For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not collect any data about me without my explicit consent.
Apple is probably the most successful counter-example but even they are now going to have app store ads.
As far as DuckDuckGo goes, I would really love to use them regularly. DDG is even the default search engine on my notebook, but I find myself going to Google in the second step about 90% of the time because DDG's results are too bad.
Also, DDG is still running on ads, so it's more of the same, albeit implemented more privacy-consciously.
Settings -> Account, under "Content" unmark "Show me the best Tweets first"
Essentially, it's a way for a site's users to bid for its ad spots. If you bid more than the advertisers, you don't have to see the ads.
It's quite a clever idea really, but I don't think it has much uptake from publishers.
It's too bad there wasn't some way to have it cross over networks too.
Also you could just use an add block
That's a (rather quickly) learned behavior called banner blindness. :) [1] People get used to the locations where ads are placed on web pages and also the kind of look that ads have (flashy, colorful, animation, tiny picture with some text, etc., as some examples) and don't even look at them (these have been confirmed by eye tracking studies a long time ago).
Second problem is that there is potentially more money in you than this proposed relatively low amount because you are probably spending a lot more in a month and it is big attraction to become a middleman in every transaction you make.
Basically, the income they'd gain from offering this would pale in comparison of the reputation they'd lose (and following that, users) from admitting what they do is bad for you.
Exactly what 'bad things' are being prevented here?
The end result is exactly the same for the end user, its simply a question of who is getting paid how much and how often for that information.
Selling your age, gender, location, preferences, etc to anyone who books an ad? That’s bad.
You can read more about how online ads work here: https://privacy.google.com/how-ads-work.html
That’s more than enough.
I don't follow your line of reasoning here.
If any company gives any information about me to a third party, that's already wrong.
And while advertisers don't get the data directly, they get it indirectly. They get the user specification (age, gender, rough location) they bid on, and the IP, and several advertisers even used that to track you between different websites their AdWords ads were shown on.
I'd ask how you think they are giving data to foreign governments, but I have a feeling you'll try to redefine "mandatory court subpoenas for individuals" as the same.
The monthly fee for this service would be about $80.
In reality, most customer cases can be resolved quickly by searching for documentation and pointing them to it and/or explaining things better (and improving the support documentation along side when necessary).
I would assume that at least 30 customers can be served per eight hour working day. That's spending more than 15 minutes per customer and is usually adequate (on average) even for phone support! With my extrapolation here, which is again just an example (real scenarios would be different), the basic cost incurred by the service provider for the salary alone comes to about $7 per user per month. Add for overheads and it would still be fine to charge $10 or $12 per month. If service tiers are used, then there could be multiple slabs, mechanisms for support and turnaround times - all these would bring down the actual cost further.
And the more you pay the more your message is higlighted or promote to these people.