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The crux of his justification for what he does is that, he argues, people wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee for services like youtube bundled with complete res

by beloch 5y ago

The crux of his justification for what he does is that, he argues, people wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee for services like youtube bundled with complete respect for their privacy. First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can pay for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing for your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium (if you're not already blocking ads). Second, The real benefit of ads is that it lets small sites that might get a single one-time visit from a user monetize that visit. A blog with a trending post is not going to be able to sell micro-subscriptions to one-time users, but they can get some ad revenue. The only current alternative here is begging for donations. That takes some effort and can piss off readers. Ironically, although Kaufman mentions that micropayments are hard, Google is one of the few companies currently situated to implement them in a way that would actually improve user privacy. e.g. If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off and replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits that are running Google Ads. Of course, it does seem a little bit like a mafia protection racket for a company devoted to invading user privacy and selling their data to turn around and offer to stop doing that if paid by users!

jefftk 5y ago
> If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off and replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits that are running Google Ads. It's not exactly what you're describing, but they've tried several (unsuccessful) approaches along these lines with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor (speaking only for myself)
mssundaram 5y ago
> If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off That would be horrible! Data collection and sharing should be off by default, and I never want to see a "Premium Internet" experience.
summerlight 5y ago
> First, users do not currently have that choice. Have you thought about the possibility that there actually was a choice and it just miserably failed. Or we can call it a "natural selection". One example would be https://contributor.google.com/ https://contributor.google.com/, which never has gained enough traction since publishers don't like it. This is simply a hard problem. You can build another big tech if you can provide a meaningful, scalable alternative.
joefkelley 5y ago
> If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium Really? I have youtube premium and I can't recall seeing ads for it. Why would they advertise a product to people that already have that product? > Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off and replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits that are running Google Ads. FWIW, this flag already exists, except you don't have to do micropayments: https://adssettings.google.com/ https://adssettings.google.com/ I guess you still see ads with this setting, they're just not personalized. Hypothetically you could imagine a "stronger" setting that doesn't just do away with personalization, it does away with ads altogether by allowing the user to "outbid" any advertiser. But I suspect there will be some surprised users who get a bill for hundreds of dollars by doing some particularly high-value searches like "personal injury lawyer" or "mortgage" or something. And if it were a flat rate, my intuition is that the fee would have to be much higher than most would expect or be willing to pay.
- jefftk 5y ago
  > Hypothetically you could imagine a "stronger" setting that doesn't just do away with personalization, it does away with ads altogether by allowing the user to "outbid" any advertiser. Google built this, it was called Contributor, and it wasn't very popular.
robbrown451 5y ago
"First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can pay for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing for your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium (if you're not already blocking ads)." This doesn't make sense. I mean, you might see ads for YouTube premium on other sites, but you aren't seeing them on YouTube. You're paying to remove ads on YouTube, not the whole web. (Nor does it prevent people from stalking you IRL)

by beloch 5y ago

jefftk 5y ago

> If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off and replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits that are running Google Ads. It's not exactly what you're describing, but they've tried several (unsuccessful) approaches along these lines with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor (speaking only for myself)

mssundaram 5y ago

> If a user paid a "Premium Internet" monthly fee, Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off That would be horrible! Data collection and sharing should be off by default, and I never want to see a "Premium Internet" experience.

summerlight 5y ago

> First, users do not currently have that choice. Have you thought about the possibility that there actually was a choice and it just miserably failed. Or we can call it a "natural selection". One example would be https://contributor.google.com/ https://contributor.google.com/, which never has gained enough traction since publishers don't like it. This is simply a hard problem. You can build another big tech if you can provide a meaningful, scalable alternative.

joefkelley 5y ago

> If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium Really? I have youtube premium and I can't recall seeing ads for it. Why would they advertise a product to people that already have that product? > Google Ads could have a flag that turns it's data collection/sharing off and replaces it with micropayments to any site that user visits that are running Google Ads. FWIW, this flag already exists, except you don't have to do micropayments: https://adssettings.google.com/ https://adssettings.google.com/ I guess you still see ads with this setting, they're just not personalized. Hypothetically you could imagine a "stronger" setting that doesn't just do away with personalization, it does away with ads altogether by allowing the user to "outbid" any advertiser. But I suspect there will be some surprised users who get a bill for hundreds of dollars by doing some particularly high-value searches like "personal injury lawyer" or "mortgage" or something. And if it were a flat rate, my intuition is that the fee would have to be much higher than most would expect or be willing to pay.

jefftk 5y ago
> Hypothetically you could imagine a "stronger" setting that doesn't just do away with personalization, it does away with ads altogether by allowing the user to "outbid" any advertiser. Google built this, it was called Contributor, and it wasn't very popular.

robbrown451 5y ago

"First, users do not currently have that choice. Sure, you can pay for some things (e.g. youtube premium), but it does nothing for your privacy. If you buy youtube premium you'll very likely see more ads for youtube premium (if you're not already blocking ads)." This doesn't make sense. I mean, you might see ads for YouTube premium on other sites, but you aren't seeing them on YouTube. You're paying to remove ads on YouTube, not the whole web. (Nor does it prevent people from stalking you IRL)