Whilst browsing the traditional internet today, I was reminded (constantly) how many worthless ads invade our everyday usage on the web. The amount of ads themselves and the sheer amount of data about any one user that is being swapped, stolen or sold in the background of every click and every keystroke nearly makes me sick. A Times article today said Twitter is having trouble selling ads because marketers do not feel they have enough invasive information on Twitter users to target their ads properly, and also they complain of the reluctance of companies to provide ads that prompt users to install the advertisers mobile apps (the WORST kind of ads EVER!!!).
The SAFE Network is positioned to fundamentally change how ads work and how advertisers reach users. I longingly dream of a day I can browse the internet and just see content and not pop up and ads everywhere, as I believe the model of the SAFE Network will disincentivize the current ad models as the advertisers will not have the data for users they rely on so heavily today and companies rely on so heavily for revenue.
As I always find myself saying, it will be exciting to see how the landscape shifts and copes with new paradigm that will be the SAFE Network!!! If anyone else has thoughts on the ways the network will change the current targeted ad model, please feel free to share!!
FYI: If you want to try an ad free internet get AdBlock Plus for firefox (and disable the “Show non intrusive ads” setting) or uBlock (which works covers firefox and some other browsers).
Seems to me that Ad Blocking Software will be much more difficult to implement in SAFE…
In the traditional internet we can recognize certain domains as being the purveyors of such stuff, and we can block content from those domains. Since SAFE stores it’s files in a distributed random encyrpted system, this approach will not work very well…
As it is right now, as I understand it, all the scripting that happens on SAFE shares is client-sided, so it would be very much more easy to strip out the advertizing (or at least the parts of the advert that generate money for the people advertizing) than on the old internet.
How would you know what is an Ad vs what is a photo with a link? Most of the current Ad Blocking systems use blacklists – Which wouldn’t work well with SAFE… If somebody blacklisted my ad, I could change a pixel and the Ad would be new and unblocked.
You’d still need to execute some form of script to track the click. Remember that the SAFE network doesn’t report to anyone that you’ve accessed a file. Without voluntary scripting, nobody knows how many people have accessed a single file.
The dynamic content is still, until we get computations running on the network, going to have to be entirely clientsided, or refer to a traditional web server.
Edit: Oh, right, you mean that there’s going to be a time when there is no longer a requirement for scripts to be executed clientside. Yeah, that may be. But I’m sure it’ll be worked around. There was talk of tagging content, this is one such place where one might employ the tag “sponsored content” and mark it in your client as something to confirm before loading.
I guess I am thinking that without knowing who is viewing what, what incentive would the ad agencies have to post ads in the first place? Yes, you can list ads on a highly viewed website, but the best result you are going to get is someone clicking your ad and driving traffic to your site. As far as where that person is, who they are, or any other info about them (age, gender, browsing history, etc) am I correct that this would not be attainable via the SAFE Network? Why waste ad money when you are not going to be able to get any relevant quantifiable data about how well your $$ is being used?
Seems to me that until there is database driven websites, SAFE will be insignificant as a competitor for the regular web. Next to nobody builds static sites anymore.
Once you have database driven websites, you will have the ability to collect data about what is being browsed etc. The expectation is that noSQL databases should eventually work on SAFE…
@jreighley this is a moot point. Its not dynamic/db websites that declares users privacy gone, it is the clients side app that the user uses to access them, and the permissions the user gives to have their activity and data accessed by the publisher.
So, if the user is willing to run apps that violate their privacy, let’s say Facebook made a SAFE version, yes advertising and all the other tricks will work with that one app. But this is still very different than the current internet where the web browsers don’t have the power to protect users, because the publishers control the servers and what happens to user data and user identity.
I think it is going to be interesting to see what models are attempted and how well they work. My first thought is its definitely a different ball game, and users seem on the face of it far more in control, and publishers will have to work a lot harder if they want to replicate a “user is the product” model.
Another question will be how such a model can compete with publishers who offer services without trying to exploit users attention or privacy, relying on SAFE content/app rewards, or micropayments, or some other model that arises in the new environment.
I’m not saying an ad model is impossible, but I don’t think it is going to dominate by any means, and I think it will be far easier for users to choose the degree to which they experience being the product. They’ll have other more attractive options I hope!
I would hope that micro-payments through cryptocurrency would be far more attractive than advertising in general.
I would pay 10 or 20 cents per day for my local paper for example… Prior to cryptocurrencies that was not possible…
In my estimation ads will be harder to block on MaidSAFE simply because Blacklisting is hard and publishing is easy. Particularly if you can run off a dynamic database that can tweak things a bit each load. I doubt many commercial businesses are going to venture onto safe with their web publishing if it means that they loose all of their analytical tools to tell them what is working and what is not. But so long as sites are dynamic, that will not be too hard to figure out.
Seems to me that Ad Blocking Software will be much more difficult to implement in SAFE…
In the traditional internet we can recognize certain domains as being the purveyors of such stuff, and we can block content from those domains. Since SAFE stores it’s files in a distributed random encyrpted system, this approach will not work very well…
I’d disagree; just as domains on the existing internet / Domain Name Service can be used for blocking; SAFE equally has a name mapping: they are Public MaidSafe IDs (PMIDs), human-readable names that direct to content, public or private.
More importantly, services would always run under your control, so there is no more reason why any service would pull ads into your interface.
The whole SAFE network is designed as one giant “database”; key-value store to be precise. I project that the most important reason to have static webpages on SAFE, will only be for archiving the old internet…
Yes and as the other thread was talking about, there will be thread tagged search that down votes anything that seems sponsored as unreliable and bribed. The culture is changing too. People are realizing I hope that they need to get sources that are undefiled by the sponsor censor bribery game.
Also open source TIVO and call control type apps that can even strip stuff out video.
