[bitcoin-dev] Ads on bitcoin.org website

[Jonas Schnelli <dev@jonasschnelli.ch>]

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Hi all

I'm a little bit concerned about the future of bitcoin.org.
A neutral website that informs about bitcoin, bitcoin-applications and
bitcoin-exchanges is important at this "early stage".

You might have seen that bitcoin.com does not claim to be neutral and
informative. As counterweight, a neutral and ad-free bitcoin.org site
is even more important.

Recently, bitcoin.org did merge a PR [1] that enables Google analytics
for bitcoin.org. The PR comments did show disagreement for this step.
For me, this seems to be against the about-us rules [2] in about "who
is in charge of bitcoin".
Personally I think allowing Google to collect data of bitcoin.org
visitors is against the bitcoin "philosophy".

Another PR [3] (not merged yet) would enable the technical base to
display ads on the site.

What ads would be displayed there?
If an ad provider would be implemented (like Google Ads), very likely
bitcoin related things like bitcoin application vendors or bitcoin
exchanges would be shown there.
Wouldn't this attack the neutrality model of bitcoin.org?

I think, it would move bitcoin.org in the wrong direction, towards
sites like bitcoin.com and it would loose the neutral "feeling" and
users and press very likely will see this as a "greedy" step.

I'd like to know, how changes on bitcoin.org happen? Do they follow
consensus-agreement among bitcoin-space contributors or does a group
of people decide what to merge and what not?

If site operators or contributers need to get payed for their (highly
appreciated) work or need to pay for infrastructure, we should address
this root problem.
I'm pretty sure we can raise funds for a such purpose and I'm offering
my help to speak to bitcoin businesses and individuals.


[1] https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/1087
[2] https://bitcoin.org/en/about-us
[3] https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/1136
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