[Terr_]

Saying "it's just an implementation problem" understates the severity of that problem, and I think it's a little deceptive to claim that laws, regulations, and economic models are all "implementation" just as much as the raw code.

I mean, would you say that dumping a type of toxic waste into a river is an "implementation" problem when there's no law against it?

> It's fast.

Except when ad-frameworks slow down browsing to a crawl because they heap innumerable delays on the page-load in order to "auction" the spot and maximize revenue.

> It's anonymous

Except for our big ad-networks that incorporated quita lot of fingerprinting, profiling, and even surveillance.

> It's secure

Except for how ad-networks are a vector for malware, since there's no incentive to vet content beyond maintaining their own throughput.

[manigandham]

I believe you missed the statement where I said this is an implementation problem. I recently founded an adtech company to show how these issues can be fixed.

Ads are fast. Ad networks however are slow. Bad tech with old vendors is most of the problem. Our ads load faster than the content half the time. Sites like Washington Post, The Guardian, Ars Technica show how you can have a fast site with ads. Very solvable through technology.

Ads are definitely more anonymous than payments. Payments = credit cards or bank accounts. Guess what that means? Your name, address, age, credit history, employment, etc all perfectly accessible and tied to your identity. Profiling is used to give you more relevant ads. Someone who doesn't have children doesn't need to see diaper ads so it's a perfectly reasonable thing. I agree that sometimes it's taken too far with retargeting where you see the same ads constantly but this is a different matter. Our network focuses mostly on context of the page (tech site = tech ads) and performs just as well without any tracking (other than history of ads seen to avoid showing same ads).

The internet is a vector for malware. There absolutely is a way to vet content, but standards and enforcement is just not there right now. Ad networks dont really suffer anything when bad stuff happens so they have no incentive to do much about it. We don't even accept any 3rd party content on our network so we're far more secure than even the sites we run on.

Again, all of this is down to implementation - nothing wrong with the ad model itself.

[Terr_]

> I believe you missed the statement

I believe you posted a reply while I was still making postscript-editing. A bad habit of mine, I know.

[manigandham]

Got it. So with your edit:

> I mean, would you say that dumping a type of toxic waste into a river is an "implementation" problem when there's no law against it?

Yes. This doesn't mean we stop doing anything that produces toxic waste. Cars are also a vector for criminal activity. Like guns and knives and cellphones. We don't get rid of them either. Instead we use regulation and standards to enforce the safety mechanisms and proper ethical behavior.

[mirimir]

> Ads are definitely more anonymous than payments. Payments = credit cards or bank accounts. Guess what that means? Your name, address, age, credit history, employment, etc all perfectly accessible and tied to your identity.

So what does 15n1xkeDCGJJQAcYv17M4bPVfGqnksihLG tell you about me?

[manigandham]

Not much. Here's how our (modern) ad network works:

New user seen, gets assigned random UUID like ABC12345. Show an ad based on what we know about site context.

Show ad, track that ABC12345 has seen this ad. Next time, we check your history and know to show you a different ad. If you click on anything, we see that as a signal that you perhaps like that category of ads.

Eventually we have a list of ads you've seen (to keep the frequency of those ads in check) and what categories you seem interested in (based on your clicks). Combine this with the context of the site and we can give you better ads. We DO NOT magically get your name, address, birthday, or any other personally identifiable information.

--

Just for more detail: Facebook and Google are different. They are the biggest adtech players and own about 80% of the market not only because of their size but because of how much they know about you. Most people willingly tell both companies everything about their lives so they have a distinct advantage. They also know your identity across devices because of logins. These massive companies are a much much bigger privacy issue than any independent adtech company simply because independent players do not have access to all this detailed 1st party information (or it's provided through rough aggregated/statistical means).

[mirimir]

My point was that payments can be arbitrarily anonymous.

I'd prefer a micropayment system that was as automated as the current ad system is. Browsing a site would trigger an initial small payment. The total payment would be proportional to engagement, including the percentage of the article read, time spent on the site, links followed, and so on. There'd also be options to pay more, or to cancel payment.

I'm guessing that browsing would cost about $0.001, and that reading would cost between $.01 and $0.10 for average news articles, blog posts, etc. Magazine-length articles and reports would cost more. Is that about right to match typical ad income?

[manigandham]

Yea I mentioned this is my first post as time-based subscriptions would be perhaps the ideal instead of micropayments. The amounts you quoted are pretty fair.

The most scalable payments option is typical credit cards or bank transfers, which obviously come with identity information. Perhaps there can be an option for bitcoin but it's definitely not ready today. No company would deal with that at scale.

[mirimir]

Why not gift cards? Gyft and eGifter both accept Bitcoin. And numerous businesses accept gift cards, including Apple and Amazon, and many chains.

[kristianp]

That you know something about Bitcoin? :)

[mirimir]

I was maybe expecting some blockchain analysis ;)