| ▲ | andyfilms1 18 hours ago |
| I have a question. My ISP, allegedly, knows what websites I go to. So why can't I pay my ISP an optional $20 a month that gets evenly distributed directly to those websites, in exchange for an ad-free web experience? Surely I'm not creating much more than $20 in ad revenue in total per month, right? Can't we just cut out the middleman and all walk away happy? |
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| ▲ | WarmWash 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| People have been trying stuff like this for almost 20 years now. The core problem is that while people hold up that ads are the problem, the actual problem is that people like free stuff with no strings attached, i.e. have your cake (the content) and eat it too (nothing traded for it). So when you present people an alternate way to compensate creators directly, they overwhelmingly just stick with ad blocking. There is a long case file of fools taking the internet at their word that "I want to give but the ads are so bad I can't!". They don't want to give lol |
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| ▲ | GrantMoyer 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The problem is that the choice isn't seeing ads v.s. paying for the content. Instead, the choice is seeing ads v.s. overpaying for the content, then seeing ads anyway when the service decides to indroduce ads back to the paid subscription. By overpaying, I mean compared to what the service itself values its content at when it serves it for free with ads. How many people would sign up for a 15$ per month subscription to read one article with no ads? How many would pay 1¢ once to read the article with no ads? How many would sign up for one 15$ per month subscription to see no ads anywhere? I realize we don't have the infrastructure to make high volume 1¢ payments, and probably not for lack of trying, but I just don't think the core problem is that people only want stuff for 0¢ and not almost 0¢. | | |
| ▲ | andyfilms1 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | ISPs have their own DNS servers they could use to those block ads, ie. a network-wide Pihole. Paying the Spotify for Adblock fee could get you access to the "premium" DNS servers. It would still be an arms race, but I'm just spitballing here. |
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| ▲ | vidarh 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Longer. Microtransactions online dates back to DigiCash[1], founded in 1989 and with their first issue online of "CyberCash" in 1994 - I remember testing it at university briefly. When microtransactions quickly started turning out to be cumbersome on an individual basis that quickly made some people pivot to the idea of bundling on the user side and have the system pay it out with microtransactions on the publisher side... I agree with the caveats you outline, though. I think to work, something like this would need to be a box you'd tick when signing up for your ISP that promised some "ad free premium access to [X number] of sites" or similar, and you'd trade entirely on it being big name sites. Even then I'd expect relatively limited takeup mostly from people unaware of ad blockers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash | |
| ▲ | ndriscoll 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem is I don't want surveillance and I don't want to incentivize trying to distract me (the "attention economy"). "Creators" just don't want to acknowledge that much of their "content" has zero or negative value to most people, and instead claim that everyone just wants free stuff. No, I want most of these "creators" to stop creating. | |
| ▲ | ggsp 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > free stuff with no strings attached I'm aware I'm preaching to the choir here on HN, but boy are there strings... | |
| ▲ | functionmouse 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think that's the case. I think the problem is that the sort of market behavior that would drive a company to run invasive ads in the first place betrays its fundamental lack of respect for its users. I want to pay for stuff. And I have tried. Even in doing so, I've found piracy is still often the superior service to using what I'm actually paying for. | | |
| ▲ | andyfilms1 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Exactly. I'm not opposed to paying a few bucks a month to a website I visit a lot, but that adds up. At some point a "Netflix for Adblocking" starts to make sense. |
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| ▲ | vidarh 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This[1] claims the average American is worth about $1605/year in ad revenue. It's a model, so it's certainly possible it is significantly off. That said if there was a credible system like this, I'd happily pay for even the right partial offering. [1] https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth-to-google |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm not sure why your ISP should be involved. Ideally they don't know what sites you're visiting. Your browser knows, though. And what you're describing is kind of what Brave tried to do with BAT (and kind of failed at). |
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| ▲ | conception 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How many websites do you go to a month? Hundreds? Thousands? And you want the ISP to handle the payment processing out to them? Many probably international? And each ISP doing this on their own? |
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| ▲ | andyfilms1 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, why not? They're billion dollar corporations, they can handle some basic payment processing. If it creates a genuinely better user experience, it will increase customer loyalty and make them money in the long run. | | |
| ▲ | ndriscoll 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'd rather my ISP and ad networks have harsh criminal penalties with prison time for management, engineers, and everyone else involved for tracking what sites I visit. That would be a genuinely better experience. | | |
| ▲ | andyfilms1 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean, I obviously agree...but time and time again, consumers keep showing that they're willing to give up privacy for a bit of convenience. Might as well use that to make the web a better place. |
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| ▲ | margalabargala 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Spotify figured it out. |
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| ▲ | rpastuszak 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Speaking as someone who managed to get uncle Murdoch to sponsor writing an adblocker/payment tool similar to yours (while I was working at an adtech business), but then got stalled by the publishers (who on avg. hated ads), specifically the direct supply sales people (who tend to have louder voices in those companies, have mortgages to pay) -- the issue is systemic. ISPs are already selling your data to a bunch of data brokers, I don't think ad spend is the only goal there. |
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| ▲ | pwagland 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Well, your ISP likely _doesn't_ know which sites you are going to. In the old days, they'd run proxies, but with SSL, they no longer know where they are going, only that they are, for example, going to an AWS or GCP site. |
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| ▲ | mminer237 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Calculating shares is basically impossible from DNS records and easily abusable. That is basically the whole premise of the Brave browser though. |
