
AdBlock Plus teams up with Flattr to help readers pay publishers - cpeterso
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/03/adblock-plus-teams-up-with-flattr-to-help-readers-pay-publishers/
======
Animats
The ad blocking business is getting too cozy with the advertising business.
Time to disrupt it again.

The Adblock people claim they're going to collect a half billion dollars a
year in voluntary payments. Has anybody in the history of voluntary payments
for software ever collected half a billion dollars? The American Red Cross
collects about $700 million a year. Somehow, I expect that Adblock's system
will not be "voluntary".

~~~
Spivak
There's, at this point, nothing to worry about. The insanely dedicated people
who maintain the ad blocking lists are the real heroes here, the client that
uses them is completely replaceable.

If/When ABP goes over to the dark side people will stop using it. There are
plenty of replacements, uBlock Origin being the current winner.

~~~
deprave
ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles
the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out
of the box.

Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP. It's super
fast, has a much smaller memory footprint, has a strict policy against
"acceptable ads"
([https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md)),
licensed under the GPLv3, and hosted in a very active repository on GitHub
([https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)).

~~~
morgante
> ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles
> the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so
> out of the box.

I actually like the acceptable ads system. I don't inherently object to
advertising (content has to be paid for somehow, and I'd rather pay with my
attention than with my money). I just object to invasive or distracting ads,
and ABP does block those.

Google Search ads, for example, are fine by me.

~~~
deprave
The "acceptable ads" initiative is how the company behind ABP makes money. It
is their primary revenue driver and is the primary differentiator from other
products on the market.

Yet, they choose to name their product in a misleading way, suggesting they do
something which, by default, their product does not do.

If ABP was a drug, what would the FDA say? :)

We all know that outside tech circles most people don't even know what
"acceptable ads" are, assume ABP does what it says on the label, and don't
bother changing defaults. That's why ABP's business is so shady.

~~~
morgante
How does something generating revenue automatically make it immoral or
unacceptable?

Pharmaceutical companies generate their revenue from selling drugs. That
doesn't make selling drugs illegal.

Nobody is getting tricked by ABP. For one thing, their homepage literally says
"unobtrusive ads aren't being blocked in order to support websites" right
above the install button. [0] Moreover, even if a user were to install it and
still saw ads they would realize that it's _not_ in fact blocking all ads.

Since you apparently hate capitalism, I'm curious how you're paid.

[0] [https://adblockplus.org/](https://adblockplus.org/)

~~~
deprave
I don't hate capitalism and there's nothing wrong with generating revenue. In
fact, the rise of ad blocking is a perfect example of market efficiency.
What's important here isn't the software that blocks ads, but the expression
of preference by hundreds of millions of people around the world who say "we
do not want to see ads on the web and we know they can be stopped."

Believing "acceptable ads" can thrive alongside such knowledge is naively
asking to be reminded of the tragedy of the commons and the fact that such
widespread coordination usually happened in either dictatorial or communist
societies.

Revenue will be generated, only that it will eventually have to come from
consumers directly to publishers and content creators.

~~~
morgante
You seem to hate capitalism because your argument against ABP was basically
"they get revenue."

ABP is in fact a capitalist solution. It gives advertisers an incentive to
tone down their ads so they can be seen by more people.

Absolutist ad blockers are actually the ones exploiting the tragedy of the
commons. Without advertising, the content which you're viewing without ads
would not exist.

> Revenue will be generated, only that it will eventually have to come from
> consumers directly to publishers and content creators.

Why? That's your personal preference and political position. Reality isn't
forced to adapt to your preferences and in practice advertising has existed
for thousands of years—it's unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Moreover, I suspect that if you asked most people outside the HN echo chamber
they'd actually rather have advertising than paying through subscriptions.

~~~
nitrogen
_You seem to hate capitalism because your argument against ABP was basically
"they get revenue."_

This is a very disingenuous representation of the other comments in the
thread. It's a low-brow dismissal by straw man and an appeal to the sacrosanct
"capitalism". You seem to be trying to manipulate others into supporting your
view by labeling the other view as anti-capitalism. This is the same as
accusing anyone who opposes government surveillance of "hating freedom".

ABP is problematic because of _how_ they generate revenue. From the
advertisers' side, it looks like racketeering. From the consumer side, it
looks like the tobacco industry paying your doctor to get you to smoke.
Accepting money to whitelist ads is the very thing an ad blocker should never
do.

------
infogulch
I've always liked the idea of Flattr and this is exactly what I've wanted to
see from them since the beginning. It's like Spotify, generalized to the web:
one monthly payment to support all the (web) content you consume in the month.

But I prefer uBlock Origin to ABP for ideological and performance reasons, so
I'm not sure if I'll use this yet.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yes, I believe that a subscription platform like this is the way forward for
web content. It's a project I'm interested in undertaking someday. Will be
interesting to watch how this pans out.

~~~
1_player
I'm working on this problem, want to shoot me an email and discuss it?

------
aembleton
This is similar to Google Contributor
[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)
except it will work with any advertising platform and hopefuly work outside of
the US.

I currently put €10 per month on Flattr and it would be great to not have to
click each time I want to help out a publisher.

~~~
vintermann
Don't you want at least that bit of explicit control? To avoid giving money to
inane clickbait, etc.?

I've used flattr in the past, but the main problem for me was that there was
so much low-effort stuff fighting for clicks. Flattr has good reasons for
their just share everything evenly default, but unfortunately it also makes
low effort stuff a lot more viable relatively speaking.

~~~
aembleton
Nope, but if I click on something and then exit within say 5 seconds then no
payment should be made. Yes, clickbait is a risk but there is an even bigger
risk that I'll get engrossed in a long form article and completely forget to
click some button. For a long form article where I spend a good say 30 minutes
reading it there should be a much larger payout.

Thinking about it, allowing me to configure these parameters would be good.

------
a_small_island
Haven't used ABP in years because of their white listing for ad providers that
paid their ransom. uBlock Origin has better performance anyways.

~~~
verganileonardo
Me neither. uBlock is much more efficient. Anyway, I still support the concept
that AdBlock 'creating' here.

------
hartator
After the deal they made with Google to allow their ads, I wouldn't trust
Ablock Plus anymore. Just go uBlock Origin. It's one guy - not sure why you
need a team in the first place -, better performance, more ads blocked, fully
open source and no BS.

~~~
kbenson
While I'm happy to see a way for people who don't want to see ads can
contribute, I also vastly prefer uBlock Origin. Adblock left a bad taste in my
mouth when they asked for money. Their entire product is based around denying
content producers a way to monetize their own product. It felt sort of like a
for-pay torrent site.

------
jalami
I would prefer the hidden costs of using a service to vanish and for those
costs to be replaced with explicit costs. I don't delude myself in thinking
the majority hold my view on this though. I personally prefer $1/mo to Free*
any day, but would only really do so without the explicit tracking involved.

Sadly, subscription models are the way to mass adoption. People are lazy and
want to make one explicit payment to some centralized authority that then
grants them a theoretically unlimited, but practically and economically
limited, selection. It's the retail store all over again, just on the web.
Spotify, Netflix, Steam replaces craigslist.

I see the perfect world being a super thin middle-man client(s) that exposes a
protocol that the content producer/seller implements. Want to buy a song, a
game, a movie, article? Use a client to access and pay for it then receive it.
Still want a middleman to handle refunds, advice, suggestions, support? Go
find a car salesman, Amazon or flattr thick client that'll add their markup
for added convenience. I think this would shift the current problem away from
"getting into Steam for a reasonable price" to "making a good game".

There are abuse, censorship, maintainability, legal, adoption, discovery
concerns, but I said perfect world. I'm just afraid for a future where DRM/EME
and Webassembly obfuscation make it impossible to get quality content on the
web when everyone flocks to these gatekeepers for everything. Cable companies
2.0.

------
charonn0
I like the idea, but not the implementation:

> Unlike Flattr, users don’t have to click a button to “Flattr” a website —
> instead, it will automatically track their browsing activity and distribute
> the money based on their engagement.

One of my main objections to most forms of online advertising is the
tracking/profiling. I don't see why there can't be a button unless they plan
on selling the info; in which case it's hardly an improvement over ordinary
web ads.

I glanced at the website, and they say the info is stored locally and only the
final results get sent back to headquarters, but there's no privacy policy or
other detailed technical explanation of what this means.

I guess that's understandable since apparently they're not sure how they can
measure the worthiness of a given web page:

> Plus, the question of exactly how to calculate engagement is a tricky one.
> You probably don’t want to reward a worthless article with a dumb-but-
> effective clickbait headline. You might also leave an article open for hours
> without actually reading it.

Which just reinforces my notion that the user should have a button. Otherwise
you're going to have situations where users are tricked into visiting
worthless pages or end up paying to support website that they might not want
to support. Can you honestly say that you would choose to support the people
behind every website you visit?

------
readams
The system is also tracking everywhere you go on the web. Yet another entity
that wants to track everything you do. Somehow I doubt they'll pass up the
opportunity to monetize that data.

------
Raed667
Honestly if I go to your website to read some "news" or whatever, and you ask
me for money or to enable ads or-else you won't show me content. I'll just
close your window and never come back.

~~~
k-mcgrady
That seems to be exactly what they would want you to do. You're not generating
any revenue for them and clearly have no intention of doing so.

~~~
Raed667
Their business model is broken and it is not my fault. Give me relevant ads
that don't spy on me and that are not benchmarking my CPU every-time they load
a piece of JS and we'll be fine.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Their business model isn't necessarily broken just because it doesn't suit
you. They're clearly still generating enough revenue they can afford to lose
you as a customer.

>> "Give me relevant ads that don't spy on me and that are not benchmarking my
CPU every-time they load a piece of JS and we'll be fine."

Isn't this giving you EXACTLY what you're asking for? You donate a very small
amount of money nautically by reading content you block the ads on.

~~~
rhino369
No you don't understand. Apple's business model is broken because the macbook
is too expensive for my tastes.

------
tiles
IMO, this looks like a reactionary move to Brave and a poor one at that:
[https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html](https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html)

Aside from AdBlock's nebulous ability to block ads except for the highest
bidder, they're introducing workable micropayments (yay!) but with a heavily
centralized entity (boo) that ensures tracking will now not be blocked, but
actually become a core feature.

Brave addresses this by citing [https://anonize.org/](https://anonize.org/) as
the backend for their micropayments architecture to remove this tracking
vector. I loved Flattr a decade ago when it was released, but any model that
actively relies on user identification (intentionally or not) is a threat in
2016.

Caveat: Read about Brave, looks great, still too young as a browser to be my
daily driver.

~~~
dexterdog
I don't think micropayments are the way with systems like this. I think they
need to just keep score and pay registered content providers based on traffic.
With micropayments you need to have an action by the user which is even less
likely if it actually costs them more money.

------
ninjakeyboard
If you want to pay publishers, why not just give them the impressions, instead
of install sketchy ad blockers, have them handle your money, and then hope
that they distribute it to publishers on your behalf.

The article says ad block will tell publishers how much they COULD have made -
what happens to that money?

------
smegel
I'm really starting to think I chose the right path by just installing
Flashblock and ignoring the remaining ads.

The Ad blocking business is beginning to look awfully shady.

------
rayalez
Finally! It was obvious that something like this needed to exist, and I think
this is the most elegant solution.

I'm extremely excited about it, I really hope this takes off.

Probably in the future there will also be a system that allows websites with
premium content make money the same way(some sort of universal paywall with
one convenient payment method). People will end up paying $10 per month for
access to a network of premium websites.

I think that it is a good thing, because incentives will align in a way that
encourages websites to focus on producing high quality content instead of
clickbait and trying to manipulate people's attention.

~~~
quadrangle
This system is just going to keep encouraging click-bait and tracking the same
way ads do. If you want to encourage actual quality, real stuff people want,
then funding has to be based on people actually wanting to reward something
not just that they click and load a website.

------
pessimizer
The worth of the metrics are questionable. Not only do I not want to send some
company information on every page I visit, how long I look at the page, and
how far I scroll; it's also irrelevant to who I want my money to go to. I wish
I could take away money from some of the garbage I read, and I send money to
things that I don't read (because I already know them) but I want to have
available for other people to read.

It seems like they're trying to closely imitate an ad model, and consequently
the commensurate micromanaged loss of privacy for the web consumer.

------
aw3c2
The thing with all those payment services is that they are trackers. I would
pay for so many things if there was something like untraceable, digital cash.

------
chinathrow
So flattr, which I deemed a nice and welcoming service, teams up with Adblock
plus folks, known for their acceptable ads program, their millions of $ taken
in by Google etc.

Strange times.

------
tobltobs
Flattr, aren't this those guys who ask for a greedy 10% share. If Adblock and
Flattr will work together there will be less to nothing left for publishers.

~~~
infogulch
Yes, this terrible awful rate is completely out of the norm for the industry.
For example, on AdSense, publishers get 68%-51% share! [0] Oh wait, 10% is the
cut that Flattr takes, of which _90%_ is kept by publishers. Note, included in
that 10% is the macro transaction fees paid to integrate with other payment
providers.

[0]:
[https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en)

~~~
tobltobs
You are comparing apples with oranges.

------
manishsharan
The 'main-streaming' of ad blocking has led to sites fighting back against ad
blocking. I have been using etc/hosts from
[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/) for
past several years and I have begun to notice that I certain sites , such as
wired and forbes, have blocked my access.

~~~
Raphmedia
There's this GitHub repo with host files setups for exactly this need :
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

------
visarga
Advertisers should pay the users to display ads to them. If the users think
the pay is good enough, they will see them. If not, then they reject the ads.

------
intrasight
Publishers need to start treating their readers like customers. If they had a
relationship with me, there's be no ad networks and no ad blockers.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The publications I pay for treat me like a customer.

------
Ameo
I'm usually quite against ad-blockers, but this kind of thing could be a step
in the right direction.

------
mesozoic
Good luck with selling something to people that they don't want.

