Firefox Better Web with Scroll | Hacker News Reader

Firefox Better Web with Scroll

firstlook.firefox.com

36 pointsjccalhoun6 comments

I'm glad to see Mozilla giving a bigger platform to this style of revenue generation. Not only is the price reasonable, it's on my favorite web browser.

Brave's BAT has always appealed to me, but the browser's too niche and the UX just isn't there for me. I think Mozilla has the resources to make this realistically become a realistic part of the dialogue with respect to monetizing the web, and only wish that they'd tried it earlier.

I'd like to learn more about Scroll's policies with respect to partner selection before I consider investing however.

The current crop of Scroll's partners is a strong whose who of some of the best and/or most well-known publications available online, but it's a pretty homogenous group. Can I run a web forum that supports scroll? Is membership content gated? Can porn sites join? Would fringe outlets like Project Veritas or Unicorn Riot (I'm not suggesting moral or qualitative equivalence, just notability) be allowed to join if they so chose?

If the Intercept dropped a set of documents that the state or a large interest group disliked, would they lose their (theoretical) membership, or would their funds be witheld?

If I'm going to invest in a service like scroll, I'd like to know that it's an open payment platform which allows for content irrespective of its moral worth provided that its content legal in _my_ jurisdiction (meaning if a foreign country decides to outlaw _x_, my consumption still supports it).

I'm also curious to know if they have any privacy protections in place to divorce my identity from the distribution of my funds at whatever interval.

If nothing else this is a really good landing page.

I think they put forth a very good value proposition for the consumer who values adfree consumption and also want to pay.

I fear this could create website silos. Where certain webpages can only be accessed by a given browser because visits from that browser could be more profitable than running ads. But this is probably a long shot...

"Scroll" is the name of the company that Mozilla is partnering with, and they actually do the integration with sites to disable their ads, manage subscriptions, and manage payouts. See: https://scroll.com/about

Since Scroll is a separate entity, they can freely make the same extension available on other browsers.

So all the heavy lifting is being done by Scroll. Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) is the "second half" of the offering here named "Firefox Better Web with Scroll". But ETP is just a regular feature of Firefox now. So the real thing that Mozilla is adding here is their size. By attaching their name to it, they legitimize the concept of replacing ads & trackers with subscriptions and payouts determined by engagement not clicks. Though, I might wish they had come up with a catchier name.

This is GREAT! It's something I've wanted for years now! [1][2] Thank you Mozilla, for daring to approach the biggest problem facing human communication this century. I've never heard of Scroll before, so I'll need to do some research, but I'm just happy that someone is trying this again.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9721917 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11622050

I don't know if this is going to take off, but we desperately need something like this.

I feel the problem is that this really doesn't provide actual value to its user.

It's one thing if they are getting contents behind the paywall, but it really only appeal to relatively small subset of users who has cause to support these sites. For the rest, they will keep using content blockers...

I understand providing access to paid contents would probably costs more than $4.99 collectively, but I feel this will be a hard sell without tangible benefits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com