Tell/Ask HN: An itch around advertising
The way the web works today, unfortunately it's not a deal I can accept. I simply will not let NetworkX throw some nasty trojan-infested advertisement at me (and this is only one of the reasons why I blacklist JavaScript by default). I may want to contribute, but I don't want to donate (one way or another it often turns into a hassle). I would like some innovation in how advertisements work on the web.
I don't want to feel like a leecher of your bandwidth and CPU. In return, you should give me the same benefit.
In fact, I want to see a friendly ad-network. Say, something like:
[] all dependencies are hosted by the domain you are visiting. This might even decrease bandwidth consumed by advertisements.
[] if you trust the domain, you trust their advertisements (even if you use various script blockers)
[] this might be deemed evil by some, though: initially (?) this would obsolete ad-blockers since it would become harder to determine what is an advertisement and what is normal content. But personally I do not mind. I would consider it a good feature.
[] a view or a click is verified by the user and the advertising domain, then signed and posted to "neutral place".
[] you, the user, can opt-in or opt-out to share information about you (e.g. should long lasting cookie be able to couple you up with your Facebook ID). Not entirely sure how to enforce the advertising domain to keep its promise here, though. It would probably have to be based on good-will and since they are putting themselves and not the advertisers in the line of fire, it might just work.
[] ... more? I think this covers the bigger problems: Trusting the statistics and the user benefiting from friendlier advertisements
Slight tangent: This has been an itch of mine for so long now. It hit the top of my head again today when I could not see user-comments on a website. There were a slew of domains which wanted to run JavaScript on my machine and there was no way of telling which ones were needed to get the comments to show up (and this one is to Disqus et al.: does site owners have the option to throw me an iframe with dead content?)
Just because I trust you doesn't mean I trust the ones you trust.
Does something like it exist? Is there some little niche market here? How many of -you- are running NoScript or an adblocker as a mean of protection rather than (for lack of a better word) leeching?