@sugar_in_your_tea @felsiq

I like the idea of GNU Taler a lot. I honestly didn't realize it was still around. I'll have to explore its source code sometime.

> But honestly, I also don’t care what the currency is, I just want a way to pay a website without seeing ads and without making an account.

This is what I would like too. I think there are a few reasons it will be hard to switch to this model. Perhaps the main one is that the advertising model allows sites to charge more and more attention for the same (or degraded) service, and that's harder to do if people see their money being spent. Another is that sites want to be able to charge more for popular content. That's easy with advertising, but with real payments as the price increases demand will slow down. So it will be harder for sites to get massive views. Finally, I think most sites overvalue their content and direct payment may increase the amount of spam.

> Mozilla probably wouldn’t be able to convince Google to join, but it could probably be an extension, and they could maybe convince Apple to join.

I don't think Mozilla is interested in this sort of solution. Meta needs Mozilla and the Anonym ad tracking tech to fight the attacks from Google and Apple made in the name of privacy. Meta has tons of money to make that happen. Previously Google needed Mozilla to prove it wasn't a browser monopoly. Now that source of cash is gone and Meta's executives are inside Mozilla. Remember when Facebook made a bunch of people sad just to see if they could? Or when they spied on teens' phone usage through a VPN app? The people who made those decisions are now making decisions for Mozilla.