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".
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.
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.
> 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.
Be careful with malware ads on Google Search. This happens fairly regularly, and in some cases can mean a direct loss of money, e.g. if you search for 'blockchain', instead of the online Bitcoin wallet showing up, Google ads often points to a malware that is a phishing site and occasionally people fall for it and lose all their Bitcoins [1]. This has been going on for a long time [2][3].
You can't pay for content if you don't click on the ads and buy something. Companies spend money on advertisement in order to increase sales, and if there isn't an increase in sale, they stop paying the content creators for providing ad space.
Search ads aren't the same as programmatic or display ads.
The latter supplements publishers (websites) with revenue that covers the cost of providing content to you. Search ads are typically acquisition driven, where companies are paying for new customers.
Search Google with "credit card". Everything above the fold is a Google ad.
Five years ago, searching for "credit card" had top hits from credit card search spammers. Today, Google has brought that spam in-house and redirected the revenue to themselves. It's kind of depressing.
(We, of course, have Ad Limiter, to cut Google search ads down to size.)
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.
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.
I'd be surprised to learn most users ever even touch the homepage, rather than the plugin installation mechanism for their respective web browsers. Result #1 on Google for me goes straight to the Chrome store.
The immorality comes in when the program actively subverts its own purpose for existing... imagine an antivirus with "acceptable viruses" allowed out of the box. They don't steal your info, or ruin your computer, but its authors gave the company a backhander to leave them unblocked by default. This is directly analogous to ads.
It's also a conflict of interest, and gives the developer a perverse incentive to allow more ads, since they charge ad publishers actual money to be on the whitelist. ABP's customers are the ad companies, not its users. (Something something if you're not the customer...)
And "hating capitalism" is such a ridiculous strawman that it deserves no further comment.
_ The immorality comes in when the program actively subverts its own purpose for existing_
Depends on what you think its purpose is -- I don't block ads because I have a moral problem with advertising revenue paying for content I view -- I block ads because I'm tired of overly disruptive ads that interfere with my web browsing experience. I really don't mind if there are some unobtrusive ads and I might even click on them if they are particularly relevant (i.e. Google ads tend to be relevant enough that I click on them).
_ It's also a conflict of interest, and gives the developer a perverse incentive to allow more ads,_
But AdBlock devs have a strong incentive to not piss off users so much that they'll stop running the software or will click the button that says "block all ads". If developers remove that button, then users will move to different software.
I don't care how much money ABP makes from publisher payouts, I just care that my browser no longer freezes while I wait for a 2MB pop-over to load as it chews up my limited bandwidth.
Not OP, but I do things that people pay money for. I find advertising degrading and avoid it where possible. The real issue is most online content is terrible and not worth paying for.
Worse even when I do pay, the ads don't go away. (Hulu, premium cable TV, etc.) Because, it's the people with money that subsidize the Advertising model, let them opt out and it collapses.
Evidently, and as I'm very sure you completely understood but chose to disregard in order to go on a tirade, the above poster wasn't objecting to revenue making in itself, but to the fact that the way that this ad-blocker makes its money is by (ironically), displaying ads. Most non tech people instantly associate ad-blocking software with AdBlock Plus, and don't even realize that the software they are installing made a deal with certain companies to let their ads through. Your tirade against "those damn anti-american commies" (hyperbole but that was the gist of it) makes no sense at all.
Since you're apparently hate reading and replying to comments as they were written, instead of as you want to read into them, I paraphrase the above poster:
"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."
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.
>the rise ad blocking is a perfect example of market efficiency
No it isn't - it's market inefficiency. Ad blocking allows content consumption without contributing to costs, which publishers have budgeted for. Flattr and Google Contributor are more efficient versions of blocking ads because it still contributes to content.
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.
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.
Is ABP being paid by the advertisers whose ads they're allowing? I honestly don't know. But it's unlikely they're blocking ads they're being paid to show.
> Since you apparently hate capitalism, I'm curious how you're paid.
acceptable ad by me is a bit of text and maybe an image I can click on if the context is right and I have a coinciding interest. Please no JS/FLASH etc stuff on your page.
Exactly. On a thread some time ago on the topic of ad-blockers, someone said something of the sort "The internet is a pull medium, not a push medium. I don't block ads, I just decline to request them and run their code on my machine"
I've never understood the backlash against the acceptable ads program. They state clearly what policies the ads must adhere to, and review them manually for compliance. Sure, if viewing absolutely no advertising is important to you, then you'll want to turn that feature off or use a different client. But why do you think they're part of the "dark side" for trying to encourage inoffensive ads?
>I've never understood the backlash against the acceptable ads program.
Simply put, many people believe there is no such thing as an acceptable ad on the web, and that any ad blocker which allows advertising to be shown is by definition malicious, broken software. No advertising, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, regardless of the content, or how badly a site depends on it, is acceptable to users of ad blockers. They expect it to block ads, period.
> No advertising, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, regardless of the content, or how badly a site depends on it, is acceptable to users of ad blockers.
I'm a user of an ad blocker (ABP). Don't put words in my mouth.
I believe in compensating creators for their content and would rather compensate them with my time than my money.
"Many people," not "literally everyone, especially HN user 'morgante.'"
I'm certainly in the "fuck all ads forever" camp. There are just way too many downsides to downloading/seeing/playing/executing advertisements. If all the websites that relied on ads today had to disappear or redesign to reduce their operational costs, I think the web would be a much better place.
Paywalls would probably be a more stable revenue model than advertising. Everyone else would have make money some other way, but alternatives (like Patreon) already exist.
> Prior to the disestablishment 1995 commercial traffic on the Internet in the United States was limited by law, and prior to 1988 for the most part strictly forbidden, with the exception of traffic with research and defense aims.
I believe you're in the extreme minority when it comes to ad block users.
The web was always presented as being free - the content was free, the browsers were free, the community that built it believed information wanted be free. Most people don't want to compensate anyone for anything on the web by viewing ads because they've been conditioned to expect that they shouldn't have to - they simply see advertising as a nuisance. Until recently when sites started detecting ad-blockers, there was no negative effect to blocking it.
I do believe advertising doesn't work on the web, but mostly because of the way the web was designed and implemented, not entirely because of politics. Content creators can't expect to be compensated through web ads as long as they can't stop users from viewing their content without the ads. At least with other forms of media, you're expected to pay before you consume, or viewership is estimated, so the effect of avoiding advertising isn't so direct, but on the web, every view counts.
Given the poor reputation (entirely deserved) of web ads, the degree of control users have over their browsers, and the number of people who view piracy and ad-blocking as a moral imperative, alongside the majority who just consider ads to be annoying and useless for them, it's simply not possible for advertising as a revenue model to work on the web. The number of people who consider "ethical" or "acceptable" ads to even be a thing isn't large enough to support the web's economy.
> I believe in compensating creators for their content and would rather compensate them with my time than my money.
But there is money involved, a lot of 3rd parties inserting themselves between you and the creators are getting paid real money (Eyeo, through its "acceptable ads" campaign, is such a 3rd-party).
Surely that money is not created out of thin air, hence the question: where is this money coming from ultimately?
> Surely that money is not created out of thin air, hence the question: where is this money coming from ultimately?
It's coming from advertisers, obviously. Unlikely so many on Hacker News, I don't think advertisers are inherently immoral and horrible people. I'm happy for them to pay for content and the technology to deliver that content.
Ironically, in this system the advertisers are actually subsidizing the blocking of non-compliant ads. That seems ideal: advertisers are competing to provide quality ads and to block poor ones.
> It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box.
Well, maybe the purpose of that particular program is to block awful, obstructive, auto-playing ads, but allow sensible levels of advertising to support web sites.
>Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP.
I looked at it, I tried it, I love it so far. I added uMatrix(1) and uBlock Origin Websocket(2). Now I just need to read the documentation to get the full advantage(3).
It's possible for a website owner to directly publish ads, and those ads would be harder to block (but still trivial). Site owners trade screen real estate in exchange for ad revenue, just like billboards of old. This used to be the model in the early 2000s and I actually OK with it... though it probably wasn't the best model, a bit like running a diner on revenue from ads in the menu.
The problem is centralized publishers. They offer higher revenue through highly targeting ads from thousands of advertisers. It's a race to the bottom where all websites are incentivized to use publishers and consumers are forced to use ad blocking tools against the publishers (hurting content creators)... undermining the long-term sustainability of the internet as a content publishing medium.
As with many things, both consumers and producers are acting justifiably. It's the man in the middle that needs to go. He's just skimming a short-term profit and hurting both sides in the long-run.
I normally surf with uBlock Origin and most of the filters turned on (anything that's not experimental or a subset of a larger filter), and I get a shock every now and then when I use a browser without filtering and see what the internet has turned into. What the shit, that looks nothing like the Guardian that I am used to seeing. Youtube ads are a real shocker too.
About the only time I ever actually notice advertising is when some site sets up an aggressive anti-adblock or airs 2 minutes of dead air where an ad spot would have gone.
I normally surf with uBlock Origin and most of the filters turned on (anything that's not experimental or a subset of a larger filter), and I get a shock every now and then when I use a browser without filtering and see what the internet has turned into.
Indeed! I got this experience every time I used Chrome (rather than Firefox) on Android. The web has become quite horrible. I am now back on iOS and the author of uBlock has made a great blocker for Safari on iOS:
It is possible, but it requires that ads people trust publishers. Otherwise publishers will just say they served a million ad that day, and cash on it without any proof. Everyone is putting their own tracker in the ads because they can't trust other people data (unless you're Google or Facebook, or other giant)
It is still not clear to me whether uBlock or uBlock Origin should be preferred. It seems that the original author of uBlock had a falling out with some contributors and decided to fork it and go do his own thing his own way with uBo. People assert that this makes it "better", but I'm not sure. I've tried both and they do appear to have substantially differing featuresets. Can anyone finally clarify the situation, and the pros/cons of each?
Use uBlock Origin, see my other post. The author of uBlock Origin makes it clear that no donations are sought for the development of the extension. That is not the case with the other version.
Furthermore, non-solicitation of donations is a political reason to prefer uBo. I'm curious about the technical reasons. As a side note, I personally have no problem whatsoever with an extension creator soliciting donations as long as they're not doing so in a deceptive or annoying manner.
uBlock hasn't been updated in almost a year. uBlock Origin is actively developed. uBlock has effectively had no significant changes or improvements since the uBlock Origin fork happened.
There's some background here which might be relevant. Another extension, AdBlock, used to have a policy against "acceptable ads." The author sought donations to keep development going, but later sold the business (and the users!) to an entity that immediately started allowing such ads through.
Maybe the author of uBlock Origin wants to make it clear that this can't happen here.
I understand that a political issue is what drove them apart originally. However, people continually assert that uBlock Origin is the better extension. Is there anyone who has done an objective, non-political comparison of their featuresets and/or technical properties to really evaluate which one is superior for end users?
I can say anecdotally, that I found plain uBlock more featureful for everyday usage, but I haven't done a thorough review. I currently use uBlock Origin.
For one thing, uBlock Origin is constantly being updated, while uBlock hasn't been touched in quite awhile[0]. The uBlock maintainer seemingly quit working on it so that he could work on a paid ad-blocker for iOS called Purify instead.[1]
I don't see the problem at all, or any need for disrupting it. If you don't like AdBlockPlus, then just switch over to uBlock Origin. It doesn't believe in "acceptable ads" and doesn't have a cozy relationship with the ad business. It even uses the same filter lists. All you have to do is switch. ABP isn't even installed by default anywhere, so you can't compare it to IE on Windows in the browser wars.
The idea outlined in the article is actually good. I'm not a fan of AdblockPlus due to the "we'll let adds through for payments" and much prefer uBlock but I do think it's strategically smart to include content micro payment with add blocking. They vastly overestimate how many people will pay for it (imo) but the segment of customers who hate adds but don't mind paying for content is a bit under served.
I am a very strong believer in good content being voluntarily rewarded if the business model is right (which includes strong price discrimination measures i.e. keeping the content free for a large chunk of people). It might be naive idealism (OpenBSD/OpenSSL, PGP not getting more donations has me scratching my head) but at the end of the day I think free (as in speech and beer) with optional payment to keep the excellent content creators in the business of creating content will work and should work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's a tempting way to look at it. "Don't want to enable ads? I don't want you wasting my bandwidth!" However, outside of rich multimedia or unusually popular content, the marginal cost of serving a page view is peanuts compared to the hours (or days, or months) of human labor that already went into producing the content.
Since creating quality content is the part that's difficult and expensive, it stands to reason that it's the part that should be monetized. It's really an accident of history that content creation was able to be subsidized by advertising or charging for distribution.
The main benefit doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth (which is very cheap), it's that the "disable your ad block" nag screens actually work on some people. If even a small percentage of people actually do whitelist/disable their ad blocker as a result of the message, then the site makes more money.
Isn't there a network effect at play, though? People who can't read your article because of ad blocker blockers won't share it on social media. Sites that turn away some visitors will probably notice a dip in traffic greater than the number of ad-blocking users who were denied access.
This is the same reason Microsoft has historically been pretty lax about going after home users who pirate Windows; those users make Windows a more attractive market for software publishers, which in turn draws more users.
Honestly, as a publisher, I can tell you this is exactly the intent. Its already like you aren't there. Saying you aren't coming back certainly doesn't hurt the publisher. You are only going to continue to see more of this. Its inevitable or a large portion of the content you view will no longer exist. This adblock idea sounds cute but its unlikely to work and certainly can't sustain the content thats out there. Unless someone comes up with something truly innovative, its going to be a war vs the adblockers. Frankly I think people are too dramatic about ads. Sure if you click on those Facebook linkbait articles they are littered with dozens of ads. Is 4 second delay to view Forbes content really that disastrous? (I say Forbes because it somehow become the punching bag for complaints).
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/ 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
90% is a pretty good deal. I started down the path of doing something like flattr not too long before they came on the scene and I figured 5-15% would be a pretty fair amount to take because you have to pay a content provider and a potential group of middle men. You also have to cover transaction fees aside from just your own internal costs.
If I fill my flattr account I have to pay any transaction charges. Flattr payouts are via bank account where the charges are neglectable. Then there is only those mysterious "potential group of middle men" left who would get their share. Who are those middle men? And if 10% is ok, why does everybody say that paypal with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction is expensive?
That's a pretty standard CC fee which would be part of any flattr-like service as well. Somebody has to pay it. That's also why my ideal number was as low as 5%. If you have 3% or so coming out for the financial system you are then aggregating all of the stats to keep tabs on how is getting what at a very small transaction level. There is a lot of data to keep for the monthly roll-up. 2% would be a ridiculously cheap amount to take. Flattr is only keeping about 7% now, but their reporting is much simpler since they are not transacting on every impression and also because very few sites are using flattr.
Flattr doesn't have to pay any CC charges, maybe some bank transfer charges. And the mysterious middle mens are vanished?
The only reason why flattr has to take such a big share is that they do not have enough users. But with such greedy charges, which are even more expensive than paypal for a lot of cases they will never get enough users.
Reminds me of Valve's attempt to monetize the Steam Workshop last year. They claimed it was to put money in the hands of the modders, but the modders only got 25% of the money and they had to earn $100 (after Valve's cut) to ever see a dime.
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/ for past several years and I have begun to notice that I certain sites , such as wired and forbes, have blocked my access.
These publishers are just signalling that their content isn't relevant. It's not "must-read" content, but features and editorials and other ways they try to differentiate themselves as an infotainment source. Actual news is posted without ads - by real people in comment threads, on social media, and at non-paywalled news sites & blogs. Don't see them as devils blocking you from content; see them as angels freeing you from having your time wasted with unimportant content.
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.
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".