But I just can't bring myself to indiscriminately block all ads, knowing how important they are as a funding source for the websites I use.
There's only one thing that destroys privacy even more thoroughly than ad targeting: payment.
Can you expand? Because I disagree. I would rather a company have my name, payment info, and email address than all those things plus other personally identifying information. I feel like a payment model decentralizes the issue and that I would not be tracked around the web. I don't need the WaPo to know the other sites I've been on, what my political affiliations are, my age, gender, etc. This is because I don't see the issue as companies know who I am, but rather that I don't like that companies have intimate details of who I am, or maybe more simply put "who I am vs what I am." To me the latter (tracking) is invasive, the former (payment) is consensual. As one might say "just shut up and take my money."
But I am open and interested to differing opinions.
I don't know many subscription based content publishers that promise not to monetise what they know about me in all sorts of other ways. I do have a newspaper subscription. That doesn't stop them from showing me ads or using ad networks and trackers. Payment networks and banks monetise my payment data as well.
Even if a particular publisher is willing make such promises, I wouldn't have much confidence in their ability to keep my data safe.
So the upshot is that I simply don't want my real name irrefutably and permanently linked to everything I read, write or watch.
What ad neworks know about me is extremly patchy. Every time I see what they think about me I wonder who on earth would ever consider paying them for that rubbish. But that's not what it's about. All they need to be able to do is make predictions that are slightly better than random guesses.
I disagree with this. Maybe you can elaborate?
If I am paying for a service then there is no incentive to mine my personal data for revenue. It's a mutually beneficial transaction. And there are plenty of ways to hide your personal information (even your name) when paying for something (e.g. using a service like privacy.com).
I doubt that there will ever be a widespread, convenient way to make anonymous electronic payments. The authorities would never allow that to happen (for understandable reasons I have to say).
Incentives are not working at all. Lots of services I pay for go to great lengths to squeeze even more out of that customer relationship. And how could I possibly trust a large number of small companies I know very little about?
I try to minimize ad problems by using containers and profiles. I have a Facebook-only container and Google-only container and never login to either in any other container. So far this approach seems to work for me.
Also important: start asking websites that need to take payment to provide a cryptocurrency alternative. Something based on Ethereum blockchain preferably, given that is possible to easily get stable-tokens (meaning, no volatity risk) and that is on its way to get rid of Proof-of-Work.
The ad-based economy needs to die and we already have the tools to kill it. All we need now is to stop with the excuses and take action.
I don't believe cryptocurrencies will work. As soon as they become widespread they will be banned or regulated just like other forms of electronic payment, including know your customer rules.
For the moment, I don't see that we really have the tools to replace ads, much as I would like that.
No. The biggest claim of Brave is that all of the information for ad matching is in the browser. So they can not control it. The only thing that Brave can control at the moment is the on-boarding ramps - i.e, if you want to take your BAT out of their wallet and to your own, you need to go through KYC via Uphold.com. But you can pay and contribute BAT to other people even if you haven't done KYC.
Even in this case, the KYC that needs to be done is only with Uphold. After you take out your tokens you are free to spend them however you want and no one will ask you anything.
> I don't believe cryptocurrencies will work
They already do.
> regulated just like other forms of electronic payment, including know your customer rules.
Even in this libertarian nightmare that you are imagining, crypto would more likely help you to keep your data away from businesses and third-parties. If every transaction needs to be authorized and monitored by the government or central authority, then there is no need for the business to collect any information from you - all they would need is to ensure that you are sending your payment from a government-validated address.
Governments don't do that today due to the sheer costs of trying to run such an operation. But tracking things on the blockchain is reasonably easy, so there would be no need for banks and third-parties to do the dirty work for them.
In any case, it seems like you are just looking for a way to rationalize your current behavior. I only mentioned Brave because it is the first strong offering for an alternative to the ad-based economy. If for whatever reason Brave stops being a valid alternative, there is nothing holding you to it. Why not try it for yourself?
Not in the least. I find ads annoying and I don‘t have any skin in the game when it comes to advertising. But it‘s not a matter of simply trying Brave. I want to understand how it works for users and also for publishers. And I want to understand how it is not a proprietary system with a gatekeeper role as a structural feature.
Hell, a competitor could even decide to have an advertisement network that also operates with the BAT supply that has been taken out of the exchanges. If for some reason the company starts doing anything user-hostile, they will lose the business to someone else.
The only important thing is that anything is better than the status quo. If you are weary of Brave, you can go for something like flattr, or you can start looking into crypto as a way to pay directly for those you want to support (and still keep your privacy). Whatever you decide, just please realize that "I don't like ads, but I don't see any good alternative" is not a valid statement anymore.
Does Brave support a way for other ad networks to integrate into their BAT system? If not, any competitor would first have to popularise their own web browser.
BAT is just a token like any other on the Ethereum chain. The "easiest" way to acquire at the moment is by using the Browser and setting up the wallet, but if you don't want to that you can just go any exchange and trade it. Or you can have a website and accept it as payment.
I am sorry if I made you on focus on the specifics of Brave when the point of my original post was to say that there are alternatives nowadays for ads. Alternatives that may not be perfect, but that do work and are better than the status quo.
In any case, I think that the best way for you to understand how things work and make sense of what I am saying is if you try it yourself. You can start by using Brave on your phone to replace Chrome or Safari and get a feel of things, see how the rewards system work, etc.
What I mean is Brave‘s specific Browser integration that creates a compensation scheme for publishers. I would only support such a system if it doesn‘t put Brave a privileged gatekeeper position.
I’m not sure which other alternatives you‘re talking about specifically, but I have explained many times elsewhere in this debate why I see subscription based services as an additional loss of privacy and why I don‘t believe that there can ever be a widely used general purpose system of anonymous electronic payments.
But I do believe that a Brave style system could work if it can be structured in away that does not allow one company to impose content restrictions.
There is nothing stopping other browsers to adopt it. There is nothing stopping other companies to create a similar alternative. There is nothing stopping a publisher to get an advertisement deal and place an ad on their website; as long as it does not use third-party cookies or tracks you in any way, it won't be blocked.
> subscription based services (...) loss of privacy (...) there can ever be a widely used general purpose system of anonymous electronic payments.
Look, I am not trying to sell you anything ok? I don't work at Brave and I am not interested in doing shilling for any specific cryptotoken. It's okay if you want to say "I don't want to pay for content that I am now getting for free. It's also okay to say "I don't mind having my data exploited in exchange of a few dollars that can go to content producers and publishers".
The only things that you are saying that are total BS is that (1) ad-tech is less of threat to privacy than a digital economy based on crypto and (2) that no alternative currently exist.
Your argument against usage of cryptocurrency for payments is just concern trolling. You are presenting a very, very unlikely hypothetical (companies might be required to collect user data to accept payments) in order to justify the status quo. Likewise, you are making these near-impossible demands from a company that has a fraction of the market share on a trillion dollar industry while having no qualms with all of the ethical violations from the dominant oligarchy. Again, concern trolling.
I'm not accusing you of anything either. I wasn't thinking for a moment that you were trying to sell me something or that you were shilling.
It's a simple disagreement. I'm unconvinced by the case you're making for specific alternatives. That doesn't mean I'm happy with the status quo.
You have said absolutely nothing to show that Brave would not be in a position to impose content restrictions if their system turned out to be successful.
My concerns about cryptocurrencies are anything but hypothetical. The authorities are extremely jumpy about cryptocurrencies. Regulation is already well under way. There have been crackdowns on crypto exchanges all over the world. Banks are suspending accounts left and right. I was personally invited by the local tax authorities to take part in a consultation on the subject.
And have you not noticed what happened when Facebook threatened to introduce a payment system that only so much as mentioned the word cryptocurrency? It was absolutely crushed before it even got off the ground. Granted, a lot of the concerns were related to Facebook's oligopolist status. But there were also huge concerns about the possibility of widespread money laundering, tax evasion and funding of terrorism.
What we need is a system that inherently limits the size of any financial transactions that a single party can initiate. That is very difficult to do while guaranteeing anonymity.
Let's not accuse each other of bad faith when what we're talking about is simply a difficult problem that many have tried to solve with very limited success.
> The authorities are extremely jumpy about cryptocurrencies. Regulation is already well under way.
Regulation already exists. It is due to the regulation, for instance, that Brave requires you to do KYC if you want to get the money out of their wallet and into your own. It is due to regulation that exchanges that do not comply with the law are getting crackdowns.
This is not an argument. This is FUD.
> Let's not accuse each other of bad faith when what we're talking about is simply a difficult problem that many have tried to solve with very limited success.
If the status quo was not harmful for society as it is, I wouldn't be nagging you about it. But this whole thread started with you claiming that accepting ad-tech's destruction of privacy is less of a problem than any alternative proposed so far. This is not a "simple disagreement"; it's plain wrong.
In my view, the status quo of ad funding is very annoying and somewhat harmful, but it is far less harmful than the app store model, which is pure oppression.
That's why I tend to be sceptical of any new scheme that once again puts someone in a gatekeeper role.
With regard to any widespread rollout of cryptocurrencies for anonymous payments you're going to have to accept that I'm pessimistic. You can call it FUD all day long. That's just aggressive rhetoric that adds nothing to the debate.
It's not that hard to make the argument that the moment that it became normal for websites to rely solely on ads for its revenue was the moment that we subverted a lot of our cultural institutions.
It's not that hard to make the argument that the rise of populism and extremist politics is rooted in this "eyeballs is all that matter" mentality for publishers.
It's not that hard to make the argument that ad-tech is making so many people addicted to our tech gadgets that its damage to the general public health is going to make Tobacco companies look innocent by comparison.
If that is not enough for you, take the amount of fraud and the amount of money that goes from advertisers to the pockets of the big ad companies and I hope you realize how ineffective it is.
> That's why I tend to be skeptical of any new scheme that once again puts someone in a gatekeeper role.
We are going in circles now. Again, there is nothing about Brave and its ad network that can not be replicated by any one that decides to compete with them. It's not like an "app store". The ads are optional, you joining the rewards program is optional. If for some reason someone else decides to create a competing ad network, it could run either as a fork or an extension. I fail to see what is so potentially evil that they can do that is worse than the evil that is currently done by the status quo.
Populism and fascism have been a problem for far longer than we have had ad-targeting. That said, I'm not opposed to putting restrictions on what ad networks are allowed to do.
>Again, there is nothing about Brave and its ad network that can not be replicated by any one that decides to compete with them.
Of course not. Others can build search engines and social networks and app stores as well. All of it can be replicated - theoretically. That doesn't change the fact that Google and Facebook and Apple are in an all powerful position to dictate content restrictions and access.
So in order for me to support a any new system, there would have to be an element of deliberate design to prevent that sort of power imbalance. I don't see that Brave has that, but I'm going to look into it more closely as I could easily be wrong.
I didn't say that it is the sole reason, but it certainly is one of the reasons and it is something that I have a way to control my input into the system.
> I'm not opposed to putting restrictions on what ad networks are allowed to do.
The problem is not "ad networks". The problem is in ad-funded business models and in PPC/PPP. When the business have the consumers just as a vehicle for delivering eye-balls, business only important metric is "how many eye-balls can we get?" and this is where everything went to shit.
> So in order for me to support a any new system, there would have an element of deliberate design to prevent that sort of power imbalance.
On one side you have an incumbent that is light-years away from having any kind of dominant hand and that you can hedge against an eventual abuse from their side. On the other you have giants that "are in an all powerful position to dictate content restrictions and access" but your only response is "it is annoying and somewhat harmful" and shrug it away? "Oh, I am pessimistic about every alternative that came so far, so let's just keep the existing abusers?"
I don't get this logic at all. It is either a display of apathy or dishonesty.
News, community, educational, etc? Is it a small group of sites, or a wide variety?
It's also got me really close to paying for YouTube red, which is the other option,and o e I wouldn't consider without the annoyance of ads.
Essentially, it's the great variety of what's available on the open Web that I don't want to lose. I don't want everything to become one big app store with all its suffocating narrow-mindedness and oppressive control freakery.
Would be way too hard to solve something like that with subscriptions.
Maybe one day, concepts like Brave Rewards or Google Contributor[0] will actually work... No idea what it'd take for those to reach critical mass, maybe government intervention.
If a site wants to use adds that will work despite, I have no issues seeing them. The extensions block pretty much any I would find unethical.
There must be a better way!
More than a handful choose that browser for privacy, including keeping stuff private from Mozilla.
Also those that disable telemetry after starting Firefox still sent telemetry. Mozilla only promises to delete it after 30 days not that they don't generate a number that says what % new installs in the last month disabled telemetry (though they don't publicly report this to my knowledge).
So that leaves those with whitelist only firewalling or similar measures that I (hope?) we can all agree isn't going to swing these numbers at any interesting digit position.
So number of (uBO + ABP users)/ Firefox users is probably 33%. So that might be where it is coming from
"Has addon" metric. uBO + ABP is far less than 33%.
https://www.businessinsider.com/30-of-all-internet-users-wil...
At my company people are either don't know about them, or actually fundamentally disagree with their purpose. (No, it's not an AdTech company, before anyone asks)
I don't think most people minds ads, such as on TV, but everyone hates the ad that is 10x the volume of the show and that's how the internet feels to me currently.
Is that true? I despise ads and the entire advertising industry. I would wear special glasses that would block billboards from my vision if they existed. I pay extra for the ad-free version of Hulu. When I'm at someone's house and they have cable and the TV is on, I find ad breaks incredibly jarring.
Am I just an extreme outlier? It would make me sad for humanity if that was the case. Not minding blatant emotional manipulation in your face all day seems... not great.
if you spend a significant time travelling through rather diverse countries, one of the first thing that hits you is different laws and norms around what can be advertised and where. moving through dictatorships and seeing elections is eye opening in its "weirdness". as a non American, visiting America and seeing laws, flags, billboards and medicine advertising is weird.
anyway, my point is, if you haven't been brought up with it, you see it for what it is, and normal becomes what you experience every day. one you spend a few years ad free, it's incredibly hard to go back, it's really jarring, and you see advertising the same way you see plastered images of the dictator in absolutely random locations when you visit other countries (and there's a good reason for that, because they're fundamentally the same thing).
And I do like to pay for services to bypass ads even though I use ad blockers that mitigate them anyways.
No. You are not alone. MOST people don't realize that there is an alternative.
Is adblocking not common? Every tech literate person I know uses an ad blocker. I'd say about 30-40% of millennials I know use them, most using ADB or uBlock Origin.
Every time I see someone using a browser with ads I forget what a nightmare the internet is.