The Cynic's Desk: The BRAVE Browser and Earning Cryptocurrency (BAT) for Watching Ads

So recently, the people behind the BRAVE Browser have announced the (much "awaited," I'm sure) news that web surfers can now opt-in to seeing ads online, and will be compensated for their time.

The "rewards" will come in the form of the Basic Attention Token (BAT) and are basically a cryptocurrency version of the long-standing "advertising revenue share" model that has been used for almost as long as we have had ads on the Internet.

A beautiful northern sunset

For those of you with short memories, BAT was one of the high flying ICOs from the 2017 boom time, perhaps most famous for the fact that the entire ICO offering was fully subscribed in less than a minute... although people were actually throwing money at something that only had an idea but no real executable function.

So, hats off to Brave for finally implementing a function for their token!

Now, Allegedly...

So the core idea is that the Brave browser is all about privacy, and non-invasiveness, and in therory the browser is actually partially an ad blocker.

According to company founder Brendan Eich, the idea is that users opt in to seeing ads in a non-invasive fashion, and then the system "works" because most people who "opt in" to things tend to be relatively unconcerned with opting back out.

As an additional feature, these ads supposedly won't leave a trail of tracking cookies on users' devices, either.

So far, so good, at least on paper.

Purple flower

Brendan is pretty smart and no "spring chicken" when it comes to the web game... after all, he co-founded Mozilla (best known for the Firefox browser) and invented Javascript... but — as typically is the case — there's a dodgy assumption here, specifically that people are going to use the system as it was designed...

Beware the Army of Penny Miners

So, we now go to a skeptical commentary from "The Cynic's Desk."

I have also been playing this game — and particularly the game of online monetization — pretty much since the game was invented.

And what I am seeing here is a bit of a boondoggle.

Like pretty-close-to-100% of the people and organizations who have walked down this path before (including Steem, case study unfolding, even as we speak...) the geniuses who devise these systems all make one potentially fatal mistake:

They vastly underestimate the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people around the world who are willing to spend their entire day sitting in front of a screen (or even multiple screens, with multiple computers, running from multiple IP addresses), mindlessly clicking on stuff on that screen... all for the privilege of possibly earning ONE TENTH OF A CENT.

And — as you are reading these words — there's already an army of "Script Puppies" trying to invent ways to automate the process of the Brave browser and ad feed, via bots, scripts, browser add-ons and other gimmickry.

"Yeah, but we have countermeasures in place!"

I'm sure you do. They are not good enough.

"Well, there are not THAT many people going to do something like that for 1/10th of a cent!"

Please. There's a reason why all the various sites trying these kinds of models go TU, while "micro-tasking" platforms like Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" continue to thrive after more than a decade. Meanwhile, there are literally thousands of web forums and Facebook groups dedicated to nothing more than being "newsfeeds" that list the latest "opportunity" for people to swarm in and "harvest" a few cents out of thin air.

"Yes, BUT..." and Where the Doom Comes From

People — including some very smart people like Brendan Eich — tend to misunderstand the dynamic of the problem they are dealing with.

But let's poke a little deeper, here. The "problem" isn't actually the swarm of "Penny Miners," themselves. Systems can usually be created to handle that. It's the attendant psychology we need to look at.

Problem number one is how the pervasive presence of Penny Miners affects the minds of LEGITIMATE USERS. Think of it as going to a five star restaurant with a bunch of hobos squatting outside. You end up thinking "This is NICE, but WTF is with the hobos?" And then you become cautious about giving too much credence to this otherwise great restaurant.

Problem number two is the false assumption that the penny miners "are also consumers who'll buy the products/services in the ads." No... they won't. They don't even "register" the ads; to them, the ads are little more than a blinking 1/10th cent coin on the screen... when they are done with their monotonous day, they couldn't tell you what the hell they've seen all day.

Problem number three is that advertisers buy advertising in order to successfully sell their wares. Period. Even if those "wares" are just brand awareness. No results, they stop buying.

This is where the natural cycle of this stuff comes into play.

A legitimate advertiser — let's say they are advertising a resort, or investment banking — are at first excited that they are getting a shit ton of clicks from this new venue... but in time, any ad buyer worth their salt will notice that they only have one sale per 10,000 clicks instead of the one sale per 400 clicks they seem to get everywhere else. And they will pull out.

Meanwhile, different advertisers promoting — most likely — "ways to make money online," will see huge follow through. Problem? Those advertisers live in the "low rent district."

As a result, the revenue shared ad pool will shrink, and the legitimate users — who are already a little suspicious — will see their rewards in a cycle of decline... and "interesting" ads becoming fewer and fewer. And so they lose interest.

Meanwhile, the *"Penny Miners" continue to pound away at it, now perhaps getting 1/50th of a cent per click... until one day a new message pops up on their screens:

"We're sorry, but after careful consideration, we have regretfully had to terminate our revenue sharing program. You will be able to continue using our services, but there will no longer be rewards."

At this point, most of the legitimate users have already left, and now the Penny Miners will also leave to go in search of greener pastures.

And so, the story ends.

Spring visitor in the yard

What Your Time and Attention are REALLY Worth...

One of the great buzzwords of our time is that we live in the age of the "Attention Economy," and that is absolutely true!

The fallacy within that statement — and where the whole gig sort of falls apart — relates to the actual value of your time, attention and content.

Just take a venue like Steem... we like to think that (at least theoretically) that it's all very democratic, and your voice is worth something.

As nice as that sounds, fact is that not everyone's "voice" has the same value. And whereas some contrubutors' voice and attention legitimately do have significant value, 99% of those voices are worth no more than a couple of cents, here and there.

Consider, for example, that Facebook — about whom we endlessly complain because of "how much money they make from our content!" — had revenues of about US $56 billion in 2018.

Wow! That's a LOT of money, right?

Forsythia branch

Now, let's consider that Facebook had an estimated 2.375 billion active users in the first quarter of 2019.

When you do the math on that, we can determine that the average Facebook user is "worth" just $23.60. Per year.

Keeping that in mind, let's now plug that back into a model where people think they are going to earn — aka "their time is worth" — hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year.

It just doesn't add up.

Especially not when the systems the world keep creating are such that the people who bright the MOST value are consistently driven off by the people who bring the LEAST value.

It seems to me to be just another iteration of Gresham's Law.

But still... I do wish Brendan Eich and the Brave project all the best possible success!

Reflections on the water during the "golden hour"

A Footnote:

I will add, just for the record, that if your intention and purpose is merely to execute a quick "cash grab;" to use a program like this primarily to generate excitement ahead of an Exit Plan, then it's probably a great strategy.

Similarly — if you're a user — if you're simply looking to be an "early adopter" whose approach is to get in, milk the system for all it's worth, and then cash out long before trouble arises, then it's probably a great program!

My article assumes — perhaps falsely — that the purpose of a venture is to build some form of lasting value. As I keep examining the world around me, I increasingly come to the realization that most people don't actually value "Lasting Value."

Thanks for reading!

What do YOU think? This was one of my old-fashioned "article style" posts, as I used to write them for the Entrepreneurial (paper magazines) Press, 20+ years ago. What are your thoughts on Brave? Does it have a chance? More "promise" than "follow through?" Do you recognize the "dodgy math" involved here? What do you think the true value of people's attention might be? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190426 13:50 PST
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