Prime example of failed business models and their desperate attempts to survive.
I'm really disappointed about how online publishers handle the decline of ad revenue. Of course my ad-blocker will also block your miner script, what do you think how this works? And better yet, integrating external third-party JavaScript into your website screams for abuse by attackers. Someone could just change the wallet address the scripts mine for and suddenly all your visitors not only do not mine for Salon, but mine for someone else entirely.
But yeah, ask me about "well how do we make money?" and I don't really have an answer myself. IMO sources like Patreon are the most appealing for me, though it might hurt websites I have not yet in my list and would not be able to access if I'm not a subscriber.
> sources like Patreon are the most appealing for me, though it might hurt websites I have not yet in my list and would not be able to access if I'm not a subscriber.
There's also the crowdfunding model. Backers can pay in advance to cover your production costs, and post-funding sales can earn you a profit. I've seen cases where the product became freely available once sales brought in a pre-determined profit.
Of course, this works best for individual productions with rather small budgets, such as documentaries or music albums. Not so much for big productions (think Hollywood movies) and not so much for periodic publications like magazines or blogs.
Imagine you have a little widget in your browser that displays something like '50%' which means you constantly use 50% of one core to mine a cryptocurrency for the page you are currently looking at.
And in return you get an ad free web. I think that would be way better then the web as we know it.
I am completely fine with this. The entire question of "How does a web site providing content 'for free' make money?" still seems to be in flux. Yes, people might push for some sort of micropayments thing, and The Guardian is making their method work, but I don't know if that's the exception or the rule. At least, not right now.
Given the choice, I prefer a background miner over ads. Even on a laptop that's running on battery. For one thing, removing the ads (and all the annoying JS they load) should make the page much better to load & navigate, meaning I can go through the content faster. If I don't want to use up my battery, then I'll add the site to my Read Later list, and read it then.
It wouldn't be so bad if Salon were using 5 or 10% of your CPU, but they are pushing it to 100%. Check out the discussion on r/BATProject[0] which is apart of the Brave browser. Brave is actually fighting the mining situation whilst also trying to help publishers and creators gain money.
Brave are actively blocking ads and background miners, but they offer verified publishers and creators to be donated Basic Attention Tokens (their own cryptocurrency). Users of Brave will be able to gain tokens either by purchasing them or by viewing ads within the browser rather than on the websites. If you're interested, I would recommend you check out their browser which is based on Chromium.[1]
I'd be okay with it if choosing to do this on your website wasn't going to obviously incentivize hackers to inject this software maliciously on unsuspecting websites to steal money from unsuspecting users.
The more legit websites do this, the more cryptojacking will wreak havoc on the web.
And for those who say they ask for consent so it's okay, why do the CoinHive people still pay out for versions of the software that don't ask for consent?
CoinHive now has the authedmine.com domain, and the scripts served from there only run with explicit and temporary user consent. No reason to block that, although I think some blockers are doing so anyway.
Their website was already unreadable on mobile so I guess they're now going to make sure you can't view it on a desktop/laptop by pegging your cpu to 100%
That's config on the miner, can throttle to any CPU usage percentage. No reason for them to be stupid enough to peg at 100%. 50% to 70% seems much more reasonable. Most day to day, non professional applications barely use more than 30%.
Again mostly negative comments here. May I ask why? It's 100% opt-in so I don't really see what blocking mining scripts has to do with it. I also block mining scripts but that's for rogue sites doing it without my consent (The Pirate Bay) while this feels like a legitimate use-case. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The headline makes it sound like they automatically start it if you're using an adblocker. That is not the case. Check the screenshot in the article.
Cryptocurrency mining scripts are primarily delivered as malware. It seems kind of incredibly tone-deaf for a journalistic site to attempt to use it as a means of monetizing even if making it opt-in.
In theory, it's a great idea being 100% opt-in and all.
But in practice, we know that CoinHive is being used largely as malware, being injected in third-party sites to enrich hackers. And it's not a nice move to support that ecosystem and the company which clearly doesn't give two damns that their software is enabling so much hacking.
The web is open and free because ads made it possible when the internet was first evolving. You only understand the internet as “free” because someone else was footing the bill to begin with. Ads can no longer support an open web as you once knew it. So, the web closes down (publishers gating their content - subscriptions) one by one and what do you end up with? A closed web. Plain and simple. Those who feel the web is “free” are under an illusion becaue they know and knew of nothing different. These people are ignorant and the ignorance is what is actually causing the web to close down faster. The more ignorance the faster it closes. I’m not saying ads and mining are great ways to pay the toll but it’s the only options since I don’t see any user here writing checks to websites out of good will. Salon at least is trying to keep the web “open” by giving options - and by the way, when did an option, in your control, ever offend you. Offended? Fine you don’t have to opt in. That’s like saying your pissed of because the restaurant accepts discover card when you only chose to carry Amex or cash.
There are a lot of people here who just don’t know what they are talking about and unfortunately they’ll never know who they are because they are always right. That’s fine because that’s the way the world works unfortunately and it’s human nature but a little honest research would do the greater community as a whole a great deal of good.
The problem with ads is that they are not just ads these days. There is a big industry whose "product" is tracking users across sites, trying to build detailed profiles in order to present people with targeted ads they are more likely to click on.
In other words, a massive invasion of privacy that may very well come back to haunt us (think of an oppressive government trying to find potential dissidents, either to bombard them with propaganda or worse).
Using my browser as a cryptocurrency miner as I visit a site has obvious problems, especially on mobile devices, but from a privacy perspective it is far less troubling. With the exception of blogs people write in their spare time, most web sites need a way to recover their expenses. Even more so for news sites that employ journalists etc.
At that point, the interesting question is how effective running a Javascript miner is. When I visit web sites using a browser that has no ad blocker or tracking protection installed, I notice that ads, tracking scripts, etc. can use quite a bit of CPU, RAM and bandwidth, too. If I could be sure that a site using crypto-miners does not just gobble up my phone's battery like crazy, the idea is not that bad, as long as sites are transparent and up-front about it.
Some sites already offer a model where you either have ads or make a donation and get an ad-free page. Something similar with cryptominers could work, too.
(All this assumes, of course, that web site owners play fair, which is hopelessly naive all too often.)
For this model to be successful(long term), sites/anyone who does this, must set an early precedent to inform and get consent from users.
(this is, of course, antithetical toward modern advertising philosophy)
Otherwise, it crosses a line from Adware to Malware, further validates the reclassification of ad blocking/protection from optional to required, and will meet a quick demise
They've been doing shady shit with JS for years like auto-reloading their home page and other shady practices. The only solution to sites running bad JS like Salon is to block the JS. uBlock origin, NoScript, etc. The only downside is that none of these tools is user-friendly enough to run without any user input. The idea that other entities should be able to run their code on my computer was a bad one to begin with and still is. I think people are slowly coming to that realization as this default begins to show just how dangerous it is.
If this is done without explicit permission from the user, I can see it being some sort of hacking offence.
So yes, I run adblockers. I will also run coinblockers. You're not going to be mining on my laptop processor and battery. Not yours.
If you don't want me reading your stuff for free (which is perfectly reasonable!) then block me, instruct your server not to send content on those terms. I'm happy with that. But I will not render your ads, nor run your mining script.
Out of curiosity... Rather than blocking ads, why not block sites that have ads? This way you comply with their implicit wish not to have you read their content without some sort of monetary return.
> If this is done without explicit permission from the user, I can see it being some sort of hacking offence.
When ads are enabled, your browser is sometimes executing javascript to conduct part of some ad-auction thing to figure out which is the best ad to show you (i don't work in ad-tech, so this is probably 60% incorrect, but you get the idea).
I don't fundamentally see the difference between a website running unsolicited mining crapware in your browser versus unsolicited adtech crapware. So I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you -- if running mining crapware is regarded as "hacking", then we may as well regard all client side code execution related to adtech as "hacking" too.
[+] [-] grzm|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16364919
[+] [-] grx|8 years ago|reply
I'm really disappointed about how online publishers handle the decline of ad revenue. Of course my ad-blocker will also block your miner script, what do you think how this works? And better yet, integrating external third-party JavaScript into your website screams for abuse by attackers. Someone could just change the wallet address the scripts mine for and suddenly all your visitors not only do not mine for Salon, but mine for someone else entirely.
But yeah, ask me about "well how do we make money?" and I don't really have an answer myself. IMO sources like Patreon are the most appealing for me, though it might hurt websites I have not yet in my list and would not be able to access if I'm not a subscriber.
[+] [-] koliber|8 years ago|reply
Businesses do not survive by default. It takes a lot of work and experimentation to find the right mix of everything to build a viable company.
[+] [-] majewsky|8 years ago|reply
There's also the crowdfunding model. Backers can pay in advance to cover your production costs, and post-funding sales can earn you a profit. I've seen cases where the product became freely available once sales brought in a pre-determined profit.
Of course, this works best for individual productions with rather small budgets, such as documentaries or music albums. Not so much for big productions (think Hollywood movies) and not so much for periodic publications like magazines or blogs.
[+] [-] realitycheck_13|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TekMol|8 years ago|reply
Imagine you have a little widget in your browser that displays something like '50%' which means you constantly use 50% of one core to mine a cryptocurrency for the page you are currently looking at.
And in return you get an ad free web. I think that would be way better then the web as we know it.
[+] [-] MereInterest|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErrantX|8 years ago|reply
Better to evolve a micropayments model that works (because at least i can quantify what I pay)
[+] [-] abusoufiyan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bencollier49|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CaliforniaKarl|8 years ago|reply
Given the choice, I prefer a background miner over ads. Even on a laptop that's running on battery. For one thing, removing the ads (and all the annoying JS they load) should make the page much better to load & navigate, meaning I can go through the content faster. If I don't want to use up my battery, then I'll add the site to my Read Later list, and read it then.
[+] [-] michaelbrooks|8 years ago|reply
Brave are actively blocking ads and background miners, but they offer verified publishers and creators to be donated Basic Attention Tokens (their own cryptocurrency). Users of Brave will be able to gain tokens either by purchasing them or by viewing ads within the browser rather than on the websites. If you're interested, I would recommend you check out their browser which is based on Chromium.[1]
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/7y7tvy/bat_comm... [1] https://brave.com/
[+] [-] abusoufiyan|8 years ago|reply
The more legit websites do this, the more cryptojacking will wreak havoc on the web.
And for those who say they ask for consent so it's okay, why do the CoinHive people still pay out for versions of the software that don't ask for consent?
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] WillReplyfFood|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] abusoufiyan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|8 years ago|reply
E.g.:
[+] [-] cardigan|8 years ago|reply
The version requiring explicit consent is being used on the Salon website, and isn't currently being blocked by AdBlockers/malware detectors.
[+] [-] NKCSS|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esnard|8 years ago|reply
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/blob/master/filters/...
[+] [-] apocalyptic0n3|8 years ago|reply
Here's two:
[1]: https://github.com/hoshsadiq/adblock-nocoin-list
[2]: https://github.com/ZeroDot1/CoinBlockerLists
[+] [-] sudhirj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudhirj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzahola|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|8 years ago|reply
The headline makes it sound like they automatically start it if you're using an adblocker. That is not the case. Check the screenshot in the article.
[+] [-] yborg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abusoufiyan|8 years ago|reply
But in practice, we know that CoinHive is being used largely as malware, being injected in third-party sites to enrich hackers. And it's not a nice move to support that ecosystem and the company which clearly doesn't give two damns that their software is enabling so much hacking.
[+] [-] realitycheck_13|8 years ago|reply
There are a lot of people here who just don’t know what they are talking about and unfortunately they’ll never know who they are because they are always right. That’s fine because that’s the way the world works unfortunately and it’s human nature but a little honest research would do the greater community as a whole a great deal of good.
[+] [-] krylon|8 years ago|reply
In other words, a massive invasion of privacy that may very well come back to haunt us (think of an oppressive government trying to find potential dissidents, either to bombard them with propaganda or worse).
Using my browser as a cryptocurrency miner as I visit a site has obvious problems, especially on mobile devices, but from a privacy perspective it is far less troubling. With the exception of blogs people write in their spare time, most web sites need a way to recover their expenses. Even more so for news sites that employ journalists etc.
At that point, the interesting question is how effective running a Javascript miner is. When I visit web sites using a browser that has no ad blocker or tracking protection installed, I notice that ads, tracking scripts, etc. can use quite a bit of CPU, RAM and bandwidth, too. If I could be sure that a site using crypto-miners does not just gobble up my phone's battery like crazy, the idea is not that bad, as long as sites are transparent and up-front about it.
Some sites already offer a model where you either have ads or make a donation and get an ad-free page. Something similar with cryptominers could work, too.
(All this assumes, of course, that web site owners play fair, which is hopelessly naive all too often.)
[+] [-] fezerozero|8 years ago|reply
Otherwise, it crosses a line from Adware to Malware, further validates the reclassification of ad blocking/protection from optional to required, and will meet a quick demise
[+] [-] VMG|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
[+] [-] molticrystal|8 years ago|reply
1. Run Noscript extension
2. Run RequestPolicy extension
3. Keep your adblock/ublock rules updated as they block miners
4. Don't ever visit Salon
The first three also work on most other websites that have miners or were hacked and had a miner injected.
[+] [-] andygates|8 years ago|reply
But using user resources to mine fadcoin? That's borderline Computer Misuse Act, in the UK, I reckon.
[+] [-] mnm1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|8 years ago|reply
So yes, I run adblockers. I will also run coinblockers. You're not going to be mining on my laptop processor and battery. Not yours.
If you don't want me reading your stuff for free (which is perfectly reasonable!) then block me, instruct your server not to send content on those terms. I'm happy with that. But I will not render your ads, nor run your mining script.
[+] [-] mikekchar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shoo|8 years ago|reply
When ads are enabled, your browser is sometimes executing javascript to conduct part of some ad-auction thing to figure out which is the best ad to show you (i don't work in ad-tech, so this is probably 60% incorrect, but you get the idea).
I don't fundamentally see the difference between a website running unsolicited mining crapware in your browser versus unsolicited adtech crapware. So I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you -- if running mining crapware is regarded as "hacking", then we may as well regard all client side code execution related to adtech as "hacking" too.
[+] [-] nukeop|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] em3rgent0rdr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] revanx_|8 years ago|reply