CoinTent: A Sustainable Ad-Free Web
medium.com
medium.com
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.
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
On our failure to focus on finding alternate solutions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961761
Your second post for example is advertising for people to contact you about some project you want to start.
See fowlerpower's originally top ranked comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805998) and then see my reply to it (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.
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?
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. 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
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.
I think there would be traction for an ad-free network you could subscribe to and direct the flow of your funds. I would be more inclined to subscribe to the service in that form rather than what CoinTent is currently proposing. But I doubt I'm in the majority.
Here's the link to the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk
What? You chose to either buy or don't. I don't see the trickery.
Here are 10 things you will do after ad blockers kill the web (You won't believe number 7!!!!)
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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"/
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.
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.
Lol, you're adorable. I'm starting to believe it's not even reading comprehension issues with you, it's just functional illiteracy.
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.
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.
it would register access to the website, add an interaction token to the pay-to database and forget who it was that visited.
if you keep to an honorable "do no evil" philosophy, this should work.
i'm sure the temptation to use a large database of collected visit data to optimize ads is appealing from a financial point of view, but since your product is about avoiding tracking, it should fit and keep it popular enough to remain sustainable.
Expect browser extensions that make that time go to zero.
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
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?
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!
Something doesn't sit right with me ethically about this concept.
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%.
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.
I've watched several schemes collapse because the collected fees were simply too low.
There is no ethical system that spits out Platonic percentages. People charge or don't charge and buy or don't buy, as they please.
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
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?
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.
Sounds expensive. Does it scale?
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.
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.
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!
Citation needed. Which adblockers are selling my data?
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?!
Luckily, both Google and Apple have expressed strong interest in standardizing web payments making their implementations compatible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd much rather that than essentially have to pay out money to browse online.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I tend to agree with the core of what you're saying: that advertising has enabled, and should continue to be a main driver of, the creation of content on the internet. There's really no way to argue with that, and I don't think ads will ever go away entirely.
I also agree that things and content cost money to make. The truth is, in the US, the average ad block rate is currently 20%. That means a lot of content creators struggle to get enough money from ads, often leading them to create worse experiences (more ads, more aggressive ads) or more content (to get more eyeballs).
Our intention is to create an alternative to ad blockers that provides a sustainable option for websites and users. Specifically, we are trying to create a model that does not solely reward websites for attracting the most viewers or eyeballs, but rather incentivizes the creation and distribution of valuable content.
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
George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtK_YsVInw8
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.
"Ad blockers" did not start an "arms race". There has always been people who would rather not have ads intruding on their daily life, including before "ad blockers" came into existence -- content blockers are merely the expression of this.
"Native advertising" and "product placement" were a thing before personal computer, internet and content blockers existed. The end game of an ad is to be seen, and for advertisers there is nothing off-limit to reach that goal, content blockers or not.
Funding through advertisements as business model is not a law of the universe which people must accept with a fatalist mindset.
Until then, you can pry my adblocker out of my cold, dead hands.
Irresponsible adnetworks are fucking up the web not advertising in general. It will revolve though and brands and content providers will push those violators or. It's just a matter of time.
I literally know of none, and having worked at some I know that you can't stay in business if you spend the kind of money necessary to solve the malware problems. And the tracking data/access is either your secondary or, sometimes, primary revenue source.
I believe that advertisements have been a requirement of humanities growth (related to the world's economy). I agree that at the moment we need ads. However, I believe the world needs to move to a transparent economy and ads as we know them may not have a place in that sort of economy.
Being served static ads or sponsored content (already happening anyway) is still an improvement over that.
This is just not true. It's not like advertisers would have said "Ya know, everyone is allowing our ads. Guess that means we no longer need to try different delivery methods. All good here, lets go get a drink guys!"
We'd still have sponsored content without adblocking. Now, instead of seeing sponsored content and banner ads, I only have to filter out sponsored content.
I agree that advertising is useful and important, but it's too hard to make money from, and too easy to block with ABP et al.
My biggest gripe with this setup is that it comes with a built-in adblocker. It shouldn't seen as a tit-for-tat, the publisher should decide whether the user gets pushed ads or not (the user could still block these client-side, and the publisher could still block adblockers if they wanted to). I also don't think we need Yet-Another-Ad-Blocker, probably not a good idea to undertake that.
There should also be some sort of API that allows sites to check if the user is a CoinTent subscriber or not, which would allow the site to offer exclusive content to customers who actually pay.
People should get used to paying for things again, and a "cable subscription" model is the right type of thing here. A world where everything is free is unsustainable.
The internet gives us the ability to discover for ourselves. Broadcasting commercials to everyone is the old method being applied to the new medium.
The amount of tracking on the internet by the advertising industry is damaging to our privacy rights.
It can(does) lead to poor quality content being published on the internet in hopes of more advertising revenue.
I applaud CoinTent for testing their idea.
I know I will take a lot of heat for saying this here in The South.
Slavery is something that has existed for at least 2000 plus years. Agriculture is supported by it, manufacturing is supported by it and it is no coincidence that the clothes you wear are made by it. Fact is we as humans may not love slavery but it exists because plantations want to make profits, it provides cheap labor to plantations that would otherwise need to charge a ton of money for all that cotton you love. The Southern economy entirely depends on it.
As more and more production including agriculture and manufacturing move to The South do you really truly believe they will remain slave free? Who would toil out in the blazing sun picking cotton by hand, for no pay, to be housed, fed and treated like livestock? Where would the thriving plantation, factory or farm get its labor from? Purely from the free population who buy its products? Do you think we can go back to the ways of charging $90 dollars for a cotton blouse?
Fact is things require labor to make and plantations and factories need humans to labor to keep making things. Slavery whether you like it or not is here to stay.
Edit: What this guy writes is crazy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706
What will you do for people like me?
When I'm browsing the internet, I really think that I'm wasting my time since I already pay for and therefore have quality news content. I assume that many, like me, are browsing rather than working because we have focus issues.
So here's another business model for someone to pursue. Rather than ad-block, let's have site-block but where that site that got blocked still receives a micro-payment from me. Why, you ask, would I want to pay a site that I didn't visit? Because I made an extra $20 that hour by not wasting time on the site, and I'm happy to give them $1 or 5% of those extra earnings. The fact that I'm somewhat serious here show you what a crazy game we've made for ourselves.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AdSupportedWebD...
> essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions
The internet existed and was great before ads, it'll exist and be great if ads die off.
If I don't want to see ads from, e.g. NY Times, but I want to read their content, I could either manage yet-another-subscription, or I could have a plugin that manages the payment for me.
The benefit of the latter is (in theory) a) I don't need to have yet-another-subscription, and b) I don't pay for what I don't read.
The downside is, again, that I don't pay for what I don't read, which in turn leads to click-bait and listicles. However, advertising has already led to that.
And if everyone ad-blocking is not sustainable then there will be less for you to consume.
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
Someone tried a broad "pay for all the good sites" scheme around 15 years ago, in the first dot-com boom. Anyone remember that?