[BizarreByte]

I'm not a cryptobro, but I was really hoping for a while that browser based miners could maybe solve the payment issue.

I was happy to trade some cpu cycles for an ad free experience. I would win, the site would win, it seemed like a really nice idea.

People immediately balked at the concept though and while I have no faith in crypto or its proponents at all, it's nice to think of what could have been.

[Incipient]

You'd be trading cpu cycles, which consume power, which cost money. So you're trading money for an ad-free experience. You're paying actual money to remove adds.

And doing it with a cpu that's not particularly efficient compared to asics.

You're better off just paying money.

[BizarreByte]

> You're better off just paying money.

14$ is more than they make off me by showing me ads. Trading CPU cycles seems more fair because it's only when I'm actually using the service.

[Someone1234]

Because most users are on mobile devices and battery life is a limited resource. It isn't good for the user OR the business if their device dies mid-day and they stop consuming because you ran a miner in the background.

[user_7832]

That can't be the only reason though. There are lots of things that are significantly worse/totally absent on mobile OSes already. Lots of software is made desktop-first, including apps like obsidian and (from the current HN frontpage) Arc browser. Mobile users have been 2nd class citizens in some ways for a while.

[Someone1234]

We were discussing Meta though. They absolutely depend on mobile, that is the majority of their user-base. In fact that is the majority on all ad-supported social media sites, so mining is a non-starter for them. Mobile traffic is >55% of all traffic and >80% for social media sites.

[user_7832]

I'm not sure that the original comment was in context of meta or ad experiences in general online, but yeah I'd agree that meta needs mobile users a lot.