
100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web - lftherios
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/100-million-investment-reshape-economics-web/
======
dangrossman
None of these web monetization efforts address the fact that the pool of [all
consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small
fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]. No
matter how much you reduce the friction for having people make small tips to
websites, there's just significantly less money to go around, so it can never
replace advertising revenue. The only way that would change is if online
advertising went away overnight, and instead of companies redirecting that to
other forms of advertising, the prices of all consumer goods went down so it
stayed in our collective pockets.

~~~
Retric
Alternatively if advertising became significantly less effective companies
would spend less money on it. That's the upside of Ad-blocking which could
theoretically make a huge impact.

~~~
kjeetgill
I'm not sure where you got this idea.

Ad-blocking might hurt in some future with hypothetically high enough
percentages of traffic.

Right now they make ads more effective (marginally). By self selection, a
population with relatively low click-rates has removed themselves from having
any money spent on them. This helps Google and Advertisers since right now,
the volume of available impressions is plenty high, the name of the game is
targeting better.

If anything, ad blockers just hurt select publishers who can potentially see a
large volume of their potential ad traffic blocked.

~~~
danShumway
This sounds completely reasonable to me, and I don't know where it's wrong,
but it doesn't square with my experience and I think it's wrong.

If this were true, nobody would be getting mad about ad blockers. But both
advertisers and publishers (big and small) regularly complain about ad
blockers, and even with a relatively small portion of users installing a
blocker, multiple journalism sites have started adding paywalls. This paranoia
isn't restricted to small sites either -- Google's even listed ad blockers as
a potential revenue problem in investor disclosures.

A couple of potential causes: maybe it's that impressions actually do matter
to revenue in some cases and we haven't completely moved over to conversions
yet, or maybe it's that advertising increases consumer spending even without
direct conversion rates, or that most publishers are engaged in fraud and ad-
blockers make it harder to do that. It might even just be that
publishers/advertisers are all stupid and haven't realized that ad blockers
don't matter, but I think that's unlikely.

What seems plausible to me is that most of the people who block ads are not as
immune to advertising as they claim. If they didn't block ads, they would
occasionally click on an ad and provide a conversion. I would not be surprised
to see that exposure to advertising increased overall spending, and didn't
just redirect it to specific companies. I could be wrong though, maybe it's
something else. I'd be interested to see research on that kind of thing.

Regardless, it is very difficult for me to square the world you describe with
a world where a huge fraction of news sites I visit are including banners that
tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright, or are
just giving up and switching to subscription models. I can't think of an
explanation for that other than, "ad blockers decrease revenue", and I think
that having an explanation for that behavior is a prerequisite to making a
believable claim that ad blockers aren't hurting revenue right now.

I mean, Google's not dumb. They would not have wasted time on the acceptable
ads initiative if they didn't feel like they needed to.

~~~
kjeetgill
Publishers definitely get hurt hardest because volume and quality of traffic
is more important for them, less so for exchanges. They're the ones who are
the "huge fraction of news sites [you] visit [that are] including banners that
tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright".

> maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and
> we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that
> advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion
> rates,

I mean you're right. Branding campaign spend just wants to eat up impressions
and don't care much for click or actions. They're a large amount of $$ spent,
but they also benefit the least from tracking so they can basically be shown
to anyone. Tons of available inventory for them. But there's tons of money in
more targeted CPA, CPC ads too.

Disclaimer: I mostly knew things from the RTB angle maybe 3 years ago. I may
be out of date with where things are at.

------
FreeHugs
It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet.

A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an
article.

That would make the world so much better for indie developers.

Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then
Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology
and ecosystem that indie devs don't have. If users would pay directly, that
would change.

~~~
greycrasan
Unfortunately the service that is free will always be more popular and
ultimately win over more users. People have decided that paying with their
privacy is better for them. I really wish paying 10 cents to use the service
was the norm, but alas I doubt it will ever happen.

~~~
toast0
I suspect you're right that people will strongly prefer free over paid, but
it's hard to know how many people would pay ten cents for something, because
it's not feasible to charge that little. Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5%
+ five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe
$0.0045. Plus, you have to do all the billing infrastructure etc.

The economics would be better with a stored balance system, but those are
sketchy --- you'd need the balance holder to be someone you trust already; or
a credit system where you pay once you've accrued enough content debt to make
billing worthwhile, but that's going to be totally scammed.

~~~
aesthesia
"Free" is also a very psychologically special price. Micropayments would make
it easier to get over the energy barrier to paying for something, but it's
still there. Laboratory experiments (and real-world experience) show that
people value the difference between a price of 1 cent and 0 cents much more
than the difference between 1 cent and 2 cents.

~~~
cameronbrown
Which is why spreading £10 over thousands of websites is much easier to sell
than £0.01 per article. With the later model people become paralised with
choice, and the former model has been successful as the backbone for SMS/data
infrastructure almost everywhere.

~~~
sgc
It would be nice if there were a reciprocal subscription model. All
subscribers to the NYT can also view articles of the LA Times or some other
site, but reciprocal logins are tracked and funds are divided accordingly.
That way, with some limits, each site could set their price, offer the bonus
of visiting other sites, and there would not be the huge barrier to entry of
requiring a massive player to aggregate things and wield power over publishers
they don't want to accept. It's basically the model of reciprocal agreements
used by the postal services around the world.

~~~
rswail
It's also the model of internet peering, but it requires an even exchange
otherwise the imbalances lead to failure.

As an example, the current dispute where the US is leaving the Universal
Postal Union (a month from today) because the exchange is unbalanced due to
e-commerce from/to China.

------
jsnell
Halfway through reading this, the site suddenly covered half the screen with a
"donate to Mozilla" banner. The case for "reshaping the economics of the web"
would have been a bit more compelling without that...

(My problem isn't about asking for donations. It's about asking for them in a
particularly user-hostile way. If the call to action at the bottom isn't
enough, work it into the text.)

~~~
sp332
Super ironic too, considering they are working on blocking in-page JS popups
like this and there's an addon to report them.
[https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter](https://github.com/ehsan/popup-
reporter)

~~~
carapace
Also ironic asking for donations on a post about giving away $100,000,000.

~~~
reubenmorais
The funding comes from Coil.

------
manigandham
There's nothing new here. Micropayments have been tried countless times. We
did it ourselves and came to the same conclusions that people just don't value
content highly nor want to pay for it at any sustainable rate. [1]

Advertising is faster, easier, more passive, and more egalitarian than direct
payments. Many people you might not consider (like billions around the world)
are happy to view ads in exchange for free content and services they couldn't
otherwise afford. Also payments just means you work, earn cash, then pay. Ads
are on-demand cash generation that uses your attention in real-time to pay
exactly when and where you need it.

Privacy is also much more nuanced than these extremes. Most people are clearly
comfortable sharing a lot about themselves on social media. Transparency and
control is a far more important and productive goal than fighting over whether
anyone or noone can use data.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038820)

~~~
udkl
Why wouldn't these two approached work in parallel ? An ad-free experience for
those willing to pay and an ad supported one for those who don't.

I'm sure there are nuances like the politics you mention in your linked
comment. Just curious why.

~~~
satyrnein
Companies don't want to advertise to the people with no money.

~~~
udkl
That's an astute observation, however I doubt it's valid. Not paying a monthly
subscription wouldn't indicate poverty. It might just be these people are
subscription averse... or they are used to ad supported free content and don't
want to pay...

------
donohoe
Forget micro-payments. Ban web advertising at the browser level. Create a
browser that thoroughly and intentionally integrates ad blocking and has a
statements of how it renders HTML with UX constraints (think Google AMP but
actually good).

What happens?

Most content sources dry-up and stop. I no longer see that as a bad thing.

Out every every 100 content mills that are re-aggregating and summarizing
someone else's original reporting you can wipe off 90 of them and still be
fine.

Those that have a foot-hold, brand, or better reach survive through affiliate
marketing (see WireCutter), donations, or subscriptions (NYT, WaPo, etc.)

I'm not saying there won't be casualties in this approach but you lose the
alt-right and other reality-bending publishers pretty quickly.

~~~
kbenson
> What happens?

What happens if you do that without enough market share is that the browser
gets detected and banned/redirected with a message about it being hostile to
the people making the content. To some degree, they would be correct.

If chrome, Firefox and Safari all did that all at once, many web properties
would go under before the dust settled. It would probably cause a recession
with how many people it affected, if not an outright depression, as it
reverberated throughout the economy.

There's a reason some things happen slowly, and why puahback against the
better future isn't always a bad thing. Too much change all at once is far
more destructive overall than if spread out over time (for the exact same
reason having two cars need major repairs the same month can put a family in
dire straits).

~~~
donohoe
All very good points and you could have a detailed discussion on many of them.

I still think that this is a situation where the bandaid/knife needs to be
pulled off quickly. Chrome will never go that path voluntarily but you could
push Safari and Firefox to do so (unlikely).

I've worked with publishers big and small and I know where this would hurt the
most with smaller sites shuttering.

That said, after working in advertising for over a decade its clear to me that
it is manipulative, abused, and ultimately harmful and directly/indirectly
funding several hateful voices that have influence on the world.

------
mizay7
I dont really know how to change the economics of the web without changing the
laws around financial transactions. The various anti money laundering laws and
anti terrorism laws make it basically impossible to transact money without
significant compliance costs. And if the transactions are to be small and
decentralized those compliance costs become prohibitive.

~~~
manigandham
The current answer is to bundle. Use a subscription for content that is then
split across sites/content by time/attention/some other measure.

However the problem then becomes which bundles you subscribe to, and that can
easily cause fatigue and a race to the bottom as seen by all the current video
streaming services now. Even worse, none of it has proven completely
profitable or sustainable either.

------
maerF0x0
I used to use flattr and thought the concept was sound. Until I saw that most
of the creators I wanted to sponsor never bothered to sign up and collect
their money.

Anyone else have experience with flattr or similar alternatives?

I figure with all the "block chain" interest we'd have seen something built on
a cryptocurrency allowing "direct" microdonations to a website's "wallet"

EDIT: looks like coil is kinda of like flattr

~~~
sp332
Readability tried something like this. Readers liked it a lot more than
publishers did.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120702145822/http://blog.reada...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120702145822/http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105891)

~~~
zem
this comment was telling:

Keith Calder June 13, 2012 • 10:41 am

I considered signing up for the Readability Publisher Program. Then I read the
Terms of Service (amusingly I just read it yesterday, so this is all fresh in
my mind). There is no way in hell I could agree to those terms. It basically
gives Readability the right to do whatever they want with my content (which
they were already doing, even without my permission) and I would have to limit
any liability Readability might have for doing whatever they want with my
content.

Some gems from the Readability Publisher Program Terms of Service.

You shall not “modify, translate, or otherwise create derivative works of any
part of the Readability Service”

You know, the exact thing Readability does with my content. Or are we
pretending that Readlists aren’t a derivative work?

“You agree to hold Readability, its directors, officers and employees,
harmless, including costs and attorneys’ fees, from any claim of copyright
infringement or intellectual property misappropriation related to ANY WEB
pages or articles sent THROUGH or processed through the Readability Service,
the Readability website (readability.com) or through the Readability API.”

So basically if I sign up to collect money from Readability, I have to hold
them harmless for ANY copyright infringement on ANY web page or article I have
authored that is sent through the Readability Service. So if I wrote an
article that is behind a pay-wall, and someone figures out a way to add that
to a ReadList… Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, unless Readability
decides to be nice to me and remove the article. But they’re under no
obligation to do that. They could just choose to let people freely
redistribute my content against my wishes because I signed up for their
Publisher Program to collect money they decided to collect on my behalf.

And just to add insult to injury…

“The Readability Service are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws
of both the United States and foreign countries. Nothing in the Terms gives
you a right to use the Readability name or any of the Readability trademarks,
logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features.”

Nice to know that Readability is protected by copyright and trademark laws
that apparently don’t protect any of my content.

So yeah. Good riddance to the Readability “publisher payment plan.” I look
forward to the other exciting ways Readability will help great content
flourish online.

~~~
nine_k
Remember when people thought that selling unprotected mp3 files is crazy, and
everyone woulDD just pirate them?

Well, yes, some do, and will do.

But in most cases buying is much less hassle, and costs very little, so there
is no point to pirate just from the _convenience_ point of view.

We need Spotify and Bandcamp for texts, with fast and frictionless payment,
cheaply operated.

------
Kiro
I liked Coinhive but despised that 99% used it for malevolent things. I do
like the idea of letting my computer do some proof of work for a few seconds
to unlock an article. It's like doing a micro payment with your electricity
bill, anonymously and without any setup.

~~~
JoshTriplett
In any world in which work that a browser can do in a few seconds will make
any appreciable amount of money, someone can make _more_ money by throwing a
server or GPU or dedicated hardware at it, and the browser's few seconds of
work stops having value.

~~~
Kiro
Coinhive mined Monero, which is ASIC resistant and where GPUs are only twice
as efficient than CPUs. It's suited for browser mining. The browser shot the
calculated hashes into a pool so it's not really about one browser vs.
dedicated hardware. It's about a large quantity of browsers doing the work in
parallel.

------
z3t4
Here I thought Mozilla had made it possible to do micro transactions in the
browser. That Mozilla had started a bank backed by 100 million in Bitcoin,
allowing zero-fee off-chain transactions between content creators and
consumers.

~~~
Sabinus
Imagine.

------
thisisitnownow
I don't understand why Mozilla doesn't implement a native web3 wallet directly
in Firefox. This would help onboard people more easily to Ethereum & EVM-
compatible decentralized networks. People wouldn't have to install MetaMask or
download another desktop wallet/browser app.

~~~
matdehaast
And then the lightning crowd would ask why did you not implement their
wallet... Or say I want to do payments on the web using my creditcard,paypal.
You need to have something built into the browser that allows transfer of
value be agnostic to underlying ledger

------
marknadal
Congrats Stefan & team!!!

Very curious to see how this will shape up.

Would you say this directly competes with Brendan Eich's BAT token in Brave?
Yes/no? How so?

I've also been working on figuring out some mathematical models for
economically evaluating digital goods (intro here
[https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-
ce8acd7...](https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd785441)
), would love to discuss various web/open-source centric economics ideas with
people!

------
peterwwillis
So, if I read this right, they want privacy-focused tech hipsters to vie for
$20M a year to create open source fintech startups that will beat global banks
and payment companies on transfer fees while simultaneously improving all
social classes' access to the internet.

Here's my solution: chargebacks. You surf a site, and see a preview of some
content. To get the full content, you click "buy", and the site communicates
with your own preferred online payment processor (OPP) to confirm a payment.
The OPP checks your balance and replies if you have the balance requested, and
the site then serves up your content. At the end of the month the OPP settles
up with each site for what's owed. If you want to get fancy you can implement
a whole rules engine so each site can set up subscriptions for users so users
can limit how much each site can charge them. You support multiple
subscription models so users can pay by a monthly contract or per-click. If
everyone keeps their money in the OPPs (ala Paypal) the OPPs end up making
tons of money by investing the balance that hasn't been transferred out yet.

Once this is implemented, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft will become the
default OPP, because they still control all the platforms. Hooray open
standards.

------
issa
To all the people saying some variant of "there's nothing new here", I think
you are missing it: Tipping has always been an effort. If it all happened
behind the scenes, with no action required on your part (beyond just browsing
to a site), then "tipping" can viably compete with ads.

------
airnomad
They would do better if they spent 100M on ads to promote Firefox downloads.

Privacy is a lost cause. Sure, you'll probably get anonymity ie. your PII are
gonna be scrambled, but all our activities are gonna be streamed to AI engines
for commercial and entertainment purpose.

And people are generally okay with that because said engines are producing a
lot of value in terms of targeted ads, better suggestions etc.

What's going on at the moment is that governments are feeling left out because
they wouldn't mind running their own AI engines to shape public discourse and
opinions.

But the trouble is - they don't have data. The big tech has data so I believe
fight for data access is underlying reason for anti big tech momentum building
up over the past few years.

------
makecheck
Instead of having payment systems that seem to go out of their way to make it
inconvenient to pay, there should be a small number of very well defined
friction points (such as: “maximum daily expenditure”) with literally zero
friction _anywhere else_.

By now for instance we should really have a security technology that allows
anyone to spend $5 a day _any way they want_ , in any denomination (e.g.
literally 2 cents here and 2 cents there), without having to go through
ridiculous virtual-cash systems, cards and other hoops. The money should
simply be there, and it should be able to go anywhere. If it’s a relatively
small amount, it doesn’t require a lot of gate-keeping, e.g. you do _not_ need
a customer-refunds infrastructure or fraud protection scheme for pennies. The
money can then either reset automatically, e.g. each day, or after some
explicit more-secure action, e.g. you log in to something with your face.

I know that it would personally make me spend a lot more if a lot of
transactions could “just happen”. Once I got a tap-here-and-pay watch, I spent
more. Once I could shop online with a fingerprint, I actually did shop online.
When I had to type in credit card details though, I hardly ever wanted to.
When “fees” would appear as part of seemingly-small transactions, I hardly
ever wanted to continue. Some things just sound like scams (don’t get me
started on subscriptions), making me more likely to find an exit.

------
dvt
Having worked in ad-tech for much of the past decade, I don't really like the
idea of ads, but the reality is that advertising is much too effective to
simply "go away." The article also conflates "advertising" with "data mining"
\-- the former is relatively benign; the latter not so much. The effectiveness
of Facebook and Google ads are mainly due to (for the most part) information
that was voluntarily handed over (likes, search history, etc.), not some evil
rootkit.

And even though it sounds like a lot, 100 million dollars is a drop in the
bucket. Consider that the top YouTubers make around ~$20M a year (this money
comes largely via advertising). So your fund would barely cover the top 5.
Also, the idea of lowering "the administrative costs of receiving payment for
web content" seems kind at odds with a bureaucratic "Advisory Council
initially made up of representatives from Coil, Mozilla, and Creative
Commons."

I dunno', to me it just seems like posturing. No real solution offered, just
some wishy-washy "feel good" proposals. At least Brave (which is my daily
driver) took a hard stance against ads and blocks just about everything, while
Mozilla just _talks_ a good game[1].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480?lang=en)

~~~
skybrian
It seems like a good chunk of money to help startups get started?

If a payment system can't make money or raise more funds, they're probably not
getting anywhere.

------
pjzedalis
Advertising is opt-out. Every idea centered around tipping, micro-
transactions, cryptocurrency are opt-in. I don't think most content creators
are willing to make that jump.

------
longears
I know credit card processors are hostile to "adult content", but as a human
being with a sexuality that's part of who I am, I'm saddened that even
"literature" related to sexuality is banned.

The grant says it's seeking "makers of all stripes: webdevs, game developers,
bloggers, photographers, musicians, journalists, filmmakers, writers,
podcasters, software developers, and more"[1]

But Coil forbids "Pornography and other obscene materials (including
literature, imagery and other media) depicting nudity or explicitly sexual
acts; sites offering any sexually-related services such as prostitution,
escorts, adult pay-per view, adult live chat features; sexually oriented items
(e.g., adult toys); adult video stores and sexually oriented massage parlors;
gentleman’s clubs, topless bars, and strip clubs; and sexually oriented dating
services."[2]

[1] [https://www.grantfortheweb.org/](https://www.grantfortheweb.org/) [2]
[https://coil.com/terms](https://coil.com/terms)

------
xvilka
They could help also to build/improve the OpenCollective[1] that is a
completely free and open-source[2] alternative to Patreon, aiming mostly for
the open-source projects.

[1] [https://opencollective.com/](https://opencollective.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/opencollective/](https://github.com/opencollective/)

~~~
Rafuino
Perhaps this project will receive a grant then to help it improve?

------
zallarak
Interesting that Ripple affiliates are sponsoring this.

~~~
fastball
Ripple is sponsoring this.

They gave ~$250m (in XRP) to Coil[0]. Coil is now giving $100m to people to
monetize the web.

Gotta do something with that sweet, sweet ICO money.

[0] [https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-is-giving-away-1-billion-
xrp...](https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-is-giving-away-1-billion-xrp-in-
massive-bid-to-fund-online-content)

------
networkimprov
The FAQ:
[https://www.grantfortheweb.org/faq](https://www.grantfortheweb.org/faq)

------
VikingCoder
Is this right?

[https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/)

It lists Coil as a provider.

------
mcv
Here's an idea that just came to me. Feel free to shoot holes in it. It's
based on my assumption that users do prefer things without ads, and might want
to pay for it.

So how about a search engine where, if you pay for it, it ranks sites without
ads at the top. And if you click a link to an ad-less site, that site gets
some of the money you paid to the search engine.

Maybe combine it with a social network that works a similar way, though that's
harder to do because you don't control what people share.

The major downside is that there would be a central place (the search engine)
where the money gets distributed. It would be better to have something non-
centralised. Still, I might use a search engine like that.

~~~
jamesrcole
A major question, for me, is: how does it get started? What would motivate
someone to create a website without ads, for the purposes of what you're
suggesting, when the scheme is in its infancy? What would motivate a website
to remove ads, when the scheme is in its infancy?

~~~
mcv
Plenty of websites already have no ads. Wikipedia, for example. Many blogs
too.

But even with ads, you'll still be listed. But ad-free sites get a higher
ranking, making that a more viable decision for some.

~~~
jamesrcole
That doesn't matter unless the existing pool of ad-free sites can supply good
results for a reasonable proportion of the actual web searches being
performed. I doubt very much it can.

For the idea to work it'd mean that there'd b incentive to have a website on a
particular topic be ad-free vs ad-based competitors. How does _that incentive_
start in the first place?

~~~
mcv
It probably shouldn't put all ad-free sites above all ad-laden sites, but some
preferential treatment would be nice. But there are already plenty of ad-free
sites that have tons of useful information. I wouldn't mind seeing them ranked
higher.

------
philipps
I can’t help but think that this is an example of jumping to the wrong
solution too quickly. Is the problem that the web doesn’t contain as much
high-quality content anymore as before; or that independent content providers
are having a hard time making a living. I don’t enjoy the web as much as I
used to, but I am pretty sure that in the early days almost nobody was making
money off the content they created. So maybe the problem is discoverability
rather than compensation. It would be helpful to see a little more of the
analysis that Mozilla has done to define the problem.

------
buboard
Want to help publishers? Fund a competitor to google that either doesnt track
users, or does it in an ethical way. With monopolistic google disappointing
both advertisers and publishers by raising prices and keeping most of the
profit, there is an opportunity in the market that wasn't there 10 years ago
when most of their competitors gave up.

Non-ad monetization models are not hindered by lack of investment or ideas,
they are hindered by REGULATION. The best ideas are impossible to do with
today's regulatory and fee structures, and publishers in particular cannot
escape that.

~~~
diffeomorphism
Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that?

Bing, with all the money and power of MS behind it, has about 5% market share.
Yahoo has about 2% market share. Baidu has about 15% but also total assets of
40 Billion US Dollars.

> The best ideas

What are those?

~~~
buboard
> Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that?

I think money is not the biggest hurdle. The problem with most ad networks is
they copy google: most of the adsense alternatives for example are simply
googles's ad partners that use google's ad exchanges. I think the ad space
instead needs a "stripe for ads", a company that will quickly catch up with
what publishers want, create solutions and push advertisers to use them.

The alternative ideas include anonymous micropauyments.

------
frogpelt
I wonder if a Spotify for the Internet would work.

Pay a monthly access fee and have micro payments go to the creators based on
usage.

Mozilla would be in a good position to introduce that type of service and
track consumption.

~~~
olah_1
> Pay a monthly access fee and have micro payments go to the creators based on
> usage.

That's exactly how Brave Browser works.

------
trust07007707
I see the following models of monetizing content on the web:

1\. Gift economy (you give it away, take likes) 2\. Goods and Service economy
(you charge for it, sufficiently to make a living) 3\. Advertising economy
(many people want it but not many willing to pay for it) 4\. Tipping (not a
viable economic model, unless it's made compulsory and a minimum is set in
which case it's not tipping)

1 & 2 have been with us since the dawn of human civilization.

3 is a modern invention and to many it is a failed experiment.

Just observations, no answers

~~~
manigandham
What makes advertising a failed experiment exactly?

It's currently the only sustaining model for 95% of digital content and has
created at least one trillion dollar corporation. That's the opposite of
failure.

------
richardw
One good thing about advertising is that it allows the poorest free access to
most content. Hopefully these initiatives will keep that.

------
MisterBastahrd
Trying to divorce publishing from advertising is like trying to divorce
brewing from yeast. The only people who don't understand this are people who
have never been in the publishing business.

------
carapace
If you think about this as a marketing campaign for Coil then it seems to me
to be brilliantly enlightened. I mean that sincerely, no sarcasm.

------
troydavis
Here's how Coil ended up with $100 million to fund this grant
([https://fortune.com/2019/09/16/grant-for-the-web-mozilla-
coi...](https://fortune.com/2019/09/16/grant-for-the-web-mozilla-coil)):

> As for the source of the $100 million that will fund the project, Thomas
> said it came via a grant to Coil from Ripple, and that in some cases, the
> project will use XRP—the cryptocurrency that is an integral part of Ripple's
> operations—to settle financial transactions.

… and here's why Ripple made the original (~$265 million USD) grant to Coil
([https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ripples-xpring-
make...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ripples-xpring-
makes-1-billion-xrp-grant-to-drive-xrp-adoption-and-advance-coils-monetized-
platform-for-creators-300902194.html)) in August 2019:

> Coil, a platform dedicated to reimagining monetization on the web for
> creators and their fans, today announced a 1 billion XRP grant from Ripple's
> Xpring. The money will be deployed towards driving adoption of XRP and the
> Interledger Protocol (ILP) by growing Coil's monetization platform through
> mainstream adoption of Web Monetization, an open web standard built on
> Interledger that enables streaming micropayments in any currency, including
> XRP.

> …

> The platform enables creators to post public and exclusive content on Coil,
> which is automatically enabled for streaming payments. Creators can web-
> monetize their own websites by adding a simple tag. Those who want to
> support creators using Coil can join the community with a $5 monthly
> subscription. There are no membership fees for creators.

In May 2018, the first of several lawsuits was filed that allege XRP is a
security: [https://www.coindesk.com/investors-suing-ripple-cite-sec-
gui...](https://www.coindesk.com/investors-suing-ripple-cite-sec-guidance-to-
argue-xrp-is-a-security). They're seeking class-action status to represent
everyone who bought XRP. Matt Levine briefly mentioned Ripple while covering
the broader question of how the SEC would classify coins:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-15/the-
se...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-15/the-sec-will-
leave-good-icos-alone).

Obviously Ripple is inherently motivated to see XRP adopted, but also, an
active micropayment/content payment ecosystem might strengthen their claim
that XRP is a utility coin and that their ICO wasn't an unregistered
securities offering. Some background on this question:
[https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-
clayton-...](https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-
clayton-2017-12-11)

Here's what that lawsuit alleges ([http://static.coindesk.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/08/716bee...](http://static.coindesk.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/08/716bee37-e45e-41d2-a4e1-2d966015a277.pdf), as amended
Aug 2019):

> Ripple claims that XRP has utility—like currency—in its use as a “bridge
> currency” for international payments. But, as discussed above, more than 60
> percent of XRP is owned by Ripple and none of that XRP is used for anything
> at all, other than to be sold in the future to investors. Moreover, as for
> the XRP that was already sold or otherwise distributed by Defendants, the
> vast majority of it is not used for bridging international transactions, but
> for investment purpose. Accordingly, Defendants’ claim that XRP has a
> utilitarian purpose is nothing but a red herring attempt to avoid the
> application of securities laws.

~~~
noxer
Ripple never had an ICO - check your facts

Ripple doesn't hold 60% they hold 50%

The purpose of the 50% they still hold is public know since the very first
days. They SHOULD use it to push the adoption of the XRP Ledger. Period.
People hate Ripple for selling/donating their XRPs, funding great stuff like
Coil with it that obviously somehow uses XRP but that is exactly what they
HAVE to do. Heck the whole company was made for that. The XRPL devs made a
better Bitcoin and wanted it to be used. How evil from them. /s

The whole security thing is nonsense. Someone bought XRP high and sold low got
made and sued. Pathetic. He didn't even bought them from Ripple.

~~~
troydavis
I’m not and don’t claim to be an expert. That’s one reason I don’t have (and
didn’t give) an opinion about the lawsuit.

Regarding the lack of an ICO, you’re correct. Others have called XRP a
perpetual coin offering[1] since Ripple clearly raised money from investors,
but you’re correct that’s not an ICO by name.

The rest of my comment was just direct citations, so direct your sarcasm at
them.

[1]: “Ripple Hit With Class-Action Suit Over ‘Never Ending ICO’”:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-04/ripple-
hi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-04/ripple-hit-with-
class-action-suit-over-never-ending-ico)

------
baud147258
Couldn't have they used that money to make Firefox consume less battery on
mobile? At least on par with Chrome?

~~~
qnsi
Funded by coil

~~~
baud147258
It's true that the money is not coming from the Mozilla Foundation, but as
Coil is trusting the foundation with 100 M$ to make good use, the foundation
could have asked 'hey, how about some money (from the 100 M$ or not) for our
software, since it's what we are primarily known for?'

~~~
baud147258
> since it's what we are primarily known for?

'And because without the browser, we'd just be an advocacy group'

------
jmlon
Great program, I hope it will help overcome the huge problems we know the
current "centralized" model has.

------
jriri99
Teach parents to teach their kids to foster connections across the globe
outside official channels like school which are heavily curated.

Changing economics for us, in our lifetime is a lost cause. Our limbic systems
are wired with the emotional bindings of our childhood. It’s hard to let go.

Teach kids to work together directly from as early as possible. Cut out Wall
Street middle men and political grifters.

------
dannyw
Coil is a company that has raised 269M. And they're spending 100M of this on a
grant?

------
Causality1
This feels like spending a hundred million dollars to recreate Beenz.

------
m-i-l
Back in the early days of the internet I used to believe that monetization, or
micropayments, was one of the key unsolved problems. Now I'm starting to
wonder if it _is_ the problem, that monetization is the root of all evil on
the internet, such as advertising and limbic capitalism, social media and
surveillance capitalism, the spammers and scammers and cryptocurrency pyramid
schemes, the re-intermediation of new monopolies, and so on. Maybe it would be
better if people were still working on free content for love not for money,
and/or working on sites and apps that provide a useful service in return for a
simple subscription or fee.

------
hartator
Isn't Mozilla already a non-profit to build a better browser? Shouldn't they
focus on that or reduce in-browser ads if they have too much cash?

~~~
detaro
> _Isn 't Mozilla already a non-profit to build a better browser_

No. Building a browser is one of the things they do to work for their goals,
but is not their mission statement.

------
whsheet
Mozilla is master of content marketing, PR and creating buzz. If they just
spent their energy into building the best browser.

------
cookie_monsta
Some seriously over-engineered solutions being offered in this thread, which I
guess is understandable considering the cohort. And I'm glad that people
smarter than me are looking at this from every angle. But here are the things
that I know/feel to be true:

1) Back when advertising subsidised content was a straight up proposition
nobody really minded about ads outside of finding them mildly annoying. It's
how the most popular pre-internet content (privately owned free to air TV and
newspapers/magazines) survived and flourished.

2) What most irks people about the current ad-tech based business model isn't
the advertising, it's the data mining behind it.

3) Lots of people don't even care about data mining as long as they get what
they need instantly, easily and for free.

4) The big ad-tech players' emergence and dominance after the bursting of the
early 2000s dotcom bubble is widely attributed to their mastery of ad-tech
whereas it seems to be that consolidation and concentration were much larger
factors.

5) Ad-tech enabled targeted advertising isn't that much more effective than
traditional- or content-based advertising (I wish I had the source for this
but it seemed legit when I read it... Surveillance Capitalism, maybe?)

What feeds the ad-tech industry really is advertisers' FOMO on the algorithms
touted by the ad-tech vendors. "Why buy a traditional mass-spray ad when you
can have one delivered with surgical precision?" goes the sales pitch. And
considering the old saw about 50% of advertising being useless but nobody
knows which 50% it is, having numbers and measurable insights dangled in front
of you must be compelling.

My suggestion is that we try to steer things back to content-based
advertising. Of course the web needs to make money. Money is a great incentive
for innovation, etc. Of course users aren't going to pay for it except in
exceptional circumstances. We've been spoiled with too much free content to
turn that ship around now. But if I'm on a site about skiing for example and I
see an ad for a ski store that has a sale, that's a good and useful piece of
advertising. I'm happy to see that, as long as it doesn't follow me around the
web for the next 6 months.

And how do we steer companies to do the right thing? The only way that has
proven to be effective over the years - by naming and shaming, boycotting the
bad actors and supporting the good ones. Basically making the costs of
behaving badly outweigh the benefits.

How do we get there? I haven't figured that bit out yet. The big problem is
that it's kind of axiomatic that the likelihood of change is inversely
proportional to the amount of money being generated by the status quo, and
hundreds of billions of dollars is a lot of weight to throw behind keeping the
current system humming along as is.

~~~
pzo
I agree with many things except point 2)

> 2) What most irks people about the current ad-tech based business model
> isn't the advertising, it's the data mining behind it.

I think most people are not even aware of some bigger implications of data
mining except some banners following them for months. After being irked with
generation of popup ads that you have to chase buttons to close it now most
are irked with ads that autoplay video, sound and you cannot easily stop it.
We are also irked with all those ads tracking technology eating lots of your
ram and cpu power - modern websites are excessively fat and bloated mostly
because of all those tracking scripts.

There is also another problem that ads business model generates - lower
quality content, fake news, clickbait headlines, articles that stimulate flame
wars, youtubers talking taking about something for 15 minutes even though you
could summarize it in 1 min, game devs designing addictive games for kids.
Basically fighting for your eyeballs time, keeping you glued to the screen as
long as possible. This is not scalable because time you have during the day
(24h) is fixed and wastes lots of people time that they could be use to make
something more productive with their life.

~~~
cookie_monsta
Sure, those things are a problem and my post was in no way meant to be an
exhaustive list of all the problems of the modern internet.

But coming from a "traditional" publishing background, I look at the internet
as just another publishing, and low-quality attention-grabbing content is
nothing new in this context - just have a look at your local tabloid
newspaper.

The problems that you talk about in your 2nd paragraph really stem from what I
hesitantly call human nature, and no tech solution is ever going to "fix"
that.

