Scary Jerry
I see a lot of complaining here about Salon’s decision to mine currency if a visitor is using an ad blocker. No income means no paid staff. Mining currency is likely a less risky proposition than allowing ads (for now at least).
The mantra for a long time about the changes brought about by the internet (ala RIAA/MPAA) is “adapt or die”. Here we have a company attempting to adapt and people are throwing rocks at it.
What is a better alternative?
George
@jerry I fully support websites mining crypto currency. In fact I think that could be a viable alternative revenue stream. I would also like to see websites suggest the Brave Browser and the BAT (Basic Attention Token) for revenue as well. Anything that helps get rid of ads.
Frostotron "Frossy" ⚧⚢🏳️🌈
Yeah, not all alternatives are good alternatives. I don't think that sneakily using other people's computers to make money is a good solution, and neither is sneakily tracking users. Locking news behind a paywall means that poor people just won't get news, and that's also a problem.
Ideally, a solution would decouple the act of reading an article from the act of payment. Would a Patreon-like model work? It would be a huge shift in culture, but we need that.
FlyingLawyer
@jerry you would understand the security risks here much better than I, but as a consumer I would prefer "pay us, let us mine while you're reading, or leave" to "pay us or leave", especially if it eliminates some or all ads in the process.
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