The Interledger Community 🌱: Janice Wait

Mozilla welcomes Two New Fellows to Reshape the Economics of the Web

Janice Wait — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 21:25:59 +0000

Mozilla, with support from Coil, welcomes Amber Case and Matt Mankins as Fellows. Case and Mankins will reimagine new models and approaches for sustaining web content that is not reliant on advertising.

Amber Case will be exploring how the future of money can generate new business models for creator compensation. Before joining Mozilla, Case held fellowships at the Institute for the Future, MIT Media Lab, and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Case is the author of Calm Technology and A Kids Book About Technology.

Case’s fellowship will focus on research into alternative business models for the web and development of a roadmap outlining potential paths forward for creators. As part of the fellowship, Case will conduct research and initiate dialogues with diverse groups to explore questions like: What is the full range of alternative business models on the web, and what would it take to adopt these new methods? What’s really needed to ignite this ecosystem? What new models of governance might be needed to support systems of multiple creators, groups and networks related to fundraising, mutual aid, and community support?

Matt Mankins will be working on advancing open monetization strategies for the web, fostering technologies to capture value without the involvement of closed platforms. Before joining Mozilla, Mankins was at the publisher Condé Nast where he led global monetization engineering efforts for the company’s iconic brands.

Mankins plans to use the fellowship to focus on research that contributes to and helps to steward a culture of ‘copy and paste models’ for supporting alternative models of monetization on the web. He plans to focus on creating a narrative framework for understanding the friction involved in current web payments standards, recommending ways to reduce this friction through social and technological norms, and prototyping them in an open source repository.

Data Futures: Research to shift power through data governance

Janice Wait — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 22:19:01 +0000

Ideas about new forms of data governance are on the rise, suggesting alternatives to big tech monopolies. Could this help us reimagine, reconstitute, and rebalance skewed power dynamics?

How data is controlled and governed is central to Mozilla’s understanding of internet health and trustworthy AI. We are committed to working with others to reimagine data governance as a building block toward a trustworthy AI ecosystem.

The Data Futures research presented here is an open study by Mozilla Insights that examines approaches to data stewardship and alternative data governance (in theory and in practice).

Read the report→

Decentralizing the Economic Power of the Web (A Reading List)

Janice Wait — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 22:12:36 +0000

By Janice Wait | Sept. 11, 2020
cross-posted from Mozilla's blog

We recently hosted a panel discussion as part of our MozFest’s Dialogues & Debates series focused on interrogating the web’s reigning business model — digital advertising — and exploring whether alternatives can become mainstream.

As the web has evolved, it has developed a reliance on advertising as its funding model. Now, let me be clear - from a general standpoint, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with advertising. What is problematic are the invasive tracking and data hoarding practices that have become commonplace in digital advertising. It’s also the ways in which these practices are changing the web and impacting democracy.

The panel explored how advertising emerged as the dominant business model, how it’s shaping the web itself, where opportunities might exist to decentralize the economic power on the web, and how we might get from here to there. And panelists had one unanimous point as we closed out the discussion: We need to level the playing field. (Watch the recording or read the transcript.)

Much attention is being paid to reforms needed in current digital advertising practices. Some other changes on the horizon, such as browsers moving away from supporting third-party cookies and Apple’s (delayed) plans to implement explicit tracking permissions, may also impact the role of advertising in the web ecosystem.

But, how might we grow sustainability for the web beyond advertising and the current data economy? Is it possible to have a web that is driven by people rather than platforms? How could the economics of the web be reshaped so they’re not built on the backs of individuals’ security and privacy?

We’ll be digging into these kinds of questions over the coming months, and invite you to join us. Below you’ll find a reading list to help you get started in understanding the issues and learn about some of the solutions emerging for decentralizing the economic power of the web.

Understanding Targeted Advertising

How do the biggest internet companies make money? (Mozilla)

It's the Business Model (Ranking Digital Rights)

AI and Digital Advertising: A Dangerous Pair (Harriet Kingaby, Mozilla Fellow)

Friction-Free Racism (Real Life)

The Internet’s Original Sin (Renee DiResta, Mozilla Fellow)

The cost of an ad-free internet: $35 more per month (Vox)

Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising? (WIRED)

Exploring Other Business Models

$100M Grant for the Web fund aims to jump-start a new way to pay online (TechCrunch)

Web Monetization Like I’m 5 (Akintunde Sultan, Grant for the Web Ambassador)

What Place Will Virtual Tipping Have in the Post-Pandemic Music Industry? (Billboard)

Scroll promises a better Internet for users and more money for publishers, all for just five bucks (Nieman Lab)

Why we invested in building an equitable data economy(Omidyar)

Investor Owned vs. User Owned Platforms (The Internet of Ownership)

We’re Missing an Entire Universe of Web Payments: How to Fix the Web for Creators (Amber Case)

Newsletters could be the next (and only) hope to save the media (Wired)

Dialogues and Debates: Alternative Business Models for the Web

Janice Wait — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 21:55:38 +0000

MozFest Dialogues & Debates series will interrogate the web’s reigning business model — digital advertising — and explore whether alternatives can become mainstream. Today’s AI-powered targeted advertisements can spread misinformation and disinformation. It may be possible to reform digital advertising to mitigate these harms, but it is also possible to introduce mainstream alternatives?

feat. Grant for the Web Ambassador Akintunde Sultan

Watch the video

Our goal in joining Grant for the Web is to support a new vision of the future.

Janice Wait — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 21:44:34 +0000

“The web’s richness and diversity comes from its individual creators: writers, coders, musicians, podcasters, app makers, journalists. But in the current web ecosystem, big platforms and invasive, targeted advertising make the rules and the profit. Consumers lose out, too — they unwittingly relinquish reams of personal data when browsing content. That’s the whole idea behind ‘surveillance capitalism.’ Our goal in joining Grant for the Web is to support a new vision of the future. One where creators and consumers can thrive.” says Mark Surman, Mozilla's Executive Director

Read the post

Hello! 👋

Janice Wait — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 15:46:48 +0000