Post ASSDYRcZjrPHwEezKK by john@sauropods.win
(DIR) More posts by john@sauropods.win
(DIR) Post #ASS7HS7A3HNYovTraC by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T00:14:56Z
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I have a message for my fellow tech nerds: turn your ad blockers off and see how bad the modern web is. We need to do something about it . You being okay in your uBlock Origin tower is not a solution. Telling everyone to live in the uBlock Origin tower will simply mean the ads live inside!**"Native" advertising
(DIR) Post #ASS8astwmbpvM386Sm by dantheclamman@scicomm.xyz
2023-02-08T00:29:36Z
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@john *peeks out from behind PiHole, private DNS, and uBO*
(DIR) Post #ASS9BdEbzhujToJlwG by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T00:36:19Z
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@dantheclamman You're the worst of the worst! đ
(DIR) Post #ASSBL1HOAK1aZHDlQm by mk_rexx@metalhead.club
2023-02-08T01:00:23Z
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@john I don't know which is worse, that I get more websites that say "Pls turn off ur adblocker uwu" when I was only blocking 3rd party cookies, or that I get more intrusive ads that get past through the built-in filters
(DIR) Post #ASSD5vvZys5rXBxCUK by kolya@social.cologne
2023-02-08T01:19:58Z
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@john I think everybody's aware that online advertising is bad, even the people who earn a lot of money with it, like Google. The corporate web just hasn't found an alternative to financing itself so far. Not least because the web was never meant to be monetized. It was meant for things like the Fediverse: free intellectual exchange and pictures of cats.
(DIR) Post #ASSDYRcZjrPHwEezKK by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T01:25:16Z
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@kolya Yeah, and as much as I thing the crypto-bros are dicks, I recognise that some of the motivation is getting away from surveillance capitalism by find a new way to monetise the web.
(DIR) Post #ASSNDJfD81VkidSNN2 by KatEmm@mastodon.art
2023-02-08T03:12:53Z
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@john it's somehow worse than the old school bad when you'd get pop up ads. Completely distracting little things all over the page, obscuring actual content...Teeny tiny xes you have to try to hit.
(DIR) Post #ASSz3yTmJolEfW58Xg by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T10:17:33Z
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@john "We need to do something about it."Great!Let's go!...Er ... what, though?
(DIR) Post #ASTGpVd2aOrcJKfNCa by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T13:35:18Z
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@mike I feel like the crypto web3 bros were at least attempting to change how money works on the internet. Their solution wasnât much better than advertising, but engaging with the problem was at least something.
(DIR) Post #ASTHFe5PlO8U4SOuLA by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T13:38:13Z
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@john Maaaybe. But if you're advocating investing in cryptocurrency as an alternative to running an ad-blocker, then ... I am not your audience đ
(DIR) Post #ASTIQLNfkZilCEbd1k by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T13:45:59Z
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@mike Lol, no. But some sort of micropayment scheme might not be crazy. People dismiss micropayments because of transaction fatigue, but there are ways around that.Not that I am particularly advocating micropayments, but I think it's a shame the online argument seems to have ended up in two camps: cryptocurrency will save the world vs everything sucks and there's nothing to be done.
(DIR) Post #ASTIYJO72lbDKebxIW by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T13:51:41Z
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@john I hear you. Thing is, micropayments have been the Next Big Thing since at least the late 1990s. There seem to be fundamental conceptual problems with them, not just technical implementation difficulties.
(DIR) Post #ASTJSinBmGVwL6ErOC by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T14:06:07Z
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@mike Sure, none of the ideas have worked out so far. Flattr's early model of having a fixed amount you used every month to split up among your choices was interesting. They had a plugin that tied it to your Twitter likes for a few weeks (that was killed by Twitter). And then EU regulation kinda killed adoption of the whole thing â you needed to send a copy of your passport and a bunch of stuff to have an account.
(DIR) Post #ASTKTcBRvxdc5QZn1M by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T14:17:27Z
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@john That's what I mean by fundamental problems. You can't really have convenience and financial security at the same time.The closest thing be a prepay system like on a pay-as-you-go phone, where you do a somewhat laborious top-up every few weeks or months, and accept the possibility of something going wrong with whatever relatively small balance you hold.
(DIR) Post #ASTMN1NA5F3q5d2QM4 by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T14:38:34Z
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@mike I don't see why that would have to be a prepay, you could subscribe to a system that did this for you (that's how Flattr worked).As much as I hate to say it, cryptocurrency gets around some of these problems with micropayments. I actually think a bigger problem is how you get people to put enough money into the system. Like the hundreds of billions that advertising currently does.
(DIR) Post #ASTQSwjUeA8hFnZ3L6 by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T15:24:34Z
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@john With a prepay system, all that's at risk if the convenient-but-less-secure micropayment process goes awry is the tenner you'd put into the prepay. Each individual microtransaction needs ZERO friction or it'll never happen. No-one's ever going use 2FA to authorize a microtransaction to read a blogpost.
(DIR) Post #ASTQfba4bI2NPuC78q by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T15:26:27Z
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@mike my point is that you can automatically âprepayâ a company or platform to do this for you. Like Flattr did. You donât need to do something every month, itâs a subscription.
(DIR) Post #ASTTWPsB3pwoMSyMGe by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T15:58:50Z
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@john If it's a subscription there is no theoretical limit to how much money you could lose from the deliberately lax (because convenient) approach to authentication.
(DIR) Post #ASTTsw9TjFGWqNnt32 by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T16:02:52Z
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@mike I feel like weâre talking at cross purposes here. Flattr paid the things you âtippedâ, out of the ÂŁx you gave them a month as a subscription. This is no riskier than subscribing to, well, anything normal like Netflix or whatever.
(DIR) Post #ASTUjSKNLSdlh3wZ4y by mike@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T16:12:24Z
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@john Yes, I think we must be at cross-purposes. This would likely be better done in a pub.
(DIR) Post #ASTVmtayWLW75Nubho by kolya@social.cologne
2023-02-08T16:24:15Z
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@john Everything that had to do with crypto and web 3.0 in recent years was super scammy. Maybe some are honestly looking to beat surveillance advertising through crypto, but mostly it seems they are trying to avoid regulation.
(DIR) Post #ASTWcpGPs2L6i53ei0 by john@sauropods.win
2023-02-08T16:33:32Z
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@kolya Agreed. The culture of web3 is pretty much irredeemable at this point because of all the scams (and to a certain extent the tech).