
CoinTent: A Sustainable Ad-Free Web - godot
https://medium.com/cointent/cointent-a-sustainable-ad-free-web-c77e3381788d
======
godshatter
I've been fighting ads since the "punch the monkey" days of the web.
Advertisers have progressively gotten worse over time. I have seen very few
attempts to self-moderate their aggressiveness. Instead, they track us around
the web and sell our data, and sometimes infect our machines with malware.
Because of this, I aggressively block ads. They had their chance and they
dropped the ball, and have no intentions of picking it back up again.

I don't want a service that blocks ads for a price. I want a service without
ads. If websites can't find a way to sustain themselves without ads, then they
can die off for all I care. I can live without the content harvesters and the
news reposters and all the other extraneous fluff out there. There will still
be companies that sell services and advertise their own stuff on their
websites, and there will still be people that pay for their own web hosting to
put up content they are interested in.

If the pushback against ads becomes extreme, there will still be a web after
natural selection has finished running amok.

I stopped using free web email, as one example, because of the ads. I now pay
for email services from a company that does not run ads and does not track me
around the web. There is no free version with ads. This is what I'm after.

I wouldn't mind something like CoinTent _after_ the die-off though. Paying
money in one place that would be distributed as I see fit adds value for me. I
don't want to be followed around the web though, that's a deal-breaker. Let me
select the websites my revenue goes to and with what weightings. Sites that
impress me will get added, sites that disappoint me won't. Also, let me
determine how much I wish to give. Do this for websites that don't post ads,
and you've got a winner for me. I will gladly pay for a useful web, and
advertisers can go extinct for all I care.

~~~
eevilspock
Everyone's bought into the bullshit that ads give us stuff for free when it in
fact it costs all of us a LOT MORE. Rather than dismiss my claim as lunacy, I
beg you to take the time to read my explanation (and reply with rational
counterarguments if you disagree):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237)

Our industry has made a selfish deal with the devil in the name of getting
rich quick:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706)

On our failure to focus on finding alternate solutions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961761)

~~~
sanswork
I'm not sure what your goal is? Advertising is never going away because there
will always be companies that want to increase the visibility of their
products and are willing to pay for it. How that advertising is implemented
will continue to shift overtime but it's always going to be there.

Your second post for example is advertising for people to contact you about
some project you want to start.

~~~
eevilspock
> Advertising is never going away

See fowlerpower's originally top ranked comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805998))
and then see my reply to it
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806687)).

And no, my second post is not advertising by any reasonable definition, and
certainly not the meaning of "ad" in "ad blocker". By defining "advertising"
so broadly that in includes all announcements and solicitations, such that
even a love letter is considered advertising, you have "won" the argument by
rendering the term meaningless. I believe there is a technical term for such
specious reasoning, such as there is for "straw man" arguments, but I can't
remember it.

Sure, advertising will always exist, but it can be made mostly if not entirely
irrelevant. Just as littering will always exist, but is now pretty minimal
because anti-littering is now deeply ingrained in our culture. That's what
cultural evolution is all about: overcoming our base natures.

~~~
sanswork
Your reply to his comment is pointless. You're equating advertising to
slavery? Going after the shock factor to make your point. Sounds a bit like
the click bait you rally against.

It is advertising you are telling people about a service you are working on
and soliciting participation. That's not using a broad definition of
advertising by any means.

Advertising will always exist because there will always people people who want
to tell others about their products and services and there will always be
people who want to find out about new products and services. How do you
propose people find new products and services in your imagined future without
advertising?

~~~
eevilspock
> Your reply to his comment is pointless.

No, you missed the point. I'm criticizing his "Advertising is something that
has existed for at least 100 plus years." and therefor "is here to stay"
logical fallacy.

No, your definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

What do I proposed? For example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10398290).
But more importantly go back to my "On our failure to focus on finding
alternate solutions" link above. This website and the culture it worships
touts its creative and problem solving ability. So it is not just a moral
failure but also one of imagination.

 _" The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people
click ads. That sucks."_

– Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera

And honestly, I believe you are so armored against my ideas, that you haven't
given them (my comments here and my links) a truly honest, reflective read.
You keep challenging me but you haven't answered all of my points or
challenges. jrcii's comment's being down-voted to oblivion represents how
upset people here get about anything that challenges their golden goose.

 _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it.”_

– Upton Sinclair

~~~
sanswork
>No, your definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

Advertising: the act or practice of calling public attention to one's product,
service, need, etc.

As in "eevilspock was advertising their new project to rid the world of
advertising".

So how do people find the collaborative filtering systems in your proposed
world without advertising?

All the alternates lead back to advertising.

>You keep challenging me but you haven't answered all of my points or
challenges.

What points or challenges? You have just posted quotes and said that everyone
is lazy for not thinking of a world without advertising.

As long as there are people with services and people who want services there
will always be advertising.

------
d23
Interesting idea. I hope to at least see more like this, even if this fails.
What I'd really like is to be able to tip articles, posts, apps, and websites.
I don't frequent the New York Times enough to justify a subscription, even
despite the annoying nagging full-page interstitials. I don't think giving
them a percentage of my ad revenue would be worth it, but if I could tip a few
quarters when I came across an article that I thought was really well done, I
would gladly do so.

I think if you gamified a system like this, it could really do well. It'd need
to be cross-site, since it'd be cool to compare to my friends and see who they
tended to support the most. It wouldn't have to directly show the donation
amounts; it could be translated into some arbitrary other point system and
include other incentives to get bonus points. Basically, make it a high-score
/ prestige thing.

~~~
xenobioticants
> What I'd really like is to be able to tip articles, posts, apps, and
> websites.

For articles, this already exists (at least in The Netherlands). It's called
Blendle and lets you 'buy' separate articles instead of needing to get a full
subscription. Works super easy as well.

~~~
davemel37
I heard about blendle, signed up for it....and than never used it!!!

As per my comment on this thread, I think the switching costs of finding other
content to occupy my time is to low to cause me to even think about paying for
actual content.

------
mangeletti
I created
[https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/173](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/173)
last weekend in response to my first experience of CoinTent.

At the time, I was mostly offended by the insultingly large (72KB _after_
GZIP) JavaScript file that the system caused me download to facilitate the
wrecking of my experience, and felt a little guilty for recommending them for
inclusion in uBlock.

Now that I realize their entire business strategy is based on creating a
problem – reaction – solution scenario for their own benefit, at the expense
of publishers and readers.

The concept is basically, "We don't like ads and you shouldn't either, so
here's an ad to tell you that while ruining your web experience. Now give us
money."

~~~
wutbrodo
Isn't any non-free, non-subscription service going to have to either put that
barrier up or show ads? I may be misunderstanding your complaint, but it
sounds really bizarre to me, akin to:

"Jesus every time I want to go watch a movie at the theatre there's this
obnoxious guy blocking my way asking to see my 'ticket'. I don't have to deal
with this bullshit when I watch TV at home, I just turn it on and start
watching content"/

~~~
mangeletti
I think you need to go read the whole article. These guys are offering an ad
blocker that ruins the ad revenue of websites and then offers the solution by
also being a paywall.

~~~
wutbrodo
I assume from your condescension that you read the article (or at least think
you did), so the problem is presumably with your reading comprehension.

As I said, some sort of wall is inherent to the solution (seamless micro
transactions would have people, perhaps unfairly, claiming that they didn't
realize they were spending money). The whole premise behind this project is to
replace ads for people who don't like ads. It's laughable to claim that the
banner informing people of that is an ad. Your complaint about ruining the web
experience seems to be that it puts barriers in front of your browsing, and my
point was that almost any solution that compensates content creators is going
to suffer from this.

~~~
mangeletti
I'm sorry I triggered you.

I think that, if the purpose of the popup is to inform me about CoinTent, then
can it be anything other than an ad?

If the goal was to solve a problem, then CoinTent would be only the paywall,
since ad blockers are already prolific.

~~~
wutbrodo
> I'm sorry I triggered you.

Lol, you're adorable. I'm starting to believe it's not even reading
comprehension issues with you, it's just functional illiteracy.

~~~
mk1202
I totally understand his point. I think you're the one with reading
comprehension issues here...

------
stephanheijl
While I support the general idea, it irks me that this concept also includes
tracking of my browsing history ("distributes the money from your subscription
to the sites you visit based on the time you spend with them"). I would like
to see more transparency with regards to how this information is used and how
much of it is actually exposed to the developers of this plugin.

~~~
bradcoin
Brad with the CoinTent team here. Glad you believe in the general idea of what
we're doing!

I understand the concern around the tracking of browsing history, as that's
obviously one of the main drivers of ad blockers in the first place!

We definitely need to make sure we deliver on transparency around what data is
tracked, how it is stored, and how it is used. We will be releasing this in
more detail on our site when we launch.

One key point for you to be aware of is that we do offer the ability to turn
off tracking of browsing history. In that case, we'll give you the option to
support sites automatically based on sites everyone else spends time with.

~~~
irq-1
Here's an idea I'm not sure would work, but I want to put it out there.

Browsing history and/or time spent has to be tracked so the money can be
distributed to the right sites. To protect the browsing history:

1) (on the client) Take the domain name (or URL, IP or data point) and add a
salt

2) Hash it

3) Add it to a bloom filter (or another type of filter)

4) After enough URLs have been added, submit the filter and salt

5) (on the server) Run the list of participating domains through the filter
(take the domain, add salt, hash, and filter)

Some thoughts about this type of scheme: No exact history data would be
submitted. You may need multiple filters for domain, time spent, type of
interaction, etc... The selection of filter and optimal number of domains (or
encoding of data points) might be problematic. Submission can be done at any
time (no schedule). The loss of a few submissions won't matter (no need for
every domain or a complete history.) Submissions can be delayed until there is
enough obscuring data, and filters provide plausible deny ability (about
browsing history.) Submissions could be made to trusted 3rd parties (browser
makers, large company networks, non-profits like the EFF, etc..) and only the
results sent to a central authority. Some websites that were not visited will
benefit, but the salt will stop gaming of the domains. Running the list of
participating domains might be to demanding to be practical. Groups of domains
could have their own payment/subscription filter (news domains, GNU endorsed
domains, etc...) distributed to the clients like blocklists.

The biggest problem: Advertisers and ad networks will fight against loosing
personally identifiable information and analytics data.

~~~
godmodus
nice to see someone with a similar idea to mine!

------
criddell
Advertisers have been building profiles of users for 20 years now with the
promise that relevant ads aren't annoying and can be valuable. I think it's
time to give up.

Billboard companies and People magazine are able to sell ads without knowing
who saw the ad. Why do advertisers online suddenly need to know everything
about me? Billions have been spent building crappy ad-tech and to assemble
profiles and I'd be surprised if it's been a net gain overall when you factor
in the externalities of it all (tracking, power consumption, bandwidth usage,
malware, etc...).

I feel no ethical issues with using my DVR to skip ads, u-block to stop
tracking in my browser, or changing the radio station in my car when an ad
starts playing.

/rant

~~~
pigpigs
Advertising in my experience as an end user has been very ineffective.

The ads that I see on Facebook are very obviously based on my browsing
history/cookies - I look at a mechanical keyboard on Lazada and decide to not
buy it. Next I go to Facebook and get ads about a keyboard on Lazada - no
discounts, exact same model. It could've shown me similar keyboards, gave me a
lower price, or anything that adds value than just showing me the exact same
thing I just decided not to buy.

Advertising for the sake of letting people know something _exists_ is not
particularly valuable to the end user, and most of the time they are not even
able to predict correctly what people are interested in.

Has anyone actually bought something because of an advertisement?

~~~
glandium
There's the worse (and very common) case: you decide to buy it, and still see
ads about that keyboard you just bought, in case, you know, you'd want another
(and even if you did, isn't having it in front of you and liking it more
efficient than an ad?).

------
nicpottier
I'm a bit pessimistic as to whether this will work, because the crux here is
getting the publishers to agree to this model and that's going to require a
ton of face-to-face deals.

That said, I've had this idea myself and this is how I want the web to work. I
should just be able to pay to make ads go away if I don't want them and that
money should go to the sites I read. I currently use Google contributor, but
that only works on some sits, not all.

I also kind of like the "threat" that people are adblocking anyways on your
site (which CoinTent will know, as their plugin is an adblocker) and you are
losing this much revenue because of it. Seems like that could work if they
reach enough critical mass.

So I supported this, though with skepticism. Godspeed!

------
cr3ative
Taking 20% on top of 5-10% processor fees seems high compared to Flattr's flat
10%.

Something doesn't sit right with me ethically about this concept.

~~~
random28345
This is a problem that _badly_ needs to be solved. Advertising revenue is the
incentive for news organizations to provide a conduit for malware onto your
computer, and there isn't anyone who thinks that's a good idea.

If these guys can solve this problem, get buy-in from publishers, and provide
revenue to support good journalism while solving the problem of needing many
subscriptions to multiple news sites, perhaps they deserve their 30% vig.

But if they are successful, it's more likely that someone will come along, do
the same thing, and only charge 2%.

~~~
onion2k
_This is a problem that badly needs to be solved._

The problem that needs solving is to make ad networks and advertisers do a
better job, not to transfer the payment model of the internet from companies
that want to pay for marketing to users who have comparatively very little
money. Approximately $70bn is spent on digital advertising in the US alone.
That's _hundreds_ of dollars per person. No payment model that relies on
direct payment is going to maintain that sort of funding level, so no one who
makes money from adverts is going to accept it.

------
jacques_chester
Ah, another competitor.

There's Google Contributor, that thing that Flattr launched, Webpass.io and
forget the rest.

I've been working on the same model: take a subscription, divvy it out
according to usage.

The problem is that, apart from Google (who can just block their own ads),
there is no easy way to prevent falsified visits intended to inflate revenues
of bad actors. Most schemes have either relied on wishful thinking or working
within walled gardens (Contributor is closer to the latter).

It so happens that I patented a protocol for preventing exactly this problem.
It can show that a user made a request for a resource without either of the
user or the publisher being able to forge the record.

My mechanism requires a browser extension, simply because there needs to be a
secure environment.

By design, the publisher is unable to track you based on the protocol.

Also by design, the protocol allows access through paywalls without needing to
reveal user identity.

Interested folks are invited to email me: jacques@robojar.com

~~~
HaloZero
Can you clarify what bad actors you're talking about?

The $5/month goes to whoever I visit the most (I am assuming this is not
collective across all their users).

Are you're saying that sites will try to falsify who I'm visiting by
redirecting my traffic?

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Are you 're saying that sites will try to falsify who I'm visiting by
> redirecting my traffic?_

By pretending to be you. Capturing your visit and replaying it. Tweaking
details. Redirecting. Performing unseen requests in the background. Most
notably, trying to override the tracking code by side-injecting their own to
capture your identifying tokens (which is why you need an extension).

There are countermeasures to all the attacks and to some as yet unanticipated,
but it takes a single integrated protocol that cryptographically verifies and
compounds in each step from the request to the response.

And that's what I did.

~~~
criddell
> a single integrated protocol that cryptographically verifies and compounds
> in each step from the request to the response

Sounds expensive. Does it scale?

~~~
jacques_chester
Horizontally scalable, but it's expensive in two ways. The first is that I put
asymmetric encryption in at some steps where I could, arguably, have settled
for symmetric encryption (which is much faster). My reasoning being that I
don't want a single compromise to require me to rotate everyone's keys
simultaneously.

Secondly it requires communication between the publisher and a tracking
server. The expensive part would be placing those tracking servers as close to
publishers as possible, meaning that wide physical distribution would be
necessary for best performance.

But otherwise, no shared state is required _between_ transactions. There are
no sessions. Each request-response cycle can be handled independently of the
others, so an arbitrary number of trackers in arbitrary locations are
possible.

Information gathered by the tracking server is uniquely signed and sent to a
classifying system which reassembles the records into an aggregate view of
what happened. Notably, the classifier cannot forge transactions either.

------
illnewsthat
This looks about the same as Google Contributor
[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)
but Google has the advantage of owning the ad network and the ability to
communicate with website owners.

It will be interesting to see where companies spend more on advertising if
they can't reach their whole audience online. Maybe more in the form of
product placement and such.

~~~
criddell
Contributor is great for people that just want to avoid ads, but lots of
people also object to being tracked.

------
walterbell
Brave is also testing micropayments, with a 5% cut,
[https://blog.brave.com/introducing-brave-
payments/](https://blog.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/)

~~~
athenot
This is a great project and it seems further ahead. Checked it out and was
surpised to see that it's headed by Brendan Eich.

PS: This is why I like HN: I discover great alternatives in a fraction of the
time I would have elsewhere. Thanks for posting this!

------
avian
Quote from the kickstarter video: "there are adblockers out there, but they
make money by selling your data".

Citation needed. Which adblockers are selling my data?

~~~
freshhawk
I assumed they were making a reference to Adblock Plus selling ads through
their new marketplace and decided to express that in the most dishonest and
self-serving way possible.

------
rajadigopula
Just got a thought ~ So I got a startup which I am aiming to grow to a million
users spending a fortune on paid advertising online, but the cointent solution
helps me get a small cashback by not helping me grow my business!

Or I pay a high traffic site to display my ad, and they sign-up with cointent
to make their site clean, eventually the hits/impressions decrease and no one
pays the site for displaying their ads! and they re-think they made a mistake
signing up with cointent in the firstplace!

Could some-one please explain how this model is going to sustain/ be
successful?!

------
nailer
Why not just web payments? Chrome can access Google Wallet, Safari can access
Apple payments, all from JS. I haven't played with the tech much but I
understand it's pretty a solid way for a website to ask you to pay for
something and then get a token they can use to see if you have or not.

~~~
BillinghamJ
It isn't standardized yet, but yes Chrome and Safari have made huge steps
towards making web payments a reality.

Luckily, both Google and Apple have expressed strong interest in standardizing
web payments making their implementations compatible.

------
idanb
I really like this idea. Ads are some of the most distracting elements on the
web, but at the same time we all understand the need for them due to no better
monetization strategy for much of the valuable content on the web. Said as
such, since content is not free to produce. When Hulu, for example, came
around offering a higher subscription cost for ad-less shows I was eager to
use it since I value my time, and as such I value my attention on the web.

Would love to see this extend to things like online music / video as well -
especially in the realm of music, a way for musicians to monetize passive
plays would be terrific.

~~~
initram
>we all understand the need for them due to no better monetization strategy
for much of the valuable content on the web.

This just isn't true. There are plenty of other monetization schemes on the
web that work for different types of content. (Subscriptions, donations,
subsidies (both corporate and governmental), patrons, etc.)

>Would love to see this extend to things like online music / video as well

It pretty much already exists in the form of Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Apple
Music, etc.

~~~
idanb
Content creators get effectively zero income / revenues from any of the
services you listed. Patreon is attempting to do some cool things there and I
think are getting some great results, as are crowdfunding approaches. However,
people I know who have gotten syndication of content on any given video
platform don't really get much in the way of return unless it's a huge hit -
so it's hard to get quality content which is why a lot of those guys are
producing exclusive content, or funding it. In terms of music, yeah - artists
are making nothing, and the services are making nothing too, but that's a
whole different story.

There has been a failure, in my opinion, of successful monetization of
valuable content on the net. I don't disagree with you that there are a
plethora of monetization schemes that are very effective on the web. However,
given the cost of content creation usually content is a loss leader for a
separate business model / or business entirely. I think it just leads to
crappy content, since now pretty much every article has some kind of agenda
and there's little journalism actually taking place. I actually really like
Vice for this reason - I think they've found a niche where people are willing
to pay for quality content. Same for the Information, which produces terrific
journalism and great long form stuff.

------
ohstopitu
my 2c:

I know I'll get a lot of flack for this...but this is definitely not an end
all, be all solution for services that depend on ads.

That said, this tool does have a place - to be the platform that provides
content producers/publishers a way to fairly charge a subset of consumers to
experience the product adfree.

* publishers/producers decide how much to charge / minute of use

* this neutral tool shows that transparently to the user and the user can decide if he/she would prefer an paid ad-free experience or not. - maybe over time, this price fluctuates based on how users across network use the content etc. (to ensure quality does not fall etc.)

As for publishers/creators that charge exorbitant rates / minute - the market
will take care of them - users would just adblock and they'd just loose $
(basically their loss - either they have a fair compensation or not at all).

BUT this tool is NOT the only way for producers to make money. Ads does have a
place but this tool just helps those who want to pay and help producers and
avoid ads at the same time.

------
danhardman
I'd happily display ads on websites that aren't incredibly obnoxious. I think
ad-blockers need to have some sort of ad-policy or vetting system in place
that when websites conform to them, I as a user get prompted with the option
to turn ads on to support the website.

I'd much rather that than essentially have to pay out money to browse online.

~~~
ghostly_s
This is exactly what AdBlock Plus started doing a couple years ago, and it was
met with mass outrage and jumping ship to muBlock.

[1] [https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-
ads#criteria](https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads#criteria)

~~~
danhardman
I was under the impression that AdBlock Plus started selling whitelist places
and that's what user's became outraged over. I may be misremembering though, I
only ever scanned post titles

------
mankash666
Cut out the middle-men. This is the perfect use-case for a cryptocurrency
based micro-payment model.

------
rayalez
Excellent idea, I've been waiting for something like this to happen for
months! It is clearly obvious that the system like this needs to exist, and
I'm sure that the company that succeeds at implementing it will be huge.

I really love how you are going about doing it, and I wish you luck!

The big challenge of a system like that that I see, is getting users on board.
To me it seems that the best solution is to allow publishers to "reward"
subscribers with additional premium content. Are you planning to implement
something like this?

~~~
bradcoin
Thanks for the positive feedback! Glad to hear you believe in the idea and
want to see it be successful.

I agree that getting users on board is the biggest challenge. Premium content
is certainly one additional way to get more users on board (and we've actually
built a product that let's websites gate access / sell premium content, too!).
I think there are actually a few ways we can give users more value by
connecting them with the sites they love even more, so we're definitely
thinking about how to bridge that connection! Let us know if you have other
ideas or specific things you'd want to see.

------
davemel37
The more I think about services like this, the more I think everyone is
thinking about this problem the wrong way.

People are thinking about the problem, as a)it costs money to produce great
content, b) great content should be supported by people who enjoy that
content, and c) ads and other current monetization efforts are
annoying/bad/potentially dangerous for users.

So, the obvious solution, which from my perspective (has not and will not work
at scale) is, "have people pay to block ads and give the money to publishers,
or have publishers offer premium ad-free content.

The thing that all of these ideas are missing is the switching cost to find
other interesting content is next to nothing.

There is already too much content bombarding us, and I have no problem reading
someone elses content for free. Even if it means missing out on a headline
that caught my attention. All I need to do is go back to my facebook newsfeed,
or HN, and find 50 other articles I am interested in reading.

I do think there is a solution out there, but I don't think it will come from
paying to block ads (which feels like an exortion racket) or paying for
article you like.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I think a great solution for everyone
involved would be to charge money to share the content. Charging for
distribution and licensing content has always been a money maker for
publishers, why not charge for social distribution.

My idea: Donate between $0.05 and $100 to share an article. Your post would
say, "I just paid $1.25 to share this article, it's that good!"

This solves multiple problems. a)the quality of what gets shared will go up,
which in turn would make the shares much more valuable in terms of building an
engaged audience and your own social cred and validation that you are seeking
when you share.

b)the amount you pay to share would reflect how much you liked the content.
(i.e. an incredibly funny video that I want all my friends to see would be
worth a few bucks to share, whereas a semi interesting one would be only
$0.05...and in turn, my friends will learn to only watch my large donation
shares... and the ratings of the content can be quantified by the audience.
(i.e. this article generated $3450 in shares tells me much more than 34,500
people shared it.)

Making this frictionless would be difficult and getting publishers to risk
their "virality" would be hard to sell...but, it's a crazy enough idea it just
might work.

After all, the switching costs of not sharing an article you really want to
share is much greater than paying to see content in the first place or paying
a monthly fee when the problem is not gnawing at you in the moment.

~~~
notahacker
That sounds like an interesting alternative revenue stream for Facebook to
try. The cynic in me suspects that it'll only work if they start reducing the
quantity of content shared by your friends that they _don 't_ pay to share, in
favour of charitable, pseudo-charitable or political messages that they are
willing to pay to share.

------
amq
Like the simplicity. Maybe flattr could create a similar plugin? Their support
buttons didn't get enough traction, unfortunately.

~~~
jacques_chester
Flattr have teamed up with one of the ad blockers to do something similar.

------
robl97
we did a consumer survey in April (adblocksurvey.com) that suggested a range
of 10-15% of people would pay for a subscription for content. Based on that we
think that adblocking should be monetized by a subscription/tip combo
(optimal.com is kind of a hybrid + we also have a really good iOS 10 ad
blocker that uses DNS) AND we need to fix ads. there are several companies in
this space and we all talk to each other about how to solve some of these
problems - I hope to speak to Brad at CoinTent soon and share some of our
ideas. I think there are many of us that want a sustainable solution (and
obviously feel we can play a part in building that, but I'm also realistic
that none of us can do it by ourselves, this includes getting publishers on
board!) that is less prone to abuse than some of the 'whitelisting' schemes we
see out there today.

------
20andup
So we are paying to remove ads?

~~~
kazagistar
Paying for the content, instead of ads paying for it.

------
slester
You can't get me to enable ads unless I'm assured they are not delivering
malware. If you can't do that, count me out.

------
amelius
A "coin tent", is that something you get when you have too many coins in your
pocket? :)

------
fowlerpower
This is a terrible idea.

I know I will take a lot of heat for saying this on hacker news.

Advertising is something that has existed for at least 100 plus years. TV is
supported by it, radio is supported by it and it is no coincidence that the
internet is also supported by it. Fact is we as users may not love advertising
but it exists because companies want to reach us, it provides revenue to
companies that would otherwise need to charge a ton of money for those
services.

As more and more media and content including TV Shows and Movies move to the
internet do you really truly believe they will remain AdFree? Where would
companies that want to reach an audience advertise? Where would that 100
billion dollar show, movie, article get its money from? Purely from the user?
Do you think we can go back to the ways of charging 300 dollars for a
word/google docs app?

Fact is things cost money to make and people need to make money to keep making
things. Advertising whether you like it or not is here to stay.

Edit: I also think adblockers are a terrible idea. All we have done with ad
blockers is started an arms race where the ads now come in the form of
sponsored content so you have no idea what's an ad and what isn't. We need to
just accept that advertising will exist and the premium for non advertising
content is just too high to afford by the vast majority of users.

~~~
delegate
Just because advertising existed before, doesn't mean it has to continue to
exist.

Advertising is not a law of nature, it is a human invention and should be
replaced by a new invention.

Advertising is a very bad thing. It's a form of brainwashing in which people
are manipulated or provoked to consume way beyond their needs. Its goal is to
plant ideas into your head, without you even being aware of it.

Curiously, the law of supply and demand in economics doesn't even mention the
concept of advertising, yet it plays a huge role in demand creation.

This 'inflated' demand provokes inflated supply, which creates even more
demand (because everyone wants a popular thing), the feedback loop being
limited by the speed of extraction of the natural resources and the capacity
of the human body, but that can be augmented by increasing human population.

There's too much shit produced in the world, too much waste created, too much
useless information on the web and too many shitty websites and ecosystems,
which exist solely due to advertising.

I don't mind at all if they disappear or reduce in numbers.

Good content and good products will find ways to survive.

Bill Hicks [https://vimeo.com/36651896](https://vimeo.com/36651896)

George Carlin
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtK_YsVInw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtK_YsVInw8)

~~~
dahdum
Honestly that sounds like a pretty terrible world to me. New products,
services, and experiences would come in at a trickle. Competition would take a
nosedive, and incumbents could begin to price at whatever they please as the
barriers to entry grow ever taller.

~~~
cromwellian
Not only that, but advertising is a way for the few to subsidize the many. For
every person who responds to an ad, 100 do not. That means people of little
means get access to free content paid for by companies betting they can find
other people to pay for it.

I grew up poor. We didn't have cable TV, or any kind of subscription service,
because we couldn't afford it. My parents would never had justified micro-
paying for online content. But through advertising, a world of content beyond
what was available in public libraries was made available to me.

Advertising will never go away anymore than money or prices will go away,
because even in post-scarcity goods world, people's attention span is still
scarce, and anyone seeking to scale any business or organization in this world
will need to reach people, and with so many people vying for attention,
undoubtedly, differential time-preference and privacy-preferences between
people will mean some people will trade one for the other, human diversity
practically guarantees it.

------
45h34jh53k4j
Im going to be frank. I block ads, and will not start paying for content. I
have had an advertising free web for a long time and will not: a) accept ads
b) pay for content

What will you do for people like me?

~~~
magic5227
How long do you expect that to be sustainable?

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
frankly; dont care. not my problem, i am a consumer. its been sustainable for
the last 20 years. the same 'sustainability' arguments were made 10 years ago,
yet here we are.

~~~
paulryanrogers
We are in a different place today; arguably worse.

And if everyone ad-blocking is not sustainable then there will be less for you
to consume.

~~~
45h34jh53k4j
I appreciate that and it makes sense from a business perspective. However,
many many people outside SV (which is most of the planet) have the same views
as myself and will happily 'steal' content. Attempts like DRM are trying to
solve the wrong problem.

Rather than trying to shoehorn these 'user pays' models as an alternative to
'advertiser pays', we need a totally new paradigm.

Invent it pls SV

------
davidhyde
Visiting their website main page consumes 2.2 MB of bandwidth. This is a
basically a blank page with some small icons. If these guys can't build a lean
website then how are they going to build cross-site tracking technology that
will improve my browsing experience?

~~~
oldmanjay
It's sort of like asking if you can't raise an objection without invoking
fallacious logic, how are you going to make interesting contributions to this
community?

~~~
davidhyde
I don't think it is poor reasoning. I was making an observation about their
technology prowess. And where most people were expressing their opinion about
whether or not ads are bad which has been discussed at length, I thought I'd
make a different point. My argument is that if improving browsing experience
is the purpose of their service and removing ads is one of the ways they do it
then I hope they pay attention to page bloat. I wanted to point out that they
hadn't paid much attention to javascript page bloat in their own web page.

------
godmodus
a great idea

------
Animats
Micropayments, again.

Someone tried a broad "pay for all the good sites" scheme around 15 years ago,
in the first dot-com boom. Anyone remember that?

