Isn't this the problem Brave browser set out to solve? It's just that they did it with cryptocurrency so everyone shunned it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards/
Cryptocurrency might have been ok, but this is their own custom currency. In other words, they’re paying people in scrip. They shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t like that.
I (rather diligently) accepted 10 ads an hour on Brave for about a year, received BAT regularly, and immediately converted it to BTC upon receipt. Eventually my BAT payments stopped coming (I somehow got algorithmically blocked and didn't bother opening a ticket with Brave for almost another year), but I withdrew the BTC from Uphold and it's worth about $450 now. That's like being paid almost 40 bucks a month to just go about your business while browsing the web!
IMO this is mind-blowing, tangible proof that micropayments in return for my time and attention works. Imagine a world where our attention is actually valued and rewarded, where all people receive income through many various streams as they navigate the physical and digital worlds. We can argue back and forth about pros/cons/ethics of arriving at my anecdotal valuation (bitcoin, crypto, etc), but that's not my point -- the point is that this type of system actually does function, and in theory could raise tides enough across the world to lift all boats in really positive ways.
Tangential, but Michael Saylor has also opined about how this type of micro-payment / micro-staking could go in the opposite direction, using smart contracts and Lightning to escrow fractional tokens to participate in social media or even prevent DDOS attacks if woven into the underlying networking appropriately. Obviously I'm skeptical about certain latencies that would be added but, conceptually, forcing people to have SOME skin in the game and doing it in an invisible, frictionless way is quite intriguing.
Anyways, just one man's journey from Milan to Minsk by way of Brave and BAT lol
It’s so funny how the Brave haters will constantly outright lie just to get their point.
> Do Brave Ads replace ads on websites? What do Brave Ads look like?
> No, Brave Ads do not replace the ads that the Brave Browser blocks on web pages (like banner ads). You can find a list of Brave’s ad formats here.
> What do Brave Ads look like?
> You can choose which ones you’d like to see: images on the new tab page, cards in your Brave News feed, push notifications, and others.
Creators also don’t get “a” cut. Brave gives 70% of earnings on ads to users, and those can then decide how much they reward to the creators of whatever content they consume.
BAT being crypto is also nice because it automatically means you can just buy BAT directly and support sites without having to see a single ad or cumbersomely figure out how to somehow donate to each site/creator directly.
> Step Two: Brave Replaces Ads
We recognize that ads pay for most of our web content. Ads are not going away. So we replace the bad ads with Brave Ads, which we use to pay publishers and users.
Maybe they don't replace ads now but they seem to have done it in the past. Or at least talked about doing it.
Really man, drop the crusade. Look at Brave their tech blog (Project Sugarcoat for example, something directly meant to make page ad hiding more cosmetically pleasing). Or the fact that their defaults are more private than Firefox its defaults.
For the weird missteps they did in the past (appending their affiliate link on crypto sites and one other scandal that eludes me), they’re a really good org / product now.
I look at Brave as another business looking to take their cut as a middleman between users and creators. It's an ad network that takes the 30% cut like Apple does to apps making over $1M.
I would much rather that creators who want to make money decide what they want to sell, and how they want to sell it. The web doesn't need a crypto tip jar layer.
I don't hate Brave, but blocking legitimate ads and then putting in their own ads is a racket.
> Creators also don’t get “a” cut. Brave gives 70% of earnings on ads to users, and those can then decide how much they reward to the creators of whatever content they consume.
Ie, creators are offered a cut - in a roundabout way.
It is not a racket when the website owners are mass-injecting trackers and security risks into my browser. Some egregious pages have 700+ (!!) ad partners.
Hell, it is the opposite of a racket because other adblockers / adblocking people pay zilch. That is the racket. Any BAT user is a +70% gain.
I’ll pay you. I won’t compromise my devices for you.
OK, even if we say that the ads from the website creator are not legitimate, it doesn't make the ads from brave legitimate.
Try to think about this from the perspective of another person instead of yourself.
Or think about this comparison: I own a bar where I sell drinks to the general public. Then some businessman comes in, throws out my bar staff and starts selling his own drinks to the guests, and offers 10% of revenue to me. Is that fair and honest? Who was the legitimate drink seller and who wasn't? Now you can say that alcohol is bad for your health and shouldn't be sold at all, and that you as a customer don't care. But it is very clear who is legit and who isn't.
> Or think about this comparison: I own a bar where I sell drinks to the general public. Then some businessman comes in, throws out my bar staff and starts selling his own drinks to the guests, and offers 10% of revenue to me.
Which is a completely wrong comparison.
- You own a bar (website) and serve drinks (ads) to the general public.
- A large subset of your visitors decides they like the atmosphere of the bar, but whenever you try to sell them a drink, they refuse to order one. Alcohol is bad, they claim, and since you aren't offering non-alcoholic drinks, they've decided its moral to not order anything and enjoy your bar for free.
- An enterprising individual (Brave) recognizes the plight of both the bar owner and the customers. They surreptitiously serve non-alcoholic drinks (clean ads) to the bothersome customers.
- They sell the drinks at 70% discount, and strongly suggest to the customers to generously tip with the net gain of money, to ensure the continued existence of the bar they enjoy so much.
Brave isn't turning non-adblocking visitors into adblocking visitors. Its converting adblocking visitors into revenue-generating visitors.