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by contravariant 2795 days ago
I'd rather not pay for it with my privacy though.
1 comments

I agree.

I developed a system for subscription payments that (1) is resistant to falsifying visits and (2) preserves user privacy. I got a US patent late last year[0], so that I might enjoy being a bit of a lightning rod for downvotes.

The gist is that the publisher can ask "is this person a member of the subscription pool?" and get a yes or no. And that's all they can get. I can't easily prevent them from using other mechanisms but I can refuse to make the problem worse.

[0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9853964B2/en

The only thing you will get from a patent on that is that nobody will use it b/c it's patented. So you're effectively blocking one road to solving the problem. There are others, of course - it's not like there's just one way of doing that.
That seems interesting. Are you working on it still?
On hold for the moment because of the practicalities of being a non-US citizen on a work visa. If someone ambushes me with a hefty cheque, sure, but for the moment I am limited in what I can do.