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Mozilla explains their recent foray into advertising - A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy (blog.mozilla.org)

submitted 2 months ago by Blisterexe@lemmy.zip to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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MARK SURMAN, PRESIDENT, MOZILLA Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My main issue with BAT and crypto in general is value fluctuations. If a website is going to get on board with something, they don't want to build a system that adjusts the price with the value of the token, so I don't think it could ever replace ads, only be supplemental.

So that's why I'm interested in Taler. It can be pegged to whatever currency we want without having any concern for transaction fees or anything like that, even across borders. But honestly, I also don't care what the currency is, I just want a way to pay a website without seeing ads and without making an account.

The implementation doesn't need to be that complicated, just a header that provides a unique identifier (can change every request), the entity to get payment from (e.g. Mozilla), and a cryptographic signature from that entity that guarantees funds are available. And then the response would be the same as if the user had a no-ads account, and the website would settle up with the payment entity at some interval. So:

user interaction - load funds, and a local ledger is kept tracking transactions, which is periodically synced with the browser vendor
website owner interaction - receive and validate headers in lieu of account details; send invoice each month to browser vendor (same overhead as dealing with one customer)

It wouldn't need to be Mozilla-specific either, it could be a standard that websites could adopt if they so chose. Mozilla and other browser vendors would be motivated to get sites on board because they'd make a cut from these transactions, and they could build plugins for the more popular platforms so adoption is easier. I'm thinking the big news agencies would be the perfect initial customers here, and they could branch out from there.

Picking a ten transaction tool (like Taler) could simplify things, but honestly anything could be used. Mozilla probably wouldn't be able to convince Google to join, but it could probably be an extension, and they could maybe convince Apple to join.

[–] ants_are_everywhere@mathstodon.xyz 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

@sugar_in_your_tea @felsiq

I like the idea of GNU Taler a lot. I honestly didn't realize it was still around. I'll have to explore its source code sometime.

> But honestly, I also don’t care what the currency is, I just want a way to pay a website without seeing ads and without making an account.

This is what I would like too. I think there are a few reasons it will be hard to switch to this model. Perhaps the main one is that the advertising model allows sites to charge more and more attention for the same (or degraded) service, and that's harder to do if people see their money being spent. Another is that sites want to be able to charge more for popular content. That's easy with advertising, but with real payments as the price increases demand will slow down. So it will be harder for sites to get massive views. Finally, I think most sites overvalue their content and direct payment may increase the amount of spam.

> Mozilla probably wouldn’t be able to convince Google to join, but it could probably be an extension, and they could maybe convince Apple to join.

I don't think Mozilla is interested in this sort of solution. Meta needs Mozilla and the Anonym ad tracking tech to fight the attacks from Google and Apple made in the name of privacy. Meta has tons of money to make that happen. Previously Google needed Mozilla to prove it wasn't a browser monopoly. Now that source of cash is gone and Meta's executives are inside Mozilla. Remember when Facebook made a bunch of people sad just to see if they could? Or when they spied on teens' phone usage through a VPN app? The people who made those decisions are now making decisions for Mozilla.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

I think there are a few reasons it will be hard to switch to this model.

It's the same model advertisers use though. Here's the flow for ads:

Ads load from the advertiser, with metadata about which website to pay
Periodically, advertisers pay the website for showing ads

All that's changing is the browser vendor is paying instead of the advertiser. So I guess think of Mozilla "paying" for ads, but not showing anything, and Mozilla's non-ads would show if a given header is present.

Another is that sites want to be able to charge more for popular content. That’s easy with advertising

Sure, and users could decide to see the ads or pay the premium to avoid them.

And yeah, I agree that most sites overvalue their content. This makes that more transparent, so users will gravitate toward the better value. I personally avoid a lot of high quality content because viewing it is too much of a hassel, a privacy violation, or too expensive (I'm not getting another subscription to read a handful of articles).

I don’t think Mozilla is interested in this sort of solution.

Agreed. But unfortunately, Mozilla seems like the best chance we have here. Brave replaces website ads (big no-no for many sites), Chrome doesn't EB want ad blocking at all, and Microsoft is cooking its own ad network.

So the most obvious niche left is an un-ad network, where you can pay to not see ads. Yet Mozilla wants to make "ethical ads" or whatever, which doesn't really solve the problem for people who hate ads.