The present state of compensation

The current state of things can be quite bleak depending on the site visited. But the normal is tons of banner advertisements. Advertisements as content on the site. Advertisements mixed into the content you are reading, sometimes done so badly that it causes you to lose place on what your reading. Advertisements hidden in the text so that a hover over shows a pop-up bubble while reading. To the worse case where ads play videos, and do many more things including invading your privacy. Many times these advertisement consume extra resources causing fans to turn on and inevitable waste time, power, and bandwidth. Also, many times while trying to get past the ads one ends up clicking on something unintended and end up off the site your started at, and possibly forgetting the whole point of the original visit to the website. And if you don’t at that point you may want to due to the experience you just had with their advertising plan. In my opinion this is just terrible, and not how we should be running things. So as consumers and producers of internet content we should do something different.

Nothing is free on the internet

This is something that we really need to address and understand, for everything on the internet there is a cost that someone has to pay to keep that content up and available. The idea that everything is free and no one ever has to pay is in my opinion the route of the current problems of today’s internet advertising problems.

• there is a cost to get and keep a domain
• there is a cost to keep hosting going, to make the content available.
• there is a cost to maintain and make the content

Future of Internet value for value ?

I think the future of the internet should work more along the lines with what is being tried with Podcasting 2.0. Where one utilizes an automated accounting system that can provide payment to the content creator as the consumer use the website, without the user being required to go through a payment action list requiring active effort like would be needed for a credit card payment or using some other system like PayPal, CashApp, Patreon etc. to make a one time or recurring payment to support the content being absorbed. This kind of system provides a more realistic so that when your spending time on a site your contributing a bare minimum amount that the consumer agrees to pay for the value they receive from their browsing effort, which could be zero. Using the same system more purposeful one time bonus payments or boosts would also be allowed, and would be truly one click payments. With this system its completely up to the consumer of the content to place and contribute value to the content producer. Sure this is a different system than we are used to, but with a little faith something like this could solve the problems of the internet. For more information on the problems of the internet see IPFS project and Internet Archive.

Braves’ Solution is pressing forward with something that’s different but is it much better

Brave Basic Attention Token

Value for value, for the web, well almost. The Brave Rewards program is an interesting implementation. I am going to specifically references the implementations of Tipping and Auto Contribute, since the earning money or credits from looking at advertisements is really not the way I want things to go. The attention grabbing notifications on Brave had to be turned off, simply less than ideal.

Tipping with Brave rewards

This really make a lot of sense, and allows you to set up a one time tip or set up a recurring monthly tip of your choosing. Downside is that there is a 0.25 BAT minimum tip.

One downside is that the system preserves anonymity, which may be good for privacy, but the creator has no idea who sent the money. And is potentially another way to disconnect creators from their customers, kind of following the App Store model of Apple and Google, where all you get is your cut of payment and access to view comments / reviews of your app, no access to your list of customers.

Auto Contribution with Brave rewards

This does not make a lot of sense to me, appears with this system you pick how much you want to spend monthly, and then brave decides how to divvy that out to the supported sites, based on how Brave determines attention on each site you visit. This seems very much like the old Netflix model but maybe with a little more transparency, in that you can see where your money was spent based on the things you have visited.

It’s a pain to get started if you want to contribute your own money

If you don’t want to rely on just what your getting from brave ads, you’re out of options. You can’t add your on value until you self identify to a 3rd party. You need to set up a custodial wallet, and you have just 2 choices. And yes you have to save up to get enough coin to be able to set up real wallet with the 3rd party wallet.

Uphold and Gemini wallets

Uphold seems like the better choice with no fees unless you are converting to another currency. However, you have to wait around until you get 2 BAT in your Brave wallet via ads, which is just silly. I have money I want to spend and your saying no I can’t put money in your wallet, until I use the browser enough to earn 2 BAT. Just a bit of a hassle, what’s the point of making this difficult is my question? This seems wrong…

Trying to use this has turned into a chore from the users side, and that’s not good. Currently, my situation is wait for my wallet to get large enough for me to verify it, to be able to start contributing my real money.

Major downside is Brave rewards are centralized managed and exclusive to Brave browser

Brave is managing the list of verified content creators. Its centralized and there is lots of legal stuff to sign up and agree to terms and such in order to participate in the program, so “Don’t piss me off, Art!” or you’re out.

Also, it only works in the Brave browsers, and while that’s fantastic for Brave. Brave is just one browser, and I don’t know about you, but I change browsers over time, and getting locked into one browser sounds like a bad deal, no matter how much good is promised to creators.

The solution is value for value with something that does the following in an open way.

• Allows the Users to add value quick and easy in order to contribute directly, and is not dependent on advertising to generate all the lifeblood of the ecosystem getting started.

• Anyone that adopts this new protocol can start receiving value with a valid wallet, etc., there is no approval process and no centralized place to ask for permission. You adopt protocol on your website and can start receiving value from users that are willing.

• Same is true for the user, you get full control of the wallet immediately.

• Can work on any browser via a plug in, etc.

• User has complete control over how much value they want to contribute and full control over how the process can work automatically on the users’ behalf.