must side-projects monetise ASAP instead of being a hobby? Perhaps Gmail wouldn't exist in that World, but Fastmail would. And postfix, dovecot, sendmail too.
  - Santosh83 8y ago
    Depends on what you do for a living. If you have an unrelated job/source of income, then yes, your site and your content can purely be a labour of love. It's an ideal aspiration, but it may not be feasible when EVERY Tom, Dick and Harry wants to have a site or produce content because a large proportion of people have poor or no income. It is also the case that not all content is 'free' to produce (except time & energy) like a blogpost. A news site for example needs to pay real money to employ people. Same with another SaaS solution. How will the creators recoup the expenses if they can't charge direct money or show ads? You need an ideal world of universal basic income, healthcare and a reasonable standard of living for all if you want people to abandon all ideas of monetising their activities. Sadly we're very far from that world.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

I have a simpler solution: websites host their own ads. Obviously this doesn't bring in as much money so as long as those of us who don't want to be tracked remains a small minority: business as usual.