Obfuscated pointers. Possible?

Development
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I’m all for trying something else. Can you elaborate on what you’re wanting to see or what issues you have with this proposal?

That said, we need a steady stream of external revenue to PtP. The only money coming into the system is the payment for storage. That won’t be enough to PtP, it should go solely to the node runners in my opinion, which we’ll need after the rewards/inflation stuff goes to 0. I think we all agree we don’t want it to come from inflation, that never ends well. Also, we don’t want to pay for downloads, which I also think is good. So where does this external revenue stream come from? And should it be a core network function, or a library that developers use?

My thought here is, as much as I hate ads, it is a proven model for consuming content without payment or reduced payments. From newspapers to radio to broadcast television to the tech giants we have today. It is an irritating, proven model that refuses to die. Same with pay wall subscriptions, as old as the print industry.

If we don’t build a way to implement these features, someone else will, and probably many times over. The group that builds them will surely implement them in a way that funnels more resources to themselves only, i.e. Google ad services 2.0.

It is inevitable someone will do this, I think we can all agree on that. And if the network is too difficult to implement this on, someone may fork it, which is bad for everyone. But if we make some tweaks to the core data types or add some additional functionality to the network to make implementing these systems easier, we are less likely to experience a lot of fragmentation in the ecosystem.

Edit: to add to this, I don’t think obfuscated pointers are only about pay walls and ads. It has lots of other uses for users. For example, health data. Say I want to share sensitive health information with a service provider. I can provide them with a pointer to the actual content for minimal cost to myself (don’t need to replicate data to scratchpads, cheaper, faster, etc.) while also having the ability to rescind ownership to that data at any time. Upload once and give out revokable access. That’s a pretty powerful feature. Same could be said for social networks. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to optionallly remove my personal stuff from the network? It is something we have the ability to do today in all other social networks, are we saying users will want to give up that feature here? I don’t think this gives up on the fundamentals at all, I think it strengthens them. If we truly have control over our data, we need the ability to restrict access or make it invisible. As a user, I have this today, I don’t want to give it up.

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I don’t have a lot of time so can’t add much to what I’ve said.

We are forced to consider all sorts of unpalatable things because so many possibilities have effectively been eliminated since the switch away from a token that supported many features that would have changed the game.

If we can undo that, things would be so much better but I don’t expect that and haven’t since that changed last September.

Saying others will do it is never an argument for doing something you disagree with IMO, so I won’t be involved with schemes that don’t empower users and increase agency. Ads clearly contradict that.

Systems that give users choice are good. The problem is that almost everything built by business is designed to minimise agency in order to maximise profit rather than deliver best value. This has become normalised, yet people hate it. I hear it all over, with ordinary folk, not just those in our bubbles.

If you offer alternatives that they actually like, which respect them, then you have a much better proposition when bad business arrives.

I get that you may go in the opposite direction to that which I’d like, because you have few options based on the technology, your situation and goals. But I won’t join in if that’s the case.

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Thanks for the response. I respect your opinion very much on this. I am by no means a purist, so your take on things is very valuable to me since it highlights things I often didn’t consider.

So lets say, hypothetically, we never went the crypto route. The network is fully anonymous DBCs, instant transfer times, 0 cost, everything is great. Money comes into the system through uploads and is paid to the node runners at that time. So far so good. With that money spent, how do we payout to content creators for months or years? Unless uploads become much more expensive or we have some kind of token inflation, where does the money come from to pay the content creators?

I would never force ads on someone that doesn’t want them. I think a user should have a choice to pay a reasonable fee to access content directly and never look at an ad. Today the tech giants do both. You don’t have a choice and you pay a lot more than you should so the share holders get their cut. They can because they own everything in the content creation supply chain. The system I envision allows the user to see an ad with no tracking involved or pay directly to get access. Movie studios or music producers could market their content directly, no tech middle man required taking the lion’s share of revenue. Lower costs and more choice for the user, payments to distributed node runners instead of google/amazon, more money in the pockets artists. But like I say, if we want valuable content, someone has to pay. Content creators have to eat. Without profit incentive, big productions simply won’t happen.

Completely agree. We have an opportunity to build these systems now and then when big business comes along to push their old profit driven structures, we’ve already priced them out. They want too much ad viewing time, data collection is too intrusive, too much in direct fees. Once consumers have what we’re delivering, they won’t go back. Just like people who migrated from cable TV to streaming services. Would anyone ever go back? Of course not, the business model is obsolete. It still hangs around, but only because it has been here, not because it is good.

My fear is that now that the network is running, we are at great risk, greater now than ever before in the project’s history. The big companies that are smart, some will start to notice the potential here. The code is all open source, it is for the taking. If we don’t move fast and start putting the pieces together for a monetizable full stack for developers, content creators, node runners, and end users, we’re dead. We have to make systems that can stand on their own 2 feet. Otherwise we risk being taken over or absorbed, or we become irrelevant like so many other software projects before us. Once this is profitable, and we provide libraries for making the systems more transparent, more fair, better for everyone in the ecosystem, we win. Profit will drive many folks into the ecosystem, not because they care about anything, but because there is money to be made and we are providing the tools to do that, in our own image. And the beauty is that you don’t need to be a huge company, any indie dev worth his salt should be able to take our libraries and launch their app. The potential here is huge.

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The key here is offering better. Without that the network is going to ‘fail’ (in our terms) one way or another. There are threads on PtP and PtD that explain past ideas of how that works over time so I won’t go over that. But without those in the protocol, I don’t know if there’s another way to do something like this.

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I’ve flipped through some of the 10 year old PtD and PtP posts, that seems to be when the topic really peaked. There is a lot of passion in these threads, but not a lot of implementation details, you know, like today :laughing:

Can anyone point to some concrete examples of the ‘best’ solutions that came out of these discussions? Even just high level concepts of how this was envisioned to work. This was before my time, so any OG’s that have some insight would be greatly appreciated. If there are things we can leverage, we should be digging into this now that the network is alive and running.

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Perhaps a good starting point would be imagine how we would do that with Native Token, and then see if on app level we can implement something with similar qualities?

I also don’t like the ads scheme, but it being optional seems acceptable.

I think donations/patreon/kickstarter service is the way to go. People want to support good service. These days all movies can be easily found on torrents, but people still pay for Netflix and go to cinema. Most of them could learn how to use torrents, but they don’t want to. They get convenient interface with that, ability to stream audio/subtitles in their own language etc.

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If you believe something is harmful, offering it as an option is not acceptable to me.

I think there is mileage in the other options you mention.

A big advantage of solutions on Autonomi will be universality for users and easy implementation for developers.

If users don’t need to sign up to a service, but tick a box or choose an amount within the app, without sharing personal data etc, we have an advantage.

If developers can support one or other models that offer users that simplicity and them a source of revenue, where no corporation can turn around later and screw them or their users we have an advantage.

Things which give us an advantage will be good to focus on.

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On the topic of obfuscated pointers, we must remember that the recipient could also just copy the data when they have access to it. Indeed, if you know you may lose access to it, copying it may become a first step.

This goes back to the fundamental argument for immutable data - closing the gate after the horse has bolted, isn’t much use. If anyone else took a copy, then it is in the wild anyway.

On the funding side, at least the cost dynamic has shifted to users paying and owning their data. Users may be happier to pay a little for tools to view/manipulate that data, knowing that vendor lock-in is less likely.

Another idea is giving away partial functionality. A free limited feature set has been a common tactic since the shareware days. Maybe that has been augmented with ads, but it doesn’t have to be. Early access can also drive payments too.

Moreover, using (per user, per day, etc) scratchpads (temporary data) could be used as a mechanism to unlock features (or literally holds the code that provides them). Again, not piracy proof, but priced well, authenticity and ease of use goes a long way.

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I don’t think ads are harmful. I think the way Google tracks users with ads and mines your data is harmful, but showing an inert ad on the screen? Not a problem. Brave shows a banner ad when you open a new tab. It doesn’t track you, it isn’t in the way, what is the problem here?

That is exactly what I’m advocating here. You can pay or you can see an ad. Users have a choice. If you force them to pay/donate and they have no option, you’re going to alienate the 99% of people that would rather tolerate ads than pay $1. They simply won’t use the application. The vast majority are OK with seeing ads if they get something for ‘free’. It has been that way for a century. Removing a valid choice for consumers is not a feature.

I agree, but we shouldn’t shun working solutions and limit choice in the process.

True. Netflix, Spotify, etc., anyone with a little technical skill and some hardware can take the stream and store it locally, but why? The service is “cheap” and after I watch something, I typically don’t again for a long time. It is a burden that the vast majority of people just don’t care about. They’d rather pay the fee or watch the ad than go look for a potentially virus ridden copy from who knows where.

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Rant incoming and I am sure has errors/biases

We need to not repeat the 90’s here. Providing at the network levels ways to lock people out, ways to monetise the network beyond the compensation for resources used or similar to PtP, that is content provided to make the network more useful. And PtD to compensate developers.

One major mistake in the 90’s was to see this new internet itself as a way to pay ones wages & profit too. From there we had in the 90’s companies trying to have the internet pay them (yahoo, google, the dot com boom/bust). It was one thing to use the internet as a vehicle of transmission to conduct their business (eg shops), but they saw it as a way make their business model the internet itself. Walled gardens being built into the internet using servers rather than p2p, and its why I will always resist anything like that being built purposefully into core network. People will use scratchpads to implement something I am sure, but that is at the app level.

Lets not make Autonomi an upgraded internet with the same models being built on it and people like Google using it to become the monopoly sucking more money from the people than many countries have as their gross GDP

The vision was for a new internet unlike the current one.

Being paid for App development can have the fine line between trying to be compensated for ones development work and seeing the network as ones business model to become rich or the next google. The real money for developers has to be seen in the applications for companies (management, commerce, process control, etc etc) and not seeing the network itself as the income, eg google, yahoo, microsoft (one of the first to try). Thus turning the network in the Internet v2.0

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OK, I think I’m starting to grasp the concern here. I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m trying to understand why there is so much push back on this idea. Let me summarize the way I’m reading this and if you guys agree, we can start to break this down point by point and hopefully come up with a workable solution. At the end of the day, like I’ve said, I need $20k/month in revenue to be sustained in whatever way here (or $10/AUTONOMI token, then I’ll work for free :laughing: ). I don’t need to be Bill Gates:

  • Ads are the entry point for terrible things: data collection/mining, surveillance, loss of privacy
  • Consumers don’t like ads, we want something better
  • Big tech companies got greedy, made everything worse, and siloed data/users to maintain control of revenue streams

Are these the issues? Are there other high level points we want to address from web 2.0 failures?

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To add, I see we are at a crossroad here.

How to live life (earn money), and that is be compensated enough for the app development work put in to make useful apps. Very important

And how to not turn the network into the source of money (hard to phrase it) for ones life.

Its why I tried to get across that the goal is development work and be compensated, and not see the network as the source on income. And a developer should honestly look and see the real earning potential is working to create apps for companies to transact business across the network with the network being the vehicle and not the product (and people as one extension). Businesses will also need backends to help with the transacting, stock keeping, management etc

I like @happybeing explanations and ways to be compensated.

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So in your view, it is OK to spend 1000 hours developing an application for a business that pays you for the rest of your life, but it is not OK to spend 1000 hours developing an application that provides a service to users that pays you for the rest of your life? I don’t understand the difference.

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I am going to appear mean here. You may not want to be the next Bill Gates, but others will at some time in the future. We are at a crossroad here, do we want to do similar to the 90’s and see the internet as the wage provider.

Building Apps that use the features of the network, keep the user as the one owning their data, freely accessing the world’s info is all part of the original vision of a revolutionary “Internet”. But building apps to earn a living off the network itself is to eventually go down the 90’s route to end up with what we have today.

Basically I see app development as more building apps for the customer, the people, not the network. So then it will be the people paying and you need to appeal to them for payment. Making them the product, while can work, is repeating the current Internet and thus we are at a crossroad, which way do we go?

I can see the issue is hidden to you.

Did I say anywhere that users cannot provide your income. But to have the network pay your income is to simply adopt the current Internet thinking that brought us to the point where we are today. Just repeating history.

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Nah, you’re good. I appreciate bluntness :smiley:

Sure, but how do we prevent that? If there is money to be made, they will come. And what these people will build will not be what we want in any way shape or form.

Yes, 100% agree.

I think this is the root of our difference in opinion. I do not think the vast majority of people will pay money for a service. They want it for ‘free’. They don’t care about privacy, data mining, anything. They tolerate minute long video ads on youtube all day every day to avoid paying a few dollars a month. For example, I have a Proton Duo account that costs me a couple hundred dollars every few years. I paid for it because I see the value. I’ve degoogled my life, it took months. When I tell normal people this, they think I’m crazy. Why would you ‘pay’ for email and password tracking when Google does this for ‘free’? You must be some kind of conspiracy theorist. I have nothing to hide, why do I care if they look at my stuff? The sheep are conditioned, the wolf is their friend. And for all that, how many users does Gmail have vs Proton mail?

Not to mention all of the content creators out there. YouTube, TikTok, Rumble, they all pay you after you get so many views. The real creators aren’t making it on Patreon and donations alone, they’re banking on the cash from views coming from the platforms themselves. Are we saying we simply can’t support this model? If not by ads, how do we pay for it? Money has to come from somewhere, donations isn’t enough.

We have first mover advantage here. We can develop a framework, providing all the benefits the current Web 2.0 ecosystem provides only better, in every way. We can fix the problems up front, get app developers, get users. By the time the big players realize it, we’ll have cash flow and momentum. They’ll come in like Windows on phones: a huge clunky failure without an ecosystem. The 90’s will repeat again, it is inevitable. Why not bake in a good working solution to these issues up front, that we can guide the fledgling ecosystem, not be greedy, show the world a better way, before we lose control of the network? Or simply, don’t let perfection be the enemy of good enough.

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By not building it into the network itself

Also by pioneers thinking outside the box and providing the path forward for innovators and not falling back into the old ways as the model. Once that happens the big boys can try to force people back to their models of exploitation, but there will be a way out.

In the mid 90’s microsoft tried their blatant attempt to own the internet and were easily (technically) defeated with the free browser that gave the world’s info to people for free without paying microsoft monthly for the privilege of using their crap just to view sites.

So similarly if the pioneers provide a way to use the network keeping to the vision then the big boys have to change.

I think the streaming services are proof positive you are incorrect. In Australia for instance bitttorrent dropped from being the major traffic of the internet to barely significant due to netflix being introduced. Also the music streaming has seen similar. Then the audio books also adds to that. Then youtube shows people will pay with monthly subs and youtube’s premium service

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I have an impression, that there is a misunderstanding. @zettawatt asked about obfuscated pointers, and then talked about ads. And @neo and @happybeing thought he wants to integrate ads as a part of the network. I’m also seeing, that they want no obfuscated pointers in the network code, which I can understand, but I also understand, that it’s not in contradiction to optional ads idea on application level. It seems to me, that everybody agree, but talk about different things.

It was an investor gains thing. Capital-based VCs and corporations were the problem, where the aim was maximizing returns without concern, or selling the company to others, who don’t mind.

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@zettawatt but which problem would obfuscated pointers solve?

You don’t think a app that gets told the datamap and has it only in memory isn’t good enough because that datamap could be stored/shared again.

With obfuscated pointers the data still needs to be assembled client side and therefore can be written out locally, shared, unobfuscated chunk addresses and datamap reconstructed or simply re-uploaded

I think it adds complexity and doesn’t solve an issue tbh

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We disagree on the harmfulness and dangers of Ad based business models.

My view is based on a number of things, but two key ones are:

  • all advertising seeks to influence another. That’s not innately harmful unless that influence begins to undermine the agency of an individual or group, to change their outlook, their understanding of the world etc, in ways that are against their own interests. I think this is both an individual problem and a systemic harm that hardly anyone recognises IME.

  • ads help centralise power because they provide a way to scale and centralise influence and power based on having power. If you have enough money, you can spend it on ads to amplify your message above all others, including beneficial, non-harmful messages. This not only gives you influence that others don’t have, it allows you to censor other messages and product recommendationswhich is why this is a systemic problem.

You may give innocuous examples and say, that’s not harmful, but that is not an argument for advertising. It an argument for each particular example, which tbh is not convincing in itself if you regard this as a systemic issue.

I don’t expect to change views on this, so don’t want to put time into debate. I’ve made these points several times before.

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Nope, and personally i do think Ads will have their place. If you were watching, I did not refer to ads at all in my rants.

Don’t ask me where will be used/right, because that’ll be obvious when there is an appropriate place for them. People sometimes want to see ads they have asked to see. No need to lose personal info either over them since it’ll be an app serving them from the network being grabbed by the app. I don’t know and when a proper use case comes up then I’ll know LOL

Yea, that was a certainly a part of the dot com boom problem. But I knew people seeing the internet in the 90’s as a way to earn a crust, and some did not want to make stuff people asked for but stuff they can peddle out. Not just VC, it was the attitude and in some cases greed of individuals. Then the google pair came along.

It was a lot more than grubby VC’s etc, it was the mindset of people too. That is why we are at the crossroads here and decisions made can guide the future of development on the network. Devs have to earn a wage, thats a given. Do they make apps for people or develop apps to make money off the network. On the surface this can seem the same and I am against “earning off the network”. But its an attitude thing, one ends up sucking off the network, and the other is creating/developing apps that the customers (people/businesses in the world) want to use and worth the tips/donations/payments they will make. As I said people have proven they will pay willingly and without force. (I gave the examples above). Of course there are those who will refuse, there always is, but make a product people want and they will pay. Even churches (ones that do not require/force a tithe) give their message freely and people willingly donate money to them. (obviously the denominations that demand a OT tithe excepted since that is coarsened payments not freely given)

If you have the concept that you have to extract payment one way or another eg deceit, make people the product, etc and not because its a great product then you end up creating the current mess we are in (eventually)