Fair Tread, a manifesto for the age of adblock

We own the screen. It is us, and we will not return to the false reflections of mediums past.

Together we’ve dismantled the echo chambers of distorting regimes and promoted the flow of ideas globally.

We value value. To build the present, we have tolerated web economics by fiat. Those days where display advertising served as an accurate proxy for a future future where ideas, attention, and work would be compensated fairly are over.

Where once there was a partnership between content and advertising that benefited our digital infrastructure and us — the User, we now have on the page two desperate fiends fighting for the promise of the promise of a transaction.

They seek a God-like view on us? Omniscience through Big Data. User-soulonomics!

But let’s be fair: They had no choice. They are Us, and We want the Web like We want the World.

Some of us have taken to outright blocking their antics, their ads. It’s our screen, this is our right! But this is temporary and likely not the way towards a civil digital life where we can all contribute and benefit.

And here we are at the motivation for the Fair Tread Manifesto.

We are all creators. We are all consumers. We all need to eat.

The Web can still be free.

We want a world where things of value — digital things of value — are readily convertible to money in proportion to their social value. If display advertising is no longer the means of this monetization, then it should move aside and be replaced by something else. Or at least welcome the new fighters in the quest for building a sustainable web.

The ideal conversion between online attention and monetary reward would:

1) Equally work for big and small entities without regard to their size and social status or even corporality.

2) Reward the attribution rather than the artifact.

3) Promote distribution, social sharing. Good ideas should be incentivized to spread.

4) Be unfettered and free to explore, discover, and add; look back, using time as the arbiter of value obtained.

5) Be reversible so tricksters have their work cut out for them.

We propose that this something else is the Attribution Economy, where everywhere we go (tread) online, we do so fairly. Fair Tread: another way forward. Join us by following @FairTread on Twitter.