The most I’ve heard of was that time Mozilla tried experimenting with ostensibly privacy-respecting ads. Generally I get the impression most everyone on the fediverse hates ads - I do too, am also a uBlock user.

But this is something I wonder about every time I look at federated systems and what options operators have for keeping up with costs. Options are pretty slim, and for most cases donations are unlikely to be enough. I get that advertising is dirty, and about as capitalist as it gets, but at the same time, I feel like the lack of a fediFOSS alternative to the big ad systems like Google is a missed opportunity to essentially strike at the heart of surveillance capitalism.

I do not have the technical skills to even begin to make such a thing reality. But I do have a vivid imagination, and had some ideas starting with the question: what if an ad/pr system were designed specifically to not manipulate the end users, but rather put them in full control and potentially be something that they might even want to engage with?

Ignoring the technical details, I’ll try to describe from the site operator and end user perspectives.

Say you’re running a blog or something, and you want to monetize. The ad system has banner ads available, either small text ones or full on images - though maybe the ad market server operator has rules to prevent ads from getting too intrusive. Instead of opaque, manipulative algorithms, the ad marketplace allows anyone serving ads to freely create categories on the fly based on a tag system. Maybe limit the amount of tags used by increasing costs for the number of tags used.

So the blogger chooses which tags they feel are most appropriate for their site, and the banner serves a rotation of ads placed in those tags. There could also be a system for specific advertisers and site operators to work out their own sponsorship deals.

Now a user visits the blog. They see a random assortment of ads on the pages they visit. Something hits different because these ads are not suspiciously related to that conversation they were having with their friend 5 minutes ago. Also they keep seeing a lot of stuff they obviously have no interest in. But on the bottom of every ad they see upvote and downvote arrows, and it says something:

Don’t like what you’re seeing? Click Here to choose what you see. Or, Click Here to block ads.

If they choose the second link, all ads from that ad server marketplace will disappear from every site for that user. Although a feature like that would probably have to rely on cookies, so it would only last as long as they keep the cookies for it. So maybe what that link could do is additionally give the option to generate a block list for use in adblockers, and point to where the user can install a supported adblocker.

On the other hand, if they choose the first link, it takes them to the marketplace server where they can sign up for an account. Signing up gives the user a full suite of features. They can fully curate which ads, ad tags, and advertisers they see, which ones they can block, and all of this exists on a feed system where these can all be rated and reviewed.

Because it would be a system that’s meant to put the user in full control, it doesn’t have to stop at ads. It could double as having Liberapay integration and learn about content creators they can choose to support, and even include systems where users could choose to see banners with news of local events they could join. For every site with ads from that marketplace server, the end user would be able to choose to have every banner display only the ads they curate, the ads chosen by the site operator, or a mix of both. This would mean there should be a way for the site operator to see anonymized metrics of which ads and tags are being most viewed on their site, and be able to still earn revenue from user-chosen ads.

Ideally all of this should work toward a system where the most liked products, content, events, and services rise to the top and become the most seen, and bad ones fail miserably - while still allowing anything more niche to thrive as well. All together it could be something that blurs the line between being an ad system, and being a more general purpose passive discovery engine, and crucially, one that any user can switch off at any time.

(And it should go without saying, that unlike existing systems, it should be designed from the beginning to respect and protect user privacy on all levels).

Anyway, those are just some of my ideas. Opinions? Other ideas?