BAT - the answer to online ads?

[durbster]

There's a browser called Brave - https://www.brave.com - and one of its key features is that it blocks ads and tracking by default.

This is fine but there's a huge issue with funding online services and without ads, much of the web would stop functioning. Ads are annoying and resource hungry, donations are optimistic at best and paywalls are hugely off-putting to the majority.

Brave has devised a solution which I think sounds perfect so I wondered what people thought of it.

Basically:
- You set a monthly budget
- The browser works out which sites you've spent most time on each month
- Your budget is divided up accordingly

The result is far fewer annoying adverts and clickbait, and you can choose to pay whatever you can afford so it doesn't exclude anyone.

It also wrestles back some control of the web away from Google, Amazon and Facebook.

And it's all anonymous too.

In Brave's implementation they've devised a block-chain currency called BAT to deal with the transactions (info here - https://basicattentiontoken.org/index/) which is another discussion really, but what do people think of the basic concept? I think it's superb.

[daddy cool]

durbster said:

- The browser works out which sites you've spent most time on each month

[peterperkins]

The porn pedlars will be rolling in it, especially if you run out of tissues..

Seems a clever idea that might have some merit..