Planting Trees Worldwide with The Web Highlights Extension
My top priority was always to make sure that most features of Web Highlights are free for everyone around the world. I am proud that the free version is already helping over 150,000 users to learn, stay organized, and do research.
At the same time, I want to keep this extension ad-free. To cover the running costs without affecting user experience—and to contribute to planting trees around the world 🌳—I’ve chosen to use the open-source Mellowtel library.
Mellowtel is a privacy-focused alternative to ads and helps to:
- 💸 Keep this side project ad-free. Over 150K users enjoy the free version, and a small revenue share helps cover costs.
- 🌱 Plant a real tree for every $2 earned through our verified reforestation partner tree-nation.com. Visit our forest here.
How Mellowtel Works
Mellowtel is an open-source library that helps developers to monetize their browser extensions. Mellowtel let users decide if they want to support you by opting in to share a fraction of their unused internet bandwidth.
Compared to other unethical solutions, Mellowtel shares bandwidth only and doesn't collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data). It's even completely open-source in order to guarantee transparency. Anyone can view the code on GitHub.
Mellowtel doesn't collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data)
Enabling Mellowtel is optional: users are opted out by default and can choose to opt in if they want to support me. Settings can be changed at any time.
Here are some facts about Mellowtel:
- It doesn't collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data).
- It's also highly regulated: Mellowtel keeps communicating with Chrome Web Store regulators to guarantee a safe experience.
- It also provides CWS regulators with tools to monitor and enforce compliance.
How Users Can Opt In
I already began to ask new users to opt in to use the library with the following dialog:
I am thrilled that out of 1,000 users asked to opt-in, 732 decided to use the library to support us and help plant trees. This gives us a strong opt-in rate of 73.2%.
We’re now starting to ask our existing users to opt-in, so we can drive more traffic and plant more trees.
How Web Highlights Plants Trees
To plant trees we are using tree-nation.com. Tree-Nation supports companies and citizens in planting trees around the world to offset their CO2 emissions.
Tree-Nation is recognized internationally and became an official partner of the UNEP in 2007. Tree-Nation has evolved to help +17,500 companies and more than half a million users to plant more than 33 million trees in +70 reforestation projects on 5 continents.
Tree-Nation combines reforestation with technology by creating virtual trees and online forests. That’s why we’ve created our own Web Highlights forest, where you can track our reforestation progress and see how many trees we’ve planted so far.
Each month, I’ll review the Mellowtel earnings and plant one tree for every $2 earned. These trees will appear in the online forest, which you can find here.
Let's save the environment and plant some trees 🌳
Should you have any feedback, feel free to contact me. Thank you again for using my extension 🙏🏻
FAQ
Will Mellowtel negatively affect user experience?
The short answer is: No. The library uses array of optimizations under the hood to ensure that it doesn’t slow down the user’s browsing experience. The impact it has on bandwidth is basically like seeing an additional ad like those on many e-commerce or news websites. Another feature that helps keeping the library unobtrusive is Rate Limiting. If you want to delve deeper read the "Concepts" section of the docs.
Can I opt out of using Mellowtel later on?
Yes. By default everyone is opted-out. Users have to explicitly opt-in if they want to support and can opt-out at any time from the settings page. The core idea is that since it's their unused Internet bandwidth, users should decide if they want to share it or not.
How does Mellowtel address privacy concerns?
Privacy is a top priority for Mellowtel. It does not collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data). Requests are handled in an incognito tab and every node is assigned a random identification key, not linked to any account. Mellowtel helps developers as an alternative to ads so they don't have to sell their users data to keep the service afloat.
Find more information on the Mellowtel website.