So, on the website, it is saying that the current advertising model is broken, I’m not sure exactly what they mean but I was wondering, the Safenetwork can be like Brave browser, where users can choose whether they would like to see ads, and if they do, then they can be paid in Safecoin, from the Safecoins the advertisers are paying, it’s how Brave browser is going to be like, and I don’t see why Safe can’t do the same at a network level.
Because it can. It just doesn’t have to be. I am sure being paid in safecoin to view ads is a viable model and one that advertisers will explore, but the point is that it is up to you to choose if that is something you want to be part of. Right now, you have no choice.
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You need to think of this from the other way around too; from a developer perspective.
The predominant, default business model is the ‘give product away for free, but monetise user’s data’ and as @astroman says, the consumer has very little choice over that.
In my opinion, this distorts the true value of software; it’s primary goal is not to delight and be useful to people, but to maximise returns for the real customer: the advertiser.
By turning this model on it’s head, the value of a product is based on it’s utility, not on it’s capacity to harvest data, and rack up ad impressions. It will be liberating for developers and product designers to be able to focus entirely on the needs of the user, and be directly rewarded for doing that.
Products like Brave are welcome in the current environment, but they are merely sticking plasters on a broken and exploitative system. We’re aiming to tear that system down, and replace it with something that can benefit everyone; not just advertising corporations.
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Imho apps should not be rewarded by the SAFE Network, because this can be gamed. Funny enough it will work like ‘ad fraud’, buy traffic and if it cost less than you earn you have profit. I would hate it if the SAFE Network got gamed and the gamer is not contributing to the network it’s growth. I foolishly assume that the SAFE Network, won’t be able to tell a bot from a human traffic.
Instead of paying popular apps according to how much they get used, popular apps could have a referral to run a SAFE vault and maybe receive a cut from the farmer.
Devs could also become a farmer, that’s why I hope that SAFE vault focus on the people scale hardware instead of AWS and Google.
Have a premium option (which can be forked by somebody else, but that just keeps things interesting)
Last but not least, if you create an app it can also have a token, that you can use to plan the future of your app. Let’s say you have 5M tokens during a crowdsale, never sell all your tokens at once always keep enough to invest in the future of your app.
You getting paid for developing your app on the SAFE Network, should not be the network it’s problem imho. The SAFE Network is already giving you incredible security, ddos protection and low cost to run your app forever, if your not creative enough how to make money without abusing your users…
just my 2cents.
I don’t want to go off topic with this, but the argument that you should not do something because it can be gamed has to be looked at in context.
To what extent can it be gamed? And how does that compare to the status quo, which is already gamed, and how do they compare pros and cons.
Almost anything with scale involving money can and will be gamed, so it’s a matter of creating systems that improve on where we are, or that have a greater upside than downside.
Advertising itself is an incredibly dangerous system that allows society to be gamed - by getting people to do things that are in the interests of advertisers and not their own interests, from eating unhealthy food, to slaving away in order to consume products that don’t deliver what they promise, and are harmful to themselves and society - all for those with the most money to make more money.
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I think the more we encourage people to farm, which is really contributing to the SAFE Network the better. Ad fraud at the moment is being committed on a billion dollars scale, billion of dollars only going to a few. Fake websites, generate fake bot traffic and get real currency. Check coinmarketcap apps got their own currencies, so why let the SAFE Network pay apps, if every app is it’s own currency issuing entity (bank)?
You pay apps if the pros outway the cons, not because before we even know the details somebody says “but this will be gamed”. So let’s get to that point, work out the details and maybe run some tests to establish whether it’s a good idea or not.
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Really now? Such as seeing something that’s really helpful to my life/health that I really wish I had? Such as advertising things like gender equality events, environmental education and about a myriad of things. I can’t seem to see how any ideas can spread without advertising… It’s not about the advertising, its the people. I rarely touch junk foods regardless of advertising. If you do, that’s your choice. Either way, I don’t see how the internet and the current world can function without ANY advertising. So imagine a world with no TV ads, no offline board ads, absolutely nothing, and you saying : “yep that’s good, advertising is dangerous”
Yeah… alright… think back, have you ever seen an ad that helped you before? Most likely it’ll be a yes, those that didn’t you just ignored, how much harm did it do for you?
For the people willing to eat junk food after seeing junk food ads, to them, it helped them. They wanted it, you might not want them to have it or think they don’t want it, or it doesn’t help them, but it is really up to them to decide. If they decide it doesn’t help them, then they can simply ignore the ad? Either way I really think it’s much more up to the individual than the ad… by limiting ads, you give no respect for individuals to make their own choices. It’s almost like limiting free speech.
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Also, companies ask people whether they want to submit their anonymous data for them to do analytics, and many people consent to this, you might not, but removing that even as an option for the people who consent and companies who will benefit because of such data, isn’t really your decision to make.
Also i don’t see why you think the current ad supported model is broken, the data the company harvests are basically anonymous and don’t affect your life almost one bit…when you land on a site for example, and you get cookies, sure, you might see different advertising tailored to your needs, but are you really being affected in a way that you don’t desire?
I support privacy for people’s safety, and support unhindered sharing of data, but I don’t support overdoing privacy when it doesn’t affect your life at all and can benefit another persons life. Advertising is for any scale and type of business. I’ve done advertising before and it really helps when you can target audiences based on their interests and demography, I don’t see how collecting such anonymous data affects people at all. You can make it enabled by default, and for those who really care, they can have the option to turn them off, but making it unavailable by default is extremely unnecessary considering at least more than half(and that’s a very conservative figure) of the people don’t care if non-identifying data is anonymously collected(otherwise laws would have been overturned long time ago). And those who care don’t exactly have to force their desires upon everyone else. You might care, and that’s fine, you can have the option to not give away your data, but not everyone does, and it would be more helpful to have certain ways to advertise on the network, along with certain demography tracking, if not, at least advertising…although, advertising without demography tracking does more harm than help as it exposes people to seeing unwanted ads a lot more frequently.
Some people who never done much advertising themselves might think all the data tracking and advertising it’s a bad thing, but really, it’s really not. Just ask any entrepreneur.
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I think honestly, you guys need to make a way for people to advertise on the network, otherwise it might end up being a very dull network, there’ll be less motivation to build websites if you can’t advertise it and get traffic.
Also again, advertising can be quite helpful, from personal experience, I might be searching on eBay to buy something and later I might see that thing advertised for cheaper. I really don’t see how that can potentially harm me in any way, in fact it’ll only bring me benefit, so I’m definitely not against all ads, only forced ads where I’m forced to wait(such as Youtube). And either way there are many other good reasons, to have the option to be able to advertise on the network such as it’ll be well funded even more so by advertisers, making the cost to use the network even cheaper, at no disadvantage to the users(because you can have the option to not give away your data or see ads if you so like). It’ll benefit the network as a whole.
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What @JimCollinson said, on the “ad-supported internet” you have to pay with your data, on the SAFENetwork you can pay with your data if you want to. The data belongs to you not the site.
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What real life has shown is that users prefer no to pay at all… Good example is mobile App Stores where paid applications with no ads are getting replaced by free with ads enabled. This process is slow but relentless during the last decade.
I hope Safe network will not lose the battle just because its creators are idealists detached from real life 
The SAFE PtD (app rewards scheme) is precisely this. Users don’t pay directly, but as with ad sponsored apps they pay indirectly. To learn more search and read about “pay the developer” / “PtD”.
The bonus is that this works without irritating ads, and without allowing those with deep pockets paying for ads to manipulate the masses.
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I agree, except in the sequence. We’ll replace it. THEN we’ll tear the old system down, or what’s left of it will evolve to a better place.
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Advertising is censorship by those with deep pockets of those with a better message, but who get drowned out by those who can push a worse one. If paying for advertising did not reward advertisers with a greater share of the money pie, it would not exist.
If you could not pay for advertising we would have word of mouth, text, post etc via non paid networks of our friends or people we choose to listen to, as opposed to those who are motivated to pay to impose their message on us. Without advertising, we get to choose who we trust, we find interesting, and we would share our own recommendations.
The world will function far better this way than it does where the power of advertising allows those with money to dominate messages we see with ones that make them more money to spend on advertising, giving them more power etc etc. This is centralisation of power. The purpose of SAFE Network is to redistribute power over our data and the messages we share and receive, and advertising runs counter to that.
Advertising makes it harder for us to find quality, reliable, trustable messages and their sources.
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I understand where you are coming from, @happybeing. However, a society with no advertising at all is also not ideal. You say you want to get recommendations from friends or people you trust. OK, well, where are they going to get such information? At some point, someone will have had to have been advertised to, so they are aware of said product, and start the chain reaction.
I don’t necessarily agree that only the powerful benefit from advertising their products, in some endless loop of power grabbing. The only people that are powerful through our advertising system now are the agents responsible for distributing our advertising, Google and Facebook. Products need to be advertised so people can decide if they want to consume them or not.
Are you a gamer? How would you know an Indie game in the genre you enjoy came out? Many of them don’t get reviews, but the developer can spend $1000 on Google AdSense and market their game on IGN or Gamespot adspace where they may get seen and offer them a return. Are you suggesting that an Indie dev should just present their game to their friends and hope that the slow word of mouth crawl will eventually make their game widespread? That’s not good for anyone. A business can’t function when they have no means to predict sales, or ways to reach their potential consumers.
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I think that’s debatable, but it isn’t what I’m arguing for. I’m saying that we should try our best to implement alternative models (such as PtD) so that we can reduce the power and censorship of paid advertising, which has become so powerful and dominant that it threatens society, health, democracy etc.
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I assume your thought process behind paid advertising being censorship is that people with money have more influence over you then those with none. While true, it also harms the little guy by restricting their ability to market their product to a wider audience. It also hinders adoption of truly innovative products that might not catch on with a large majority, but could be an exact niche product a certain demographic is looking for.
A large corporation will always be able to “advertise” either directly to the consumer, or by indirectly advertising their products by buying premium space on a storefront to market their product. I’m sure a publishing company pays a substantial sum to places like Amazon to market their books. I’m sure Amazon doesn’t just send out those “Book of the Month” emails of their own volition with no involvement from the publishers pushing their product. Thus, without things like Google Adsense, or Facebook ads, where you can simply buy certain amounts of Ad space, the little guy would be even more harmed, because they could never afford the tens of thousands, probably even hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to become a recommended or sponsored item on Amazon.
This, and
And your friends/family are supposed to know EXACTLY what you want? So don’t the ads, I agree, but the more people giving suggestions the better for the individual to decide for themselves. Also to be frank nowadays sometimes targeted ads in my personal experience, gave better choices/recommendations than family/friends would.
Also, “impost their message on us”? You must have a tremendous disregard for people’s abilities to filter out messages that they don’t need/want to see or peoples abilities to decide for themselves what’s best for them. Furthermore, nowadays you can actually tell a lot of these advertising networks like Google ads what type of ads you prefer to see, for it to benefit you as well as the advertisers. By cutting out ads you’re assuming advertising is a one way relationship that only benefits the advertisers, whereas that’s so not true, it’s like saying if you walked into a cafe and grabbed a coffee(because you saw it’s coffee sign), the cafe is the only person that benefited, I think online advertising is similar especially if you can choose what type of ads you would like to see, or choose to not see them at all, if you so wish. But completely banning ads from everywhere is incredibly unideal…
I understand if you dislike ads personally, but leave people who like them, and can potentially be paid by casually surfing the web and looking at them, alone. Give them a choice too, just like you have the choice to not look at ads or have your data tracked etc. Also, you’d be stifling innovation as now entrepreneurs have an even harder time starting a business. Online advertising is really important, you’ll realises if you have tried creating and marketing a really useful, niche specific product/service, for example acne cure/homesick counselling etc, these isn’t effective without some sort of tracking to know if that person has searched for ways to cure acne in search engines or if they’re overseas and have searched for homesick remedies etc etc etc. Again, tracking isn’t always bad.
I am not disagreeing that it can be, but also, because it can be, eliminating ALL is also unideal. Because there’s a tremendous upside to ads(with which most often comes with tracking, to prevent people from seeing unwanted ads and actually seeing helpful ones)
Sounds like some people will get bored without ads in the network. Don’t worry about it then. The Brave network can continue in parallel, and if you want to take a break, you can come to the safenetwork to chill and maybe be bored into sleep. Some of us will rarely if ever look back. We will see you at the park, at a bar, on the street, and you can tell us about your travels on the corporate internet.
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