Mozilla explains their recent foray into advertising - A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy
Mozilla explains their recent foray into advertising - A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy
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
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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I'm completely fine with anonymized ads being an option in theory, but there needs to be a way to compensate services w/o resorting to advertising. I think Mozilla should provide a way for users to pay to opt-out of ads, and get websites on board that way.
Websites want to get paid for their work, and advertising is the easiest way to do that. The solution isn't better ads, but alternative revenue streams for websites, and I'm 100% fine with Mozilla taking a cut of that alternative revenue stream. But I will not tolerate ads on my browser.
I hoped Brave would've solved this problem by letting users pay to remove ads, but instead they went to crypto to reward viewing ads. That's the opposite of what I want, and I really hope Mozilla has someone still working there in a position that matters that understands that.
Isn’t that exactly what brave did? I wasn’t a fan of their “watch ads to get BAT” system either, but the alternative was always to just buy BAT with actual money. I’d rather see Mozilla work with brave to collaborate and improve on the BAT strategy than to start another competing standard, personally.
Isn’t that exactly what brave did?
I'm actually quite intrigued with Braves attempts at innovating here, but I don't know how effective they have been and, alas, Brave relies on Chromium.
Exactly how I feel, which is why I’d be psyched if Mozilla joined in so that system could be extended to the browser I use lol
Does buying BAT compensate websites? AFAIK, no sites actually signed up to be compensated that way, so it just ended up being a random cryptocurrency. Brave went crypto first, websites second, and that obviously didn't work.
Mozilla should do the opposite IMO. Go out and make agreements with major sites to make their content available w/o ads for compensation, and then get users to start using that service. What they use for payment isn't particularly important to me, but it should be stable and low-cost. I think GNU Taler is a good start to keep costs really low (no money is actually changing hands), and Mozilla can settle up with websites monthly, quarterly, etc.
It should be Brave collaborating w/ Mozilla, not the other way around, because Brave obviously has weird motivations. Brave can keep BAT to reward watching ads, I just don't think they should use the same system for rewarding ads vs compensating websites for not showing ads.
I’d also love if they could do it this way, but I just don’t think it’s realistic tbh. In brave’s system it’s just up to the specific content creator to accept rewards - someone on YouTube could opt in without requiring google themselves to stop showing ads on the site in general (not gonna happen imo). Also, it’s not a reality I’m happy with, but Firefox and brave together are negligible for websites compared to chrome (65% of users use chrome 😭) so expecting websites to globally remove ads for non-chrome specific features is unlikely. Web devs could show ads based on user agent, sure, but that’s more work for the devs themselves compared to just blocking the ads and allowing them to say yes or no to be rewarded for their content.
BAT vs taler wise, I personally don’t care - I feel like the system works with either, so if they wanted to stick with BAT or switch it up I’d be happy either way. The part that’s important for me is the ability to reward creators independently from the websites that host them - like rewarding both is great, but in the case a website hasn’t/won’t done the work to disable ads (cough cough YouTube, Facebook/ig, etc)I still think creators should be able to benefit from the system. The last time I used BAT (which was very early after it launched tbh, things may have really changed) you could buy BAT (or watch ads for it, but the experience was truly shit and I immediately turned it off) and donate directly to websites (I gave some to Wikipedia iirc) or creators (I don’t watch YouTube but I heard some had signed up on there) or just let brave watch the time you spent on sites and divide your BAT between them proportionally monthly(?). Literally the only downside was like you said, adoption wasn’t incredible back then - but keep in mind that Firefox has 2.74% of users and brave is a rounding error. Firefox coming on board could dramatically increase engagement if all websites have to do is say “yea sure” to getting money from a small subset of their users, but I just really don’t see the majority of devs bothering to write new logic and fundamentally change their sites for the fraction of the Firefox+brave users who choose to donate (who are already a tiny fraction of their traffic).
Endgame ofc I agree should be to make tracking ads a thing of the past, but tbh I just don’t see the benefit of convincing websites to stop but only for a fraction of their users - like if you stumbled onto a random website and saw they said they’d opted into the program and wouldn’t track you / show ads… would you disable your adblocker? Imo until a system like this gets EXTREMELY wide adoption we have to be using adblocker anyway, so expecting devs to do a lot of work just so we can run the blockers on their page seems less than ideal to me.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.
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.
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.
IMO a solution that doesn't use a blockchain is better. The premise of a blockchain is that either (1) everybody keeps a copy of every website everyone visits, or (2) there's a trusted party (or parties) somewhere that compresses the database.
We already have trusted parties on the web, and recording that much duplicate data is bad both for resources (bandwidth, energy consumption, disk usage) and for privacy.
There's a whole field of blockchain forensics and it will get even more interesting as quantum computers with more qubits start spinning up.
Really sites and visitors just have to agree on a signed bill/receipt and hand the transaction over to any existing payment processor.
Your other points are absolutely valid, but privacy-wise I’d much rather have my data associated with an anonymous wallet ID than any payment linked to my real identity
Good point thanks for catching that. The receipt itself can name any anonymous identifier like a crypto address. I was just intending to note that the blockchain is essentially a wasteful timestamp server that doesn't seem needed for this application.
As a practical matter, the website has your IP, when you visited, what you looked at etc. So you already have to trust them with your privacy. And there's a question of whether public policy would allow web traffic to be untraceable by default. But certainly the payment processor doesn't need to know things like which websites you visit.
Minor correction: the website has my VPN’s IP 😂 I don’t trust random websites with shit, personally. The payments not being tied to your real identity would also not make the web any more or less private than it currently is - just the alternative would remove privacy. Again tho, I’m not tied to crypto specifically and would be perfectly happy with any payment system that maintained user privacy. I just don’t want to see a feature roll out that gets people jailed for visiting lgtbq+ sites or some shit when their payment providers are controlled by fascist governments
> that gets people jailed for visiting lgtbq+ sites or some shit when their payment providers are controlled by fascist governments
If that's your threat model, then there may be an additional threat of timing analysis on the blockchain.
If your threat actor has the resources of a nation state and is able to tap your ISP, the site's ISP, and your VPN's ISP, then you probably also don't want a permanent pseudonymous record of your activity in the form of a blockchain.
This is just an initial thought; I don't have any concrete reason to believe that blockchain forensics + timing analysis is any stronger than just one of those on its own.
Why's it gotta be crypto though
BC banking has a host that's higher for both cash and administrative.
I didn't like how brave did it but the idea is sound IMHO.
Would you want your full identity being associated with every page you donate to, especially if the donations happen based on you just visiting? Idc if it’s crypto or another alternative personally, but it absolutely has to be properly anonymous or at least have the ability to be. Especially at the time BAT launched, crypto was the only way I personally knew to achieve that - if Mozilla wants to get on board and switch away from crypto to something equally anonymous, I’d be thrilled, but imo this is a good use case for crypto anyway so it doesn’t bother me.
You could have some sort of account with the browser company. They aggregate site visits, then do a monthly payout.
But that would mean storing history for users? Though surely there's a way to anonimize that.
that's actually the first good idea ive seen somebody suggest mozilla do instead!
For the moment you can donate to sites you like while keeping the adblocker on.
Yup, and that's generally what I do.
I honestly just want to put $20 in a pool or something and have the browser deduct from that balance when I visit a site. The sites I visit more get more of my money, and I'll get a record of how much each site changes per visitor to decide whether I want to keep going there. If they use something like GNU Taler for the accounting, the sites can't track me at all, they'll just get micropayments and settle up with Mozilla at some interval.
Yet Mozilla seems to not consider this at all. Their entire messaging is "better ads," not "alternatives to ads."
This is exactly what I've been saying. Shove a virtual tip jar in the browser and let it pay out to websites based on viewership. I could even imagine a model where sites simply say "you must have at least $x in your tip jar to view this site, or pay us directly $y per month" for sites like Wall Street Journal that now paywall everything away
Exactly. I don't want to have a dozen small subscriptions, I want one pot of money that handles all of my online stuff, with no recurring monthly obligations. If they continue to produce good content, they'll continue to get my money, and that's how it should be.