This is exactly the issue I encountered. I run a pelican static blog on github. I just host my comments as a simple flask app on www.pythonanywhere.com Code here: https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment
Actually I wanted something even more simpler. No usernames, avatars,emails,threading, none of that. I just wanted the simplest way to add comments, and to keep spammers out, that it. I feel isso is more useful for blogs that have a ton of comment interactions. FYI I agree that comments are not bigdata, I should have used sqlite as well..
I explored this for my static website (hosted on github), Didn't fit my needs exactly. So I started building one in flask and mySQL recently: https://github.com/singhjaideep/flask_comment
That makes sense. So we can, instead of mining anonymous data about users (like my other comment), can mine the webpage the ad is going to be displayed on. This would make it interest based. Thanks for your input!
Dang it! Back to square one. So it seems its a double edged sword. Personally I feel this is a good compromise. What would you rather have, something like this? Or something like Google Ads that follow you throughout the internet with help of super cookies and javascript, merge everything they know about your behaviours from their other services, and serve ultra specific creepy ads?
That is true. They drive up prices on Google Ad prices. But I feel its a symptom more than the problem. Because these ad networks have a per-click payout system, they have to track each and every click. One way to fix this would be to have a constant pay rate regardless of clicks. Something like $X/week or $Y/month, where X&Y can be decided on heuristics I explained in other comment.
Good question. Maybe target using some kind of heuristics? We can figure out who is loading our imgs: ip addresses, requesting browser details, load time, approximate location (city, state, country), what website is the user visiting (can figure out what they are interested it) etc. We can build anonymous profiles of users. Ofcourse, the bigger the network, more precise the heuristics..
I'll take a stab at it. Do not embed javascript at all! Javascript slows down the webpage, send creepy-tracking-stuff back to the ad network, and gets easly blacklisted in adblockers. We should not trust arbitrary 3rd party javascript code anyways. How about embeddable static images instead? Generate a unique img tag for each content creater, that we can refresh at our end, everytime the webpage loads. Will show a new ad everytime a user goes to the page.
Absolutely! Some websites I can't even scroll properly without disabling ads. I like the Patreon idea, because of not middleman, so it certainly appeals to an audience. But I don't think its scalable. With ad networks like Google, I do not have to create an account anywhere, or link my credit card. Google takes care of compensating both content creaters and advertisers.