Thinking of how the Brave browser blocks ads but then replaces them with their own to generate revenue.

What if there was a browser/chrome/Firefox add-on that you paid ($2 a month?) That installed a cookie on your device that would then remove adds from all.the sites you visited, that gained a share of what you paid in order to remove ads for you. So mass media sites, tech sites, etc. Would recognize your cookie, see that you’ve paid, and track how many sites you visited and then bill the company for how many users subscribed to the ad free service.

  • Jonah@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    3 years ago

    So there would be a single identifier that you sent to every website, and those websites would report visits to a central authority, which would then generate a list of all of the websites you visited and at what frequency? I fail to see how that ‘enforces privacy’.

    I could see this working for something like youtube, where it already makes sense for them to track the videos you watch. If there was an option to pay a small fee that got distributed amongst the channels that I watched (with a small cut to youtube if I must), I would probably take it. I have many doubts about doing it for the whole internet, though.

    • ganymede@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 years ago

      Agreed. To OP, its actually not a bad idea overall, but i agree that you’d need to find a way around the single unique identifier issue.

    • Nevar@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 years ago

      Fair point. I don’t know enough about cookies but it would have to be a zero knowledge proof identifier. Not sure that could be programmed into a cookie.