Oddbean

What’s wrong with being the product AND having choice? People WANT their data bought and sold. It’s like internet poop, that they leave for all the internet machinery to scoop up and make use of. As long as it’s freely available, unrestricted for all “machines” to access and use… so what? So why NOT sell targeted ads on Nostr clients?

Most people don't like advertising as today's ads are incredibly overbearing and intrusive. That said, I'd still like to see how an ad supported client would function on Nostr. Would the market reject it? How would it be perceived? I may not use it, but I'm just one Nostrich in a flock of birds. nostr:nevent1qqsp48hrh7ya2ehuptfcjgf7v5lfs4afvamkw6kfvdqj6t05yls5rqspzemhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2un9d3shjtnrdakj7q3qmanlnflyzyjhgh970t8mmngrdytcp3jrmaa66u846ggg7t20cgqqxpqqqqqqzngld2s

I think the ad model is about to get shot in face by local llms prechewing the web. Many of us already use an llm as starting point instead of google. Microsoft and the other big techs are forcing the issue as attack vector on google since google has most of ad revenue. Even more ominous for ad based model is the use of agentic ai. I almost never see an ad already and it was by accident.

That's cool. You can be as local or not as fits your preference. My point is that "logical machine" need not necessarily be 1:1 with "physical machine". Our goal is to make that distinction as fungible as the user wants (including not at all)

cool i guess. But local means on my machine. cloud is someone elses. just not a fit for this use case imho but hey itll be a popular transitional til abused by whoever sits at data choke point. til then. let le bon temps roule as the cajun say

This Nostrich will take all steps necessary to not see any advertisements while using Nostr. The very idea of targeted ads showing up in my feed is repulsive, regardless of who would benefit. I don't think I'm an outlier here.

But isn't this because people generally joining #nostr has fed up with the current social media and system status quo? Maybe the majority of people that would go to the other group has no problem with this, therefore they are happy using other places. I mean only other places.

You say this … and yet you expose all of your “public data” on Nostr, freely available for any machine to scrape and make use of. So nostriches wd RATHER handcuff the client devs ”thou shalt NOT use the public data to enhance your business model” … cutting off their access to a major revenue stream … ONLY because, “that’s what they do in the walled gardens”.

Just because one leaves a trail of breadcrumbs does not mean they are hungry. Just because the data is there does not mean it has to be used to manipulate the origin of that data. The ad services are free to scoop up this info and do with it as they please. They could be doing it now. That (some) data is there is completely moot to the question of whether the community is better served by handing over permission to be manipulated. Thankfully, nostr inherently gives users the absolute ability to never lose control over their experience. The larger question isn’t whether ad-driven clients should be created, imo. It seems it should be “how can nostr protect users from the inevitable onslaught of noise (dms, comments, etc) that will come from amoral actors. A question that has been here the whole time. I would like to see more brainstorming on this notion, first. Muting isn’t going to be sufficient. Imagine ddos levels of noise being generated. All I can think of is super strict modes of “only people I follow and that they follow”, web-of-trust style. But that breaks down when money gets involved (influencers).

Yes. Mute and follow only go so far. An explicit “is trusted” marker will be needed to implement Web of Trust over Nostr. Making “is trusted” markers private will help keep influencers and money out, but these and bots will always be the challenge of better WoT tools. The pioneering of WoT for social media is Nostr’s game to loose. Along with “crowd recommendation” of content and follows (and “other stuff” users want) “trusted” advertisers and products will also thrive on the Nostr network. nostr:note1ta9gzmtewn7jnslhjd8ew9322qp3rnyc56e9a0rj9f0x2ftndxhqcy7dwt

I'd be curious too. Marketing that focuses on small, local, interest based over brand recognition is pretty critical to small business success & is less prone to manipulation. The biggest problem I've had with it, both as a buyer & seller, is the inability to be preemptive, which seems solvable now. In the short term, a client that did lean into ad revenue would definitely get rejected by users & have a very hard time finding advertisers, but long term something that diversified its own revenue between things like feature widgets, subscriptions and ads could avoid having too much advertising dependence & provide meaningful advertising to users in less overbearing numbers, i think, would do well. Right now, we'd rather pay sellers that we like to advertise to us than vice versa because it's all still so small & new😅 but eventually, its be nice to discover useful things in a way that isn't just a constant barrage of your past search history. In a utopian version, the user could even be compensated for their consent. I don't know, maybe its a pipe dream. More organic, word of-mouth type is great but ultimately slow on generating meaningful income for the seller. Zapvertising is pretty clever but it still lacks on matching seller with buyer. It's a whole, mostly unexplored, territory & I've been excited since my nostr beginnings to see what eventually comes of it. 😊

Zapvertisements. Expose a setting to the user to accept more or fewer, which are split between the user and the dev team with some decent split, like 60-40 (user/dev). If the ads are too much, dial down to minimum (which may be zero) and only get content from subs, or get ads to fund your zapping habit.

I think on the client is the best way to do advertising on Nostr. You'd need to be transparent that it's an ad or promotional note. A portion of the ad revenue should be paid to the user's lightning address. A user should be able to pay a fee to have ad free use of the client.

Ads also have potential for disruption with Nostr; they don’t necessarily have to stay “evil” and shadowy. Users can be compensated directly for opting in to have their data aggregated and sold. Companies can have much more effective targeted advertisements with the ability to directly buy existing customer data whenever needed and by streaming sats to those who view and show interest in an ad. In my view, a P2P ad market over Nostr will become incredibly powerful for monetization in due time.

I’m not sure there will be value in selling “user data” that is freely available to anyone… but maybe companies could “process” nostr data in useful ways to be of value … but I doubt that end users would be compensated in these cases?

It’s freely available, but aggregating it could definitely be of value. Most users don’t know how to query event data across the network, let alone analyze it in a meaningful way. And sure, people might not be compensated from the get-go, but the ability to do so via micropayments is incredibly easy and could act as a draw for more use of an ad market that does support direct compensation. Small businesses all won’t have the ability to do all this themselves, and oftentimes they don’t feel great about throwing out ads on whatever platform they’re using, not knowing what’s being done with all the data or who it’s even going to reach. Paying a service to do the analytics and giving businesses the ability to purchase an ad targeted to those who are most likely to buy a specific product or service by buying data directly from them reduces ad costs for the business while also increasing conversion rates. The customer is also compensated for buying a product they actually want, and a relationship is built. Market forces and sentiment would drive adoption to ad markets that most effectively benefit both parties.

Oh I know its being shared and I still dont like it and never will. Those “benefits” are too small for me to be considered a plus. To the contrary, its creepy as fuck. I search for things myself. Lose the ago following you around and your mind will be less polluted by dopamine injections. Be as random as possible, make the advertisers pay more, make them look for ghosts. If they wanna pay, pay me a salary for my data.