8 ms·

Yea, I'd be happier if there was some notion of an inherent value in my eyeballs - and then I could just put that money into the system. Eg, I pay $5/m or $15/m

Yea, I'd be happier if there was some notion of an inherent value in my eyeballs - and then I could just put that money into the system. Eg, I pay $5/m or $15/m, whatever, and that gets split up by the number of pages I view and content I consume. I'm a firm believer that FOSS and (Internet) Content needs funding. Yet, I loathe ads. They promote (but are not solely to blame for) behavior that is a brain drain on society. Ads always seem to boil down to 90s style child cereal commercials. Loud noises and flashy attention grabbing tactics to pull you towards it within a tiny, limited window of bought attention. I'm not convinced society is better because of ads. The dystopian movies with neons signs everywhere seem shockingly accurate (and I believe are already like that in many eastern cities). I like some of Brave's attempt. At least their doing something. But Ads still seem wrong to me.

jaywalk 7y ago
You can buy BAT with a credit card and participate in Brave's system without ever seeing an ad.
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  I don't understand, why would I spend money on something I don't want or care about?
  - jaywalk 7y ago
    The comment I replied to said: > Eg, I pay $5/m or $15/m, whatever, and that gets split up by the number of pages I view and content I consume. That's 100% possible to do with Brave's system.
    - kxrm 7y ago
      My only issue with this, if I understand correctly, is that I must use BAT currency.
      - naasking 7y ago
        If I understand correctly, you don't actually use BAT, it gets consumed as you browse. You would just top it up like a pay as you go phone if you want an ad-free browsing experience, or you can generate BAT by enabling ads at a configurable level if you don't mind them.
  - eropple 7y ago
    So I don't use Brave, but it certainly sounds as though by purchasing BAT (or you can receive them through enabling ads) those are then allocated to the content creators whose stuff you're choosing to consume. Which supposedly--this is the part of the scheme I am most skeptical about, because crypto markets are mostly just hilarioujs--allows them to turn BAT into actual money. Can you explain what exactly in this conversation you don't care about? Follow-up question, can you explain why you felt the need to air that don't-care-about-it without moving the conversation anywhere?
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    You are spending money on the creators of content you read, which theoretically you care about (not getting that vibe though.). It’s like supporting someone on Patreon but it’s a different take on direct support.
  - sliken 7y ago
    Do you hate click bait? Do you wish the "free" content was of higher quality? Do you think a insightful blog post, youtube video, or similar content is worth rewarding the person who made said content? Seems like the main evil of advertising is that it doesn't directly reward the maker of the content. Most of it is sucked up by the middle men who siphon off most of the money and force the content providers to work ever harder for their ever smaller fraction of the proceeds. Using brave seems much like using Patreon to sponsor your favorite content providers. But instead of trying to manually set a $ per month per provider you can just use your eyeball time to control each content providers share. Seems like the internet where brave (or similar) was popular would be a much nicer place than the current advertising. Wouldn't you be willing to pay $20 or similar a month if that meant zero ads for you and your favorite sites got more money than they get through advertising today?
harikb 7y ago
The reality is that your eyeballs are something like $200/month. You are just not likely to pay that money. When you factor in money thrown away at bot/fraud, advertisers spend a shit load of money just to reach you (and indirectly pays for a whole lot of entertainment tv-shows/web-content)
- asdkhadsj 7y ago
  Man that's rough. You're right, my content is way not worth that. It's odd to me though. I could pay for content I care about at an amount far smaller than $200/m, and the content creators would make more from me I imagine. Why the extreme overhead? There's no way some blogger is making $200/m off of a handful of clicks from me. I'd be shocked if they made $5/m directly from me. So where is the disconnect? (sidenote, i understand the $200/m figure was not for a single blogger. But, lets pretend that blogger was all of my traffic for the month. I still can't imagine it's even remotely close to $200/m)
  - freeone3000 7y ago
    Everybody at every step takes a bit of money. It funds a billion-dollar industry of parasites.
    - asdkhadsj 7y ago
      Agreed. Which is sort of why I asked that. The reply to me said it would be closer to $200/m. However, I was wanting to pay content creators, not parasites. So my comment was talking about paying content creators. I can't imagine they come anywhere close to $200/m from me, as you put it it's all the middlemen. So why would I be concerned about $200/m?
  - __jal 7y ago
    Google has a market cap of 894.52B at this point in time. For instance.
    - asdkhadsj 7y ago
lazzlazzlazz 7y ago
Quantifying your attention across specific sites and then rewarding them proportionately is precisely what Brave does. The reward distributed to them is paid by you. Your balance accumulates either through opting into ads (advertisers pay you to intrude), or you can buy Basic Attention Token yourself (like via Coinbase) and top up your wallet. Brave is doing exactly what it sounds like you want.
- mk89 7y ago
  It's very hard to quantify attention. And also, is that the most important? Quantifying a reward should not be given to an algorithm. That's the only reason why things like this[0] happen. For me the best way is either a Netflix style network (like safari books), or something like [1]. [0]: https://unhashed.com/cryptocurrency-news/are-fake-websites-abusing-braves-bat-reward-scheme/ https://unhashed.com/cryptocurrency-news/are-fake-websites-a... [1]: https://taler.net/en/ https://taler.net/en/
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Sounds like extortion to me
t34543 7y ago
Remember when the internet wasn’t a center of commerce? People posted websites and information for free because it was cool and noble. That’s the internet I love. The audacity of so many people who feel entitled to get paid makes me so sad. I adblock, strip affiliate links, etc. Ad revenue drives censorship. Dumbs people down, etc. The whole biz should burn down to the ground.
- anewguy9000 7y ago
  holy shit a hacker on hn. i was not sure there were any of us left
- mc32 7y ago
  Much of what you say rings true but ... I think without the incentive of monetization I don’t think we’d see as much good content in places like YouTube. On the other hand that same carrot brings a lot of baggage like: ads, and lots of crap (content farms and idiotic buzzfeed listicles and cat videos) some idiocy is okay, but we get flooded ...
- throwaway-hn123 7y ago
  Imagine being a dumb teen with the audacity to think people shouldn't earn money. People like you are vermin.
sjwright 7y ago
> I'd be happier if there was some notion of an inherent value in my eyeballs Your eyeballs only have value if they’re willing to look at things that other people are willing to pay to have you see. Thus ads.

jaywalk 7y ago

You can buy BAT with a credit card and participate in Brave's system without ever seeing an ad.

TurkishPoptart 7y ago
I don't understand, why would I spend money on something I don't want or care about?
- jaywalk 7y ago
  The comment I replied to said: > Eg, I pay $5/m or $15/m, whatever, and that gets split up by the number of pages I view and content I consume. That's 100% possible to do with Brave's system.
  - kxrm 7y ago
    My only issue with this, if I understand correctly, is that I must use BAT currency.
    - naasking 7y ago
      If I understand correctly, you don't actually use BAT, it gets consumed as you browse. You would just top it up like a pay as you go phone if you want an ad-free browsing experience, or you can generate BAT by enabling ads at a configurable level if you don't mind them.
- eropple 7y ago
  So I don't use Brave, but it certainly sounds as though by purchasing BAT (or you can receive them through enabling ads) those are then allocated to the content creators whose stuff you're choosing to consume. Which supposedly--this is the part of the scheme I am most skeptical about, because crypto markets are mostly just hilarioujs--allows them to turn BAT into actual money. Can you explain what exactly in this conversation you don't care about? Follow-up question, can you explain why you felt the need to air that don't-care-about-it without moving the conversation anywhere?
- 1123581321 7y ago
  You are spending money on the creators of content you read, which theoretically you care about (not getting that vibe though.). It’s like supporting someone on Patreon but it’s a different take on direct support.
- sliken 7y ago
  Do you hate click bait? Do you wish the "free" content was of higher quality? Do you think a insightful blog post, youtube video, or similar content is worth rewarding the person who made said content? Seems like the main evil of advertising is that it doesn't directly reward the maker of the content. Most of it is sucked up by the middle men who siphon off most of the money and force the content providers to work ever harder for their ever smaller fraction of the proceeds. Using brave seems much like using Patreon to sponsor your favorite content providers. But instead of trying to manually set a $ per month per provider you can just use your eyeball time to control each content providers share. Seems like the internet where brave (or similar) was popular would be a much nicer place than the current advertising. Wouldn't you be willing to pay $20 or similar a month if that meant zero ads for you and your favorite sites got more money than they get through advertising today?

harikb 7y ago

The reality is that your eyeballs are something like $200/month. You are just not likely to pay that money. When you factor in money thrown away at bot/fraud, advertisers spend a shit load of money just to reach you (and indirectly pays for a whole lot of entertainment tv-shows/web-content)

asdkhadsj 7y ago
Man that's rough. You're right, my content is way not worth that. It's odd to me though. I could pay for content I care about at an amount far smaller than $200/m, and the content creators would make more from me I imagine. Why the extreme overhead? There's no way some blogger is making $200/m off of a handful of clicks from me. I'd be shocked if they made $5/m directly from me. So where is the disconnect? (sidenote, i understand the $200/m figure was not for a single blogger. But, lets pretend that blogger was all of my traffic for the month. I still can't imagine it's even remotely close to $200/m)
- freeone3000 7y ago
  Everybody at every step takes a bit of money. It funds a billion-dollar industry of parasites.
  - asdkhadsj 7y ago
    Agreed. Which is sort of why I asked that. The reply to me said it would be closer to $200/m. However, I was wanting to pay content creators, not parasites. So my comment was talking about paying content creators. I can't imagine they come anywhere close to $200/m from me, as you put it it's all the middlemen. So why would I be concerned about $200/m?
- __jal 7y ago
  Google has a market cap of 894.52B at this point in time. For instance.
  - asdkhadsj 7y ago

lazzlazzlazz 7y ago

Quantifying your attention across specific sites and then rewarding them proportionately is precisely what Brave does. The reward distributed to them is paid by you. Your balance accumulates either through opting into ads (advertisers pay you to intrude), or you can buy Basic Attention Token yourself (like via Coinbase) and top up your wallet. Brave is doing exactly what it sounds like you want.

mk89 7y ago
It's very hard to quantify attention. And also, is that the most important? Quantifying a reward should not be given to an algorithm. That's the only reason why things like this[0] happen. For me the best way is either a Netflix style network (like safari books), or something like [1]. [0]: https://unhashed.com/cryptocurrency-news/are-fake-websites-abusing-braves-bat-reward-scheme/ https://unhashed.com/cryptocurrency-news/are-fake-websites-a... [1]: https://taler.net/en/ https://taler.net/en/

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Sounds like extortion to me

t34543 7y ago

Remember when the internet wasn’t a center of commerce? People posted websites and information for free because it was cool and noble. That’s the internet I love. The audacity of so many people who feel entitled to get paid makes me so sad. I adblock, strip affiliate links, etc. Ad revenue drives censorship. Dumbs people down, etc. The whole biz should burn down to the ground.

anewguy9000 7y ago
holy shit a hacker on hn. i was not sure there were any of us left
mc32 7y ago
Much of what you say rings true but ... I think without the incentive of monetization I don’t think we’d see as much good content in places like YouTube. On the other hand that same carrot brings a lot of baggage like: ads, and lots of crap (content farms and idiotic buzzfeed listicles and cat videos) some idiocy is okay, but we get flooded ...
throwaway-hn123 7y ago
Imagine being a dumb teen with the audacity to think people shouldn't earn money. People like you are vermin.

sjwright 7y ago

> I'd be happier if there was some notion of an inherent value in my eyeballs Your eyeballs only have value if they’re willing to look at things that other people are willing to pay to have you see. Thus ads.