That's all true - we mention these directly on our FAQ ([redacted]) -- many are issues we plan to address as soon as possible -- the application 100% works in terms of functionality, but is definitely still under heavy development!
42 karma · joined March 2, 2018
In the near future, we're planning to expand into more general adblocking; we're currently focused on growth & there's still a lot of internal discussion happening, but we're most seriously considering a Spotify-style or micropayments model... very early days though - we just officially launched last week!
We work on a number of major publications that 12ft does not, including NYT, WSJ, and several others. We have a full list of supported publications here: [link redacted]
Right now, we don't make money or monetize at all, and are still exploring options. For the foreseeable future, we're 100% focused on growth and plan to raise VC funding to sustain operations. Ultimately, we want to find a monetization solution that works well for everyone and keeps our interests aligned with the best interest of our users.
The reason for the root cert is that in short order (after cleaning up our infra, etc.) we're actually planning to expand to a full-spectrum adblocker.
Really making the longer-term bet here that with a lot of work, the underlying proxy infrastructure will enable a lot of really interesting possibilities, and the shorter-term bet that with this approach we can create the best / most effective adblocker for paywalls by far.
Digging in, there are a few reasons actually - first is, Chrome removes extensions with this kind of functionality from the Web Store constantly (only option would be to sideload).
Under the hood, Incoggo is also actually a local proxy (it adds a trusted root cert during the install process - we have some details on this / other potential issues / concerns on our forum). Reason for this being, Chrome extensions can't modify inbound requests in the way that's required to unblock several of the publications we support (NYT, Bloomberg, WaPo being key examples).
edit: child comment is a better solution.
In Ford’s case that might be something like: ‘I want it to be faster / easier / cheaper to get from point A to point B’. If the way to deliver that to a customer is better horses or a car, it doesn’t really matter so long as the desired value is provided.
> I think monetizing a privacy product without having the user pay is extremely hard. There will need to be an extremely high amount of transparency everywhere.
I would agree with this wholeheartedly -- we're still very early stages, but trying to keep things as open as possible in terms of our tech & intentions with everything.
> but also receive a lot of public funding.
Curious what sources you receive public funding from?
> - we plan to build in something similar to HTTPS Everywhere to the product, to automatically upgrade connections (and we only route traffic on ports 80 / 443 (optionally 53)). - we also plan to build in the ability to allow peers to block certain categories of traffic from going over their connection (using blocklists similar to those used by Fortiguard -- so you could block all torrenting sites, as an example).
Short term, I'm self-funding the company (day job + previous exit of an entirely unrelated company).
We're still exploring different methods of monetization, but leaning towards an Adblock-Plus style model at the moment (but would want to keep any ads we served entirely local / we'd never send any data off device & would want to be as transparent about everything as possible). Personally, I think it keeps our interests best aligned with those of our users & helps keep the focus on preserving user privacy!
- Right now we're still undecided / exploring different ways of monetizing the product! (something similar to Adblock-Plus though is our leading idea). - We're working on a way to disallow users from acting as exits for certain kinds of traffic - so you'll be able to categorically block certain kinds of sites through the UI in the near future. - Even with DoH on by default in the browser, we can still override / specify a DNS server.
Let me know if you still have questions / any of the above is unclear!
Also, unlike SoftEther, we don't depend on volunteers for our network - the network is largely made up of the users themselves!
Our posts a few months back were largely exploratory posts - seeing if there was actually demand for the product (or at least enough to pursue the project!).
Since FreePN is such a technical product, we've been iterating a lot on our messaging. We are still in very early stages, but we do have some mechanisms planned to mitigate the effect of bad actors on the network:
- we plan to build in something similar to HTTPS Everywhere to the product, to automatically upgrade connections (and we only route traffic on ports 80 / 443 (optionally 53)). - we also plan to build in the ability to allow peers to block certain categories of traffic from going over their connection (using blocklists similar to those used by Fortiguard -- so you could block all torrenting sites, as an example).
Early days still, but much to come!
A $5-$50/mo Linode + a tiny bit of ops overhead has to be less expensive than anything anyone else is charging (whether Facebook, Slack, Teams, etc.). Plus, then they at least have complete ownership / control of their data, which for an organization like CERN seems a little important...