[dxuh]

I always thought that JavaScript cryptomining is a better alternative to ads for monetizing websites (as long as people don't depend on those websites and website owners don't take it too far). I'd much rather give you a second of my CPU instead of space in my brain. Why is this so frowned upon? And in the same way I thought Anubis should just mine crypto instead of wasting power.

[captainbland]

I'd imagine it's pretty much impossible to make a crypto system which doesn't introduce unreasonable latency/battery drain on low-end mobile devices which is also sufficiently difficult for scrapers running on bleeding edge hardware.

If you decide that low end devices are a worthy sacrifice then you're creating e-waste. Not to mention the energy burden.

[thedanbob]

> Why is this so frowned upon?

Maybe because while ad tech these days is no less shady than crypto mining, the concept of ads is something people understand. Most people don't really understand crypto so it gets lumped in with "hackers" and "viruses".

Alternatively, for those who do understand ad tech and crypto, crypto mining still subjectively feels (to me at least) more like you're being stolen from than ads. Same with Anubis, wasting power on PoW "feels" more acceptable to me than mining crypto. One of those quirks of the human psyche I guess.

[matheusmoreira]

Running proof of work on user machines without their consent is theft of their computing and energy resources. Any site doing so for any purpose whatsoever is serving malware and should be treated as such.

Advertising is theft of attention which is extremely limited in supply. I'd even say it's mind rape. They forcibly insert their brands and trademarks into our minds without our consent. They deliberately ignore and circumvent any and all attempts to resist. It's all "justified" though, business interests excuse everything.

[x-complexity]

> Advertising is theft of attention which is extremely limited in supply. I'd even say it's mind rape. They forcibly insert their brands and trademarks into our minds without our consent. They deliberately ignore and circumvent any and all attempts to resist.

(1): Attention from any given person is fundamentally limited. Said attention has an inherent value.

(2): Running *any* website costs money, doubly so for video playback. This is not even mentioning the moderation & copyright mechanisms that a video sharing platform like YouTube has to have in order to keep copyright lawsuits away from YouTube itself.

(3): Products do not spawn in with their presence known to the general population. For the product to be successful, people have to know it exists in the first place.

Advertising is the consequence of wanting attention to be drawn to (3), and willing to pay for said attention on a given platform (1). (2)'s costs, alongside any payouts to videographers that garner attention to their videos, can be paid for with the money in (1), by placing ads around/before the video itself.

You're allowed to not have advertising shown to you, but in exchange, the money to pay for (2) & the people who made the video have to come from somewhere.

[matheusmoreira]

> Said attention has an inherent value.

Yes, and it belongs to us. It's not theirs to sell to the highest bidder.

> Running any website costs money, doubly so for video playback.

> Products do not spawn in with their presence known to the general population.

Not our problem. Business needs do not excuse it. Let all those so called innovators find a way to make it without an attention economy. Let them go bankrupt if they can't.

[x-complexity]

> Yes, and it belongs to us. It's not theirs to sell to the highest bidder.

Your attention belongs to you, until you give it to someone else.

The videographer has the right to sell sponsorships on their videos in exchange the attention they've attracted. It is also their right to do so.

> Not our problem. Business needs do not excuse it. Let all those so called innovators find a way to make it without an attention economy. Let them go bankrupt if they can't.

Your logic has already been tried: It's called Netflix. And it was overtaken by YouTube.

YouTube has been the wellspring for indie videographers because they have a platform that could (a) handle the video hosting for them for free, where (b) they could post their experiments on without an upfront cost & where an audience can be found because the platform's free.

Your idea seeks upfront payment, which increases the risk cost dramatically from 0 to a fixed value. One-shot experiments with 0 funds are killed under your scheme.

To seek their bankruptcy is nothing short of a fetishistic desire for your ideals to trample on others your your own gloating. Go back to the DVD era.

[matheusmoreira]

> The videographer has the right to sell sponsorships on their videos in exchange the attention they've attracted.

As is my right to use uBlock Origin and Sponsor Block to automatically block and skip every single one of those segments. Won't be long until we have AI powered ad blocking that can edit ads out of video streams in real time.

We decide what we pay attention to. Making videos is not a license to dupe us into viewing advertising noise. Baiting us with some interesting topic only to switch to commercial nonsense is just rude, and that's the most charitable interpretation I can offer.

> YouTube has been the wellspring for indie videographers

Because of ads and surveillance capitalism. Those are the root causes of everything that is wrong with the web today. Blocking those will reduce their returns on investment, thereby fixing the web.

> One-shot experiments with 0 funds are killed under your scheme.

Nah. Only the money motivated people will leave. People have been creating things just for the joy of it since the dawn of humanity. Those humans with intrinsic motivation are the ones I really care about. Not these insipid profit driven "content creators".

[ge96]

I think some sites that stream content (illegally) do this