Havn (en)

I recently saw a video from Louis Rossman about whether or not ad blocking is piracy. This isn't a response to the video (it's OK), but some thoughts I got from it.

This is not a post where I'm sure of my opinions! I'm think out loud, and hoping for other people's thoughts. It started as a thread on Mastodon. Here's a link to that, and I hope someone adds their thoughts there!

To me, more interesting than if it's piracy/illegal, is if it's ethical/right. And when evaluating something like that, I like to ask myself:

“Would it be ok if everyone did it?”

However, I really hate ads...

So for myself, I've landed on the following:

• I pay for Youtube, Nebula and streaming services for video, and Spotify for music. (I don't love Spotify's rates and artist payment structure – but the other apps are so much worse...)
• To “combat” the free-to-play-hell that is the mobile games market, I subscribe to Apple Arcade and buy good games, like Monster Train.
• I used to use DuckDuckGo, but I often had to fall back on Google, and it still had ads. Now I use Kagi, which gives me better results than Google, and is (paid and) ad-free. Huge recommendation from me!
• However, I do use ad blockers when surfing the web. But I try to whitelist sites, and subscribe to some news outlets (and I donated to the ad blocker I use).

But, I'm not sure I can 100 % defend my use of ad blockers – as it's easy to think “I can block ads, because most people don't – so the free stuff is still available”. But would it be if everyone did?

At the same time, the ad supported web is a pretty terrible place, with bad privacy and incentive structures. Greed and exploitation ruined the web, so I should be able to “fix it”, right?

I try to be a conscious consumer of the web – but I've no illusions of me being perfect in this regard! I'm just sharing some practices and principles that seems sensible to me, without saying “everyone has to do like me”. Feedback is, as mentioned, appreciated!

I do wish Scroll, that got bought and (more og less) closed down by pre-Elon-Twitter, would've been a thing... I really liked that idea! Coil had some interesting ideas as well (that I know even less about) – but has also shut down.

You'd pay a monthly fee of $5, and then a bunch of websites would become ad-free. The sites you visited, got revenue from your Scroll subscription.

Privilege and accessibility

But I'm in a privileged position, being able to pay for so much of what I do on the web. And things being accessible to everyone, can be fantastic! However, (despite the, sympathetic, hopes and dreams of the FOSS community) everything probably can't work like Wikipedia.

Is the alternative to put things behind paywalls, and thus away from those who aren't in a position to pay? Is the model we have now, that those who can't pay with money have to pay with their privacy?

I'm genuinely conflicted here.

Two decent examples

Even though it's not content, I like Telegram's model. (This isn't a comment on the people behind it – and I'm not saying it's perfect.)

They have some ads in channels with over 1000 subscribers – but they're non-intrusive, and are not based on tracking. (I only use Telegram for personal messaging and small groups, so I never see these in the wild.)

But the main income is from a subscription that does two things (in addition to voice-to-text):

1. Cosmetics
2. Increase already generous limits

This freemium model works well, because the product don't feel limited when using it for free, as the free tier limits are set high enough (and doubled if you pay).

For instance, on the free tier, you can:

• send files up to 2 GB,
• join 500 different channels/large groups, and
• create 10 different chat folders.

It also doesn't rely on tracking, as opposed to the free with ads, paid without model.

This means I feel fine asking people to use the service, because the free version is still a way better product than Meta's Messenger, that everyone uses in Norway.

In addition, the privacy is much better – and the security is a little better. (Yes, these are two different things!) There are obviously even more secure services out there, though – if that's your jam.

Social media as a perk

My Mastodon instance is a part of a different paid service: Write.as, that this blog runs on. That's a really promising model for parts of the Fediverse, in my opinion! It's an added perk, and they get a bit of steady income to run the instance. Medium does the same.

Maybe this could be something for even more businesses? If it brings in enough more people to your service to pay for enough moderators and servers, it could work! Perhaps something for companies like Fastmail, Squarespace, or even internet/cell providers?

Your customers becomes a bit more sticky, but they could still move their followers and followees any time they want (if they stop paying for the service, don't like the moderation, or something else).

Vivaldi and Mozilla are exploring this space as well – but their model is a variation of the one above: The function of the Mastodon instance is to point people to the parts of their business that do make money. This also seems viable.

Open and ad-free, social media is an amazing prospect – but we can't expect stable service and good moderation without cost of any kind! And while it's great that people donate to people running their instance, I think something more stable would be beneficial. (And the beauty of the Fediverse, is that we can have both at the same time!)

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Anyway, even though it's really basic, I hope we can remind each other to asks the question I started with: “What would happen if everyone did like me?”

That's one of the most important things we can ask ourselves, whether it's about the way we live our lives online, or in the rest of our communities.

Thoughts on this? Practices and principles you try to follow to contribute to a better web? Feel free to comment on the Mastodon thread, or send me an email!

#Technology #Essay

-Erlend ⚓